Page 70 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

She stood beside him at the railing. There was a faint smudge on the western horizon that Rossi had identified as the coast of Malta. It was growing slowly closer, arriving visibly and inevitably.

“I have written to my father,” she said.

“I know.”

“I told him I chose you freely. He will read between the lines, and understand that I was not coerced by our circumstances. He will understand it, but he will still demand to hear it from my own mouth.” She sighed. “It will be far more difficult than refusing you at Hunsford.”

“Because you must now explain why you changed your mind.”

“Precisely. I refused you in a parsonage, and I accepted you in a ruined tower. I doubt the etiquette books cover such a sequence of events.”

He smiled his genuine, warm smile—the one the island had finally produced.

“I have written to Georgiana,” he said. “I told her I am bringing home a wife. I told her you are exceedingly clever, exceedingly brave, and quite unwilling to tolerate my arrogance.”

“You told her that?”

“I told her the plain truth. I fully expect the two of you to conspire against me within a fortnight of your arrival at Pemberley, and I know I shall enjoy every moment of it.”

She leaned against his shoulder. It was a gesture that had begun in a rainstorm in a ruined tower, and had continued through every day since.

“Malta,” she said.

“Malta.”

“And then England.”

“And then England.”

“Are you ready?”

He considered the question. She watched his face, knowing it better than any other in the world. It was the face that would be the first thing she saw every morning for the rest of her life.

“I am ready,” he said. “I have been planning for this since our second week on the island. The settlements are drafted in my head, the letters are written, and I am prepared to face the ton.”

“But?”

“But none of my preparation accounts for the fact that I would far rather remain on the island. I have prepared for the life we must lead, but the island was the life I truly wanted. They are wholly different things.”

She took his hand on the wooden railing. The coast of Malta was growing on the horizon; the future was arriving, whether they were ready or not.

“The island is in us,” she said fiercely. “Wherever we go. It is the life we built, and no drawing room in England can take that away from us. They have no power over what happened in that tower.”

“No,” he agreed, his fingers tightening on hers. “They do not.”

The coast steadily grew. They stood at the railing and watched the future arrive. They were hand in hand, their skin brown and deeply calloused, holding each other with the unyielding grip of two people who were never going to let go.

The morning was bright and blue, and Malta was finally close. They were ready.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Valletta did not appear gradually. It arrived all at once: honey-coloured stone rising from the harbour, fortifications climbing in high tiers, and the dome of a cathedral catching the morning sun. The city was remarkably solid, populated with people walking on streets and buying bread. After six weeks on the island, the simple sight of civilisation struck Darcy with an overwhelming force.

There were hundreds of people on the harbour walls, on the docks, and in boats. They were speaking, shouting, and laughing. The aggregate sound of human voices hit him like a physical blow, a sudden wall of noise after six weeks where the loudest sound had been the sea.

Elizabeth stood beside him at the railing. She held his hand tightly — her grip had not loosened since the rescue — and looked at Valletta with an expression of disbelief, as though the world she had given up reaching had miraculously come to her.

“There are buildings,” she breathed.