Chapter Twenty Two
As the carriage approached Pemberley, Darcy watched Elizabeth with rapt attention.
It was so beautiful to watch her expressions as the carriage travelled up the tree-lined grand avenue into the park. There in a clearing the deer tended to congregate, due to the judicious use of fine deer treats by Darcy’s gamekeeper.
Upon seeing the herd of deer Elizabeth looked at him with her shining eyes. “How beautiful!”
Her breath caught as they came over the slight ridge, and the view extending out to the great house opened before them. Lips slightly open, the lovely curls floating around her hair, the silk fringe around her bonnet, a studied look of concentration as she admired Darcy’s beloved house.
His heart beat faster.
George immediately demanded to have a better view, and he climbed onto his mother’s lap to stretch his head out the window to see everything. Darcy held Emily up to another window so that she could clearly see as well. “That’s Pemberley,” Darcy told the little girl. “It is your new house.”
“Pebely,” she repeated back, seriously.
“Close enough,” Darcy agreed.
Elizabeth exclaimed, with some emotion in her eyes, “It is as lovely as you said!”
Darcy tried to perfectly memorize the moment, and how he felt.
“Welcome home,” Darcy told her.
She wiped at the edge of her eyes, “I love it. I do.”
That was nearly as good to Darcy as it would have been if she loudly declared that she loved him.
Darcy had given instructions to the coachman to pause at this point for as long as they wished to observe the house from its best perspective, so he now stuck his hand out of the window and struck the roof.
They set off.
There was now only a little pain in his chest, though he could feel the stretch, when he extended his arms out to their full length.
While nothing next to the joy of caring for Elizabeth and the children and seeing Elizabeth happy—Elizabeth had been happy since they married, that showed in her every expression—Darcy was deeply, deeply grateful to the Almighty, who had showed him far, far more kindness than he deserved in allowing him to recover so well and so quickly.
The surgeon had said that he would likely experience pain from the wound for the whole of his life, and it would always be more difficult to make certain wide stretching motions. The bullet that sat in him, likely on the edge of his lungs, might also cause problems. He’d found that if he breathed deeply there was a peculiar and painful sensation on one side that the doctor thought was likely caused by the bullet.
Darcy’s stamina grew day by day, he no longer found difficulty in most daily tasks, and he had even ridden his horse for fifteen minutes the previous day. The ribs themselves barely twinged; it was the scar that gave him pain.
It was good that he would always feel some pain due to his duel.
Darcy would not have liked it for his body to have come away unscathed.
His current happiness was such that any reminder of the wrongness of what he had done would need to come from his body—there was no good moral in this, except that sometimes the Lord was kind to those who did their duty.
When the carriage came to a stop, there was a line of servants who had come out to greet them, with old, dear Mrs. Reynolds at the front.
Georgiana did not wait for Darcy: She leaped out of the carriage and ran over to the beloved housekeeper and embraced her. Mrs. Reynolds smiled at Georgiana and embraced her back, though this clearly violated Mrs. Reynold’s firm sense of how matters were supposed to be done.
The dear old woman had been nearly a mother to them for many years—Darcy and Georgiana had especially looked towards her ever since their mother died.
Darcy climbed out of the carriage cautiously. He did not need help, and then with some difficulty, but not too much, he lifted George and then Emily down. Then grinning like a loon, Darcy helped Elizabeth down.
Georgiana, with an air both of embarrassment, but also something like Elizabeth’s thrown back shoulders when challenged, glanced down the line of servants before going over to George and Emily.
Elizabeth’s eyes were warm on Darcy’s, and he kept her arm as he led her to Mrs. Reynolds. “My dear, dear Mrs. Reynolds. It is my great delight to introduce my wife to you. Elizabeth, Mrs. Reynolds, our housekeeper.”
The two women curtsied to each other.
