Epilogue #3
The Bennet books occupied the better part of two shelves on the east wall now.
He had arranged the purchase over a year ago, when Elizabeth had mentioned that her father was considering parting with some of his library.
He had offered fair value and been careful about the phrasing.
He did not want his father-in-law to feel he was being relieved of a burden.
He wanted him to feel he was placing his books in good hands.
He ran his finger along the spines now. The excellent natural philosophy collection.
Several first editions in better condition than their age had any right to allow.
A gap where the Shakespeare folio was not, because the folio was in a case at Pemberley, where it belonged, and where the rest of these books would be taken when they left London at the end of this season.
London was no place for a babe.
Thomas would read these books one day. Darcy would not send his children to school, they would have masters and tutors at home. But his son would attend Cambridge. He laughed at himself. The time was so distant it was nearly imaginary, and yet he could not stop thinking about it.
Their son.
He was still standing at the shelves with this thought when Elizabeth appeared in the doorway carrying Thomas. He was red-faced and evidently dissatisfied with the world in general.
“He would not sleep,” she said, “and Nurse was exhausted, so I sent her to bed and here we are.” She looked at Darcy. “What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“About what?”
“Many things.”
She came in and sat down in her chair, the one she had claimed on her third day in this house and never relinquished. Thomas pressed one cheek against her shoulder as she rubbed his back in slow, circular movements. “Come and sit down,” she said.
Darcy crossed the room and sat in the chair across from hers, and they were quiet for a moment. It was how they had begun in the first uncertain weeks of their marriage, not speaking because they did not yet know how, and the library being the one place where not speaking felt appropriate.
They knew how to speak now.
“I was thinking about Tracy,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “So was I.”
Thomas made a mild complaint. Elizabeth shifted the babe and he subsided. As they sat together, Darcy thought about how much had changed since he wed and how entirely empty this room had been without her in it.
“Come to bed,” she said at last. “It is late.”
She rose from the chair with Thomas on her shoulder and held out her free hand to him, entirely natural, entirely herself.
He lifted Thomas into his arms, for he knew Elizabeth was tired too. Then he took her hand.
Thomas fell asleep between them approximately forty minutes later, having delivered his considered opinions on a range of subjects including hunger, the temperature of the room, and a shadow on the ceiling that frightened him.
Darcy returned him to the nursery with what was probably excessive care—but one did not wake a sleeping baby.
Almost six weeks with an infant had taught him that.
Elizabeth was still awake when he came back. “He is growing very decided,” she said. “I wonder where he gets it.”
Darcy huffed. “I know precisely where and it is not from me.” He slipped into the bed as his wife laughed. The candle was low, the fire down to coals, the January dark heavy against the glass. She turned towards him but said nothing.
“What is it?” he said.
“I was thinking about Ramsgate.” She paused. “About the morning I wrote you that letter to warn you. I almost did not send it.”
He thought about the letter. The practical, careful hand. The reluctance in every line, and underneath the reluctance something she could not quite suppress, that she had seen something wrong and could not in good conscience leave it alone.
“I am glad you did,” he said.
“So am I.” A pause. “Though I will say that nothing in that letter was intended to result in all of this.”
“All of this?”
“You. Thomas. Georgiana. The library.” She considered something and smiled. “Tracy’s umbrella.”
He laughed, which he had not quite expected, and she laughed too, softly, and then she leaned her head on his shoulder and was quiet.
“I am glad I did it,” she said. “Writing the letter. Sending it.”
He put his arm around her. “Even knowing you would end up married to me?”
“That, Mr. Darcy, is a very transparent piece of vanity,” she said teasingly. “You wish me to praise you, but I shall only say, ‘go to sleep.’”
He pressed his lips to her hair. She hummed and placed her head on his shoulder as she had earlier in the day.
After a time, her breathing changed and he understood she had fallen asleep before he had, which she would deny in the morning with great conviction and which he would not contradict, because he had learned some arguments were not worth having.
He lay in the dark, thinking about a letter written and nearly abandoned, the grey sea at Ramsgate, her shawl hanging from a rafter, the book about bees, and the long, strange journey that had somehow produced this room, this woman, this life he had not known to want and now could not imagine being without.
Darcy had spent most of his life protecting the people he loved. It had not occurred to him, before Elizabeth, that he might one day be protected too.
I did not believe it could be like this, he thought.
He was glad to have been wrong.
Keep the Romance Coming
Darcy and Elizabeth: two sharp minds, one enduring love.