Chapter Twenty-Seven
The ceiling above her was unfamiliar, cream plaster with elegant mouldings that caught shadows from firelight somewhere to her left.
Elizabeth blinked at it, her vision swimming slightly as consciousness returned in slow waves.
Her body felt strange, not in the way it had felt strange for days now, but in a way that was both foreign and deeply, profoundly right.
She lifted one hand before her face and saw strong, capable fingers, a hand she recognised, skin that belonged to her and no one else.
Relief crashed through her with such force that tears sprang to her eyes.
She was herself again. Back in her own body, her own flesh, her own bones and blood.
The weakness that had plagued her was gone, replaced by strength she had taken for granted her entire life until it was stolen away.
Even exhausted as she clearly was, even with her head aching and her stomach churning, she felt better than she had since waking up in Anne’s failing flesh.
“Elizabeth?” The voice came from her right, male and worried. “Elizabeth, can you hear me?”
She turned her head, the motion easier than any movement had been in days, and found Darcy sitting in a chair pulled close to the bed.
His face showed exhaustion that matched her own, dark circles beneath his eyes and lines of tension around his mouth.
Behind him, Jane stood near the window, her hands clasped before her and her expression tight with barely contained emotion.
Mrs. Bennet hovered near the foot of the bed, her face red and blotchy from recent weeping.
“It’s me,” Elizabeth said, directing the words towards Jane rather than Darcy or her mother. Her voice emerged hoarse, her throat raw. “The pet I most wanted as a child was a hedgehog.”
Jane’s face transformed, relief so profound that it made her sway on her feet.
The code words they had agreed upon, proof that Elizabeth was truly Elizabeth and not Anne wearing her face.
Jane’s eyes filled with tears that spilled over immediately, tracking down her cheeks while a smile broke across her features like sunrise.
“Thank God,” Jane whispered, her voice breaking. “Oh, thank God.”
Mrs. Bennet surged forwards, her hands reaching for Elizabeth. “Lizzy, my dear girl, you gave us such a fright. Collapsing like that at your own wedding breakfast. What were you thinking, drinking wine on an empty stomach?”
Elizabeth caught Jane’s eye over their mother’s shoulder and saw understanding pass between them. Jane moved forwards, gently extracting Mrs. Bennet’s hands from Elizabeth’s person.
“Mama, perhaps you should go down and let everyone know Lizzy is recovering,” Jane suggested. “I know Father was worried. Let them know she is awake, and will be just fine shortly. She only fainted.”
Mrs. Bennet’s face showed conflict, torn between concern for her daughter and the allure of being able to hold forth to the important guests downstairs. Social ambition won, as Jane had clearly known it would. Mrs. Bennet patted Elizabeth’s hand one final time before bustling towards the door.
“Very well, but you must send for me immediately if Lizzy takes another turn,” Mrs. Bennet commanded, already halfway into the corridor. “A mother knows best in these situations.”
The door closed behind her, and Jane turned back to Elizabeth. “I should check on Anne. Make certain the reversal worked for both of you. Mr. Darcy, will you stay with Elizabeth?”
“Of course,” Darcy replied, his gaze never leaving Elizabeth’s face. Something in his expression made Elizabeth’s stomach flutter.
Jane squeezed Elizabeth’s hand briefly, her touch conveying support and understanding.
Then she was gone as well, leaving Elizabeth alone with her husband.
The word struck her with renewed force now that she was back in her own body, now that the marriage was real in ways it had not felt when she was trapped watching Anne speak the vows in her place.
Husband. Darcy was her husband. They were married, bound by law and church and society in ways that could not be undone except by death.
Elizabeth lifted her hands again, studying them in the firelight as though they might disappear if she looked away.
Her hands, her wrists, her arms. She touched her face, feeling the familiar contours of nose and cheekbones and jaw.
Ran her fingers through her hair, finding it arranged in the elaborate style Jane had created this morning but unmistakably her own dark curls beneath the pearl-tipped pins.
“I am myself,” she said aloud, needing to hear the words spoken in her own voice. “I am Elizabeth Bennet.” She paused. “Elizabeth Darcy now, I suppose.”
