Upon arrival, Elizabeth found herself in a location that was nothing short of a wonderland. They were in an orchard with what looked like apple, cherry and peach trees, many of which were in wonderful bloom. The flowers were so much more beautiful than anything she had ever seen. Longbourn did not have fruit trees, so she had not grown up with them. Some blooms had fallen on the ground, leaving a carpet through the soft grass. The trees were of different shapes and sizes, the blossoms were of alternating colors, and it was quite the most beautiful site she could recall.
"This is my mother's favorite spot on the estate. In fact, my father has had a man dedicated to this orchard for most of his life."
Elizabeth just looked around in wonder, and then leaving Fitzwilliam to his own devices, she ran like a little girl from tree to tree, examining every aspect from every direction. She found her bonnet restricted her vision entirely too much, so without a thought for propriety, she pulled it off and threw it carelessly on the ground. Stewart would make her take another one the next day anyway.
Fitzwilliam just watched her in wonder and cursed the day he had decided the master of an estate had to always be a sober and severe gentleman. It shamed him to admit it, but both Richard and Bingley had given him much better examples of a good way to live, but he had preferred his own council, though in truth that amounted to torturing himself in punishment for his own crimes. The circularity of the downward spiral was not lost on him, but with a solution staring him in the face, he thought that it would be worth enduring years of deprivation for just one such display from the woman holding his heart.
"Come join me, Fitzwilliam. Are you planning to instruct our children in how to play properly by handing them a Fordyce?"
There it was. Elizabeth stopped stock still, almost shocked that it had come out of her mouth and wondering just what exactly she had just done.
Fitzwilliam, seeing her consternation did the only thing a sensible man could do. He took off his hat, let out a loud WHOOOOPPPP that scared a group of birds into confused flight, and ran. He took off his topcoat and threw it on the ground, ran across the orchard at a full sprint, and picked up Elizabeth to spin her around and around and around. Within a few seconds, both were laughing and crying all at the same time, and it was some minutes before he was willing to release her. Even then, he demanded a kiss that would have killed a lesser man before allowing her freedom.
He pulled her towards a bench, that had an engraving.
** For Anne who loved this garden from George who always sat beside her. **
Elizabeth stared at the message, and said, "Some people do spend their whole lives together."
"Yes, they do. My mother was my father's entire life. When she died, he… well, he just stopped living."
He described a vision of a short conversation he had with his father near the end of his life, and it was almost as if both of them could see the same man standing right in front of them, such was the power of his words.
≈ Do not fret, Son. I see what you think – that I am not strong enough to bear it – that I am somehow weak because I cannot live without my Anne. Someday, I hope you will meet the woman who will make you understand, will show you that life with your one true love is worth any price, worth any pain, worth anything. Do not worry about me, My Son. I will make you a bargain. I will keep myself going long enough for you to attain your manhood, if you will promise me that when you see the woman that makes your heart sing, you will snatch her up. ≈
Elizabeth was crying by the end of it, while Fitzwilliam was pensive.
"I did not live up to my end of the bargain."
She reached up, cupped his cheek with her palm, and said, "The negotiation is not over yet, Fitzwilliam. Do not give up so easily."
He snuffled but did not disagree. Instead, he said, "It was all untrue, anyway. When he died, the physician I brought in said that Cancer had been eating the man alive for months or years. He would not have survived, with or without my mother."
"You do not know that, Fitzwilliam. Perhaps the disease had it in for him. Perhaps his loneliness prevented him from fighting the demon when it came, or perhaps nobody is strong enough. It is not for us to spend our lives questioning fate."
Fitzwilliam looked at her carefully, raised one eyebrow, and said, "Our Lives?"
Realizing what she had said, Elizabeth pulled off her pelisse, put it on the bench that was still wet with a bit of dew, and said, "Sit, please, Fitzwilliam."
He complied, and she very slowly, and very deliberately sat on his lap, and wrapped her arm around his shoulders.
Staring at him, she said, "We are taking a very big chance, Fitzwilliam. Is it possible for two people to go from such wildly different feelings to being in love without even once being in each other's presence? Without a single word being spoken to each other? When you caught me this morning, I knew what I wanted, though I was still afraid to admit it to myself. We have spent far less than two hours together since that debacle in Kent. Is that enough time to know our hearts? Is it enough time to be sure?"
