After days on end of barely any sleep, Elizabeth found herself waking at last from deep, long, satisfying slumber. The surrounding darkness hinted at a very late hour, and the few remaining embers in the fireplace offered little to no heat. Yet, somehow, only one side of her felt cold.
Shifting in her worn day dress that she had somehow never taken off, Elizabeth rolled to her side - only to encounter a mass of human warmth that grunted at her touch.
She breathed in sharply as the events leading up to her current situation reemerged in her memory. How ironic was it that the day her husband finally came to her bed was the one day she looked absolutely horrid? With a lingering glance at her snoring husband, Elizabeth rolled the other way and stepped gently onto the generous rug that ran the breadth of her room. She had kicked off her shoes at some point before her nap - if sleeping away the duration of an entire day could be considered napping - and her stockinged feet relished the warmth of the fur beneath her toes. Slowly, and with some degree of acrobatic contorting, she managed to slide off her dress. It was a dress that had seen plenty of bodily fluids from the twins, and she was rather glad to be rid of it.
"Elizabeth," Darcy's called out behind her in the dark, his voice hoarse from recent sleep.
"I'm here," she answered as she turned, realizing only then that she was more undressed than she had ever been in his presence.
But what did it matter between a husband and his wife?
She breathed in for courage and slid back onto the bed, the covers cold under her exposed skin. She barely saw him - catching glimpses of his rumpled shirt, just able to make out that he had propped himself to a seat. She wondered how much he could see her, given that his large frame took up most of the suddenly narrow bed.
"Did you sleep well?" she asked gently, counting on the simple things to set them both at ease.
"Very well." He chuckled in the dark. A soft wind whispered through the open window, lifting the curtain ever-so-slightly. The extra trace of moonlight illuminated Darcy's face briefly and allowed Elizabeth to drink in the softness in his gaze beneath his unkempt appearance. Since the very beginning of their acquaintance, she had never seen him as anything but proper, even rigid. There was a secret thrill to being the one person to ever see him like this.
"I'm glad to hear that," she replied. She shifted slightly higher onto the mattress - and closer to her husband. She leaned back against the bedpost, one hand on her lap while the other lay on the bed between them. She felt his gaze traverse the length of her bare arms and shoulders. "It is not your bed, after all."
"No, it isn't."
Elizabeth held her breath as he reached out to touch her. His hand covered her hand first, warm and gentle. Then his fingers moved, trailing slowly up the length of her arm until his fingertips grazed the edge of her chemise. Elizabeth sighed, shuddering, as his hand brushed her collar, her neck, her jaw, then her cheek.
Her husband pulled closer, until the heat of his body warmed hers in the chill of the night air.
"But I would like to hope," he whispered, his face tantalizingly close to hers, "that I would be welcome here."
Elizabeth smiled, unable to help herself any longer. She leaned forward to kiss him, sure yet tender against his lips. He answered by gathering her into his arms and onto his lap.
"You," she whispered against their briefly parted lips, "are always welcome here."
And she was happy to learn that they both intended the same sort of welcome.
"Why dd you stop?" she asked an hour later.
"Hm?"
Darcy pressed a languid kiss against his wife' brow. A thin sheet was all the warmth they needed as they lay side by side on the bed, the length of her beautiful body pressed back against his. Her loose tresses tickled his chest, and their right hands entwined as thoroughly as their bodies had mere moments ago. His left side might well be pinned down by their current embrace, but his lips, at least, were free to roam her temple, her ears, and her jaw as he wished. The little sighs and moans she proffered whenever he did only made his hands yearn to map her body once more.
"The other night, in the carriage," Elizabeth whispered when he was too distracted to answer. She twisted slightly to look up towards him, her skin sliding delightfully against his own. "I had thought you would join me in the bedroom after, and yet you - "
She looked up, her eyes completing her question.
Darcy smiled before he kissed her, taking his time to do it thoroughly. He weaved his arms around her waist. "Did you want me to?"
"Yes." She laughed, with barely a hint of maidenly shyness. He was glad he had chased that away from her. "I thought it was clear that I welcomed you. I barely slept the whole night wondering what I had done to drive you away."
"You did not drive me away."
"And yet you left me all alone, at the door to my bedroom - with no husband in sight."
Darcy felt his smile grow slightly sheepish even as he chose his words. "I merely did not wish to impose."
"Upon your own wife?"
"Upon a woman whom I cared deeply for, whom I loved with every fiber of my being - not when I did not know if she would ever feel the same way."
This time, Elizabeth rolled over completely until she faced him. Then she nestled herself upon his shoulder, her arms tucked between them. Her eyes glistened in the dark as they returned his gaze.
"Why would you ever think that?"
Slowly, Darcy sighed. "I am the one who proposed we marry, Elizabeth - both the first time and the second. And while I have had my past moments of misguided delusions, I am not fool enough to think that, without the inducement of Benedict and Beatrice's guardianship in the balance, that my second proposal would have ever met with greater success than the first."
She did not answer, responding only by snaking her arm across his chest. He pulled her closer and continued. "I have always admired you, but these months in Pemberley have opened my eyes to how vastly you deserve my admiration and more. You are the best mistress Pemberley could ever have, the best mother the children could ever ask for, and the best wife I could ever have imagined marrying. Your supervision of the household, your management of the children's affairs, your willingness to entertain and engage with whoever arrives upon our door, your insights over every portion of our lives - every facet of you character nurtured greater and greater affection in me until I feared that there was no hope of them ever being returned."
