Chapter 29
Darcy awoke with a start.
For one disoriented moment, he could not place where he was. The bed beneath him felt strange and familiar all at once. He blinked, and the ceiling above him came into focus—the carved cornices, the faint crack in the plaster near the window.
His heart lurched so violently he thought he might be ill.
He sat bolt upright. The chamber tipped and steadied around him.
The scent, his own blend of cedar shavings and cold ash, was unmistakable.
On the small escritoire by the hearth lay a scatter of papers, the first pages of letters begun and abandoned—his own cramped hand, slashed out and re-begun: Madam— Miss Bennet— Elizabeth—.
Each one bore the mark of agitation and temper.
He stared at them, scarcely breathing.
Rosings.
He threw back the bedclothes and looked down. The nightclothes were the same he had worn that dreadful night—the night he had tossed and turned in bed, angry and miserable over Elizabeth’s rejection.
From the corridor came the sounds of the house at morning: the low burr of voices, a footman’s quick tread, the thin rattle of a coal scuttle, the distant strike of a grate being cleared. His throat tightened. A tremor went through his hands.
Was it all a dream?
No, that was not possible. It was too real, too detailed.
Darcy rose and crossed to the window and pressed his palm to the glass as if he could test the reality of the world by touch alone.
The landscape beyond was bright with pale winter sunlight, the lawn glittering with frost. His breath fogged against the glass.
He turned back to the room again, half afraid that if he blinked, the image would change—that he would find himself once more in the strange world he and Elizabeth had shared.
But nothing shifted. The chamber remained as it had always been.
He dragged in a breath that scraped, then another.
Unable to bear the loneliness of the room any longer—when is the last time I awoke without her by my side?
—he went behind the changing screen and tore his dressing gown from his body.
He dressed with hands that would not be steady, mis-fastening one button and then another, then tearing them free to start again.
He crammed his feet into his boots, forced them at last to heel, and seized his coat.
When he descended the stairs, the scent of holly and evergreens greeted him, and he froze. The halls were still hung with garlands, the side tables adorned with ribbons, and in the corner of the drawing room stood the same evergreen boughs decorated with mistletoe and candlelight.
A maid hurried past with a tray. She bobbed a curtsey and smiled up at him. “A happy Christmas to you, sir.”
He stopped in his tracks.
Christmas.
His breath caught. He turned sharply toward the tall clock in the entryway. It struck eight. The same day. The same hour he left Rosings last time.
A wave of dizziness washed over him. He put his hand to the newel post to steady himself. His pulse hammered in his throat. His mind seized at fragments—Elizabeth’s breath warm against his shoulder in the carriage, the weight of her head upon his arm as she slept next to him.
The clean snap of a snowdrop stem. The smoothness of a pebble turning beneath his thumb. He could feel them. He could taste the salt at Elizabeth’s lips.
“I have gone mad,” he murmured aloud.
The dream—the life—they had shared—it had felt so real. Every moment vivid, alive.
He pressed his hands against his temples. “It cannot have been a dream.”
And yet the house said otherwise.
He moved toward the door, needing air, needing space to think. He would go for a walk—to clear his head. Perhaps the cold would restore sense to him.
But sense did not come. Panic did instead.
If it was a dream—then what? If it truly was Christmas morning, then it had been only last night that he had proposed.
Badly. Disastrously.
His stomach twisted.
If the world had truly returned to its former state, then Elizabeth’s last memory of him was of that humiliation, that dreadful speech in which he had offered his heart and insulted her in the same breath.
And she hated him.
He hesitated at the door, uncertain whether to go to the parsonage at once or to wait until later in the day. To call so early would seem desperate, even unhinged. And yet to wait felt impossible.
He stepped outside into the cold. The air bit at his cheeks, but he barely noticed it. He walked without direction, his thoughts racing.
What if it was all a dream? What if she remembers none of it?
His chest constricted painfully.
What if she still despises me?
He had nearly reached the trees before he realized where his steps had brought him.
The stream that fed the small pond lay ahead, rimmed with a thin crust of ice, the surface clouded and gray.
A hush rested over the little hollow as if the very air remembered secrets.
