The yellow Mini darted up the driveway of Pemberley, over the hill, curling around the bridge, through the tall trees, fast and smooth in the curve of the landscape towards the house itself. Above them the soft twilight of the stars illuminated the way, as the four women inside sang 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' as loudly as they could in the vast expanse of moorland that lay beneath the stately gaze of the Cage. As they pulled into the visitor car park, they disturbed a few of the ancient red deer, who always ventured down after nightfall, perhaps trying to reclaim their lost land. The car came to an abrupt stop outside the small information kiosk, the doors opened, and Imogen fell out into a heap onto the floor.

"Fucks sake!" she said exasperatedly as she struggled with the car seat, trying to let Harriet out of the back of the car.

"Calm down, Imogen," Harriet warned as got out of the car and dragged her aunt to her feet. Reaching the smooth path, the girls paused for a moment to remove their shoes and then began the slow walk up the steep hill to the house itself. Arm in arm, they began to sing again, and their voices rang out in the emptiness of the valley.

It was May, and the air around Pemberley was filled with smell of the summer ahead; freshly mown grass, magnolias and the warmth of the air itself. In four weeks' time, the Duke of Derbyshire was marrying for the third time, and this time he knew it was for real. The future Mrs Darcy, as she was choosing to be known for professional reasons, hadn't wanted a big fuss making, however, this evening had been her unofficial hen party. Organised in the 'Georgiana' suite of the Alveston Arms, her future stepdaughters had arranged for family, friends and staff members, past and present, to attend and all were there to celebrate with Joyce, who had been overcome with emotion as she had been led into the room which which had been decorated with soft pink roses, white lilies and dozens of fairy lights. It had taken three glasses of prosecco before she had finally relaxed and then danced with everyone, thanking them all profusely for attending, before falling asleep on one of the plush purple sofas, the glittery willy bopper headband still bouncing on her head. The willy headbands had been Imogen's idea and she had been immensely proud of them, whilst Lizzy had shuddered at the thought and tried to accidentally leave the bag behind in the flat.

"You did really well tonight," Maggie said, as they followed the younger women up the hill, "I think she really enjoyed it."

Lizzy laughed, "she won't be saying that tomorrow when Imogen puts all of those pictures on Instagram."

"Maybe not," Maggie agreed. She stopped for moment, a few steps behind, taking her time to look up at the Derbyshire sky. "I had forgotten how dark it gets here."

Lizzy stopped too, deciding to sit down on the path. They were halfway up the steep hill that led the way home. Maggie followed her cue and sat too, and they both looked up at the cerulean sky, which was quietly dotted with stars.

"I miss you," she said softly. Maggie looked at her and then pulled her in for a hug.

"I miss you too," she said. "As great as London is, it's not Pemberley."

"Pemberley is home, Mags, it will always be here when you decide to come back," she reached into one of the bags they had brought back from the party and pulled out a small parcel wrapped in tin foil. "Cake?"

There was a silence again. Maggie knew that Lizzy was hiding something from her, she could always tell, would always know. She simply had to wait long enough for it all to come flooding out.

xXx

Benn left the after-party of the London premiere with thoughts of her in his head and the shape of her embossed on him as he pounded down the stairs of the Shoreditch hotel, into his car and back to the hotel in Mayfair where Natasha was waiting for him in the suite on the 4th floor. The car journey back hadn't given him enough time to process the thoughts that had been racing through his mind since he had left her on the terrace. All he could think about was Lizzy, stood there in diamonds and organza, trembling with cold; beautiful, silly, caring, soft, warm Elizabeth, who had haunted his dreams for the past year, whose face he had seen glimpses of in every woman he had dated. She stood in front of him and told him that she felt the same way he did. No, not as he did, as he had done. Before. It was too late now for her to be making declarations of affection, he decided.

