Page 76 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

“We do,” he agreed.

“We have a legal certificate, a locked door, and the blessing of my family. It feels permanent.”

“It is permanent, Elizabeth,” he promised.

He kissed her gently.

The lamp finally guttered out. Silver moonlight streamed through the window, illuminating the sheets and his face beside hers. She lay in the quiet dark with her husband.

The pink shell rested on the bedside table, and the heavy gold ring encircled her finger. The island was behind them, and England was ahead.

She fell deeply asleep in his arms, held safe behind a locked door, as his wife.

It was a softer, warmer sleep than she had known on the island. She had nothing left to fear, and nothing left to carry.

She slept, and he held her as the moon moved across the harbour. They had survived the fire and the sea, and what they had built between them was sound.

Chapter Thirty

During the long voyage from Valletta to England, Darcy discovered that being married to Elizabeth was consuming. Beds, proper meals, and the presence of other human beings were welcome improvements, but they did not alter the fundamental reality: Elizabeth commanded his attention. He conducted the business of his life with the distracted efficiency of a man who cared for very little else.

The voyage aboard the Fortuna, a passenger ship bound for Portsmouth, would take three weeks. Their passage had been arranged by Mr Gardiner. Elizabeth's favourite uncle had proven to be highly competent, unpretentious, and possessed of a quiet authority that required neither volume nor rank. He had effortlessly secured passage for four using nothing but excellent manners and the commercial contacts he had cultivated over twenty years of importing goods.

Darcy genuinely liked Mr Gardiner. It surprised him only because he had previously dismissed the Gardiners as mere trade. It was a cruel word he had used to categorise and diminish a couple whose warmth and practical intelligence exceeded that of any three families in the ton. He knew he would not forgive himself for that arrogance easily.

Mrs Gardiner's affection for Elizabeth was obvious. She treated her not as a young person requiring guidance, but as a woman whose judgement was trusted and respected. Elizabeth responded to her aunt with a visible ease that she displayed with no one else but Darcy.

Mrs Gardiner and Elizabeth talked for hours on the deck in the afternoon sun, their heads close together. Their conversation was low, frequently punctuated by Elizabeth's bright laughter. Mrs Gardiner filled in the missing weeks: the pirate attack, the terrible confusion, and their rescue by the Prosperità. She detailed the weeks of frantic enquiry, the letters sent to every consulate on the Italian coast, and their refusal to surrender hope.

“Your uncle refused to accept it,” Mrs Gardiner told Elizabeth. Darcy stood near enough to hear, but kept a deliberate distance to preserve their privacy. “He wrote to the Admiralty. He wrote to the consuls in Naples, Palermo, and Malta. He wrote to your father every single week, and every letter contained the same vow: We have not found her, but we have not stopped looking.”

Elizabeth's face was very still. She was absorbing the terrible truth of her family's suffering, finding the reality far worse than she had imagined.

Mrs Gardiner spoke of Longbourn. She described Mr Bennet's short, controlled letters, his deteriorating handwriting revealing what his words would not. Mrs Bennet's nerves had escalated from their usual theatrical pitch to a genuine, frightening collapse, proving the depth of her love for her second daughter beneath all her scheming. Jane had held everyone together, though Mrs Gardiner confessed that Jane's calm letters had begun to crack under the strain.

Darcy heard enough to understand the terrible damage their absence had caused. The grief was deep and ragged, and it was going to take a long time to heal. It would be his responsibility as much as Elizabeth's; he had married into this family, and their wounds were now his to tend.

The conversation with Mr Gardiner happened on the fifth day at sea.

They were leaning against the railing, watching the grey, vast Atlantic. Mr Gardiner was smoking a pipe. The scent of the tobacco was a luxury Darcy had not encountered in weeks, and he found the smell unexpectedly pleasant.

“I should like to ask you some questions,” Mr Gardiner said quietly. His tone was mild, but his gaze was extraordinarily sharp. He was a man who had built a successful business by asking precise questions and listening carefully to the answers, and he intended to apply that same thoroughness now.

“Ask,” Darcy said.

“You were alone with my niece for six weeks.”

“Yes.”

“On a deserted island with no chaperone, no society, no oversight.”

“Yes.”

“And you are now married.”

“We are now married. The ceremony was performed in Valletta by an Anglican clergyman. The marriage is legal and registered.”

“I am not questioning the legality. I am asking about the sequence.”