A/N: Our last chapter. Thanks for keeping faith with my story.

Pride, Prejudice, and Pretense

Chapter 29: Wives and Daughters

They held each other for a long time in silence. The relief of being together, safe, overwhelmed Lizzy.

They had overcome themselves and overcome the Wicker Man to arrive here. The burden of doubt and despair she had still been carrying as she waited for Darcy began to lighten as she lay against his chest.

She felt his hand on her back and then in her hair, soft caresses. She had her eyes closed, shutting out everything present but him, touch, sound, and scent, distancing herself from the past and feeling the future nearer than it had felt in — forever.

His chuckle registered first not as a sound but as a movement of his chest, then she heard it. She lifted her head to look at him. He gave her his injured but intense smile. "The blonde is almost gone."

She boggled for a second, then understood.

So preoccupied with worrying about him, applying for graduate school, humoring her mother, and helping her aunt, she had not thought much about herself, or her appearance. Her natural brown had grown back as the blonde dye faded. Her hair was now mostly brown. But it had been blonde still when Darcy saw her last. For a moment she felt self-conscious, awkward. She touched her hair, wishing that she'd had time to change it, as she wished she'd had time to shower and put on clean clothes.

Fumbling for a response, she finally smiled, but unsure. "The real me — or very nearly. What do you think?"

"Enough to tempt me," he said and leaned forward for a kiss, a surprisingly eager kiss, given his condition, what he had likely suffered in the past hours.

She returned the kiss with eagerness of her own, allowing herself to rest more of her weight on him as she pushed herself up his chest, her chest pressing hard on his.

She ended the kiss and pulled back, smirking at him even as her breath came fast. "Enough to tempt you, huh?"

He grimaced, partly in play. "Don't remind me of what I said." Pausing, he looked at her, gentleness in his eyes that she felt in the touch of his fingers against her cheek.

"Haven't you figured out yet that I only said that because I already knew, at some unacknowledged level, that standing by and watching you seduce George Wickham would prove unbearable?"

She blushed with pleasure, understanding him and believing him, but she played dumb. "You knew how clumsy a seductress I would be?"

He scoffed, smiling again. "Ha! Hardly clumsy. Miraculously efficient, I say. You seduced two men at once, Lizzy Bennet, two — one with pretense and the other without trying."

She looked around the otherwise empty hospital room, then let one eyebrow buoy, coy. "Are you trying to seduce me, Fitzwilliam Darcy?"

He sighed in head-shaking resignation and sat back, letting his finger softly trail across her smirking lips. "The spirit is willing, Lizzy, so, so willing, but the flesh is weak."

She kissed his lips quickly, carefully, and then she sighed. "I know. Mine too, spirit and flesh. Soon," she promised, and he nodded, accepting.

"It's a date."

A chair stood close to the bed. She pulled it closer to the bed and sat but reached out to hold his left hand, leaning toward him. "What happened to you, Fitzwilliam — how did you end up in that office building?"

He inhaled, then exhaled slowly. "Probably, it is best to tell you the whole story, although I'm not going to worry about the precise timeline, or keeping it all straight. I'll just tell you as best I can, the major events and explanations as they come to me."

"So, I left Casper with a hunch. Although calling it a hunch probably dignifies it too much. It — whatever it was — lodged in my brain after I realized that the two teams that showed up on the mountain were independent of Wickham. He hadn't called for them; he hadn't expected them. Someone else sent them. It was not Wickham's suspicion that explained them. And then it occurred to me — it was someone else's suspicion. And — although I admit this was a leap — what if it was not just a suspicion of you, what if it was a suspicion of Wickham too, I mean, worry about him, what he might give away. Who had we interacted with who seemed concerned about you and Wickham? The answer was Father Robyn."

