Page 77 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

Darcy met Mr Gardiner's gaze. They studied each other with the directness of two men who respected each other enough to dispense with drawing-room polite fictions.

“The sequence,” Darcy said, “was this. I proposed to your niece at Hunsford, four months before the shipwreck. She refused me. The refusal was deserved. I had proposed with pride, with condescension, and with a catalogue of her family's failings that demonstrated every defect of character she accused me of. She refused me, and I wrote her a letter, and the letter was the last communication between us before we found ourselves on the same ship.”

“And on the island?”

“On the island, we had nothing but each other and the truth,” Darcy said softly. “I loved her long before the shipwreck. She had not loved me, and I had given her no reason to do so. The island changed her understanding of me, just as it changed my understanding of myself. That change was genuine; it was not produced by desperation or the mere absence of alternatives.”

“The change produced a marriage.”

“The change produced a deep attachment,” Darcy corrected firmly. “The marriage followed because my love for her is entire, and because her reputation required my protection. Above all, I wanted to make her my wife more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. It was not an obligation. It was my greatest privilege.”

Mr Gardiner drew on his pipe. The smoke trailed into the Atlantic wind.

“My niece is not the sort of woman who requires rescue,” Mr Gardiner said.

“No. She is not.”

“And yet the world will say she was rescued,” Mr Gardiner noted heavily. “They will say that you did the honourable thing, interpreting your marriage as a discharged obligation rather than a free choice. That perception will attempt to diminish her in every drawing room in England.”

“I am aware.”

“Are you prepared for that?”

“I am prepared,” Darcy said, his voice hardening into steel. “I will spend the rest of my life correcting any person who attempts to diminish my wife. I will use every ounce of my influence to ensure she is treated with the respect she deserves. Your niece spent six weeks teaching me that the world's opinion is not the measure of a person's worth. I have learnt that lesson, and I intend to fiercely enforce it.”

Mr Gardiner studied him in long silence. He was taking the measure of the man before him, and he found Darcy's fierce sincerity acceptable.

“My niece,” Mr Gardiner said, “is the cleverest woman I know. She is also the most stubborn. The two qualities together produce a person who is either quite right or spectacularly wrong, and she is rarely wrong twice about the same thing.”

“She was wrong about me once.”

“She was. She tells me she is not wrong now.”

“She is not wrong now.”

Mr Gardiner nodded and drew on his pipe. It was not overt approval, but a solemn acknowledgement. He had heard what he needed to hear, and he would reserve his final judgement for the years ahead.

“Welcome to the family, Mr Darcy,” he said.

“Thank you, Mr Gardiner.”

“You may call me Gardiner. The family does.”

“Gardiner, then.”

The pipe smoke trailed into the wind. They stood together at the railing, two men connected by their love for the woman below decks.

Elizabeth was preparing for England.

Darcy watched her with deep admiration. His wife possessed a brilliant, formidable mind, and he found her determination captivating.

She sat at the desk in their cabin with paper Darcy had purchased in Valletta, writing careful notes. She was composing the conversations she knew she would soon have to endure in Hertfordshire.

“My mother,” she said, glancing at her notes. “She will be wholly ecstatic, and quite unbearable. She will cry, and she will embrace me, and then she will immediately begin calculating your income to determine if Pemberley's dining room is larger than Lady Lucas's. I will endure her vanity because her initial emotion will be genuine. It is simply how she expresses her affection.”

“That is generous of you.”

“The island taught me patience,” she replied. “My mother's love is flawed, but it is true, and I must learn to accept it without resentment.”