It was much later, when the summer moon was high in the sky, the brightness glazing the countryside with its soft hues, illuminating the structure of Pemberley against the darkness of the Derbyshire moorland, in the distance the outline of Manchester and its surrounding suburbs twinkled. Up on the leaded roof of the Wyatt tower, Lizzy Darcy was lying on a thick woollen blanket, looking up at the constellations with Benn Williams.

"Look," he pointed up at the sky. "That's Ursa Major."

"Where?" She moved her head an inch closer, fully aware that there was now only a hairline between them. He leaned his arm over, directing her eye to the sky, and she saw the stars pitted in the darkness.

"There, can you see it?" She nodded and then looked at him and grinned. He didn't know how they had ended up climbing on top of the roof, navigating the creaky spiral staircase and lying behind the iconic Pemberley portico, but he was glad he was here sharing this night with her.

"How do I know that it is Ursa Major and you're not just making it up?" She sat up now, looking down on him, her hair falling in ringlets around her face.

"You will just have to trust me," he said with a deadpan smirk. Lizzy looked back up at the sky, grabbing her coffee mug and taking a large gulp. He reached over and took his own from the tray they had brought up to the roof, pulling himself back against the sandstone brickwork of the balustrade. "You know if you had told me this time last year that I would be sitting on top of a stately home with Lady Elizabeth Darcy, then I wouldn't have believed a word of it."

"I bet last year you were somewhere terribly exotic, filming something wonderful and definitely not thinking about being stuck on a roof with a crazy woman with mad hair."
She bowed her head, he wasn't sure if she was being purposely self-effacing or if she was genuinely unaware of how lovely she was.

"Don't be daft, your hair isn't mad," he looked over at her and she hit him playfully. She moved backwards, placing her back against the wall and sitting closer to him than she thought she should. There were butterflies in her stomach turning over, and she took a deep gulp of coffee and ate a profiterole to try and convince herself that she was simply hungry, rather than it being something more.

"I used to come up here when I was younger," she began, swallowing the profiterole in a very unladylike manner. "My grandad had this amazing telescope which was a million years old and we always thought we could get it focused and see galaxies, but we never did and ended up dragging it back downstairs and watching The Sky At Night instead."

"Your grandad sounds a bit bonkers like you," he stuck a plastic fork in another profiterole for her, and she took it from him with a small smile.

"He could be a lot of fun; sometimes he was grumpy and strict, he was an older generation, born in 1918 to an unmarried suffragette who luckily happened to be the daughter of a Duke, so it was all okay."

"Winston was the son of Millicent Darcy?" Benn had been given a quick lesson on the Darcy family tree one afternoon by Harriet when she decided to park herself in his trailer under the pretence of setting up a new private Instagram account for him. Millicent Darcy was a really famous feminist, there was even talk of a statue of her being erected in Parliament Square, he had never made the connection before but imagined that when the statue was revealed some junior editor would headline it: "Mr Darcy's Bolshy Granddaughter Gets Own Monument", alongside a picture of Colin Firth.

"Yeah, he was born and raised in green, white and violet," she confirmed. "Didn't stop him from being a bit racist either."

"Racist?"

"Maybe a tiny bit, but then he met Cecily and she changed his mind. I remember when he took her to his club for the first time, and this would have been when I was about seven, so 1988 maybe… and they referred to her as a 'Lady of the Commonwealth'. He was furious, never went back to that club again, and Darcys had been members since, well, since before Fitzwilliam, so ages."

"She was black?" Benn looked confused.

"Yeah, she was from Jamaica; She died about ten years ago now, but I can still hear her telling him off and shouting at him, she was the only person who dared to shout at Winston. You can thank her for the amazing Jerk Chicken that I will make at some point."

"Is this you promising to make me dinner?"

Lizzy looked up at him, "it might be."

"I'd like that." He reached over and took her hand in his own, she jumped slightly under his touch. Lizzy felt the lightning coursing through her veins as she turned her head to look at him, finding him already looking at her. His face a few inches away from her own.

Benn had found himself thinking about her when he was alone, wondering what it would be like to take her to his favourite places, run her fingertips over the bookshelves at Shakespeare and Co in Paris, take her swimming in the Pacific Ocean under the shadow of the Santa Monica boardwalk, hold her hand and walk through the streets of London. Then his mind had wandered, what would it be like to hold her hand, kiss her face, run his fingers through that mass of curls and to feel the closeness of her laughter reverberating against him. She was always laughing, always smiling, always giggling, it was infectious; when he had arrived at Pemberley he had been a different man, not a man that he recognised, but a shell of the person he had once identified as, no wonder his wife had fallen out of love with him. Lizzy made him remember the person who had once occupied this body, made him remember how to smile and tease. For the first time in a long time Benn knew that he could have a future that didn't involve Madeleine, could see a different life without her and in the last few weeks he had begun to realise that maybe this new life involved the woman sitting next to him right now. He could feel the anticipation in the air, catching at his breath, making it hard for him to do anything except look at her.

