Page 80 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

Her father fell quiet, returning to his familiar, assessing silence.

“You will forgive me,” he said drily, “if I reserve the right to determine for myself whether Mr Darcy is truly worthy of my favourite daughter. He proposed terribly once and successfully once. I shall require further evidence before I grant him my full confidence.”

She gave her first real laugh since arriving at Longbourn. She had missed her father's sharp, familiar humour.

“Give him time,” she urged gently. “He improves greatly upon acquaintance.”

“I sincerely hope so, for both your sakes,” Mr Bennet replied, a tired, genuine smile finally touching his eyes.

Jane was waiting in Elizabeth's bedroom. It was the room Elizabeth had slept in for twenty-one years, looking out over the familiar garden. The bed seemed far narrower than she remembered.

Jane sat quietly on the bed. She was dressed neatly in pale yellow, her face set in the tragic, rigid composure Mrs Gardiner had described in her letters.

Elizabeth closed the door. They stared at each other, two sisters reunited after a terrifying, seemingly permanent separation.

“Lizzy,” Jane whispered, her composure instantly shattering.

Elizabeth hurried to the bed and took her sister's hands. Jane gripped her with a desperate, crushing force, betraying the months of silent fear and lonely courage she had endured.

Jane wept openly. It was not her usual quiet sorrow, but the messy, uncontrolled crying of a woman who had been brave for too long.

Elizabeth held her tightly. She offered the same steady, quiet comfort Darcy had given her on the island, allowing her sister to simply weep.

When the crying finally subsided, Jane wiped her face, offering a weak, trembling smile.

“Tell me,” Jane said.

Elizabeth told her everything. She spared no details, speaking of the tower, the arguments, the terrifying storm, and the desperate fever. She confessed how her prejudice had broken, and how Darcy had proposed in the dark of their shelter.

She did not speak explicitly of their nights, but she did not need to. Jane heard the intimacy in the warmth of Elizabeth's voice, and she understood exactly how deeply her sister loved her new husband.

“You love him,” Jane breathed, her eyes wide.

“I love him more than I ever thought possible,” Elizabeth confessed.

“And he loves you.”

“He has loved me since Hertfordshire,” Elizabeth said softly. “His pride blinded him then, but the island stripped it all away. The man I married is honourable, steadfast, and devoted.”

Jane sat quietly, holding her sister's hand in a warm, comfortable silence.

“Jane,” Elizabeth said. “I need to tell you about Mr Bingley.”

Jane's serene mask instantly shattered. In the privacy of the bedroom, her expression betrayed the one thing she had denied herself for months: desperate, vulnerable hope.

“Fitzwilliam wrote to him before the shipwreck,” Elizabeth explained gently. “He confessed that he had separated you, and admitted how terribly wrong he was to judge your heart.”

Jane gasped. “He wrote that?”

“He is an honourable man, Jane. He felt compelled to right the terrible wrong he had done you.”

“What did Mr Bingley reply?”

“We do not know; the letter was sent just before the pirate attack. But Fitzwilliam wrote again from Valletta, urging Mr Bingley to return to Hertfordshire immediately and discover the truth for himself.”

Jane's eyes were brilliantly bright, shining with a sudden, overwhelming possibility.

“I cannot promise that he will come,” Elizabeth cautioned. “But the obstacle that separated you has been removed.”