Page 128 of The Long Road Back to Yesterday

Her face crumpled.

Charles tightened his hold on her hand. “I would give a great deal not to hurt you, but I will not lie to you.”

“That is what I discovered tonight. I spent years believing I had only to wait, and all the while he had never considered me at all.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks.

“Eliza has everything I wanted, and she did nothing to obtain it. She simply met him, and he loved her.”

Caroline leaned against him.

“I spent years wondering what more I could do to attach him. Tonight I discovered there was nothing I could have done. He was capable of all the affection I wanted from him. He simply did not feel it for me.”

Charles held her while she cried.

“I wish there were something I could say to make this easier, Caroline. I am very sorry.”

She wiped her face. “I feel as though I have been robbed of something, and that is the worst of it. No one robbed me. Pemberley was never mine. Mr. Darcy was never mine. He never encouraged me to believe otherwise.”

Charles kissed the top of her head.

“I feel as though someone has died, Charles.”

His arm tightened around her.

“Someone has died, Caroline.”

For a long while, he simply held her.

Chapter 41: Husband and Wife

October 25, 1811

The morning of Elizabeth’s wedding dawned cold and gray, with a hard frost dusting the grass around the church and her breath showing white in the air when Uncle Edward handed her down from the carriage. Aunt Maddie and Jane had gone ahead, leaving Elizabeth a final moment alone with him before they entered.

He looked at her and smiled. “Are you ready, Lizzy?”

“I am, Uncle Edward.”

Elizabeth slipped her hand through his arm, and they entered the church together.

There was little warmth within. The cold seemed to have settled into the old stone walls, and as the congregation rose, Elizabeth heard the rustle of clothing and the faint movement of feet against the floor. Her attention passed over Mr. Darcy’s friends and neighbors until she found Fitzwilliam standing near the altar with Colonel Fitzwilliam beside him.

He was watching her as Uncle Edward began to lead her up the nave, and Elizabeth was suddenly conscious of all the people she had once imagined would be present when she married. As a girl, she had expected Papa to walk beside her while Mamma sat happily in a front pew, with Jane, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia all there to see it. She had never imagined that Jane would be the only one of her immediate family present to witness her wedding.

Her hand tightened upon Uncle Edward’s arm, and he covered it with his own without looking at her. Uncle Edward had come to stand in Papa’s place, just as he had stood beside his nieces through everything that followed their great losses.

Elizabeth swallowed and looked toward Fitzwilliam again. He was waiting for her, his eyes fixed upon her as she approached, and when they reached the altar, Uncle Edward placed her hand in his.

Fitzwilliam’s fingers closed around hers as the rector began the familiar service.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony.”

Elizabeth had heard the words before, but they were different now that she stood beside the man she loved as he made his vows.

Moisture gathered in her eyes as she listened to him. She knew him well enough to know that he would keep every promise he made to her until death parted them, but it was not death that threatened to take this marriage from them. When she raised her eyes, she found Fitzwilliam watching her with such solemn attention that she wondered if the same thought had occurred to him.

His fingers tightened around hers, as Elizabeth made her own vows.