Page 150 of Twice Chosen

His expression softened. "What do you want?"

Elizabeth looked over Pemberley at the house where two versions of their lives somehow existed in memory. At the meadow. The trees. The windows catching late sunlight.

"This."

Darcy lifted her hand and kissed it. "Then this."

They remained until the light faded.

But age did not take them together that evening.

Life, apparently, did not believe repetition necessary.

Darcy lived another three years.

Elizabeth spent those years complaining that he had broken their pattern.

"You died three hours after me last time," she reminded him one winter morning when he was eighty-five and refusing to allow a physician to examine a cough.

Darcy looked over his spectacles. "I was considerably more cooperative then."

"You were dead."

"Precisely."

Elizabeth laughed.

The cough passed.

He lived to see Clara's eldest daughter married. He taught a grandson how to calculate rents and allowed Eleanor's youngest boy to cheat at chess because the child was eight and thought himself subtle.

Elizabeth caught him.

"You saw him move the piece."

Darcy looked innocent. "Did I?"

"Fitzwilliam."

He smiled.

The next spring they sat together in the library while rain tapped against the windows.

Darcy had become tired more easily.

Elizabeth knew.

So did he.

They did not pretend.

"Find me sooner," Darcy said unexpectedly.

Elizabeth looked up.

He smiled faintly. "You said that once."

"I remember."