Page 1 of Twice Chosen

Chapter One

The Last Morning at Pemberley

Elizabeth Darcy had always believed Fitzwilliam would die first. It was not a pleasant belief, nor one she had ever admitted aloud. It was simply arithmetic. He was eight years older, had spent much of his youth riding horses that possessed considerably more courage than sense, and had never properly accepted that walking across wet grass in January without a coat was not proof of masculine fortitude.

At seventy-six, Elizabeth had long since abandoned any hope of improving him in that particular respect.

So it seemed deeply unfair that she should be the one lying in their bed at Pemberley while he sat beside her looking as though he might frighten death itself into reconsidering.

Elizabeth opened her eyes and found him watching her. His hair had gone entirely white, though it remained thick, and the stern lines she had once thought so intimidating had softened with age. The creases beside his eyes had not been put there by time alone. She liked to think she had been responsible for a good many of them.

"Do stop scowling, Fitzwilliam," she whispered, her voice little more than breath.

Darcy's expression darkened immediately. "I am not scowling. I am sitting quietly beside my wife, which under ordinary circumstances would be considered admirable behavior."

"You have been scowling since 1791. I have simply grown accustomed to it."

"I have not been scowling for fifty years."

"Fitzwilliam."

There was a particular manner in which Elizabeth could say his name that had defeated him from the earliest years of their marriage. His eyes closed now, just as they had when he was thirty and she had caught him pretending not to be jealous of a visiting gentleman who had praised her eyes rather too enthusiastically.

Elizabeth smiled. "That is unfair."

"What is?"

"You know precisely what you are doing."

"I should hope so. I have had decades of practice."

His mouth moved, almost becoming a smile, and Elizabeth felt an absurd little triumph.

She lifted one hand from the coverlet. The effort made it tremble, but Darcy caught it before she had raised it more than a few inches. His thumb moved slowly across her knuckles--once, twice, three times.

I am here.

The gesture had begun during their first year of marriage at a dinner neither of them had particularly wished to attend. The hostess owned seven lapdogs and possessed a gift for asking questions so intrusive that even Elizabeth had been rendered temporarily speechless. Beneath the table Darcy had stroked his thumb three times against her hand. At the time she had not understood what he meant. Later he had told her.

Three strokes had survived births, funerals, quarrels, difficult tenants, terrified children, Lydia's letters requesting money, Jane's widowhood, Georgiana's first confinement, Mr. Bennet's final illness, and all the ordinary miseries that filled the spaces between larger griefs.

Elizabeth turned her hand beneath his. "You must sleep tonight. You have hardly closed your eyes since Tuesday."

Darcy adjusted the blankets around her before answering. "I have decided I dislike Tuesday."

A soft laugh escaped her. "That is hardly Tuesday's fault."

"I have not yet reached a conclusion on that point."

"Still unreasonable after all these years."

"Only where necessary."

The physician had stopped pretending two days before. Elizabeth and Darcy had stopped yesterday. There would be no spring for her. Neither of them said so now.

Elizabeth turned toward the windows, where snow drifted softly across the dark lawns of Pemberley. She could just make out the old cedar beyond the terrace, its branches bending beneath the weight. "Pemberley looks beautiful."

Darcy followed her gaze. "It always does."