He stopped at the fringe of reeds and looked down upon the water, and his heart beat so hard he thought it might break a rib.
He stopped at the bank, staring out across the thin sheen of frost. His breath clouded before him.
This was where it had begun—his despair, his words to the unseen fae. He could almost hear his own voice echoing through the cold air: I wish I had never been born.
He closed his eyes. The memories did not fade.
They rose—Elizabeth in the kitchen, bare-armed and fierce with a broken bottle; Elizabeth by the river, anger bright as a brand; Elizabeth beneath his hand, soft as a prayer.
The taste of her. The look in her eyes when she said I love you. The flower ring. The vow.
If it had been a dream, then it had been the truest one he had ever known.
What if none of it happened? The thought would not be driven away. What if she remembers nothing? What if I am alone with these shadows, and she is left with only the memory of a proud fool who offended her?
He forced his eyes open and stared at the water until the blur of panic steadied into focus. If it had been only a dream, then he would build the reality with his own two hands.
The resolve settled in his chest, warm and sure.
He would begin with an apology.
After that, he would do the work that proved a man could be trusted.
He would return to Hertfordshire with Bingley at once.
He would set his friend again upon the road to Netherfield, and he would contrive as many walks and dinners and calls as Jane Bennet’s comfort allowed—quietly, honorably, with no pressure and no interference from those who did not wish it.
He would seek out Mr. Bennet with humility and hear his mind. He would put himself where Elizabeth might see him at his best and not at his proudest. He would earn, if not her love, then at least her good opinion.
And if she did not remember a single moment of the life they had shared—if it had all been phantasm—then he would build another life in its place, brick by brick, day by day, as long as breath remained to him.
His chest ached, but the ache felt clean now, like air drawn too deep on a cold morning. He looked up at the pale sky.
He smiled faintly, the cold wind stinging his face.
Dream or not, he thought, I will make it true.
He turned from the pond—and froze.
There, just beyond the line of birches, stood Elizabeth.
∞∞∞
Elizabeth woke suddenly, her heart pounding, her body shivering.
Darcy.
She rolled over to borrow his warmth, but the space beside her was cold. Reaching out, she half-expected to find the solid warmth of Darcy’s arm and the steady rise and fall of his chest—but her hand only met the smooth coverlet.
Smooth?
Her eyes flew open.
The room was not the one she had fallen asleep in.
Gone were the deep oak beams of the Pemberley servants’ quarters, the rough blankets on a lump mattress, and the folded garments Darcy had left at the foot of the bed.
Even the air was different—cool and close, heavy with the smell of lye soap and fresh plaster.
Elizabeth sat up in confusion, staring about her. The narrow bed, the single chair in front of the washstand, and the closet with the shelves—all of it was familiar.
She was in the Hunsford parsonage.
Her breath caught painfully in her throat. “No,” she whispered aloud. “No, this cannot be.”
Looking around again, she hoped for some sign that might explain the impossibility. Had she been dreaming? Was she ill?
A sudden thought struck her.
Am I… am I Mrs. Collins?
The very idea made her shudder.
She drew a shaking breath and pressed a hand to her forehead, then stood and went to the corner where a small trunk stood open.
Inside lay her gowns—her old gowns, the same ones she had brought to Kent from Longbourn.
There were no newer gowns that would have indicated a trousseau.
And there were certainly no caps or lace collars, which would have been a sure sign that she had married.
Turning back to the bed, she inspected it carefully. There was no second pillow, no man’s coat, no books or papers that might belong to Mr. Collins. The smallness of the room, the faint scent of lavender and starch—everything spoke of a guest chamber.
A guest, then. Not a wife.
Relief flooded through her so suddenly that she nearly laughed aloud. “Thank Heaven,” she murmured, collapsing back against the bed for a moment, her pulse still unsteady.
But her relief gave way almost at once to bewilderment. If she was not married—if she was still Miss Elizabeth—then what had happened to the life she and Darcy had built together? The memory of it was still so vivid. Lying next to Darcy at night, traveling with him to Pemberley, working as a maid.
Had it all been a dream?