Chapter Ten
Three Strokes
Elizabeth found Darcy near Oakham Mount the following afternoon.
She had sent a note through Jane asking Bingley whether his friend might walk toward Longbourn. It was not subtle. She had ceased caring.
Darcy stood beneath an oak when she approached. His hat was in one hand. He looked nervous.
Fitzwilliam Darcy.
Nervous.
Elizabeth almost laughed.
"Miss Elizabeth."
"Mr. Darcy."
They stared at one another.
Neither knew where to begin.
Elizabeth decided on cruelty.
"The blue room chimney requires inspecting."
Darcy's face emptied.
Her breath caught.
He whispered, "Mrs. Harold was meant to see to it."
Elizabeth covered her mouth.
Darcy took one step forward. "No."
She laughed. Then cried. "William."
He made a sound that was not quite a word. "Elizabeth."
She crossed the distance between them.
Darcy caught her.
There was no propriety. No caution. No Meryton. He held her as though she had returned from the grave, which Elizabeth supposed she had.
His face buried against her hair. She clutched his coat.
"You remember," she said against him.
"All of it."
She pulled back enough to see his face. "Everything?"
"Everything."
Elizabeth began laughing again. "You asked about apricot preserve."
Darcy's mouth twitched through tears he would once have hidden. "You mentioned my coffee."
"You asked about hawthorn."
"You threatened that tree."
"It deserved defending."
"It was diseased."
"It lived thirty years."
"Poorly."
Elizabeth laughed. Darcy smiled.
There it was: young Darcy's face with her husband's smile.
She touched his mouth.
His expression softened.
Then he kissed her.
Not like a first kiss. Not like young people uncertain of one another. Like returning home.
Elizabeth's arms went around him. For one reckless minute fifty years collapsed.
Darcy drew back sharply.
Elizabeth blinked. "What?"
He looked genuinely appalled. "Good God."
"What?"
"You are twenty."
She stared at him. "You are twenty-eight."
"I am aware."
"I have kissed you before."
"Not yet."
Darcy looked so offended by chronology that Elizabeth began laughing again.
"Do not," he said.
"Oh, William."
"I am serious."
"You have been my husband for fifty-five years."
"Not legally."
"You sound ridiculous."
"Elizabeth."
She kissed his cheek. Darcy closed his eyes.
"That is not helping."
"We shall behave."
His eyes opened. "Will we?"
Elizabeth smiled. "No."
He laughed, then sobered. "We need to decide what this is."
"Our second chance."
"Yes. And what we change."
Darcy looked toward Meryton. "Wickham first."
"Already?"
"I spoke to Forster."
Elizabeth smiled. "You have been busy."
"So have you. Mary played better yesterday."
Elizabeth stared. "You noticed?"
"I always noticed."
Her heart softened. "That is new."
"Yes."
They sat beneath the oak, close enough that their shoulders touched. For the first time they spoke plainly.
Georgiana. Lydia. Jane. Bingley. Charlotte. Their parents.
Then silence came, different from the earlier silences.
Their children.
Elizabeth whispered, "Anne."
Darcy took her hand.
"Thomas," he said.
"Henry."
"Margaret."
All gone now. Or not yet born. Perhaps never born.
Elizabeth's eyes filled. "If we change too much, they may not--"
Darcy squeezed her hand.
There was no answer. No promise. They could not save everyone and demand precisely the same future.
Elizabeth leaned against him. "We cannot live only to reproduce what we had."
"No."
"That would make everyone else pieces on our board."
Darcy looked at her. "You sound like yourself."
"I should hope so."
His thumb moved over her wrist once, twice, three times.
I am here.
Elizabeth closed her eyes. "Then we choose carefully."
"Together."
"Always."
They remained beneath the oak for nearly two hours after discovering the truth, though either would later insist it had been much less. There were too many questions to fit into sense.
Darcy wanted to know Elizabeth's final memory. She told him about the blue room chimney and made him laugh so suddenly that a bird startled from a nearby branch.
Elizabeth wanted to know his. Darcy did not answer at first.
"William."
He looked away. "Your hand."
Her teasing vanished.
"I was holding your hand. I knew I would not remain long after you. I did not particularly wish to."
Elizabeth's eyes filled. "You should have called someone."
"Why?"
"Because you should not have been alone."
Darcy looked at her. "I was not."
She understood.
For several minutes they said nothing.
Then Elizabeth asked the question neither had wanted to approach. "Do you remember the children at the end?"
"All of them."
"Anne's hands had begun to look like mine."
"Thomas still cheated at billiards."
"He did not cheat."
"Elizabeth."
"He interpreted rules creatively."
Darcy laughed through grief. "Henry's youngest had your eyes."
"And Margaret still wrote twice a week even when she lived twenty miles away."
Their children had grown old too. Some had died before them. Their memories contained grandchildren, funerals, Christmas mornings, quarrels, reconciliations, people who now had no certainty of ever existing.
Elizabeth pressed both hands to her face. "What have we done?"
Darcy moved closer. "Nothing yet."
"But if we change things--"
"We already have."
She looked at him.
"I danced with you," he said. "That alone changed something."
Elizabeth gave a watery laugh. "Perhaps our children depended upon you insulting me first."
"Then I regret nothing."
She laughed harder.
Darcy took her hands. "Listen to me. We cannot spend this life arranging every breath to reproduce the old one. Even if we tried, we would fail. We are not the same people."
"No."
"We know too much."
Elizabeth looked into his young face and saw the old man she had lost. "And not enough."
"Exactly."
That was when they began speaking of rules, though Elizabeth would later insist she had agreed only because Darcy was becoming unbearable without them.
Before leaving the oak, Darcy asked one more question. "Do you regret telling me to find you sooner?"
Elizabeth looked at him for a long moment. "No."
"Even knowing what it may cost?"
"Ask me when I am seventy again."
Darcy smiled. "I intend to."
She squeezed his fingers. "Then we had better be careful crossing roads."
"Elizabeth."
"You are the one who died of heartbreak."
"That has not been medically established."
She laughed all the way down the hill.