He stopped and licked his lips. "There was that strange, oily, officious visit he paid you, Fanny, in Chicago. It might have been priestly overstepping — not exactly a novelty among Episcopal priests, who often think they're God's right hand — but it stuck in my mind. And then I recalled the girl from UIC, Teresa Sanz. She said that Father Robyn introduced her to Lady Catherine. What if that had not been innocent, what if it had been Father Robyn…procuring a plaything for Wickham? My head told me I was just guessing, but my experience told me that the priest was off. And then the whole Wicker Man name began to make sense to me, a perverse sense, the whole Christian vs. pagan thing, the idea of striking against Christendom from a place like St. James. Attack the enemy from the enemy's very heart."

He shifted in the bed, grimaced, and looked at his splinted fingers. "So, I went back to Chicago. I gathered up some things," he gave Lizzy a look and she thought, our copy of Wives and Daughters, "and I moved into a hotel near both St. James, Father Robyn's church, and Rosings. I started following Father Robyn carefully. If I was right about him, and he picked up on my tail, he would be gone, in the wind. I wanted him — but I wanted the Wicker Man, to destroy the organization. I had to bide my time.

"When I could, I also got to know Teresa Sanz, much as Bingley did, by bumping into her on campus, pretending I was an English professor (pun intended). It took a couple of 'chance' encounters for her to begin, under apparently casual questions, to begin to refer to her time at Rosings. The reference was indirect but it was obvious to me, and it was also obvious that she was deeply ashamed of what she had done there.

"She was drawn into it before she quite understood what was happening to her. Drugs were almost certainly involved, and without her knowing." Darcy's deep frown deepened more.

"It became clear from a few things that she said that Father Robyn's introduction of her to Lady Catherine had not been chance, but had been orchestrated. Lady Catherine later let something slip, post-coital murmuring," Darcy's face pinched, "that suggested that Catherine and Wickham had asked for the introduction."

Darcy rubbed his face, the swelling, with his left hand. Lizzy could tell that he was fading but fighting his exhaustion.

"But I also got another idea." He pursed his lips in embarrassment. "I have a friend among the analysts at Langley. I never mentioned him to you or Bingley. And I admit, I used him to give me a sense of you, no Kellynch slant, before we left DC. I needed, wanted to know more about you." He dropped his eyes and hurried on. "Anyway, I called him from Chicago after talking to Sanz and asked him to dig into St. James' finances, and to compare what he could find on the parish to what he could find on Lady Catherine's — purported — donations."

Lizzy was nodding, seeing it all come together in her mind much as it had in Darcy's. Lizzy went on for him. "And it turned out that Lady Catherine was making large donations to St. James that were not properly reflected in the Parish financial ledgers."

Darcy grinned at her. "Exactly, or at least that's what my analyst friend, Frank Churchill?" Darcy slowed and looked at Lizzy, to see if she knew the name but she shrugged her ignorance, "That's what Frank told me. She was funding the Wicker Man — not that she was the only source of funds — by pretending to give to St. James. The bookkeeping was complicated, and doubled-up, but I wasn't trying to prove it, just confirm that my suspicions were right and by then I was certain they were.

"I managed to sneak into the parsonage at St. James and to install some bugs. It helped me that Father Robyn was so secure in his pretense, his fake priesthood. He had grown to depend on Wickham attracting any suspicions, not himself."

"Avatar," Lizzy said softly, and Darcy nodded. "But the avatar was dead."

Another nod. "What happened on Casper Mountain caused serious problems for the Wicker Man. The loss of Wickham caused serious problems. It was obvious that Father Robyn was under new pressure. But I think those helped me too. He was too busy trying to contend with the consequences to seriously check his rearview, or check for bugs in the parsonage, or to notice footprints near the laurel hedge."

"So, that's how you found out about the meeting at Vivos xPoint?" Lizzy asked.

Darcy nodded. "So, you heard about that?"

"Bingley told me." Lizzy pushed herself even closer to Darcy's bed, and squeezed his hand, remembering her fear when Bingley told her the news.

"Yes, I found out that way. An emergency summit of the major players, the complete management team, as it were. What you and I and Bingley did in Chicago, what we did on the mountain, it forced Father Robyn to decide to reveal himself." Darcy shook his head slowly.

"The man behind the curtain, the man no one had paid attention to, was going to step out. He was supposed to be there in person, but his plans changed at the last moment, after I had left Chicago and relocated to the Black Hills to prepare for the meeting. I didn't know.