As he walked into the hotel, with a nod from the doorman and the soft shuffle of his oxfords on the tiled floors, he knew that he couldn't go straight upstairs and once again he headed towards the sanctuary of the bar. It was an instinct he had managed to subdue for nearly nine months, but the occasional glass of wine here, pushed on him by playful hands, the times she had offered him a beer to wind down in the evening, and he had succumbed, slowly slipping on a slope that was more perilous than ever. She was waiting for him, impatiently texting – he could feel the pulsating vibrate of the phone in his pocket - and she would be getting gradually more annoyed. It would result in an argument, where they would shout and argue, and she would throw things before softly turning to him and kissing him roughly as they fell onto the bed and had cool, technical make-up sex which he wouldn't enjoy, but which seemed to placate her enough to make her more pleasant the following day. Natasha could be nice; she could sparkle, and sometimes she made him laugh. It was only a small feeling he had, but when he was with her he felt as if she saw him as a trophy to be displayed. There was something about it that left a bitter taste in his mouth every time she kissed him in public, or when he noticed how tightly she held onto his arm in front of photographers.

He ordered a whisky at the bar, the harsh honey sweetness of it dripping down his throat like nectar and before he knew it, he was ordering another. He heard the voice in his head; warning him against it, and he ignored it. Doubles now; another, another. The world was blurring slightly, and he moved to the slippery comfort of a booth. Soft jazz was playing in the background and unknowingly he obnoxiously clapped as the pianist finished his rendition of 'The Way You Look Tonight'. People were looking at him now, small ripples of recognition, and he posed for a selfie with a gaggle of leggy hens, chatted about the cricket with a group of City boys, told an inappropriate joke to a couple on a date who awkwardly laughed until he wandered off, hiding again in the glorious sanctuary of the Bar at the Dorchester. He needed fresh air now, and maybe a cigarette.

Making it look like very hard work, he pushed through the revolving door of the entrance, and on the other side of the glass there she was. She looked at him, her eyes not faltering once. Suddenly he was in the freezing cold night, and turning back on himself to get back inside, to get back to her. Surely this meant something, surely if he believed in such nonsense this would be a sign. She was standing in the Art Deco grandeur of the foyer, looking back over her shoulder, still looking at him, her hair falling loosely around her shoulders, the glittering gold thread in her dress catching the light. He stumbled over to her, the new shoes sliding on the black and white floor now that he couldn't concentrate on not falling over.

"Have you been drinking?" She hissed questioningly, and as he got closer to her he realised that she looked very cross.

He smiled cheekily at her, "just one or two," as he threw his arm over her shoulder and tried to kiss her on the cheek.

"Fuckssake, you smell like a brewery!" She wrapped her arm around his bespoke suit. Hoisting him up and to his feet, she dragged him towards the elevator as a friendly porter followed with her bag and they proceeded to have the most awkward lift journey ever encountered.

It was 4am when he awoke to find himself in a strange room, in a strange bed, his head aching and his mouth dry. Somehow, he had managed to get undressed and put his clothes in a pile on the floor, although his jacket had been placed carefully over the chair by the window. He heard her get up, and then felt her pulling back the covers and slipping in between the crisp, cotton sheets, the gentle weight of her next to him made him feel safe. She was wearing pyjamas decorated with elephants, her face stripped of make-up, and she passed him a bottle of ice-cold Evian from the bedside table. He gulped it down thirstily, emptying the bottle before lying back on the soft, feather pillows and closing his eyes.

In the quiet light of the room, partly from the chinks of moonlight that were glinting through the gaps in the curtains, and partly from the lamplight shining under the gap in the door, he could see the gentle jut of her chin, the frown in her brow and he leaned over tracing it with his fingertip just to make sure that it was her and not some elaborate fantasy concocted by his whisky-addled mind. He felt her retract back at his touch and he moved his hand back shyly, afraid that he has crossed a line. His stomach turned again, had he misread the situation? A moment later he felt the soothing, cold palm of her hand on his cheek, her fingertip pressing teasingly on the spot behind his ear where his hair began to curl. Greedily he took her hand and kissed it, pressing his face into the back of it. She smelled like coconut oil, and he breathed her in deeply.

