Author's Notes

Sometimes, I just stare at the cryptic story notes I leave myself and wonder exactly what the hell I was going for.

Into the Fire

Not very many months into their marriage, they had their first real argument as husband and wife.

Truth be told, with temperaments and a telling beginning such as theirs, Elizabeth had expected it to happen much sooner.

It started in the way quarrels usually do, sparked by something so inconsequential that it was promptly forgotten in the years to come. At the time, however, needled pride provoked them both to words that were harsh and scorching and unknown to yet be harbored in either of their hearts until it went too far.

She knew from the shock that overspread his features that he wished the words unsaid the moment they were uttered, but her anger burned too hot for it to be of any concern.

"No," said Darcy, frantic, "no, I—"

He clutched at her wrist as if to anchor her to him, but she, unable to be subjected to his touch just then, wrenched out of his hold. It was petty of her, but in that moment, she wanted to hurt him as he had her. Elizabeth had never claimed to be without fault.

His expression contorted into something achingly childlike before it closed off entirely.

"Not another word," she warned, her voice astonishingly steady considering how erratic she felt the beat of her heart to be. "We both of us have said quite enough, I think."

She left him standing alone in the music room.

.*.

Georgiana was away visiting with Lord and Lady Matlock for a fortnight, and so there was no other companion present at supper to compel them to act as if nothing was amiss. They hardly even looked at each other as they picked at their food.

There was an instance where their eyes caught by chance across the table. He would have spoken then, had opened his mouth, but Elizabeth deliberately dropped her gaze, having no wish to hear anything her husband might say. Her meaning was perfectly understood as the unbroken quiet proved.

She retired once supper ended though she was the furthest possible thing from tired. When Lily arrived shortly after to attend to her, Elizabeth not unkindly dismissed her, feeling herself unfit for any company. She prepared for bed on her own as she and Jane had always done, absently twisting her hair between her fingers and into a thick plait.

The solution to managing her temper had always been fairly simple at Longbourn. Silence and solitude were easy enough to come by along the surrounding country lanes there; she could walk for miles without encountering a soul. Even when the weather did not allow her that haven, she could at least hide away in her room until she could think reasonably and was herself again. She had shared the room with Jane, yes, but her elder sister, dear creature that she was, understood Elizabeth's manner of working through the brunt of her feelings and let her be.

The lateness of the hour precluded her preferred method. For the first time since Pemberley had become her home, she wondered if she had been too hasty in giving up her private bedchambers.

Elizabeth conceded her attempt at letter writing to be a hopeless case nearly as soon as she had begun and blew out the candle upon her bedside table. Thin wisps of smoke were still coiling from the wick when Darcy came into the room.

Eyes closed, she listened to him moving in the dark as he readied himself for bed. She felt the mattress dip as he slipped in beside her. Everything was still then.

"Elizabeth?"

She considered answering, struck by the timbre of his voice; she did not, in the end.

The deep sigh that followed affected her more than she cared to admit.

.*.

Mrs Bennet's wailing could be heard throughout the whole of the house, only occasionally overtaken by Kitty and Lydia's giggling and the jarringly flat notes of a tormented piano.

"Hill, oh, Hill! What am I to do with the willful, wretched girl? She will be the death of me! Or worse—our ruin!"

"Mama," Jane soothed, "I am certain it will all turn out to be some great misunderstanding. You must be calm."

"And what is there to misunderstand, Jane, I ask you?" snapped Mrs Bennet. "Your sister chased away Mr Darcy, a man of ten-thousand a year, if need I remind you."

"No need at all, Mrs Bennet," Mr Bennet said as he rose to pour himself another drink. "I do believe that when I am ancient and have lost most of my faculties and nearly all of my senses, though I might not recall my own name, I will most assuredly remember the precise income of my son-in-law."

The piano chords and redoubled cackling of her youngest sisters jumbled gratingly in the air.

"Son-in-law!" his wife all but shrieked. "Tell me, can we still refer to him as such when he has, for all intents and purposes, cast off his ungrateful wife? It's like I have always said, girls: it's she who holds her tongue that finds and keeps a husband."

Mr Bennet snorted even as Mrs Bennet buried her face in her handkerchief and bawled.

Mary, banging away at the piano yet, decreed, "Silence is a virtue all members of our sex would do well to possess, for even when we have lost all else, silence can still be had."

This, of course, sent Kitty and Lydia into a fresh wave of hysterics while their mother sobbed louder.

The noise of it all rose to such a pitch that Elizabeth's head pounded with it, unable to distinguish one sound from the other.

.*.

Elizabeth awoke with a start.

It took her a moment to realize where she was and a moment more to feel the warm, reassuring weight of her husband's arms around her. She cursed her body as a traitor of the weakest sort for seeking out the comfort of him instinctively in the night.

Carefully so as not to wake him, Elizabeth rose and dressed for the day. Her hand was upon door handle when he spoke from behind her.

"How long, exactly, do you intend for us to go on like this?"

Her anger at him still simmered beneath her skin, and the hint of acrimony in his question acted as kindling. An unkind retort sprang readily to her lips, but she tamped down on it.

When he saw she would neither answer nor turn to face him, he tried a different tack. "Where do you go so early?"

"To visit with some of the tenants," she told him dispassionately. "I promised Mrs Branson that I would go to see how her daughter fared. You need not wait for me to take dinner or supper." She started to open the door.

"Elizabeth, don't, not with this unresolved between us, please!" She hesitated on the threshold as he pleaded. "Will you not even give me the opportunity to apologize?"

At that, she shut the door a little too forcefully before whirling on her heel. "And why would you apologize for something you said with such conviction, Fitzwilliam? You are not one to go back on your word."

"What of the things you said?" he replied heatedly. "Did you mean even half of them? Any part of it?"

Her reluctance to meet his gaze, edged with repentance, was confirmation enough that he had caught her out.

"Do not think I make light of it. There is no explanation I can offer to excuse myself even of empty words spoken in anger. I bitterly, bitterly regret them, and I am so sorry."

Sleep-rumpled and serious, hopeful and agitated, he stood before her, a wealth of contradictions in the body of a man.

"So am I," she told him. "I said cruel, foolish things, and I have acted childishly, besides. Forgive me?"

Elizabeth could never be certain after that which of them had moved forward first or whether they both did at once, but it hardly mattered. They were soon tangled in each other, breathing apologies between kisses that were soft and tender.

"This will never do," he murmured some time later, toying with one of her curls as they lay close together.

She lifted a questioning eyebrow, taking in the self-deprecating grin beginning at the corner of his mouth which seemed at odds with his comment.

"Whatever will our incentive be not to argue so fiercely if this is how it concludes?"

End Author's Notes

Mrs. Bennet did in fact paraphrase Ursula from The Little Mermaid. I regret nothing (is an example of a thing I can't say).