"Vivos xPoint, I was willing to bet, was part of the Wicker Man, a source of funds and more. I was there a couple of days ahead of Father Robyn's scheduled arrival, and I realized that Bang Fumerton was installed in one of the bunkers. I couldn't do much to prep, it turned out, since Vivos was crawling with security. Luckily, the place is so vast there was no way to keep me from sneaking in. I was there when the Wicker Man's pieces arrived, keeping watch from a disused bunker, a telescope. The meeting was to last for a day and night, and since Father Robyn wasn't there, I assumed he would arrive later, last minute.

"Fumerton must've decided to demonstrate his skills for the others, or he had stored something unstable in his bunker, or something, but the bunker exploded. He lived up to his name." Darcy's grin was grim. "The bunker was built to withstand blasts from the outside but it did well with one on the inside, so there was little damage to the surroundings, but everyone inside was killed."

Lizzy stood up after placing Darcy's hand on the bed. "So, you had nothing to do with Fumerton, the explosion?"

"No, honestly, nothing. I hoped to wait for Father Robyn and then to capture them all at once. It would've been tricky, doing it single-handedly, but I wasn't interested in glory. I was worried that calling anyone else would risk discovery, send them running. I was planning to gas them in the bunker once Father Robyn was there."

Lizzy shook her head. "Father Robyn is not — was not — God's right hand, but…that explosion might have been the hand of God, an act of God. The new God ends the old gods."

Darcy looked at Lizzy closely but did not ask her to elaborate. After a moment of thought, he nodded once. "Reversal of the movie."

"But Father Robyn wasn't there?"

"No, and I left almost the next day. I had a sudden, sick feeling that what happened at Vivos might unhinge him, send him after revenge. Frank had been keeping tabs on you at my urging, — sorry, only an overwatch, using traffic cameras, to and from the bridal shop, as far toward home as cameras went, nothing too invasive," Lizzy shook her head to indicate that she was not upset, " — and I had asked him earlier, when I had him check on St. James' and Rosings' finances, to keep an ear to the ground, to try to identify a leak or mole in Langley." He pushed himself up a bit in the bed. "I admit I didn't entirely trust Kellynch, or anyone else at Langley, at least not as much as I trusted Frank."

His tone changed. "Frank was a friend of mine at University. After Bingley, before MI-6. He moved here just after he graduated. We sort of kept in touch, especially after we realized we were in the same line of work, broadly speaking. — Sorry, let me get back to the story.

"I rushed here terrified that Father Robyn would beat me. He did, it turns out. He must've left almost immediately after hearing about Vivos. He may have had men here already, following you, although Frank hadn't seen anyone."

Lizzy thought about the car in her neighborhood but said nothing.

"So, Father Robyn had other men here?" Lizzy asked after a moment.

"Yes, they're dead in the abandoned building, in a part of it you must not have seen. I assume the Company team has found them by now."

"Kellynch didn't mention it."

"You've talked to the Director," Darcy asked, concern on his face and in his voice.

"Yes, he called to ask me to reconsider my retirement."

Darcy shifted forward in the bed. "And?"

"And I said no."

"Oh," Darcy said noncommittally but he sank back against the bed. "That's your final answer?"

"My final answer. I'm saving my yes — for later, for someone else, for a different life."

She could not meet his eyes since she was sure he comprehended her meaning. He had written similarly to her.

He waited until she finally lifted her gaze to his. He held her gaze for a moment without speaking, then he spoke: "I have asked the right question, but not as the right person, not to the right person. Please hold onto that yes until the question can be asked in propria persona, answered in propria persona." He smiled weakly. "I've decided that the key to being a spy is this: I am not who I am and I am who I am not. It's time to be who I am."

"So, you're done? MI-6?"

"I will officially resign as soon as I am up to talking to my boss. He may retire me peremptorily. The last few weeks I've been off-book, unsanctioned, flirting with rogue."

"What will you do?"

He seemed unworried about the question in general. "All that I'm sure of is — you."

