Epilogue A Mortal Appetite #2
Mr Bingley turned away at once. Mr Hurst stepped in front of Mrs Hurst, though whether he intended to protect her from the blood or the blood from her was less certain.
Miss Bingley gripped the pew until the wood protested.
Mr Darcy did not move, but his pupils widened until his eyes appeared almost black.
Elizabeth held her palm over the bowl.
One drop gathered against her skin, trembled, and fell.
The moment it touched the silver, the bowl rolled away from her hand of its own accord. Mr Collins caught the knife before she dropped it, and Jane pressed folded linen against the cut.
The light began inside the bowl.
It rose in a narrow white column, struck the chapel roof, and curved towards Mr Darcy.
Elizabeth reached for him, but the radiance closed around his body before her fingers found his sleeve.
Wind moved through the chapel although every door and window was shut.
Candle flames bent, the paper flew from Mr Collins’s hand, and evergreen branches shivered along the pews.
Mr Darcy vanished inside the light.
“Fitzwilliam!” Elizabeth shouted, moving forwards.
Mr Bennet caught her arm. “Wait.”
“I cannot see him, Papa! What has happened?”
“We cannot know if you interrupt it.”
The white radiance circled faster. Elizabeth counted the seconds because counting was the only act available to her. At five, the chapel floor trembled. At seven, the light contracted around his chest. At nine, a sound emerged from within it, harsh, broken, and unmistakably human.
A breath.
At ten, the light disappeared.
He stood where she had last seen him. His head was bowed, one hand pressed against his chest, and the other extended as though balance had become an unfamiliar discipline. He dragged in another breath, deeper than the first. Colour rose slowly from his collar to his face.
Elizabeth tore free of her father and reached him before his knees failed. She caught his arm, while Mr Bingley moved to the other side and steadied him.
“Fitzwilliam, can you hear me?”
He raised his face. His eyes were clear, disorientated, and no longer fixed by unnatural stillness.
“Yes.” He swallowed and pressed his hand harder against his breastbone. “There is a pounding.”
Elizabeth placed her palm against his chest, forgetting the linen wound around her palm. Under her hand, his heart struck again, strong and rapid.
“It is your heart!” she exclaimed, tears running down her cheeks.
“It is excessively violent.”
“It may be objecting to centuries of neglect.”
He drew another breath. Surprise crossed his face when cold air entered his lungs, and he released it slowly, a faint cloud forming in front of him.
Fletcher had not moved from the altar. His eyes rested on Darcy’s breathing chest, and the control inherited from generations of service threatened to desert him.
“Your father’s salve will no longer be necessary,” Darcy told him.
“No, sir.” Fletcher pressed his lips together before continuing. “He would have been very pleased to see it wasted.”
Elizabeth touched her husband’s cheek. Warmth had begun to gather under his skin. It was not yet the living heat of her father or Jane, but the deathly cold had gone.
Behind them, the bowl’s light faded. Its polished side caught the candles, the pulpit, and two figures standing together before it.
Elizabeth stared and, miraculously, Darcy’s reflection stared back.
He followed her gaze and became still for a very human reason. His reflected face was pale and shaken, but it was there. For the first time in centuries, he could see himself standing beside another person rather than a blank space where his body ought to have been.
Miss Bingley approached the bowl and looked inside. “You are there.” Her voice lost its customary polish.
Darcy lifted one hand to his face. The man in the surface did the same.
Mr Bingley stood behind them, absent from the reflection. Jane reached for him and linked their fingers. He watched Darcy’s image without envy, but Elizabeth saw the grief he concealed for Jane’s sake. Jane leaned closer, offering no promise beyond the hand already holding his.
Darcy turned away from the bowl. His attention moved around the chapel, touched Elizabeth, and then passed her completely.
Then he lifted his head. “What is that?”
Elizabeth followed the direction of his eyes. “What is what?”
“That smell.”
No one responded.
He drew another breath and turned to the vestry, his uncertainty vanishing. He walked past the chancel, passed Mr Collins, ignored Mr Hurst’s attempt to stop him, and opened the vestry door.
A basket of muffins rested on the table inside, covered by a white cloth. Mrs Bennet had ordered them for the choir children, who were expected to sing after the public wedding and receive food in exchange for enduring the cold.
He removed the cloth.
“Those belong to the children,” Elizabeth warned as she followed him.
He lifted one muffin and examined it with deep suspicion. “What is it?”
“A muffin,” she stated the obvious.
“I know the word. What flavour is it?”
“Why do you not find out yourself?”
He broke it open. The soft centre released a trace of warmth left from the kitchen. Darcy raised one half to his mouth, hesitated, and bit into it.
Everyone had gathered at the vestry door by the time he began chewing.
His eyes widened.
Elizabeth waited for his judgement. “Well?”
He swallowed. “It has texture.”
“Most food does.”
“And warmth.”
“It was baked.”
He ate the remaining half.
The second muffin disappeared with less ceremony. By the third, Fletcher had entered the vestry and uncovered the butter, though Darcy refused to delay long enough for it to be spread. He ate the fourth while Mr Collins explained that gluttony was a sin even when newly available.
Mr Hurst leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms. “Three centuries of honour, restraint, and authority have ended in theft from a church choir.”
“I shall compensate them.” Darcy reached for the fifth muffin.
“There are twelve children.”
“There are more muffins.”
“Not for long.”
Elizabeth began laughing before the sixth. Jane covered her mouth, Charlotte surrendered after the seventh, and even Mr Bennet’s shoulders moved when Darcy seized the eighth from Fletcher before his valet could return it to the basket.
Miss Bingley watched him scatter crumbs on the embroidery of his waistcoat. “Pemberley has survived wars, poor harvests, and generations of Darcys. It may not survive the expense of feeding you.”
Darcy brushed one hand across his coat and succeeded only in spreading the crumbs. “I have not eaten for a long time, Miss Bingley.”