Have No Fun （Third Person） #3
“My oak tree was the docks in Portsmouth and London. Much like Bingley, I will never know if I was showing you the honour of following your wishes, or if I just lacked courage. For Bingley, it was one more mile of riding. For me it would be endless weeks of misery, but in either case, we would both have to lay our hearts bare in front of the woman we loved. I will never know if we were not bold enough, or if it was simply not the right time. Had Bingley acted more precipitously, he might never have grown into the man he is, your sister might not have grown into the woman she is, I would never have become such great friends with your sister, and my life would be diminished. Had I acted with more bravery, I doubt Anne would have ever escaped Rosings, let alone found herself and her love. Only you could do that! Perhaps, Elizabeth… perhaps Fate just decided that we had important things to do before we could be together, but the time is now. Please tell me you will allow me to try.”
Elizabeth came to her senses; the power in his voice was overwhelming. She knew insincerity at a dozen paces, but the converse was true, and there was not the slightest doubt that this man sincerely offered up his heart.
“Fitzwilliam, do you know what my most prevalent emotion was upon leaving Netherfield? It was not anger, though I was filled with a red-hot rage such as I had never felt before. It was not pain, though my hip hurt abominably. It was not concern for my sister, though she was reduced to leaning on a limping blind woman for support. It was not embarrassment, though I had heard the worst slight of my life. It was not revenge or justice, though I knew that you would put that harridan in her place. Do you know what it was?”
“Please,” he whispered so softly no one else could have heard.
“It was disappointment. I loved you, even then. I would not admit it to myself, and still can barely do so, but I was disappointed to know that my one chance to befriend you while maintaining some kind of dignity was lost. I never aspired to have you love me, but I had hoped I could love you from afar and live my life. That was ripped away that morning, and I felt it so acutely it nearly killed me; but it was many months before I could sort out the feeling and understand it.”
“You love me?”
She heard everything in that question: love, pain, struggle, hope, and more love.
“Yes, with all my heart. I think I loved you almost from the start. Love at first sight did not apply, but I flirted outrageously with you in that first assembly, though I would not admit it to myself.”
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Will you do me the great honour of becoming my wife?”
She answered in a whisper,
“Yes, I would be honoured. May I?”
While he wondered at her request, she disengaged her hands from his, raised them to cup his cheek, and traced his face to know it.
She would never see him, but that was no reason she could not know him.
His hair was longer than she would have expected, his sideburns softer.
His lips, when she reached them, were soft and yielding, and he gave not the slightest resistance as she gently pulled him towards herself for their first kiss.
So intense were their feelings that they naturally bumped their heads together before their lips met, which unleashed a torrent of laughter that delayed the kissing for… well, to be truthful, not very long.
Fitzwilliam would have happily jumped up and spun her around the room like a little girl, but wisely desisted, correctly surmising that was more likely to make her ill than lovestruck.
He did however, equally wisely, or perhaps lazily, trade places with her on the bench, as having her in his lap was in every way superior to being on his knees, which by that time were in agony.
Sometime later, the lady asked, “Fitzwilliam, is it true that a ship’s captain can perform a marriage at sea?”
“I believe so.”
“How far out to sea?”
The man grinned like a schoolboy, and realised that his lady—he would never tire of that phrase… his lady—could not see it. Doubtless, she would devise a system for communicating such things—or more likely, just teach him Anne’s.
“I do not know, but to save the life of my valet, I suspect Captain Smyth will be satisfied with a few yards.”
His lady laughed with open glee. She reached up to cup his cheek, used her thumb as a guide to move her lips to his sans the traditional head-bashing, and kissed him soundly within an inch of his life.
Sometime later, his lady spoke again. “Fitzwilliam?”
“Are you planning to marry me soon?”
“Yes, my love?”
“Captain Smyth was three sheets to the wind last time I saw him.”
“The least your valet can do is sober him up enough to say the words, what with the captain saving his life.”
The gentleman could not quite resist spinning his lady around just once, before tucking her hand carefully in his arm and leaving the room practically at a run, bellowing, “FOWLER! COFFEE!”
~~~
Unbeknownst to each other, two friends who had lost contact but would soon be reunited awoke at the same time, by the dubious light of a new moon.
Neither lady could return to sleep, nor could either see anything at all, nor was it time to arise.
Both being pragmatic sorts, they naturally decided to engage in the only productive activity left to them—exploring their new husbands’ forms in some detail.