“However,” Darcy continued in a droll voice, “I do wonder about the efficiency and value ratio of Santa’s assembly line. Elves with bad teeth churning out millions of toys, a fair percentage of them misfits and unsuitable for Christmas Eve delivery.”
Charles snorted. Elizabeth and Jane rolled their eyes. Jane rose, placed the last few dishes on a tray, and headed to the kitchen. Her husband followed, bellowing, “Have a holly, jolly Christmas…!”
As she watched them disappear around the corner, Elizabeth felt her fiancé tug on her hand. She turned as he lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them one by one.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice low. “I wishRudolphhad been a childhood tradition for us. Georgie and me. She would have loved it.” He closed his eyes and swallowed. “I can imagine you and Jane curled up in your fuzzy pajamas and singing along.”
Elizabeth smiled tenderly and pulled him close. In the past few weeks as the holiday season had begun, he’d started talking more about his family, especially Georgie. He’d mentioned her love of giraffes and talked about her wish to go trick-or-treating in London when she was five. Elizabeth knew the holidays were an especially difficult time for him. He still fell quiet sometimes when he’d get caught up by a memory, but now, rather than shaking it off, he’drespond to her gentle questions. Elizabeth tried not to think about how lonely he must have been in the years before they met and tried desperately not to dwell on the pain she’d caused him. The past was the past; she’d told him that many times.
Three days after Christmas, the engaged couple was in London, and Elizabeth was getting her first close-up look at Darcy House. Although Darcy’s heart was in America at Pemberley, this was the house where he grew up. She’d been a little surprised to learn that he’d shuttered the country house, holding onto the title and the land but lending the two smaller residences to his cousins’ families. He showed her a painting of the house, but averred he’d not been there in a decade and had rarely spent much time there as a child. It didn’t need to be stated aloud that he had few good memories of the ruggedly beautiful estate.
On a soggy afternoon that kept them from their walks through the city and its glorious sights, the couple explored the secret passageways, hidden dumbwaiter, and oddly set-in closets that lent Darcy House a cozily eccentric personality. Formal portraits rather than photographs graced the walls, and Elizabeth caught glimpses of Arthur, Anne, Fitzwilliam, and Georgiana Darcy through the years in beautifully rendered oils, including a family portrait when Will was perhaps fourteen. She bit back expressing her wish to have one of the paintings in New York. Perhaps they belonged here with the Darcy forebears, but she’d seen the yearning in his eyes as he gazed at them.Someday.
She saw his boyhood room with its narrow bed and sports awards and the geography and Latin ribbons he’d once mentioned. He showed her Georgie’s bedroom, unchanged over all these years. Stuffed animals and books lined the shelves while a rocking horse and an enormous dollhouse took up one corner. Darcy gazed at the room and shrugged sadly. “I’ve never quite known what to do here.”
Elizabeth touched his fingers and held in her emotions.She was just a baby.
Then he took her into his father’s study, a dark, formal place clearly devoted to work. A small plaque was propped on the shelf between stacks of books and ledgers:“Love can do much, but duty more.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.Elizabeth wrinkled her nose; Darcy noticed herexpression and followed her gaze. “He believed it. He was raised to believe it. Meeting my mother tripped up that theory.”
Thank God.And meeting me tripped up the son.She thought back to a conversation she’d had a few weeks earlier while hosting dinner at their apartment. Will’s aunts had illuminated the overly serious tendencies of the Darcy men.
Michael led “the boys,” including his son John—in town on business for a few days—into Darcy’s den to discuss a stock deal. Elizabeth was highly amused by the Dallas-based lawyer’s ribald humor and teasing of his youngest sibling. Rich’s gentler sarcasm and his childhood adoption of her fiancé as a little brother suddenly made more sense and deepened her appreciation for his friendship.
Despite some annoyance with the separation of the sexes—and dreading a host of questions about wedding plans, none of which she was prepared to answer—Elizabeth remained behind with Annabella, Katie, Catherine, and Patricia. She found herself not only in the novel position of dinner party hostess but key to easing Rich’s girlfriend into the family fold. It had already gone more smoothly than she’d expected as Patricia appeared happy to have her youngest son serious about a smart, accomplished, career-oriented woman. “And a doctor!” she enthused.
Darcy bent down to kiss Elizabeth before rolling his eyes, pouring a glass of Scotch, and trailing after the men. When she glanced back from their exchange, she noticed his aunts watching him saunter off. Catherine smiled sweetly and gestured at the photographs Elizabeth had framed for his birthday. “These are lovely. My sister would be pleased to see her son happy.”
