He sighed. “I am embarrassed to confess to you how meanly I considered the inferiority of your relations, although I am certain my arrogance comes as no surprise. Of course, you and Mrs Tilney avoided completely any like share of censure. I have already divulged the dishonour of my part in separating Bingley from your sister.”
“And I have discovered your role in elevating Mr Tilney, to the point of buying Matlock’s benefice so that you might see her happily wed.”
“But towards you, I behaved more dishonourably still,” he said, continuing as if I had not spoken. “I was in love with you, but felt your family an insult to my station. My uncle, the old earl, who knew of Georgiana’s near escape from Wickham, believed her misjudgement entirely due to my bachelor state, and that what was needed was a maternal figure. I understood my aunt could not be that person for her. I say this not to excuse myself, but only to explain my rationalisations at the time. I knew you would be an excellent sister, but I imagined with abhorrence introducing the rest of your family to the earl, of listening to him rage at my lack of sense. I never wanted to admit this to you. I am ashamed of what my feelings once were.”
It was not precisely easy—though hardly a surprise—to listen to his memories. But had I not listened to Wickham, allowing his perceptions to so easily rule my own feelings? Had not my family—especially my mother and younger sisters, but at times, even my father, embarrassed me?
“I understand,” I said quietly.
He glanced over at me, the first time he’d really looked at me since entering the hermitage. “I doubt you do,” he said acerbically. “Even after I brought Bingley away, I thought often of you by day and dreamt of you by night. I hoped somehow that you would leave Hertfordshire, visit someplace where I might see you again. At one point, I even considered buying Netherfield Park so that I would have some excuse to spend time in the neighbourhood. The only thing that kept me from it, I believe, was the thought of trying to come up with some excuse to keep Bingley out of it.”
He shook his head at my open-mouthed astonishment. I had been to visit Charlotte in March of 1812, and thus he certainly could have seen me at Matlock Court. But of course, Lady Matlock had never had me to dine, and it is doubtful she would ever have mentioned such an undistinguished guest of her rector’s wife.
“Meanwhile, there was Anne,” he continued, “whom the earl had met and approved, and he was pushing mightily for the match. I extended myself to go out into society, accepting invitations as never before, hoping, I think, to find someone who was exactly like you and yet who could meet my family’s expectations. Everywhere I was, there she was also, and as I wanted to like her, and repeatedly looked for ways we might suit…well, before I knew it, I had created expectations in her, in everyone.”
I could see it all so clearly. Manipulative Anne de Bourgh, with her mother’s assistance, and perhaps with the cooperation of the earl or some other spy learning which invitations he had accepted, ensuring she was always nearby—and then that the right ears heard fabrications about his intentions, creating enough talk, until an obligation had been formed in his mind. A subtle trap, indeed.
“And why should you not have?” I said, keeping my voice steady. “She had the approval of your family, the wealth to replace your sister’s dowry, the beauty, and the birth.”
He gave a bitter bark of laughter. “Because it was the essence of dishonour. To waken every morning longing to go back to sleep, to recapture the dream of you. To wish, in my heart of hearts, that the woman I had just given my body to was somebody else altogether—everysingletime—until I had to force myself to be a husband to her. It was almost a relief, really, when I found she was repeatedly unfaithful, and had an excuse to stop trying once and for all.”
I took his hand, brought it to my lips, kissed his cold fingers. My heart swelled at these admissions, and I revelled in the constancy of his adoration. But I would not have him suffer needlessly.
“Dearest,” I said, “I believe with all my heart that you tried to love her. It was only that she was so cold, so heartless herself, that you could not find any emotion to cling to, to build a foundation upon. Yes, you were mistaken in her character. But I do not believe for one moment that your affection for me could have withstood the test of time, had she been even slightly worthy of your efforts.”
Meanwhile, I thought but did not say, she manipulated and abused you and your loyalty and trust, separating you from nearly every person you cared for, until she finally could push you no further.
He took my face within his hands. “Listen to me,” he said. “If I had done as I ought and asked you to marry me in 1811, none of it might ever have happened! I could have explained Wickham’s perfidies to your father and prevented the Brighton excursion that led to your parents’ deaths and your sister’s disgrace.”
