Page 61 of The Longbourn Bloodline

Jane began serving the cake, and Darcy accepted his portion with the stiff courtesy of a man whose attention was entirely elsewhere. Elizabeth was eating her cake in small bites, her eyes downcast, her lashes dark against her cheeks. Charlotte leaned close, murmuring, and Elizabeth’s lips curved.

Bingley took a large bite and chewed with the trusting enthusiasm of a man who suspected nothing, and fortunately did not bite anything that might have cracked his teeth. Jane, having finished serving, carefully crumbled her slice without finding anything.

“I have the bean!” Lydia announced, holding up a dried bean with a triumphant air of which no one gave assent.

Darcy accepted a modest slice. The fruitcake was dense with currants and candied peel, the brandy unmistakable, and on his second bite, his teeth encountered something small and unyielding.

He paused, extracted the offending object with as much discretion as possible, and revealed the dried bean. “I believe I very nearly swallowed it, which might have resulted in a beanstalk by next winter.”

“But…” Lydia protested. “I found a bean.”

“From your pocket, you silly goose!” Mrs. Bennet took the bean from Lydia. “Mr. Darcy has the bean, as is well proper, for he is to be the King tonight. Now, we must find the Queen!”

“It is not I,” Jane said, displaying her plate of crumbs.

“Nor I,” Kitty said with a shrug.

“Oh, I should have asked Cook for a pea,” Lydia shouted, finally realizing her error.

“Lizzy.” Charlotte’s voice was quiet but carrying. “I believe you should examine your cake more closely.”

Elizabeth considered her tiny slice, and her fork moved through the crumbs. And there, small and pale against the plate, was the pea.

Mrs. Bennet erupted before everyone else. “Elizabeth has the pea! Elizabeth is the Queen! But this is… this is most irregular. I had thought surely Jane and Mr. Bingley—but Mr. Darcy and Lizzy? Mr. Bennet, did you arrange this? Mr. Bennet!”

“I arranged nothing, my dear. I merely observe the hand of Providence, which appears to have a sense of humor.”

Elizabeth, meanwhile, held Darcy’s gaze with an expression that blazed with a fierce joyfulness, as if she believed Providence had indeed made her his queen.

Hill placed the paper crowns on the table—homemade affairs, cut from gilt paper, slightly lopsided, clearly the work of worn scissors and overenthusiastic hands. Lydia grabbed the larger one and thrust it across the table toward Darcy. “Here, Your Majesty. Try not to look so terrified.”

The crowns were clearly absurd, but he allowed Mrs. Bennet to place it on his head of disheveled, road-worn hair as befitting a monarch. Across and down the table from him, Elizabeth placed her crown on her dark curls. A paste jewel dangled by a thread, the gilt crinkled, and his pink ribbon peeked from beneath it all. As she looked up at Darcy across the ruins of the cake with that private smile again—the one meant only for him—the perennial ache he had held in his chest cracked, not painfully but with the slow, irreversible certainty of ice breaking in spring.

“Magnificent,” Mr. Bennet said, raising his port glass. “The King of Twelfth Night. May your reign be brief and your subjects merciful.”

“The King and Queen must lead the wassailing!” Mrs. Bennet declared, apparently recovering from her disappointment with remarkable speed. “It is tradition! They must walk first to the orchard, and the company follows, many paces behind.”

“An excellent tradition,” Mr. Bennet agreed. “The King and Queen must go first to the orchard. With lanterns. In the dark. Unchaperoned.”

“Mr. Bennet!” Mrs. Bennet’s scandalized protest was undercut by the gleam in her eye.

“I jest, of course. A crowd of revelers tramping through the apple trees with guns is the very essence of chaperonage.”

“I believe I know my duties, Mr. Bennet.” Darcy rose from his chair, crossed to Elizabeth’s side of the table, and offered her his arm. “Miss Elizabeth? May I have the honor?”

“You may, Mr. Darcy,” she said. Her hand settled on his sleeve—light and warm, exactly where it belonged. “Though I warn you—the orchard path is uneven, and your London boots may not survive.”

“I have survived worse than Hertfordshire mud, Miss Elizabeth.”

“Have you? I shall remind you of that statement when you are ankle-deep in a puddle.”

They walked together toward the door, the company streaming behind them, and Darcy felt his paper crown slip slightly to one side and did not care at all.

The walk toward the apple orchard reminded Darcy of the Widow Pratt’s cottage, close by where he had raced Elizabeth over a stile. Mr. Bennet and Uncle Philips loudly discussed their ancient fowling pieces, and Mrs. Bennet organized the cider distribution while Kitty stayed close to Georgiana and provided the necessary orientation to the orchard, the surrounding stiles, and how to avoid mud puddles, which were by now frozen patches.

Darcy was quite aware of Elizabeth’s warm hand steady on his arm, walking beside him and leaning against him much like the cat who had taken residence on the armchair he’d favored.

Gradually, as the gunshots sounded and voices rose in song, he and Elizabeth drifted away toward a quieter part of the orchard, where great gnarled trunks with their bare branches reached for the clear night sky twinkling with faint stars above. The moon was not quite full, missing a sliver on its left, but in its light, Elizabeth’s face was luminous as she looked up at him with those extraordinary eyes—the eyes he had defended to Lady Catherine, the eyes that had haunted him since that first assembly at Meryton—and this time, she was smiling.