"Your eyes are amazing," he half-whispered.

"My pondwater eyes," she said softly, demurely averting her gaze.

"They're like mercury…" He raised his hand to her cheek, tracing his finger down her jawline and over the soft pinkness of her lip. "I have never met anyone like you in my entire life."

She looked up at him, unable to move, unable to speak; she felt as if she was in a movie, where the world had stopped turning and music played as the stars shone in their sky. As Benn moved towards her, in that practised way that she had seen him do so many times on the big screen, she could feel the heat of his breath against her face, could smell his expensive cologne mixing with his own scent. His stubble grazed her top lip as she felt him press his lips gently against her own, just for a moment.

"I can't tell if that's a compliment or not," she said. "There is probably a reason why you have never met anyone like me."

"Lizzy, I am in great danger of falling halfway in love with you." He was staring at her hand in his own, stroking the back of it, feeling the smoothness of it under his thumb as if it was a pebble. Then he looked up at her and leaned over, kissing her again, harder this time, feeling him push back against her, his hands gently on her hip pulling her towards him. But no, she couldn't do this, not like this, not with his divorce imminent. When she had met him four weeks ago, he had still been in love with his wife, they might have shared a few nice moments and it was undeniable that there was a spark there, but she had been here before and she didn't want to risk her heart trying to repair someone else's.

"I'm sorry, I can't do this." She got up, slipped her shoes on her feet and began to gather her things together. "You are a very nice man, and a very good kisser, but I can't wait around for you to decide to break my heart on a whim when you come to the inevitable conclusion that this won't work. I've done that before and the only person who gets hurt is me. So, please, let's …" she swallowed, "let's be very good friends." She nodded, trying to convince herself that this was what she wanted, trying to convince him that this was best course of action.

"Lizzy, don't do this… don't push me away," he petitioned, reaching for her hand again, as she pulled it away. "Matt was right, wasn't he?"

"Matthew?" She said, her face growing indignant. "Have you been speaking to Matthew about me?"

Benn nodded, "he said that you never let anyone get close to you… I thought this could have been different."

"This? This is nothing!" She shouted loud enough for the echo to carry around the building. "This is us playing about on the roof like schoolkids, it's not real, Benn. It's like a scene from a film, no wonder you're good at it."

"What makes you doubt what I think about you? I mean it." He walked over to her, tried to touch her shoulder, but she shrugged him away. "I think you're amazing. Did that kiss feel like it wasn't real? Because it was, I promise you."

"You're a very good actor, Mr Williams, maybe you're being method," she said with a Darcy-like sneer. "Every actor can kiss."

"No! You don't get to call bullshit on this!"

"Yes, yes I do," she said coldly. "I think it's maybe time to call for your car, don't you?"

"Why?"

"Because you went to speak to Matthew about me; Matthew who thinks that he still knows me even though the only time we have conversations about anything other than himself or his ridiculous relationship is when he's telling me that it's okay for us to still have sex occasionally, because we're used to it. Matthew who only ever gives a shit about what you can do for him!" She paused for a moment. "You could have asked anyone here about me and they would have told you that first and foremost, before anything else, before anyone else, I am a Darcy, and Darcys don't get to simply do what they want. Matthew doesn't get that, he never did. He never will."

"You let it define you, you're not just a name, Lizzy."

"You still don't get it, if you decide to quit acting and grow a beard and start teaching English in a comprehensive school, then you can. People might comment on it at first, but they will forget eventually, until one day the Daily Mail runs a Where Are They Now segment and your name pops up, but mostly you are anonymous. I don't have that luxury, I am always going to be Lady Liz and I am always going to live at Pemberley, and people are always going to ask about Darcy and Elizabeth. Always."

"You don't have to answer them, you choose to do that."

She shook her head sadly, "it's not a choice, Benn."

He noticed that she was shivering, almost without thinking he took her cardigan and placed it gently over her shoulders, wrapping it around her, letting his arm linger on hers for slightly longer that he should have done. She noticed that he was trembling.

"You always have a choice, Lizzy," he murmured gently.

"I know," she replied with a false brightness, moving away from him and opening the rooflight, beginning her descent down the spiral staircase. "I have made my choice and I will always choose Pemberley."

Benn wasn't sure what was happening, but before he knew it he had been bundled out of the staff entrance and was sitting on the slick leather seats of his corporate car, driving away from Pemberley and the woman who was holding his heart in her hands.