Joy
Darcy had everything but joy.
He was content, certainly, but joy— that elusive overflowing pleasure which came so easily to persons like his cousin Richard and friend Bingley— seemed forever out of his reach.
His disposition was not naturally given to ease but to discipline and rigidity. And, for all his possessions and dependants, he was lonely. He could admit that in the darkness of his rooms, or the cold of his library.
That loneliness was the effect, he thought sometimes, of having no one that was his, purely because they wanted to be. He was too reserved to make many friends who weren't sociable creatures already, and nothing tied him more to the experience of living than his inherited responsibilities. Even Georgiana, his beloved sister, had never been his for the keeping. He was to give her to someone else, someday— and in the meantime, he had to be her role model, not her easy friend. As for the servants, though he held Mrs. Reynolds and the other old retainers in affection, nothing changed the fact that they were there because he paid them to be. There was no one there just for him.
Enter Elizabeth.
She brought her warmth to his library, both by the sight of her on the window-seat and the feel of her cuddling up against him. Sometimes it was her feet she propped on his lap, and he had more than once given into the temptation to hold down her ankles and tickle the soles until she squealed. Other times she coaxed him to rest his tired head down on her lap. He was too long for the sofa, but the indignity of his knees sticking out was worth her hands in his hair and his nose pressed to her stomach.
She brightened everything, from the sorry state of his social life to his most boring correspondence. She gave him attention that he never knew he wanted, teasing the habits he didn't know he had or the peculiarities of his preferences, things that were once inconsequential and routine but were now a pleasure for her notice. She even coaxed out his buried sense of humor, which, as it turned out, could be very playful.
Miraculously, she was only like this with him. As if he, somehow, by his reserve, brought out the side of her that no one else was privileged enough to receive.
She was the one woman who was genuinely interested in him for himself, the one person who preferred his company above all else, and the one soul who sought to understand his, as reticent and critical and grave as it was. And she responded with the unfurling of her own soul.
It was so joyful.
Darcy has everything, including joy.