A/N: Hey, guys. This is a small one-shot that I wrote up quickly for your enjoyment. I hope that you love it. :)
And now, really quickly, a note to Forgiving Pride readers: My computer crashed, and this is the first that I've had access to a computer since Finals Season, so that's why there hasn't been an update, even though I've been home lazing around for almost three weeks. So sorry! Hopefully, you'll get an update soon. In the meantime, enjoy!
My Dearest Fitzwilliam,
I write to you with my lips pouted and my head bowed--and it is bowed not only because I must curl my neck to see this paper but also because I am very sorry. I fear that I have not been fair to you in our letters thus far. I have been given a chance to practice my wit on paper countless times throughout my life, and, in turn, practice picking up sarcasm in the written word of other young men and women. You, my dearest husband, have been given no such luxury. I'm sure that, with your letters of business and of pleasure (to Georgiana mostly, I assume), you have become accustomed to words written on paper being utterly serious and completely meant by the person writing them.
Now, Fitzwilliam, just as I taught you to take a joke on that memorable evening with the peacock, I shall teach you to take a joke on paper.
Whatever might entice you into believing that I was being serious in my last letter, I shall never know. Surely a young married woman who has shown nothing but the deepest love and adoration for her husband wouldn't miss him in the slightest when they were separated for the first time? And surely this said woman, who has shown great fear towards becoming a part of this privileged world that her husband brought her into, would throw two balls in one week in his absence? And surely this woman would finish off nearly all of the wine in a house such as Pemberley (whose wine cellar, I am sure, could never, ever, I repeat, ever, be finished off, even if we never replenished it and drank two bottles a day for the rest of our lives), and ask her husband to buy more in his travels?
Perhaps I should underline passages that I do not mean, to make you aware of them?
Okay, my dearest husband, I warn you: I am becoming serious, now. This paragraph will be full of words that I do mean, completely and entirely. Since your departure I have done nothing but sit in this house, waiting for your return. This is excepting the times when I am wearing holes in the earth of the paths through the gardens as I wander around, waiting for your return. At night I find that I cannot sleep; a year with you beside me has rendered me incapable of drifting off when I am lacking your presence. I think of nothing but you, and while in the first week I couldn't read because I would be distracted with thoughts of you, in this second week I have learned that after sitting for one and a half hours and being distracted so often that I read not two pages, I become involved with the book, and am awarded a small vacation from my missing you. I have finished four novels since this discovery, for thoughts of you have become too painful and I prefer literature to masochistic pondering.
I miss you and love you most dearly, Fitzwilliam. Words cannot explain the feeling in my stomach that has been present ever since I watched your carriage drive away sixteen days ago. Please trust that I adore you and not seeing you for such a time has rendered me quite useless to anyone wishing for pleasant company. I need you here, so much so that it frightens me--to think that I used to be so independent! I am counting down the hours until you are expected to return, Fitzwilliam, and I know that I am being selfish, but I must beg of you: if there is any way you might shorten your visit, do take it.
I think I rather like being serious in these letters; it has been a weight off my back to pour out these feelings to you. I have tried to speak with Jane, but she simply does not understand.
And now, dearest husband, it is your turn to tell me of how much you are missing me. I pray that the distance I felt from you in your last letter was a result of your belief in my gallivanting about without a care in the world for you. And I must confess that I have spent a fair amount of time on my knees both praying for God to forgive me my stupidity in being sarcastic in my last letter (though again, how you ever thought that I was serious...and here I was thinking that you were smarter than me!) and also praying to Him that you were merely saying that you may be another week as a response to my letter. Please, make haste in your journey home. But be safe! I cannot begin to contemplate what losing you would feel like, and doing so just to write this sentence has been too painful for my tastes.
I love you most dearly, Fitzwilliam. Hurry home to me.
With the Deepest Love,
Elizabeth Darcy
P.S. I have been wondering about this exceedingly, and hoped that you could be of service. How long is it before it is safe for an infant to travel with its parents? I have three months left of confinement, so that must be added to the number you give me before our child and myself may travel with you.
Fitzwilliam Darcy was sure that the smile gracing his face looked quite idiotic to any of the servants that happened to be passing by the study in his London home.
His wife's last letter, which told of the two balls that she had thrown in his absence and suggested that he might leave home more often, had stung more than he cared to ever admit to anyone. He had sulked through the business meetings that filled his daily schedule and slept hardly at all at night, making his company severely unpleasant. His cousin Richard had even reduced his dinner plans with Fitzwilliam to every other night after several attempts at finding out the root of Fitzwilliam's despair had failed. Why, Fitzwilliam had positively exploded when Richard asked if the reason for his sadness was because he missed his wife.
"Of course not! You are a fool, Richard! You think that I am miserable simply because I lack my wife's company?" To have rumors of his pining away for his wife while she partied the night away at home reach Pemberley would be too painful and shameful for him to bear--he was still a man of pride.
Finding out that he was a fool for taking his wife seriously was a touch embarrassing, especially seeing as she had spent much of their year together teaching him how to take a joke. But any embarrassment that he could have felt was strongly overshadowed by the knowledge that his wife loved and missed him as much as he did her.
He was startled out his reverie by a voice calling to him and the sound of a man bounding up the stairs.
"You are a fool, Fitzwilliam!"
His cousin entered his study with a smile in his eyes. "This is the reason for your sadness, is it not?"
Damnit. He had left the letter on the table.
He had taken to carrying it around with him so that he could read it whenever he pleased--he simply hadn't been able to comprehend his wife, and reread the letter often in an attempt to do so.
Fitzwilliam realized that he had been staring at Richard like an idiot. So much for denying that the letter was the reason for his sulking around.
"She was joking, Fitzwilliam. Kidding. Being sarcastic. You understand me? She was not serious. I cannot believe that you thought she was."
"I know this now," Fitzwilliam said, his face red. He held up the new letter briefly to show the source of his enlightenment. "But I'm afraid that I must get to a meeting--"
"If I wasn't nicer, dearest cousin, I would tease you into oblivion about this. As it is, I'll simply take this one opportunity to remark that you are incredibly daft. You honestly thought that she wasn't missing you at all? I know that this is ridiculous, and I only know it from the way she looks at you. I thought that she had finally taught you how to take a joke, Man."
"I've got to go now, Richard--"
"At least now you'll be better company now. See you tonight?"
"Yes, yes. Tonight. Goodbye, now."
Fitzwilliam walked all the way downstairs. In truth, he did not have a meeting, but he wished to remove himself from Richard's presence as soon as possible. There was no carriage prepared for him, so he walked down the street to a small, very expensive tavern.
It was still early in the day, so he didn't order a drink. Instead, he asked:
"May I trouble you for a pen and some parchment? I have a letter that needs writing."
The bartender obliged.
Fitzwilliam sat down to write.
My Dearest, Sweetest, most Lovely Elizabeth,
You have no idea...
He smiled. Only three days before he and Elizabeth would be united again.
He hoped that his absence hadn't pained her too severely.