"Oh, so your plan is to do me?" It was silly, perhaps, but it felt so good to be able to banter with him. Lizzy and Fitzwilliam. Not Fanny and Ned. Not Agent Bennet and Agent Darcy. A woman and a man, each acutely aware of the other as woman and man.

Maybe the fact that we're both too tired and this hospital room too public adds spice and makes the moment both sexier and more precious.

Anticipation is the best sauce, Lizzy thought to herself and then blushed at her anticipatory, saucy imaginings, the imagined feeling of his heated bare flesh inside her.

"As soon as my strength returns," Darcy said, underscoring the word 'strength' and deepening her blush.

The door opened and a nurse came inside, carrying a plain white tote bag. "A man came in and asked for this to be given to Agent Darcy." Lizzy took the bag from her and she left the room.

"What is it?" Darcy asked, puzzled.

Lizzy opened it. Inside was a phone on top of a folded jacket. She recognized the jacket from Chicago, Ned. "Your phone and jacket. They must have found them in the building."

He nodded. "Rook took them from me in the parking lot." He shook his head. "When I saw him behind you, in the Smiley office — "

"Where was he?" Lizzy asked. She had wondered about that a time or two since arriving at the hospital.

"Crouching behind the file cabinets, the ones pushed toward the middle of the floor. I had passed out so I didn't know where he was until I saw him rushing at you. He can move quietly."

Lizzy knew he must have been beside the cabinets when she turned the knob of the door. She had moved silently too. She'd tell Fitzwilliam about that barefoot trek someday, but not today. Darcy had dealt with enough.

"Father Robyn and his men took me outside your house. I didn't anticipate you working at the bridal shop, and I thought you would likely be at home."

"Mom had a big idea about a white sale of sorts on Black Friday. I've been helping out some and couldn't refuse when she was expecting such a big day."

"Was it a big day?"

"Yes, it was. Bigger than she anticipated."

"My doctor talked to her doctor," Darcy told her, "and I guess, since we're intelligence agents, they've been sloppy about HIPAA. Although she only told me that she was resting comfortably and that her doctor was optimistic about a full, eventual recovery."

"That's what he said, yes. I've seen her. I guess that she'll be fine. But right now, she doesn't remember what happened to her." Elizabeth quickly informed Darcy about what her mother could not remember, the bridal shop to the van ride, and she told about what she had done to Father Robyn's henchman and Father Robyn, telling him agent to agent, with professional detachment. They were both still for a long moment, reckoning with what she had said. Then Lizzy went on, a slight change of subject. "My mother doesn't know I was an agent. I've lied to her all these years." Lizzy felt ashamed to admit it, even if it had felt necessary.

"I'd like to be with you when you tell her if that's alright with you."

"Yes, Fitzwilliam, thanks. That would help. She's likely not to believe me, at least at first." Lizzy wondered what her mother would make of Darcy, his serious demeanor in public, around people he did not know. She would likely declare him a stick in the mud.

Darcy gestured for Lizzy to hand him the tote bag. He reached inside and took out his phone. "Huh, they didn't destroy it. Maybe they thought they could learn something from it. And it still has a charge, a little, anyway."

"What happened in that building, Fitzwilliam?"

"You can guess. I got free for a few minutes and managed to kill two of the men. But that left Father Robyn, Rook, and the other man, the one who went with Father Robyn to take you."

"Father Robyn promised me that I would live long enough to watch you die," Darcy's voice choked, he had to clear his throat before continuing, "and then he had Rook tie me, beat me, snap two of my fingers." He looked at his phone but only as a goad to forgetfulness and an incitement to thought — then he looked up at her. "Tactically, he should have killed me. Killed you. Been done with it, us. But he was like his avatar, like Wickham, in the end. He didn't want to defeat us, me, he desired total ruin; he wanted our living misery as much or more than he wanted our death. He lost, he's dead — because winning wasn't enough." Darcy caught her eyes and his own burned bright for a moment as he regarded her. "And — because he had no true conception of the Fury he kidnapped from the bridal shop."

"Mrs. Bennet, my mom?"

