Page 78 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

She looked down again. “My father will be difficult. He will be very quiet, and he will take me to his library. He will ask me if I am happy, and that question will contain everything he cannot bring himself to say. I will tell him yes, and the conversation will likely last no more than three minutes.”

“And if he asks about the island?”

“He will not ask,” she said softly. “He will choose ignorance as a way of protecting me, and I will allow him that kindness.”

She turned a page. “Jane is the conversation I am both dreading and desperately anticipating. Jane will hear everything without judgement. We will hold each other and cry, and that will be our healing.”

“And Bingley?”

“I will tell her that you wrote to him, admitting your terrible mistake. I will tell her that he may return to her, though I cannot promise it. The path is open, and Jane must decide what she wishes to do.”

He said nothing, watching her.

“You are magnificent,” he said.

“You have said that before.”

“It bears repeating. You intend to manage the social expectations of an entire county with nothing but a borrowed pen and your own fierce determination.”

“And my husband's support,” she reminded him, offering a warm smile.

“You have that,” he promised softly. “Always.”

The Fortuna sailed westward through the Mediterranean and out through the Strait of Gibraltar into the grey Atlantic swell. Elizabeth continued her careful writing while Darcy sat quietly beside her. The Gardiners were on deck above them. They were all heading home towards England, and their lives were only just beginning.

Chapter Thirty-One

Elizabeth had not expected this. She had anticipated tears, noise, and her mother's shrill exclamations. She received all of that, but the familiar house seemed to have changed dimensions, much the way a childhood room shrinks when revisited by an adult. The alteration was not in the house, but in herself. Having survived the vastness of the sea, the house in Hertfordshire with its awkward angles and overgrown hedgerows now looked remarkably small. Yet it contained her family, and they were irreplaceable.

Darcy had managed their journey from Portsmouth with his customary efficiency, securing a private coach and fresh horses at Guildford. He had also sent a letter ahead to Longbourn to announce their arrival. Elizabeth suspected he had carefully calculated the timing: it arrived just early enough for the household to prepare, but too late for Mrs Bennet to assemble the entire neighbourhood to witness their return.

Her mother met them at the door. Mrs Bennet did not merely walk out to greet them; she burst forth with unstoppable, spectacular emotion.

“Lizzy! My Lizzy! My dear, dear girl!”

Her mother held her tightly, smelling of the same rosewater she had worn for twenty years. Mrs Bennet's voice, which had spent Elizabeth's entire life saying the wrong thing, now said the only right thing, repeating her daughter's name in a genuine outpouring of love.

Elizabeth held her mother. The embrace felt different from the fierce equality she had known on the island. Here, her mother was shaking, and Elizabeth was steady. She offered that steadiness as a quiet gift.

“I am here, Mama. I am well. I am here.”

“Pirates! My daughter taken by pirates! I said to your father, I said Mr Bennet, something must be done, and he did nothing, he sat in his library, and I wrote to your uncle, and I told Lady Lucas, and Lady Lucas said⁠—”

“Mama.”

“—that you were surely dead, and I told her you were not dead, I told her my Lizzy was too clever to be dead, and I was right, I was right, Lizzy, I am always right⁠—”

“You were right, Mama.”

Mrs Bennet finally pulled back. Her face was wet and her cap askew. Her bright eyes immediately darted towards the man standing three feet behind her daughter. He represented ten thousand a year, Pemberley, and the complete, permanent triumph of the Bennet family over the Lucases.

“Mr Darcy,” Mrs Bennet cried, her voice shifting instantly from maternal hysteria to a honeyed, reverent warmth. “Mr Darcy, you have saved my daughter. You have brought her home. I cannot express⁠—”

“He did not save me, Mama. We saved each other. The distinction is important.”

Mrs Bennet did not hear the distinction. She responded with an effusiveness that would have deeply embarrassed Elizabeth three months ago, but which she now accepted with quiet patience.

Darcy bore the lavish praise with patience. When Elizabeth glanced at him, his expression held a faint, private amusement. The proud master of Pemberley, who had once so cruelly catalogued her family's failings, was now standing in their hallway being embraced by their matriarch without the slightest objection.