Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Elizabeth reckoned with the island the way she reckoned with everything: practically, thoroughly, and with a refusal to be sentimental about the arithmetic.
The arithmetic was not encouraging. They had been on the island for three weeks.
In that time, four ships had passed within visible distance of the tower.
Of those four, only one had been close enough to theoretically see their signal fire.
Yet no ship had stopped or altered course.
None had shown any sign that two people on a hilltop were waving, shouting, and burning everything they could find.
The signal fire had failed. The raft had failed. The methods available to two people on a small island, possessing no materials beyond wreckage and rope, were ultimately insufficient.
The fundamental problem was scale. They were small, and the sea was impossibly large. That disproportion was not going to change. Waiting for luck to resolve the matter was merely a prayer, and Elizabeth preferred action.
If they could not make the sea smaller, they could make the island more liveable.
She began with a garden. It was not a garden in the Longbourn sense, with borders and her mother's opinions regarding the arrangement of roses, but a purely practical one.
She transplanted wild herbs from the hillside to a cleared patch of soil near the tower, where the cistern's overflow kept the ground damp.
The rosemary, thyme, oregano, and fennel had been growing wild on the island for centuries.
However, with the benefit of regular watering and cleared soil, the transplants took hold vigorously.
She also began drying figs. The trees produced more fruit than they could eat fresh, and she disliked seeing the surplus rot on the ground.
She laid split figs on flat rocks in the sun, turning them daily.
Within a week, she had a store of dried fruit that would keep through bad weather and supplement the fish.
It was not glamorous work; it attracted insects, required constant vigilance, and left her fingers stained.
Yet she performed it with systematic dedication.
If she was going to live on this island, she intended to manage it thoroughly.
Darcy watched her work, but did not interfere. He had learned during the argument over the roof that Elizabeth's decisions were not tentative proposals requiring his approval. They were settled plans requiring his cooperation, a distinction he was increasingly comfortable with.
He focused his efforts on the tower. The stone repairs she had insisted upon for the roof proved sound; the beams held the weight, and the leaks stopped entirely.
He built a shelf from driftwood planks for their supplies.
He constructed a rainwater channel from the intact section of the roof to the cistern, doubling their water collection.
He also carved hooks into the stone wall to hang the sailcloth, which served as a curtain, shade, and additional bedding on cold nights.
The tower was beginning to look like a home.
The word arrived in Elizabeth's mind one afternoon as she walked up the hill from the cove.
She saw the smoke rising from the chimney, the herb garden by the door, and the sailcloth moving in the breeze.
The word was both wholly absurd and wholly accurate.
At night, by the fire, they read aloud.
The book had washed ashore in their first days.
It was a waterlogged volume with warped covers and stuck pages, which Darcy had carefully separated and dried in the sun over the course of a week.
It was an Italian novel. Elizabeth did not speak the language, and Darcy read it poorly.
Reading it aloud was therefore an exercise in creative interpretation that likely bore little resemblance to the author's intent.
“I believe he is proposing to her,” Darcy said, squinting at the water-damaged text by firelight.
“You said that three chapters ago.”
“He was proposing three chapters ago. He appears to still be proposing. The man is either very thorough or very unsuccessful.”
“Perhaps she has not answered.”
“She has answered at length. I simply cannot determine whether the answer is yes or no. My Italian does not extend to the conditional subjunctive.”
“Then she is being evasive. It suggests the answer is no, but she would like it to be yes.”
“You are inserting your own sentiments.”
“I am interpreting the text. Though I concede the distinction is fine.”
She sat between his legs with her back resting against his chest, the position that had become their custom for evenings by the fire.
His arm rested around her waist. The book was propped on his raised knee.
He turned the pages with his free hand while she leaned against him, cheerfully inventing the plot of a novel neither could properly read.
The domesticity of it should not have surprised her. She had lived with this man for three weeks. She ate with him, slept beside him, and managed a strange household that consisted of a ruined tower and a patch of wild herbs.
She turned in his arms. His firelit face was close, and she kissed the corner of his jaw where the stubble was thickest. The kiss was idle and affectionate. Yet, as always between them, such idle affection quickly deepened into something far less idle.
“Fitzwilliam,” she said against his mouth.
“Mm.”
“What are we?”
He pulled back enough to look at her. His face grew serious. She recognised the expression; he wore it when he was asked a question he considered important, and intended to answer with all precision.
“We are two people on an island who have chosen each other,” he said.
“Yes. But what does that make us? In the language of the world we left. What are we?”
“In the language of the world we left, we are compromised. You are ruined, and I am the man who ruined you. The judgement is wrong in every particular, but it is the language the world will use.”