Patricia leaned over and squeezed Elizabeth’s arm. “You’re good at laughing together.”
Now, barely a month later, Elizabeth was missing the changes the women had alluded to.He is different here. More formal, and his accent—softened after his years in the States—was more pronounced. And he seemed slightly on edge, his mood more brittle, in a manner she hadn’t glimpsed for nearly a year. When she broached the subject, he shook his head and apologized. “Ghosts,” he said, squeezing her hand. The house was full of ghosts, of course; she’d seen the rooms. It needed to be aired of them, to be changed. If she were to spend any time here, she’d ensure that happened. But for now, she simply smiled softly and threaded her fingers through his. She knew he was looking forward to the rest of their trip and needed it even more than she did.
They spent four days in Paris, prowling museums, sharing meals in low-key but well-regarded brasseries, and walking through the gravesat Père Lachaise, where Elizabeth bowed to her inner English major geek and placed flowers on the headstones of Honoré de Balzac and Oscar Wilde.
As they exited the cemetery gates, she reflected on the Darcy family gravesites. His father was buried in England among generations of his forebears. Tucked in with him was a small container of his wife’s and daughter’s ashes. His mother, though, had wished to rest at Pemberley. While she and Georgiana had markers in the Fitzwilliam family plot at East Hampton’s Green River Cemetery, most of their ashes had been sprinkled in Pemberley’s wildflower garden. Elizabeth had visited the spot, marked by a beautiful stone sculpture, for the first time on that August morning after Darcy had told her about the accident. It was peaceful there in a place he and his family had loved. Only the sounds of the waves crashing and the gulls crying broke the quiet. He clearly had not felt at peace in London, and she wondered how he could handle his business trips there. She was happy that they were in Paris and that her man seemed to be returning to himself.
As they strolled through the cold city streets, Darcy confessed his impatience for their final destination. “I’m tired of seeing my fiancée in clothes.” Their week in Mauritius would mean a private beachfront bungalow, a huge bed, and no visitors beyond room service delivery.
“Cheeky man.”
But he was right. It was heaven on earth.
They arrived back in New York, tanned and relaxed, neither married nor having set a wedding date. He packed a few regrets in his carry-on, as he had rather hoped to make decisions or commitments before their holiday ended. Getting married on a practically deserted island held some appeal for him. Alas, it turned out that Elizabeth Bennet could be drunk on sun, sex, and Mai Tais and still hold her own against at least one of his desires. The men and women who lined the table at his corporate board meetings would be gobsmacked at his inability to reach a decision or force a deal when faced down by his deliciously naked fiancée. Yet he couldn’t complain about other frequently reached and deeply satisfying mutual conclusions.
As for Elizabeth, while she felt a little guilty for putting the kibosh on his desire to “be done with it all and get married on the beach,” she was determined to take her full measure of life as the future Mrs. Darcy. They’d moved so quickly in a short few months, and she just wanted to settle in for a bit and enjoy what they had. He agreed, reluctantly. What she didn’t say aloud was that she worried his timetablemeant children sooner rather than later. Twenty-five seemed awfully young to her, especially when she considered that Sylvia had had two children by her age. This was the twenty-first century, and Elizabeth had things to do, books to write, places to go, and a man to love before such seriousness set in.
By Valentine’s Day, they’d picked a late May wedding date and notified the families. By March, she’d signed on with Kelleton Press and given them the final manuscript. By April, she’d fielded two phone calls from an agent looking for movie rights. She was in shock, but Darcy smiled and kissed her engagement ring. “Oh, thank God we’re nearly married,” he said. “I’ll get halvsies.”
“Halvsies” hardly summed up the imbalance when they sat down to figure out the guest list for the wedding. Paring it to the essentials was not going to be easy, and they agreed it would be best achieved, or at least more fun, over a bottle of wine. Neither cared for “plus ones,” but they faced a conundrum.
“I thought the idea was a small wedding.” He frowned, staring at the list his bride-to-be had handed him.
“That’s before you decided it was payback time for various and sundry board members, fellow CEOs, and apparently, half a dozen members of the Social Register who’ve never worked a day in their lives.”
“As opposed to your football, er, soccer coach, bosses, physical therapist, and freshman year roommate?” Darcy glanced at the list again.She’s joking, right?“And Stefan? The blond Viking gymnast?”Oh yes. She better be.He sat back and gave her a doleful stare. She tapped her pen against his knuckles.
“Did you see the page detailing the mimes and the choreographed dance we’re going to do down the aisle?” She gave him a playful smile, one eyebrow quirked.
“Elizabeth.”
