Page 225 of What Change Entails

The road dust marked his boots. Travel had creased his coat. Weariness shadowed his face. None of it diminished him. If anything, it made him dearer, because he had come not as the master of Pemberley receiving admiration, but as a man who had ridden through rain, moonlight, and fatigue because she had asked him to come.

“If you ask,” Elizabeth said, “I shall answer you.”

His breath left him unevenly.

She enjoyed that.

Perhaps too much.

Darcy pulled the reins from the tree but did not mount.

“I will walk with you to Longbourn.”

“You need not.”

“I know.”

They walked along the lane together, Elizabeth on the inside away from the road, Darcy leading the horse between himself and the hedge when the path narrowed. It was ordinary in the best way, awkward in places because the horse disliked stopping and Elizabeth’s skirt caught once on a bramble. Darcy freed it with the grave attention of a man handling priceless lace, though the gown was one of her older walking dresses.

“You will make it vain,” she said.

“The bramble?”

“The gown.”

“It has reason.”

“You flirt better when tired.”

“I do many things better since knowing you.”

That was too much. She had to look away.

Longbourn came into view through the trees.

Her home appeared smaller with Darcy beside it. Dear, familiar, flawed. A house of noise and partiality and teasing indolence, of sisters and nerves and laughter, of mistakes survived and affections altered. For the first time since leaving Derbyshire, Elizabeth did not wish it were Pemberley.

She wanted both.

The thought frightened and pleased her.

At the gate, Darcy stopped.

Elizabeth turned.

“I should go in first,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You will follow?”

“Yes.”

“Do not be alarmed if my mother says something dreadful.”

“I have survived Lady Catherine.”

“That is not the same thing.”