Lizzy asked the question with a straight, innocent face before she laughed low — but she sobered immediately.

"Sorry, Fitzwilliam, I do like to laugh, and our Wickham mission, and these last few weeks, have offered me precious few chances to do it." She reflected for a moment, and then gazed at Darcy ardently, intently. "And — Father Robyn had no true conception of what spies might do when they're in love," she finished quietly.

Darcy put the phone on the top of his blanket and nodded. 'None."

His eyes were beginning to droop but he still added, smiling sleepily. "I hope to spend the rest of my life listening to you laugh. Though I also hope not at me."

Lizzy laughed again, stepped to the bed, and kissed his forehead, patting his chest. She felt her exhaustion keenly. "Not at you, never at you. Sleep, love. Sleep."

He put his hand on hers. "You too. Go home, and take a long shower. Wash some of tonight away. Sleep. Until tomorrow."

Lizzy slept later than she meant the next morning.

She had left Strong Memorial with her aunt and uncle; they'd waited on her. And she had gone to their house to shower and sleep. Her aunt lent her some pajamas and she curled up on the big bed in the guest room, under an ocean of of blue blankets, snow whirling in the Rochester wind outside, and, after saying Fitzwilliam in an incantatory tone to herself, she warmed and sank into deep, dreamless sleep.

The next morning her aunt woke up early and drove to Lizzy's house, returning with fresh clothes (including Lizzy's favorite skirt and boots — Aunt Gardiner paid attention) and she made breakfast, all before Lizzy finally rose.

Lizzy woke and ate, dressed, and her aunt took her to get her car at the bridal shop. They had decided to close it for the weekend.

Lizzy went inside for a moment to reclaim her phone, left behind when Father Robyn arrived. She found it, still plugged in behind the counter where she'd left it. There was a text from Darcy.

Good morning. Up early. Sent my resignation to MI-6. All yours.

A tremble went through her head to toe as she read it. Joy. They were both done. They were both free. Free for each other, for the different life she had been imagining. She trusted Darcy with her freedom more than she trusted herself with it. She hoped he felt the same way about her, his freedom. That's what love was — a gift of freedoms. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear the clink of shattered fates. The Company and MI-6 were behind them.

She took a deep breath and responded.

All yours, too.

Near her, hanging, was a wedding dress they had featured during the Black Friday sale. It had caught Lizzie's attention often that day. She had imagined herself in it. Simple, a bit antique, silk tulle with a high neckline but a short skirt, and an A-line silhouette.

She took a photograph of it and sent it to Darcy.

She wished she could be there to see him receive it. She could imagine his raised eyebrows, followed by the raising of the corners of his mouth. When she first met him, she had thought of him as House of Lords — formal, stiff, unfeeling. Unsmiling. He was none of those things, not really. He was dignified — a man who knew the difference between self-respect and self-esteem, even if others did not, and if they confused his proper self-respect with improper self-esteem. What seemed like pride in him, or vanity, was neither. It was magnanimity — greatness of soul, to use an old-fashioned term. Not a quality strewn thickly on the ground these days. He was not haughty; he was deliberate. He did not often speak without thinking, and he did not often process aloud. He did not speak until he had given a matter due consideration and come to a conclusion. But sharing the conclusion did not make him dogmatic, only circumspect. A man of conscience — and deep but largely unguessed struggles with himself.

She could soften him, had already softened him, she could make him and already had made him more happily spontaneous, more obviously vulnerable. Reducing his gravity a bit, his native command, so that others felt less determined when orbiting around him. She could ease his internalized self-demand — teach him to give himself grace.

I am in equal parts anxious to see you — in that and out of it.

She trembled again. In and out. So you like it?

Yes, it's lovely, elegant, and sexy. It's you.

Smiling, she responded. Is it crazy for me to send you a photograph of a wedding dress before we've ever been on a real date?

She waited for his response, half-holding her breath. No, we both understand the destination before we start. I don't intend to date you experimentally, Lizzy. For me, our life together has already started. It began in Chicago.