Fitzwilliam looked at her, and said, "To be honest, my heart was doing battle with my evil twin for five months, ever since you showed up with mud on your petticoats, and the wind in your hair to tend your sister. My heart has won… definitively. As you said, that awful, prideful, insulting man you met in Hertfordshire and again in Kent may be a part of me, but he is a part that I hope is dead, or at least leashed. I love you, Elizabeth Bennet. If you accept me or reject me, I will still love you until my dying breath."
Elizabeth, feeling a rush of tenderness she could not have imagined even a week before, took a moment to gather her thoughts, and to be honest, to play with his hair which was no so conveniently situated.
Finally, she said, "You hurt me at that first assembly, Fitzwilliam. I assume Jane has made you aware of that, and we need not discuss it again. However, I very spitefully used that one exchange to form a prejudice against you, and never even gave you a chance for your good twin to emerge. I took the word of a scoundrel, simply because he flattered my vanity. You were awkward and silent in Rosings, but… but… but…"
She seemed to run out of words, so Fitzwilliam reached up and kissed her cheek, and said, "…but?"
"But, if I am truthful, I must say I both despised you and was fascinated by you in Kent. Parts of me, perhaps only my body, or maybe my passion, was very strongly attracted to you. My prejudice… my first impression… my stubbornness did not allow for any amendment to my opinion. At Netherfield, you treated me with respect… well, except for your failure to quash that horrid woman sharing the house with us. In Rosings, your cousin seemed to take delight in stealing my attention, but…"
She paused a moment, blew out a deep breath, and added.
"…but I could see it hurt you, and I… I… I reveled in the injury. I had no idea what you did to Jane, I was still just feeding my vanity at your expense. Then in your proposal, you pointed out all of my defects, all of my 'inferiority', all of my… well, all of the things that could have made me forgive you right on the spot, because I can tell this."
She stared at his face hard, as if memorizing it to make a marble bust from memory later.
"I left that day because you hurt me a second time. You hurt me more than I would admit to anybody, even myself. However, if I had not already felt some sort of strong, visceral attraction to you, I would have taken you down a peg. You said your cousin took you down a peg or two… well, I would not have been satisfied with two. I would not have stopped until I injured you as badly as you injured me. I would have been vindictive and mean and cruel. I would not have stopped until every possible morsel of affection was lost. I would have done that, because I knew, somewhere deep inside, somewhere in the darkness where no light ever penetrates… I knew I could love you if I simply allowed myself to, and the very idea terrified me."
He ran his knuckles over the outside of her hair, reached his hand around to cup her ear, with his fingers extending under her hairline and his thumb on her chin, and whispered, 'Could have loved me?'
She just nodded, and said, "Things happen in life, Fitzwilliam. Couples quarrel, sometimes badly. They make up, sometimes incompletely. Children and fortune and death visit sooner or later. As much as I esteem my parents, they have a marriage where the two together are weaker than they would be apart. I do not want that. I want one where we are more than twice as strong together as we would be apart. I… I…"
He just stared at her.
"I need you to promise me that you will continue to respect me. You can hate me from time to time, but if you respect me, it will be brought back to rights sooner or later."
He thought of all sorts of things he could say, but eventually settled on the simplest.
"I promise!"
"And will you promise to love me until one of us is dead, and then continue to live, even if it is without me. Promise you will not take the coward's way out, like your father, because that makes me responsible for your life even after death."
"I promise!"
She sighed, and said, "Well then, I should probably tell you that somehow, you wormed your way into my heart. I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun. But make no mistake, Fitzwilliam Darcy. I DO love you with all my heart! I will be your wife. I will be your Mistress. I will make the same promises I demand of you."
With that, the couple sealed their bargain with a kiss for the ages. Elizabeth thought that it would be a shame to burn down such a pretty orchard, but it would be worth it.
Some time later, the nervously happy couple had been talking about all of the things newly betrothed and mostly senseless couples talk about, but they finally had to sheepishly admit that it was time to work their way back to practicalities.
Elizabeth looked up and saw a vision of her maternal grandfather sitting in his favorite rocking chair, smoking his pipe, reading a newspaper. She asked him if the paper always told the whole story of an important person, and he laughed uproariously. She vividly described the scene to Fitzwilliam, until she felt like he was standing right beside her seven-year-old self listening to the old man.