“I am not ruined.”
“No. You are not.”
“I am asking what you want. Not what the world will call it. What you want.”
He was quiet for a moment. His hand rested on her waist, his thumb moving in a small, absent arc. She had learned it was his thinking gesture—the physical expression of his mind working through a problem.
“I want to marry you,” he said. “I have wanted to marry you since before this island. That desire has not changed in kind, only in its certainty. I want to marry you, and I want to take you home. I want to walk into the church at Lambton with you beside me, hear the words spoken, and know that the rest of the world has finally caught up to what has already happened here.”
“What has already happened here?”
“Everything. You are my wife in every way that matters. The ceremony is a formality. A necessary formality, for your protection and your family's peace, but a formality. What we have here, in this tower, is the thing itself.”
She looked at him. His face was steady, his voice was calm, and his hand remained warm on her waist. This proposal was nothing like Hunsford.
There was no pride in it, no condescension, and no catalogue of her family's failings.
There was only a man in a torn shirt telling a woman in a torn dress that he wanted her for the rest of his life.
The declaration was plain, direct, and completely without ornament.
“That is not a proposal,” she said.
“No?”
“A proposal requires a question. You have merely made a series of statements—eloquent statements, to be sure, but statements nonetheless.”
His mouth curved into the faint smile she had loved since the beach. “Elizabeth Bennet. Will you marry me?”
“I will marry you in a church in Lambton, in a chapel in Italy, or on this beach with a lizard as witness. I will marry you because you asked properly this time, and because you are the man I want. I am tired of the question, and I would very much like it settled.”
“That is not a romantic acceptance.”
“It is a practical acceptance from a practical woman who is sitting on a stone floor in a ruin on a deserted island. Romance would be misplaced. Practicality suits the occasion.”
He kissed her. The kiss was a question answered and a matter irrevocably settled. She kissed him back with her hands framing his face, holding him fiercely to her. The embrace felt certain enough to contain both the island and the entire world beyond it.
Later, on the pallet, she explored him in the dark.
The fire was low, consisting of more embers than flame.
The faint, red light turned their skin the colour of old copper.
She moved over him, her hands mapping his body with slow, deliberate attention.
She memorised him. The island was temporary, but his body was real, and the memorising was an act against impermanence.
She kissed his chest. She kissed the flat plane of his stomach, where the skin was warmer than on his arms and shoulders. She traced his scar with her mouth, moving gently over the tender tissue. His breath hitched under her lips.
She did not move lower. Instead she pressed her mouth to his jaw, and his arm came around her, drawing her up towards him. She went willingly.
He kissed her with a thoroughness that left nothing provisional about it.
Both hands moved over her—her back, the curve of her waist, the length of her spine—unhurried and methodical, as he was in all things.
She threaded her fingers into his hair and kissed him back with equal thoroughness and no restraint whatsoever.
They lay together in the ember-light. She discovered the particular sensitivity behind his ear that made his breath catch. He discovered that she made a quiet, involuntary sound when his mouth found the curve of her throat. These were small findings, carefully noted on both sides.
“Fitzwilliam,” she said against his mouth.
“Mm.”
“You are not attending to the Italian novel.”
“No.” He kissed the corner of her jaw. “I am not.”
“The man has apparently stopped proposing. I thought you ought to know.”
“I have already proposed,” he said, his mouth moving to her collarbone. “The matter is settled.”
She laughed quietly against his shoulder. It was, she thought, a thoroughly satisfactory answer.
His hand slid from her waist to her thigh, his fingers finding her with the focused attention she had learned was his hallmark in all things. He was thorough and unhurried. He touched her in the dark, keeping his eyes fixed on her face. She let him watch her.
She came quietly — a slow wave that built through her hips and broke gently. She curled towards his hand, resting her forehead against his chest as she whispered his name.
They lay in silence. His mouth rested against her hair, and her hand lay flat over his beating heart.
“Fitzwilliam.”
“Yes.”
“I said yes.”
“I know.”
“To the marriage. I said yes. I want you to remember that I said it here, in this tower, on this island, before we knew if we would ever leave. I said yes when yes meant this life, not the other one. I want that to be the yes you remember.”
He pulled her closer, wrapping his arms securely around her. His body was warm, solid, and wholly hers.
“I will remember,” he said.
The fire died to embers, and the stars turned through the gap in the roof.
She fell asleep against his chest. The last thing she heard was his steady heartbeat.
It was the same sound she had listened to for weeks across four feet of flagstone, but it was now heard directly, without distance, and without pretence.
It was the sound of a man who was hers, and the life she had chosen.