Chapter 14 The Wedding
Darcy had faced down predators, creditors, society matrons, and his own aunt with equanimity that bordered on supernatural.
He had managed an estate worth more than most men would see in a lifetime, navigated the treacherous waters of London society, and endured Caroline Bingley's attentions for the better part of a decade without visible distress.
He could not tie his cravat.
"You have done this every morning since you were fifteen," Colonel Fitzwilliam observed from the doorway of the guest chamber at Netherfield, leaning against the frame with the particular enjoyment of a man watching his formidable cousin come undone by a strip of linen.
"It is not a skill that typically deserts a man on his wedding day. "
"The fabric is uncooperative."
"The fabric is the same fabric you tie every morning. You, however, are shaking like a leaf." The Colonel crossed the room and swatted Darcy's hands away. "Hold still. You are getting married, not mounting a scaffold."
"The distinction feels academic at present."
"Darcy." The Colonel finished the knot with the practiced efficiency of a military man and clapped his cousin on the shoulders.
"You are marrying the most extraordinary woman either of us has ever met.
She loves you, God knows why. You love her, which is the least surprising development in the history of human attachment.
And in approximately ninety minutes, you will stand in a church and make it official, and then you will spend the rest of your life being happier than you deserve. This is not an occasion for terror."
"I am not terrified."
"You are green."
"It is the light."
The Colonel grinned and retreated, and Darcy looked at himself in the mirror and tried to see the man Elizabeth loved.
He saw a tall, dark, serious-looking person in a dark blue coat and cream waistcoat, impeccably dressed, rigidly composed, and utterly petrified.
The man in the mirror did not look like a man about to receive the greatest gift of his life.
He looked like a man afraid of dropping it.
The church at Longbourn was small, ancient, and full of people.
The entire neighborhood had turned out, because a Bennet daughter marrying Mr. Darcy of Pemberley was the kind of event that warranted cancelling all other plans, including, apparently, a funeral in the next village that had been rescheduled to accommodate the curious.
The pews were decorated with gardenias -- Mrs. Bennet's triumph -- their scent filling the cold stone space with an almost tropical sweetness.
Morning light poured through the stained glass, casting patterns of blue and gold and red across the flagstone floor, and the effect was of standing inside a kaleidoscope, the world broken into beautiful fragments and reassembled into something new.
Darcy stood at the altar with the Colonel beside him and waited, and the waiting was the longest sixty seconds of his life.
Then the door opened, and Elizabeth walked in, and every coherent thought he had ever had dissolved.
She was wearing ivory -- not cream, as Mrs. Bennet had insisted with a prescience that now seemed prophetic -- and the gown was simple, almost severe in its elegance, the lines clean, the fabric flowing, nothing fussy or overwrought.
Her hair was half-up, half-down, dark curls framing her face and falling past her shoulders, and at her throat, his mother's sapphire caught the colored light from the windows and blazed like a captured star.
She was holding her father's arm. Mr. Bennet was walking with a deliberation that Darcy recognized as the pace of a man who wanted to slow time, who understood that he was delivering his daughter to a future he could not control, and who was making peace with it in the twenty steps between the door and the altar.
Their eyes met. Elizabeth's face did not hold the demure, downcast expression that tradition demanded.
She was looking directly at him, her chin level, her eyes bright, and she was smiling -- not the sharp smile or the polite smile or the new, soft smile she had shown him in the garden.
This was something else. This was joy, unfiltered and unguarded, the expression of a woman who was walking toward the thing she wanted most in the world and was done pretending otherwise.
Darcy forgot to breathe. The Colonel nudged him. He breathed.
Mr. Bennet reached the altar. He placed Elizabeth's hand in Darcy's, and the contact -- her bare fingers in his, warm and steady and real -- grounded him like nothing else could.
"Take care of her," Mr. Bennet said, low enough for only the three of them to hear. "She is the best thing I ever made."
"I know, sir," Darcy said. "I will."
Mr. Bennet nodded. Stepped back. Took his seat beside Mrs. Bennet, who was already weeping with a thoroughness that suggested she had been practicing.