≈ Lizzy Bee, let me tell you something. All of our lives are stories. There are stories we tell ourselves, stories we tell others, stories learned researchers' piece together from evidence, the story of our lives, and the story of our loves. No story is complete, nor is any story accurate. Stories are always made of the most interesting bits of truth, mixed in with the most interesting bits of fiction. It is your job, when you want others to understand the story of your life, to judiciously make sure the 'most interesting' pieces are the ones you want them to be. ≈
Fitzwilliam seemed confused, and Elizabeth elaborated.
"Do you know what I am frightfully tired of, Fitzwilliam ?"
He laughed, and said, "I have no idea."
"I am tired of being in the middle, neither here nor there. For five years now, I have been 'out', meaning not a child but not a grown woman. For the length of our rather odd courtship, I have been stuck in the middle between loathing you and loving you; between an inferior spinster and your wildest dream. For the past fortnight, I have been stuck in the middle between being a visitor, being the mistress, being the sister Georgie is desperate for, being the niece that your Aunt is desperate for… but always in the middle… always neither fish nor fowl. If I go back to Hertfordshire to get married, I will be neither the properly courted daughter to be feted, nor the wife who captured the rich gentleman. If we elope, I will always be in the middle between properly courted mistress and slightly scandalous love affair."
Fitzwilliam had never thought so much on that, any more than a condemned man on the way to the gallows thinks about how clean his haircut is. There were always bigger concerns.
Not knowing what to say, he simply raised his eyebrow, and said, "Lydia warned me that you have this gesture and I would need a new twitch of my own."
The rather silly joke relieved her tension, and she laughed far more than the jest was worth, before continuing.
"Stories… our lives, our place in society, our reputations, our families, our shared history… it is all just stories. My grandfather gave us the right idea."
"Which are?"
"Well, what is a story, but a set of plot elements arranged graciously, with superfluous detail removed, no?"
Still confused, he just nodded.
"Well, here is a story… ALL OF IT ENTIRELY TRUE. You proposed to me in April. I accepted your April proposal. You traveled to Hertfordshire to become more acquainted with my family and obtain my father's blessing. I traveled to the North with some well‑known people of long and trusted association with your family. I took the time to meet both of your aunts and get to know them, both at Matlock and at Rosings. I took the opportunity to know your cousin and your sister. I happened upon a disaster and acted in the way the Mistress of Pemberley should act, but I said nothing about any connection with you before it was properly sanctioned, as that would obviously be improper. I acted as Mistress of this estate, because it was necessary, and I was just assuming the role early. You returned to Pemberley as planned. I could not stay in the house with any sense of propriety after we were betrothed, but nor could I give up the role of mistress with so many depending on me. In desperation, we bought a common license and married publicly in front of fifty villagers and the Pemberley staff, so propriety is satisfied. It was all according to plan, except for a minor scheduling change due to the fire."
Fitzwilliam sat there with his mouth hanging open, and finally sputtered, "You mean… you mean… you… you… wha…"
Elizabeth jumped to her feet, and said, "Come along, Fitzwilliam. Jane will be here by ten. With a common license we will need to be at the church before eleven if we want to be married today. We do not have all day to dawdle. Propriety must be satisfied, and I cannot think of a single way to do that except for a properly sanctioned wedding. Not one of these rush jobs, mind you. A properly sanctioned and planned courtship, occurring over months. It is fortunate for us that the months have already elapsed."
Still stupefied, he stared at her for a minute, and then a small, sly smile appeared on his face, which turned into a grin of legendary proportions.
Without a word, he grabbed her around the waist, swung her around a half‑dozen times, set her down, kissed her strongly enough to set her shoes on fire, then let out a yell of joy and happiness, while she gave him a smile such as had never been seen before in those parts.
With a contented scream that scattered another flock of birds, the happy couple clasped hands, and took off at a run towards Pemberley, towards life, towards love, towards heartbreak, towards children, towards grandchildren, towards great stories and destiny.
They never looked back.
~~ Finis ~~
A/N: That is the end of the story as I envisioned it, but I have more sort-of epilogue chapter I'll add tomorrow.
I would like to point you to another story that I like very much and recommend highly. My wife, Amalia, who you all know as my part time editor, wrote a truly wonderful children's book called Gordita Grogster and the Magic Bicycle. You can find it on Amazon, and it's available in unlimited. Just search Amazon for "Grogster". Please give it a look.
Wade