Experimentally. No, nothing experimental about it. She chuckled at his phrasing. For me too. I'll be there soon.

He responded. Hurry. I need less medical staff and more kisses.

He would only say something like that to me, privately. She responded. On my way.

She was a woman fully grown, and experienced; she knew who and what she wanted.

Lizzy grabbed a tag from the counter, wrote her name on it, and attached it to the dress. She put an IOU on the counter and signed it. Then, she moved the dress to the layaway section of the store.

For safekeeping.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a bridal gown, must be in want of a husband. Lizzy chuckled to herself.

When Lizzy entered Darcy's room, she was surprised to find Bingley and Jane sitting with him. "Jane! Charlie! What are you doing here?"

Bingley answered as Jane got up and rushed into a hug with Lizzy. "Kellynch sent me and Jane took some time off to come see you both. She and Darcy have been getting personally acquainted."

Jane still had Lizzy in the hug and she whispered. "I get it, Lizzy. He's something." Jane pulled back and led Lizzy to an empty chair, already there. She did not sit immediately; she instead kissed Darcy hungrily on the mouth, not troubled by the company in the room. Neither was he; he kissed her back with equal hunger.

Jane cleared her throat archly. "Ok, you two, get a non-hospital room."

They finished the kiss and Lizzy smirked at him then leaned close to his ear. "That kiss is for the not-so-subtle in and out line."

He grinned at her. She turned to Bingley and Jane, hugging Bingley and then taking her seat. "So, why did Kellych send you?"

"Not to ask you to unretire. Kellynch told me that what you said to him last night has silenced him on that subject forever. No, he sent me because he knew I was worried, that I wanted to see you both, and because he wanted you to know that we've found the mole. Sort of."

"Sort of?" Lizzy asked as Darcy stiffened on the bed.

"Yes. Here's the thing. Yesterday, just before all that happened here happened — Kellynch filled me in and I've told Jane — Darcy's analyst friend, previously unknown to me — " Bingley shot Darcy an uncharacteristically chiding glance — "a Mr. Churchill, asked to see Kellynch. It seems that Churchill got the good idea to stop looking for new-fangled, sophisticated infiltration and check old-school ones. Like the telephone. Like to see if anyone in Langley had gotten a phone call from Chicago around the day that Lizzy traveled to Casper with Wickham. There were several calls, so he cross-listed them with Father Robyn's cell. Nothing. Then he cross-listed them with St. James' phone. Nothing. But there were phone calls from St. James to DC the day before, and one of the numbers called turned out to be the home number of an administrative assistant in Langley. Her name is Steele, Lucy Steele.

She's been interrogated. It turns out Father Robyn had a tie to her, something he could hold over her, but he had kept her in his pocket for a long time, until he needed something important.

He sent Steele photographs of Lizzy and Darcy, asking if she had ever seen either. She said no. She works in another part of the building, for someone in legal. But she thought Lizzy matched the description of someone she had heard about but never seen. Lizzy. Except for the blonde hair in the photograph. That confused Steele.

But it seems that Steele eats in the Langley cafeteria and that she got to know Charlotte Lucas there; they ate together regularly. Charlotte had complained to Steele now and then about a particular female agent, pretty and dark, an agent Charlotte of whom Charlotte was jealous. So, that day, at lunch, she mentioned the agent, asking, offhand, if Charlotte had seen her lately. Charlotte said no, that the agent was on a deep cover mission in Chicago with an MI-6 agent, and that she had gone blonde — or so Charlotte had heard from her boss."

"Shit," Lizzy said.

"I guess Charlotte just didn't think, or didn't think what she said could matter, or didn't care at that moment, but Steele left Langley and called Father Robyn on a burner phone. She told him who you were, that you were a CIA agent working with an MI-6 agent." Bingley stopped and looked at Lizzy.

"So, when you said 'sort of', you meant that it's not clear that Charlotte counts as a mole. She's the leak, but it's not clear what her motivation was, carelessness or cattiness or what. Steele is the mole, what Charlotte is remains to be determined."