Darcy shifted in his chair, leaning forwards with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped before him. His expression showed patience mixed with confusion, clearly waiting for explanation.
“Elizabeth,” he said quietly. “Something is going on, something that I do not understand. Will you not tell me?”
He was owed the truth. He, more than anyone save Elizabeth herself, was a victim of Anne’s schemes.
She must tell him everything and hope he did not think her mad – but at least, if he did, she was safely back in her own body.
Elizabeth took a breath and began. The words came haltingly at first, her exhaustion making coherent thought difficult.
But she forced herself to continue, to lay out the truth in all its impossible, horrifying detail.
Anne’s alchemical abilities, learned from her father.
The body swap potion, brewed with rare ingredients and activated through simultaneous drinking.
Anne’s motivations, her resentment and jealousy and desperate desire for the life she believed Elizabeth had squandered.
Anne’s plan to use another potion on Darcy after the wedding, to ensure his eternal devotion – a potion Sir Lewis de Bourgh had once used to ensnare Lady Catherine for his own.
Darcy listened in grave silence, his face showing shock that slowly transformed into horror.
He did not interrupt, did not question or protest the impossibility of what she was describing.
He simply sat and listened while Elizabeth’s voice grew stronger, her words coming faster as the story poured out.
“She wanted everything I had,” Elizabeth finished. “My health, my vitality… your attention. I was simply an obstacle to be removed, a body to be stolen and discarded.”
Darcy remained silent for a long moment after she finished speaking, his gaze distant as though reviewing recent events through this new lens. When he finally spoke, his voice carried the one thing Elizabeth had not dared hope for: belief.
“There were tells,” he said slowly, his eyes finding hers again.
“Things that troubled me, though I could not identify why. The simpering. You have never simpered, Elizabeth, yet she giggled at every jest and leaned against me with constant need for reassurance. You value independence too much for such behaviour.”
Elizabeth felt her cheeks heat despite everything.
Darcy continued, his voice growing more certain.
“Your insistence on the special licence and marrying in London, instead of from Longbourn, struck me as utterly unlike the Elizabeth I knew, who loved her family deeply. Then, when I suggested instead visiting Longbourn after our wedding trip, to spend time with your family before we departed for Pemberley. You showed no interest. No concern for when you might see your father or Jane again. It all struck me as wrong, but I told myself you were simply caught up in wedding preparations.”
Elizabeth watched his hand hover near hers, not quite touching, and felt the weight of everything unsaid pressing down on her chest. The question formed before she could stop it.
“And yet, still you married me.” She kept her gaze on his face. “You suspected something was wrong. You knew I was not behaving as myself. And yet you stood before the altar and spoke vows that bound us together.”
Darcy’s expression shifted, something that looked like guilt crossing his features before he could mask it. He withdrew his hand, settling back in his chair with movements that suggested discomfort. When he spoke, his voice carried careful precision.
“I have been in love with you for so long,” he said quietly, his gaze dropping to his clasped hands.
“Since Hertfordshire, if I am honest with myself. I have thought of little else but you for months. And when you accepted my proposal, when you agreed to become my wife, I was so grateful, that I did not examine too closely why your manner had changed.”
He looked up at her then, his eyes showing vulnerability she had never seen in him before.
“I told myself you were nervous about the wedding. That you were perhaps having second thoughts but felt obligated to go through with it regardless. I convinced myself that once we were married, once you had time to know me better, your doubts would fade and you would come to care for me as I cared for you.”
The admission struck Elizabeth with unexpected force. She had not truly realised how deeply his feelings ran. Guilt twisted in her stomach.
“But you tried to warn me,” Darcy continued, and now his voice carried despair.
“Didn’t you? When you told me that Elizabeth Bennet did not love me, that she had accepted my proposal only because she felt she had no other choice.
You were trying to tell me the truth. That the woman I was about to marry was not who she claimed to be. ”
His hands tightened on each other until his knuckles showed white. “I need to know, Elizabeth. Did you mean that Anne did not truly love me, or that you yourself did not?”
Elizabeth’s chest constricted, her breath catching. She saw the fear in his face, the vulnerability of someone who had risked everything on a hope that might prove false. Her hands twisted in the blanket.