"Lizzy," he whispered, as he looked deeply into her eyes, a glint of light catching in them. She looked nervous, he thought, but then unexpectedly, as if she had gotten caught up in a moment that she couldn't get out of, he felt the gentle firmness of her mouth. He kissed her back deeply, feeling himself get lost in the magical wondrousness of all of this, as if he was still dreaming about her. He moved his hands onto her waist, then onto her hip, pulling her towards him so that he could feel the warmth of her against him. She put her hands on his face, dragging him back into the kiss that he didn't want to end, then swiftly running her hands over his shoulders as she pulled him on top of her. Under the sheets his hands moved tenderly, hesitantly, under the thin t-shirt; he felt the smoothness of her skin, the soft curve of her body. He touched every fragment of her until finally, slowly, he was moving inside her, and he felt her push against him as they held each other tightly, before falling to the sheets, sated and alive. She curled up in the crook of his arm, her head on his chest, and as he drifted off to sleep, he swore to himself that he would always remember the image of her glistening up at him, the way her curls surrounded her face like a halo, the way she had bit her lip to stop from crying out.

A few hours later he awoke suddenly and dressed quickly, scared to look at the number of messages that would be flashing angrily on his phone. She was still sleeping, and he sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, before stroking her face gently and kissing her on the forehead. She stirred for a moment, by the time she had fallen back into a deep sleep he was gone, leaving only a handwritten note on the pillow.

Oh, I could drink a case of you, my darling, and I would still be on my feet. B

xXx

"And you haven't seen him since?" Maggie asked, as she tapped the keycode into the staircase entrance and opened the door, the gentle creak echoing around the courtyard. The house looked still and stately under the glow of the moon, the lights already burning in the flat at the top of the Wyatt tower. Lizzy shook her head slowly, before she recovered and smiled with the false face that Maggie immediately recognised.

"You don't have to put on the Lady Darcy show for me, Lizard," she reassured as they walked up the three flights of stairs and into the flat.

Lizzy sat down on the sofa and looked over at Maggie who was making tea in the kitchen, Imogen and Harriet had already gone to bed, leaving a trail of bags and shoes in their wake.

"It's the not knowing what was wrong," she played with the pineapple necklace that she found she wore every day.

"Well, anyone that hurts you is a complete dick as far as I am concerned," she harrumphed as she poured the water. "Is he still with that Natasha person?"

She had been looking at his social media pages for the past few months now, but nothing. After the London premiere had been done with, it seemed that Benn Williams had disappeared off the face of the earth, he hadn't even turned up for the US or Australian premieres, despite the film being a phenomenal and worldwide hit. She had asked Matthew, currently moving to Malibu with Tamsin, who was the new lead in a hot LA based sitcom, but he had not heard from him since London either.

"I don't know," she uttered. "I just don't know."

Maggie brought the two cups of tea over to the table and sat down, slipping off her shoes and unpinning her hair, "do you love him, Lizzy? I mean, can you imagine growing old with him?"

"Is this what you asked yourself when you finally accepted Pete's proposal..." she said, her humour recovered. "Or were you persuaded by that massive rock on your finger?"

Maggie had dated Peter Edwards on and off for years, and Lizzy counted him as part of the family, Harriet even called him 'Uncle Pete'. It looked as though they would never marry – Pete living in his own flat in Tooting, working as a DCI for the Metropolitan Police, and Maggie living and working at Pemberley – but they fumbled on and it seemed to work for them for a long time, until he wanted a future and a home with her, and she couldn't find it in herself to make the leap from her comfortable existence to something new and different. It was the loss of Pete – the temporary split which saw her crying into her coffee far more often than she liked, ignoring the sad little glances from Kate in the ticket office – that pushed her to apply for the job at Austenation and move down south. He had proposed at the top of the Eiffel Tower on the eve of her fiftieth birthday with a platinum solitaire from Tiffany's. He knew it had cost far too much money, but his mother had always told him that shrouds don't come with pockets, and Pete Edwards got down on one knee and popped the question as Margaret Jane Wickham accepted with the biggest of smiles. They had married quickly, quietly and without any fuss in the registry office at Chelsea and then treated themselves to afternoon tea and champagne at The Ritz before texting everyone to let them know the good news.

