Jane exhaled slowly, as though regaining her composure. “But you are not wrong, Elizabeth. And you may be right that we will have different opportunities to speak away from Longbourn. I have allowed Mama to command the conversation, partly because I did not wish him to know me better.” She hesitated, then gave a small, rueful smile. “And just perhaps…as a way of punishing him for what he did.”
The newly married couple entered their carriage, bound for a brief wedding trip by the sea. They spent the first two nights in London. During this time, they saw no visitors, kept the knocker off the front door, and spent most of their time within the master’s apartment.
Late in the morning of the third day after their wedding, they set out, travelling west towards Sidmouth, a quieter choice than the more frequented seaside towns. The journey itself was unhurried, broken into comfortable stages as they stayed in pleasant inns and took long walks to explore whatever they could see at each stop. By the time they reached the coast, the season was still early enough that the shore lay undisturbed, a circumstance that suited them exceedingly well.
They lodged in a house set above the water. From their rooms, they could hear the sea. Their afternoons were spent on long walks along the narrow cliff paths and the pebbled beach below. They often paused to admire the red sandstone heights enclosing the town, glowing in the sunset light.
Though the air remained brisk and the sea cool in May, they delighted in their time there, rising late, or rather lingeringin bed together long after the sun had risen. The residents of Sidmouth neither sought their notice nor intruded upon their privacy.
“Dearest,” Darcy said, as they strolled along the shore arm in arm one afternoon, “though I am persuaded we should have found one another again in the end, I am grateful that I was spared the misery of months or years spent believing you despised me.”
Elizabeth laughed at that. “I should have returned to Hertfordshire resolved to put you out of my mind,” she said, “and I should have failed. I was so very certain of my own judgement, and yet when you left the parsonage, I had begun to regret at least some of what I had said.” She looked up at him then, her smile touched with amusement rather than reproach, and the answering warmth in his eyes told her she was well understood.
“I intended to write you a letter explaining myself,” he said. “I had begun writing it, attempting to absolve myself in your eyes of what I could, but some impulse persuaded me to pick up a book instead. I believe it was a book, maybe several, that somehow led us through these different events, forcing us to see what we had been blind to otherwise.”
“Had you been a little more obliging when you first entered our local assembly,” Elizabeth taunted in jest, “you might have spared yourself this entire…kerfuffle, as my uncle’s Scottish clerk would say.”
Had the subject not already been well canvassed between them, Darcy might have taken offence. Now he laughed, particularly at her choice of words.
“And had you not been listening to my conversation with Bingley,” he retorted, giving her arm a good-humoured squeeze as they walked, “you might have spared yourself the pleasure of forming so very accurate an opinion of me.”
She laughed, as he had intended, but the sound faded almost as soon as it escaped her, and her steps slowed. “It was not so very accurate. The impression I formed of you was built on lies and misunderstandings, and on my own wounded vanity.”
Darcy turned to her at once. “Had I not insulted you when we first met,” he said, with equal seriousness, “you would not have despised me, and perhaps would have thought more of my character.”
“But had I not thought poorly of you,” Elizabeth protested, lifting her head again and smiling as her former spirits returned, “and argued with you at every turn, would you ever have fallen in love with me?”
Again, Darcy laughed, pulling Elizabeth to him. She rested her head against his shoulder, and the two walked the rest of the way back to their leased house in contemplative silence.
At the end of a fortnight, they turned their faces northward and proceeded to Pemberley. They travelled without haste, stopping often and allowing the journey to unfold at its own pace.
For Elizabeth, who had ventured little farther from home than London for the occasional visit to her aunt and uncle, and more recently to Kent, the distance itself felt like an adventure; the western roads revealed landscapes and towns unlike any she had known before. Sidmouth and the sea had been a grand adventure, but the journey north proved exciting.
Darcy, though far more accustomed to travel, found novelty of his own in the route, for he had seldom been so near the southwestern coast of England. Leaving the sea behind by way of Exeter, they journeyed north through Bath and reached Derbyshire in due course, their progress unhurried.
When they arrived at Pemberley, Elizabeth, who had taken in so many sights over the last month, still found much to be amazed by.
“Oh, William,” she said when she saw the manor house as they drew near. “It is enchanting. It looks as though it was placed there by God Himself. Never before have I seen any place where nature has done more for it, or where the natural beauty has been allowed to exist without being counteracted by awkward taste. And now, I am its mistress! I can no longer be astonished that Caroline Bingley was so determined to have you.”
Elizabeth could not remember seeing him laugh so freely. Even as the carriage came to a stop beneath the portico of Pemberley, she and Darcy still smiled like conspirators.
When she descended from the carriage, she became aware that several servants had appeared to witness their arrival. Their expressions were warm and approving, and MrsReynolds in particular regarded them with a look of such evident delight that Elizabeth felt herself blush.
“Welcome home, sir,” the housekeeper said. “And you, MrsDarcy. We are delighted to have you home at Pemberley.”
“Thank you, MrsReynolds,” she said. “I have heard so much about you and Pemberley, and I am very much looking forward to seeing it all, and to learning from you what is required of me.”
The housekeeper beamed at the praise from the new mistress, and thus the foundation of their understanding was laid.
As might be expected of a couple so deeply attached, yet so different in temperament, Elizabeth and Darcy found themselves, in the first year of their marriage, occasionally at odds. Their disagreements were sometimes marked by extreme flashes of temper on both sides.
“You always suppose yourself correct,” Elizabeth declared once, with more warmth than prudence.
Darcy’s brow rose. “And you always suppose yourself innocent of provoking me.”
Elizabeth laughed before either could grow offended. “Very well. Let us agree that we are both intolerable.”
But the habits of resentment they had once indulged were no longer permitted to linger between them. Almost as often as their irritation flared, passion overcame it.
