Page 94 of The Longbourn Bloodline

“Neither Elizabeth nor Jane wished to be far from Longbourn, but they can both grow to know Pemberley, along with me. While we are at Netherfield, you will be close to Longbourn, and our children will be raised together, as Bingleys, Darcys, and Bennets.”

“Very well, Charles.” He extended his hand—bare, gloveless, despite the cold, for important agreements required the warmth of skin against skin and the steadiness of a grip that meant what it promised. “A gentleman’s compact.”

Bingley took his hand, his grip firm, palm warm, and eyes bright. “A gentleman’s compact, Caroline notwithstanding. She will be furious, I daresay. Though I fancy she will be the first to change her name from Bingley to Darcy.”

Darcy couldn’t suppress a wince.

“Cheer up, man,” Bingley chuckled, releasing his hand and whistling sharply for the spaniels. “She can finally be a Darcy without marrying one. I expect she’ll find that some consolation.” He gestured down the snow-dusted path. “Come. We’ve bagged nothing but conversation this morning, and I suspect the pheasants are laughing themselves feathers off.”

“The pheasants have always found your optimism amusing.”

“Is that what we shall tell Jane and Elizabeth? That we bagged a gentleman’s compact and let every bird in Hertfordshire live to see February?”

“I believe Elizabeth will find it satisfactory.”

“Jane will find it delightful. She has little fondness for the shooting.”

And so, the two friends walked back in companionable silence. The spaniels, undoubtedly crestfallen at their lack of game, bounded ahead, tails wagging enthusiastically. The fallen elm, witness to Darcy’s earlier proposal, receded behind them, and he did not glance back.

There, beneath that tree, he had proposed and offered Elizabeth a name that was not his to give.

Now, though, he would offer her much better. Not the Darcy name, with its borrowed glory and purchased foundation, but the truth and a partnership. The future they would build together, brick by brick, on ground that at last felt solid beneath their feet.

My children will be Bennets.

The thought still stung, and would ache for some time yet. But beneath the pain, relief began to stir, tentative as a snowdrop in January.

He was not losing the Darcy name; he was setting it down. He would place it, gently but firmly, into the keeping of Bingley’s children, who would bear it forward with the legitimacy it deserved.

And his own children—Elizabeth’s children—would carry a different name. A name rightfully theirs by blood no less than by affection.

Bennet.

It was, he reflected, a good name. It had produced Alice, who loved with fierce devotion, and Elizabeth, who saw through his pride and chose him all the same.

A name he would be honored to give and to keep.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

ANSWER AT THE ALTAR

On the morning of her wedding, Elizabeth discovered a gentleman lurking in the shrubbery.

To be precise, she discovered her gentleman in her shrubbery—crouched behind the winter-bare hydrangeas in a coat that had no business being anywhere near frosted branches, attempting to attract her attention by throwing small pebbles at her window with the accuracy of a man who had clearly never been required to throw stones at anything in his aristocratic life except perhaps an occasional grouse.

“You are going to break the glass,” Elizabeth observed, leaning from the casement. “And then you will have to explain to my father why his daughter’s bedchamber is drafty on her wedding morning.”

Darcy looked up, his hair already tousled by the wind, his cravat bearing the marks of a hasty knot, and his expression that of a man who had risen at dawn with a matter so pressing it could not be trusted to the ordinary passage of hours.

“Come down,” he urged, his voice low. “Please. I must speak with you.”

“It is seven o’clock in the morning. I am in my dressing gown. My mother will have an apoplexy if she discovers you here, and Jane will be insufferably amused.”

“Then come quickly, before anyone discovers us.”

Elizabeth considered the propriety of the situation, but only as long as propriety deserved on a morning when she was to be married by noon. She reached for her pelisse.

The shrubbery was cold, the ground unyielding, and Elizabeth’s slippers entirely unequal to the task. Yet none of this signified when Darcy took her hands and regarded her as if she were the only fixed point in a world intent on spinning away.