"Lizzy," she said with all seriousness. "I want you to be happy."

She rolled her eyes warningly, "I am happy, why would I not be happy?"

Maggie viewed her friend out of the corner of her eye, "Lizzy, I know that you are happy, but there is more to life than Pemberley; I think you need to leave for a bit, take stock of what you actually want. Maybe travel, take some of the book money and go on an adventure somewhere. Harriet is nearly all grown up, she will be going to university soon and what are you going to do then? You can't keep yourself busy by doing the Lady Darcy tours of the house six times a week, it's not enough. You've been rattling about since you finished working."

Lizzy deep-sighed, but not from frustration, more from knowing that Maggie was right, "Pemberley has always been the place that kept me safe."

"It will always be your home, but you don't have anything to prove anymore. You don't even need to live here if you don't want to after the wedding," Maggie tried to reason with her. Joyce and Hugh were going to be living at the far end of the estate for most of the year and even though Hugh had been reluctant at first to make the move back to England permanent, he knew that there was no point in arguing with his fiancée, her mind had already been made up.

"I know, and where does that leave me, Maggie?" Lizzy looked down sadly, as much as Lizzy was happy for her father, she knew that the role she had played in the story of Pemberley for nearly eighteen years was now redundant.

"You didn't answer my question, Lizard."

"Do I love him?" She smiled sadly, "does it matter? He isn't here, hasn't been here… I can't decide on something like that."

"Love isn't a decision, Lizzy, love is something that you can't control, no matter how much you might want to. It's something that you can't describe or explain, and I know that's hard for you."

"But he isn't here," Lizzy rarely cried in front of anybody, not even Maggie, but she couldn't stop the fat tears from rolling down her face. It was hard to explain what she felt for him, she couldn't put a neat label on it and place it in a buff coloured folder, couldn't rationalise it, no matter how hard she had tried to. "When I see him, it's… it's like … like the universe is saying to me 'this is your person', but then he's gone, and it feels like the colour drains from everything and I don't understand why he left again, because… that night was incredible. I've never felt like that before, with anyone… I don't think I'll feel like that again." She looked up, her face puffy, her mascara streaming down her face, this was the ugliest of cries and it was making her feel vulnerable. "I'm thirty-seven years old and I haven't found anyone yet who has loved me enough to stick around. There have been two loves in my life, Maggie, two – one is currently embarking on what only can be described as some kind of youth outreach programme, and the other is married to the love of his life who can now magically conjure babies on cue."

"Has Forsythe blessed the world with yet more hideous spawn?"

"Four. They have four children now," Lizzy sneakily looked sometimes when she was feeling low, knowing that it wasn't advisable, and she had seen David and Bianca's brood increase every time she checked, their perfect smiling faces taunting her from the screen.

"Wow…" Maggie said sarcastically, "so what? That's not your life, it isn't your concern. As for Matthew, you know he needs to be adored, and she does adore him. It's quite unnerving to watch close up, to be honest." She had spent Christmas with her brother and his very young girlfriend and watched as Tamsin fawned and fluttered around him, he clearly loved every moment of it, especially when she agreed with everything he said, no matter how ridiculous. Pete had shot her disparaging glances across the room and later in bed they had laughed about it, trying to ignore the loud and dramatic sex noises emanating from the room next door. "But she is very beautiful, and Christ alive that girl can scream."

Lizzy laughed despite herself, before the sadness settled on her face again. She hadn't wanted to talk about the night she had spent with him, wanting to keep it all special and secret and locked away so that she could brood about it to herself, but telling Maggie about it had made her feel better, made her feel confident about the feelings that she had.