The ceremony was brief and ancient and perfect. The vicar spoke the words that had been spoken in that church for centuries, and Elizabeth and Darcy repeated them with the careful attention of two people who understood that promises were not decorative.
"I, Fitzwilliam George Darcy, take thee, Elizabeth Grace Bennet, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part."
His voice did not shake. His hands did.
"I, Elizabeth Grace Bennet, take thee, Fitzwilliam George Darcy, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part."
Her voice did not shake either, but her eyes were bright with tears she did not let fall, and when the vicar pronounced them man and wife, she smiled at Darcy with such radiant, fearless happiness that the congregation collectively inhaled.
He kissed her. Gently, briefly, properly, as the occasion demanded. But his hand at her waist tightened, and her fingers curled into his lapel, and the kiss contained everything that the public version could not: I love you, I chose you, I will spend the rest of my life proving it.
The wedding breakfast at Longbourn was a production that Mrs. Bennet had spent three months orchestrating and that exceeded even her considerable ambitions.
The dining room had been transformed with gardenias and candles and the best china, and the food was ambitious and largely successful, and the toasts were numerous and occasionally coherent.
Bingley toasted first, with the warmth and slight incoherence of a man who had drunk two glasses of champagne on an empty stomach and was overflowing with affection for his best friend and his best friend's wife.
Jane stood beside him, glowing, their hands linked beneath the table, and Elizabeth caught her sister's eye and felt a surge of gratitude so fierce it made her chest ache.
Colonel Fitzwilliam spoke next, with the easy humor of a man accustomed to public speaking and the genuine fondness of a cousin who had watched Darcy transform from marble to man.
"I have known Darcy since we were boys," the Colonel said, "and in all that time, I have seen him smile approximately four times. Three of those were in the last month. I credit Mrs. Darcy with this remarkable improvement and urge her to continue her efforts."
Laughter. Darcy's mouth twitched -- the old almost-smile, and Elizabeth nudged him under the table, and he gave in and smiled properly, and the room cheered.
Mr. Bennet rose last. He was not a man given to public sentiment, and his toast was brief, delivered in the dry, sardonic voice that Elizabeth had inherited and loved.
"My daughter asked me recently if I was happy for her.
I told her I was. What I did not tell her -- because we Bennets are better at wit than sincerity -- is that I am proud of her.
Not for marrying well, though she has. Not for securing the family's future, though she has done that too.
I am proud of her for being brave enough to love a man she once despised, and honest enough to tell him so, and strong enough to build something real from a beginning that was, by any objective measure, a complete disaster. "
He raised his glass. "To Elizabeth and Darcy. May your marriage be as spirited as your courtship and considerably less scandalous."
Laughter again, and tears, and Mrs. Bennet's audible weeping, and the clink of glasses, and Elizabeth looked at Darcy and he looked at her, and in the noise and warmth of her family's dining room, she leaned close and whispered, "I love you."
"I know," he whispered back. "You mentioned it at the altar."
"I will mention it again. Frequently. For the rest of your life."
"I look forward to it."
The departure for Pemberley came in the early afternoon, the carriage loaded, the farewells delivered in a cascade of embraces and instructions and Mrs. Bennet's tearful insistence that Elizabeth write every day.
Jane held her longest, their heads together, whispering things that no one else needed to hear.
"Be happy, Lizzy."
"I am. Oh, Jane. I am."
The carriage rolled away from Longbourn, and Elizabeth watched her childhood home recede through the rear window until it was a smudge against the grey sky, and then it was gone, and the road to Pemberley stretched ahead, and beside her, Darcy took her hand.
"You are quiet," he said.
"I am adjusting. An hour ago, I was Elizabeth Bennet. Now I am Mrs. Darcy. The transition requires processing."
"Take all the time you need."
"I intend to." She turned from the window and looked at him. Her husband. The word was new and enormous and exactly right. "Though I have a question."
"Ask it."
"How long is the drive to Pemberley?"
"Four hours."
"And this carriage has curtains."
He looked at her. She looked at him. The air between them thickened.
"It does," he said carefully.