Happily Ever After with Mr Darcy : A Collection of Short Stories Inspired by Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Quills & Quartos Publishing
Published: 2022-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

The next morning, Elizabeth awakened early despite being so late to her bed. She and…and Fitzwilliam had spoken for most of the night. There was no end to the things he wished to know of her, from her earliest years to the present. Of the future, he did not speak, and Elizabeth was glad, for she could not yet consider it. A marriage between them, the master of this great land and a woodcutter’s daughter, seemed preposterous. All the wealth in the world would not matter if they could not be happy together as equals.

And yet, you did not think it preposterous for Jane to wed Sir Charles.

Sir Charles, she had to remind herself, is a different matter. Her recollection of Sir Charles’s person was somewhat vague; she was certain he was nothing to Fitzwilliam in greatness, in power. Yet, he had nurtured Jane’s talents, helped her to grow. In the future, would Fitzwilliam do the same?

Dressing simply, she wandered downstairs and out of doors again, wishing to be alone with her thoughts. To her surprise, the Darcy carriage waited at the head of Pemberley’s drive.

Surely…surely…he was not leaving?

She dashed down the steps just as the coachman mounted the box. “Wait! Wait!” she called.

The coachman looked at her, and then, obeying some hidden signal from the coach’s interior, dismounted and strode out of hearing. The carriage door opened, and Fitzwilliam emerged just as she reached it.

“You are going away?” she asked incredulously.

He brushed her dark locks away from her face. “Please do not run down those steps again. I would not have you fall and hurt yourself.”

“Do not change the subject, Fitzwilliam. Where do you go?”

“I told you: I must remove any threat to you before I continue our courtship. And it is time I become the man my parents raised me to be. By them I was given good principles, but I have spent the last five years behaving as a spoilt child, throwing tantrums because life did not turn out as I wished. You were right when you called me a coward—not because I am afraid of my aunt, but because I have been afraid of letting go of the past. When I learnt of her wicked garden, I ought to have taken action—as my father would have—but because she resembles my mother in physical aspect, because she might one day be able to help me, I ignored the unforgivable. No, a coward I have been, and coward I might still be but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.” He took her hands and kissed each one.

Elizabeth was astonished at the change in him from their first, terrible beginning; she had known last night he meant to be a better man, but she had not suspected how deep his commitment.

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