"I do love him," she said softly, admitting it to Maggie and to herself. "I am completely in love with him."

xXx

Lizzy heard the clock in the Long Gallery chime its delicate melody, sounding out that it was now ten am. The house was due to open in half an hour and she was currently rummaging about in the small cupboard in what was once her old bedroom, trying to find a box of leaflets needed for her tour this afternoon. She loved the familiarity of being back in the Knights Bedroom – hidden away at the end of the gallery, she often forgot about the Jacobean strapwork on the ceiling, the wonkiness of the walls and how the fireplace mantel was straight, but the rest of the room wasn't. If she thought about it hard, she could still smell a hint of Impulse, stolen cigarettes out of the window and burning wood from when she singed the windowsill with her hair straighteners. The bed was still here, although it had undergone intensive restoration work, never to be slept in again; and the nail glue had finally been removed from the fireplace, although she had heard that it took nearly three weeks to gradually work it away. Pulling out the box of leaflets, she walked through her old playroom, along the north corridor and down the staff stairs towards the stewards' room where a small huddle of volunteers, gathered with brews and biscuits, waiting for the briefing from Hannah who would let them know what was happening for the day. Lizzy walked in late, halfway through the schedule, placing her box on the table she grabbed a biscuit and sat down as the rest of the Thursday team went to their positions in various rooms around the house. This room used to be the Mahogany Room, it still was depending on which plan of the house you checked or the age of the member of staff you spoke to. She opened the two hundred year old sash window onto the view of the Reflection Lake, the peaceful morning breeze drifting in off the hills, carrying the scent of roses down from the garden near the Orangery.

"Lizzy?" Hannah brushed back into the room, hurriedly making a cup of tea as she gathered clipboards and feedback forms under her arm, "they're doing the filming in the library, so you will need to cut that from your first tour this afternoon, that okay?"

She glanced back into the room distractedly, her eye taken by the small ducklings faltering about on the edge of the lake, "what filming is this?"

Hannah, busily grabbing for a radio and checking the schedule for something more important shouted back as she left the room, "Find My Roots."

Lizzy felt her heart immediately palpitate. The door clunked shut and then reopened as Hannah walked back into the room to slurp her tea. "Oh," she continued, "Benn Williams will be here later too, so if you can cut the State Bedroom from your last tour of the day that would be absolute perfection." She swigged the last mouthful, "he's signing autographs and books in the Servants Hall later for staff, I am so excited! He was FIT as Darcy… I mean, UFFF…You must have met him when they filmed here, right?"

"Yeah," she said hesitantly, her heartbeat in her fingers.

"So LUCKY!" Hannah whined, "trust me to start work here like three weeks after they finished filming… the most exciting celebrity I've met so far was Jemima Lancaster, and she was nice, but she wasn't Benn frickin Williams." She disappeared out of the room, leaving an empty cup and the radio on the table.

Lizzy tried to remain calm, but Hannah's excitement rubbed off on her too. Her stomach did a little flip and her heart was dancing, Benn Williams was going to be at Pemberley today, and she was going to tell him without reservation, without restriction and without fear that she loved him and even if he didn't feel the same about her anymore, she simply wanted him to know.

He caught the train to Manchester, riding in First Class, but hiding under his real name. His hair was longer now, his face stubbly and he loved being able to order a chocolate croissant and a full fat latte from Costa on the platform without having to worry about recognition. He knew that if people looked closely they would recognise him, but he found that they didn't look and consequently he felt like a normal person again. He was meeting the production crew at Piccadilly before they all travelled to Lambton and then on to Pemberley. The bulk of the research was now done and all that remained was for him to film some shots at Pemberley.

He had never known that his odd last name came from one of the oldest families in England, that through Mabel Darcy he was related to the current Darcys, and Lizzy. He scrolled through her social media photos again, he had looked at them a lot over the last few months; pictures of her laughing at party, dressed in a pink dress with a turquoise petticoat, wearing a headband with glittery willies on it; a picture of the Eggs Benedict that she had made one morning; baby ducks swimming on the lake at Pemberley; and the latest one, just from this morning, a filtered selfie where she was smiling and wearing the necklace he had bought for her, it was captioned: 'Part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time', and he knew that it was a message for him.

He mentally started wishing away the hours of the journey, nervously anticipating seeing her again, he was giddy with laughter and inside his heart was beaming.