I smiled softly at him, placing my hands over his. “And yet, my darling, you forget an important impediment to our happiness. I did not like you then. I am certain I was perfectly capable of refusing your proposal of marriage, for all the stupidest reasons in the world.”
He rested his forehead on mine. “What are the odds,” he said with a hint of self-reproach, “that I might have proposed in so elegant and humble a manner so as to have changed your mind?”
“That might have been one of the labours of Hercules,” I said, smiling. “And I cannot believe you said anything of your feelings for me to Anne, no matter how many times she disappointed you.”
He looked into my eyes, his reflecting his deeply held regrets. “But I did. When she lay, broken and dying, as I thought, she said she was sorry, sorry for the pain she caused to me and mine. It was a deathbed repentance, but she did feel it in the moment, I was certain. And I apologised as well, for marrying her when my heart was engaged to another, and for any pain it might have brought her, however unknowingly done. I did not want her to die holding onto it all. I wanted to be free of it myself.”
“I am happy she apologised at the last, for you were certainly owed one. I am happy if your confession gave you a bit of peace, for never has a man deserved it more. And if Mrs de Bourgh somehow overheard you saying it, well, perhaps the old lady did suspect your feelings for me. Nevertheless, I can safely state my belief that she would have despised me with every fibre of her being, with or without that information.”
He pulled me into his arms, a bit more forcefully than was his wont, causing my gasp. “The best act of my entire life was begging you to marry me.”
I grinned up at him, our faces so close, our breath intermingled. “I do not remember the begging, but perhaps my memory is faulty.”
He did not smile back. “I knew you were going to say no,” he said. “I was certain of it. I knew I had not the means of convincing you. And I thought, I must have one kiss, dear Lord, please, just one kiss, to last me the rest of my life.”
And he kissed me again, taking away my breath, my mind, my reason, just as he had with the first one. This time, because I was not quite so astonished, I had enough sense to return it in full measure, over and over again.
When I finally caught my breath enough to speak, I whispered, “I do hope you would not have been so poor-spirited as all that, to concede defeat so easily had I been foolish enough to say no the first time you asked.”
“I love you, Elizabeth,” he said. “I thought I loved you then, but I had only scratched the surface of my emotion, at what I was capable of feeling for you. I want you to know that I did not bring you to Pemberley for my pleasure, though it has been everything I ever dreamed of and more. I brought you here to give you the life you ought to have had, as soon as I could give it, had I not been such a fool.”
Everything felt new and bright within my soul. I was his, and he was mine; I felt younger than I had in years.
“Fitzwilliam,” I said, and he kissed me again at the sound of his name upon my lips. “I have had, I think, the life I ought to have had. Perhaps it was not the life I would have chosen, but a valuable life. Precious years with my uncle, experiences in service that have built compassion within my soul and made of me a better mistress for Pemberley. Any wisdom I know of marriage or motherhood, I have learnt from living with my aunt Gardiner. And not simply me. If Lydia and Jane are happy, it is due to you. If you could not mend everything, you mended everything you could. It was—is—more than enough. I love you.”
“You do?” he asked, almost as if he could not believe my words.
“Of course I do.”
“I have been afraid to hope. When did you…” a tinge of pink touched his cheekbones, and he clamped his mouth shut.
I laughed. “When did I know I loved you? Was it the first time you came to me as a husband, and were so careful, so gentle, so…adoring, though I was so ignorant? Was it during long walks on that meandering journey home to Pemberley, tramping about the countryside so patiently whilst I explored? Was it the first time you admitted that I was in the right and you were so, so wrong?” I grinned. “I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago and took hardly any time at all. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
“I want you,” he said, his thumbs stroking my cheeks. “I want you now.”
“I will want you always,” I said. “Let us go home, to our beautiful home, and to the beautiful life we have before us.” I kissed him again, and grinned. “I believe there is also a beautiful bed somewhere therein.”
“Not necessary,” he said. And we did go home—much later—after expressing ourselves as only a couple most happily wed and violently in love could be supposed to do.