Page 132 of Twice Chosen

Darcy looked down, astonished.

Elizabeth's smile softened.

"There," she whispered. "She knows you."

Darcy's face changed.

He looked at his daughter and then at Elizabeth.

"Yes," he said quietly.

This Pemberley was learning them all.

Clara was followed not immediately by another child but by a miscarriage that neither Darcy nor Elizabeth had expected.

The loss came early, before most of the family knew Elizabeth was expecting, and yet it reopened every fear she had carried from the nursery.

For days she refused to speak of it.

Darcy did not force her.

He sat beside her, handled visitors, answered Mrs. Bennet's worried letters without revealing what Elizabeth wished private, and waited.

At last Elizabeth said one evening, "I thought knowing loss would make me better at it."

Darcy looked up. "Has anything ever made you better at being hurt?"

She gave him a weak glare. "That is annoyingly sensible."

"I have had practice."

Elizabeth rested her head against him. "I was afraid the second life meant we would be spared."

"No."

"I know."

"Do you?"

She laughed through tears. "I dislike you."

"Frequently."

The miscarriage did not teach them a lesson. Elizabeth resented stories in which every grief existed only to improve someone.

It simply hurt.

Months later the hurt became smaller.

Then Matthew came.

He was not a replacement.

That mattered too.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Lydia Chooses