"Fitzwiliam - "
"I love you, Elizabeth." He kissed her gently, lingering and tender. "I proposed once, in Hunsford, thinking that I loved you. But now I have discovered that I love you more than I ever did then, and I know that I shall grow to love you even more in the years to come. I am glad, and ever so grateful, of your willingness to let me be your husband, even if only for the children's sake."
"But you are not." She shoved herself closer, until the tip of her nose brushed against his cheek. "You are my husband - simply because you are. And I swear, Fitzwilliam, that I count myself blessed every single day for having married you - not just for Bennie and Bea's sake, not just for my family's sake - but for my own. For months now, I have watched your ways and counted them dearer to me every day. The hours I have spent in longing for you - oh how silly it all sounds. I know you to be a man of honor and duty, and I was so desperately hoping that I could grow to become more than that to you, especially when I have fallen so desperately in love with you."
His heart skipped a beat. "Truly, Elizabeth?"
"I worried these past weeks, did you know? You have been so kind with your compliments, and I truly had no cause to repine. But I worried, rather often, that that you have come to view me only as a mistress and a mother." She looked up at him. Her eyes had always been bewitching, but now they were tempered with a depth of tenderness he had never before known he could hope to receive. "And not a wife."
Eventually, Darcy smiled. "If you only knew how I have tossed and turned in my chambers, night after night, hoping against hope that you would one day allow me be a true husband to you."
She returned his smile, the moonlight lending her an almost ethereal glow. "I suppose we were hoping the same thing."
"I am glad we are in agreement."
"As am I." She kissed him soundly as he once more covered her body with his. "And perhaps we can continue to be in agreement, dear husband."
His only answer was a determined growl.
Once the physician verified that young master Benedict Bingley was indeed fully recovered, the household at Pemberley settled into a new era of blissful contentment. The servants, though long accustomed to a fair master and a capable mistress, seemed to work with an even lighter step than usual - although Darcy was not quite certain to attribute the change to the actual atmosphere of Pemberley or to his own buoyant spirits.
Ever since he and Elizabeth had finally come to an understanding, every moment of every day was spent either with the twins or with each other. Mornings dawned with lingering touches and languid kisses. Evenings warmed his heart with her company and his bed with her body. It had taken all of two weeks for them to decide that it was not worth the trouble to maintain separate chambers, and she began to permanently stay in his. The mistress's wardrobe helped when it came to storing her growing collection of clothes and books, but all she ever truly needed every day remained in the drawers by her side of their poster bed.
Benedict and Beatrice took to the warming weather well and soon began to crawl and climb at every turn. No corners were left unexplored and no surfaces untouched. Elizabeth screamed rather uncharacteristically the first time she found Beatrice halfway up the servants' staircase, a gleeful Benedict on her heels. Memorable moments abounded as the twins conquered their first words, their first mouthfuls of human subsistence, and even their first fight. How two little souls could grapple over the small wooden toy horse with so much strength and determination rather baffled Darcy, but he found himself ordering a second such toy to be made the very next day.
Elizabeth laughed at him when he did, of course. She seemed to find his indulgence towards the twins a great source of amusement.
Given that her amusement often gave way to more ardent kisses and smiles, however, Darcy was mostly content to be chuckled over.
"You will spoil them silly, you know," she chided this morning, when his birthday present for the twins arrived. They stood side by side in the hallway outside his study, looking together upon the large wooden toy set that included not just horses but all of the creatures believed to have been in Noah's ark. The replica of the ark itself sat behind the gaggle of wooden animals, as large as a small pony.
"I did not think it would be so big."
"The twins could hide in that thing and never be found."
"Benedict might like that, though Beatrice would never concede to be away from company for longer than two minutes."
Elizabeth smiled beside him. She leaned against his shoulder, her hand nestled in his. "She takes after their father."
"And Benedict their mother."
"Perhaps." Elizabeth sounded unsure. Darcy felt his wife brush a kiss against his arm. "I rather think he takes after their godfather."
Darcy couldn't help the smile that crept its way onto his lips. "Is that a good thing?"
"I most certainly think so, for I have never met or known a man more honorable, selfless, or kind." They turned to face each other. Elizabeth hooked her arms around his neck, and he drew her against him by the waist. "And I do hope that our child takes after you as well."
He smiled at her allusion to the babe they were expecting. It was far from the quickening yet, as far as he knew, but Elizabeth's absent courses and recent changes in appetite had been signs enough for them.
"You would rather the child be arrogant, conceited, and taciturn at best?"
"Only if it were a boy. A girl can be bewitching instead, with the ability to cause the most reticent of men to fall ardently in love with her."
They laughed together, their past ever present yet no longer pained. He pulled his Elizabeth into a kiss, enjoying the way she returned it. Tomorrow, they would celebrate their godchildren's first birthday, complete with guests from both Longbourn and Burnham Manor. But today, he had his wife all to himself, and he would have it no other way.
A/N: I hope that was a happy resolution! We have a bittersweet epilogue left, partly due to the fact that I overcompensated when readers (rightfully) complained that Jane had been too unceremoniously fridged in my previous book The Widower / A Promise to Keep. Lol. ODC happily ever after, always!