"Yeah," Bingley said with a shrug. "And in more ways than one. She's due to face Kellynch today. It's all the more complicated because she and Kellynch, they…" he trailed off, his meaning clear.

Lizzy nodded. "I thought so. So, she finally got him, and now she's going to lose him?"

"It looks that way. Kellynch is too jealous of the Company, its reputation, to put his feelings for Charlotte, whatever they might be, ahead of the job."

"This Charlotte was a friend of yours?" Darcy asked Lizzy.

"Sort of," Lizzy said, not thinking about her choice of expression until it had been used. "I doubt she acted out with truly evil motives. But she had convinced herself I was her competition for the Director, and she let that gnaw at her — and it cost her. Dearly."

They put the news about Charlotte to one side and spent the next hour or so catching up with Jane and Bingley.

It turned out that Jane had career news too. She had been offered a management position at a head-hunter firm in DC. It meant much better pay and much less travel. She hadn't made up her mind about whether to take the job yet, which was why she hadn't mentioned it during the Thanksgiving call, but she seemed to be leaning in that direction.

Bingley was overjoyed that the job wouldn't take Jane from DC and overjoyed that she would not be on the road so much.

He had asked Kellych for reassignment — he wanted to work as an instructor on the Farm, to be located in DC and no longer doing deep cover assignments. Kellynch had not said yes, but Bingley was sure he would. Lizzy sang an impromptu chorus of Old McBingley, with Darcy and Jane joining in for the E-I-E-I-Os. Bingley smiled and blushed.

A nurse came in with more good news. Darcy was going to be able to go home the next day.

Lizzy left him with Bingley and Jane, and she walked to her mother's room. Aunt Gardiner had texted Lizzy as Lizzy left the bridal shop to tell her that Mrs. Bennet was doing well.

Aunt Gardiner was spending the day sitting with Mrs. Bennet.

When Lizzy entered her mother's room, she found her mother asleep. Aunt Gardiner was reading in a nearby chair — a paperback copy of Gaskell's Wives and Daughters. When she saw Lizzy notice the title, she held the book up. "I wanted to see what all the fuss was about."

"You mean all the rigamarole?" Lizzy asked, grinning.

"Oh," Aunt Gardiner said, understanding after a moment, "the opening passage about 'the old rigamarole of childhood'."

Lizzy nodded. "Gaskell's not often Dickensian, but that beginning is all the inimitable Boz, Dickens himself."

Aunt Gardiner shrugged. "You would know — you're the one who is going to be a professor."

"Fingers-crossed. So, how long has she been asleep?" Lizzy asked, just as her mother snored softly.

"An hour or so. She spent the morning ordering the nurses about like servants."

"Has she remembered anything?"

"No, not that I can tell. But she's eager to get to the shop and do the receipts on Black Friday. A banner day, she keeps saying."

"That it was."

"How is Ned — Darcy?"

"Just Darcy, please. No more Ned, no more Fanny. He's good." She paused, then confessed."I sent him a picture of a wedding dress this morning."

Aunt Gardiner lifted her eyebrows. "Oh? The high-necked A-line hanging near the counter?"

Lizzy smiled, delighted but also surprised. "How did you know?"

"I saw you admiring it Friday, more than once. I've never seen you admire one in that way before, personally, like you were imagining yourself wearing it. Do you think it's a good idea, to send a picture of that at this point in your relationship?"

Lizzy nodded confidently, sighing. "We're together, Aunt. Darcy's not going to spook, and neither am I."

Aunt Gardiner's eyes welled with tears. "Then I'll tear up that IOU I'm betting you left on the counter of the shop; the dress will be my wedding present to you." Her voice grew softer. "You've always been like a daughter to me, Elizabeth."

Lizzy wiped away tears and drew her aunt into a long-lasting hug.

Mrs. Bennet continued snoring.

THE END

A/N: One more chapter, an epilogue. Focused on ODC.

If folks are interested, I might say a little about my conception of the book.

The epilogue might post quickly; it might take me some time. I'm exhausted from the story and the term, and I'm in the middle of finals (grading). I'm also in the middle of reading appearances for my new novel. A lot on my plate.