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Chapter Text

The world is grey.

When she wakes up at Pemberley in the morning, the sky is iron, the air is stifling, the walls are bleak. She gets dressed—well, her maid dresses her. Her maid is grey—well, the maid’s eyes are grey, and she hardly talks. To be honest, Elizabeth hardly talks to the maid either.

Then Elizabeth goes down for breakfast, and the food has no taste. It is strange. Food tasted good before; she remembers how ravenous she was, at Longbourn, her childhood home, eating in the morning with her parents and noisy sisters. After a brisk walk, coffee tasted like luxury and strength, bread smelled like kitchen and laughter, butter and honey.

And there is butter and honey at Pemberley, of course. And much more—an elegant display of much more—but nothing feels real; everything seems to be drowned in grey tones. Maybe it is the season. February. February is a bad month—always. It is the month where people starve because winter provisions run out. It is the month where lovelorn maids hang themselves in the attic. It happened once—not at Longbourn but at Lucas Lodge; Elizabeth was only thirteen, but she understood.

February is the month where she is eating breakfast, at Pemberley, alone.

With three footmen and her husband. Who does not look at her. Or maybe he does. But she certainly does not look at him.

Though, nobody could say that Elizabeth Bennet (Darcy) is not always perfectly polite.

“Would you like some more coffee, Mr Darcy?” she asks, with a smile.

Of course, she must look at him now. “No, thank you,” he answers.

She smiles again. Then she eats.

The world is grey beneath the windows’ panes. The air is grey in the room. She can hardly breathe.

“I like red,” she says. “I wonder where all the red has gone?”

She thinks her husband is looking at her. “It is winter,” he murmurs.

She just says, “I understand.”

She finishes eating and goes back through the grey, silent halls of the grey, silent mansion.

**

“Elizabeth, you have changed,” Jane said, when Elizabeth visited her, three months ago. Jane lives far away. She has a husband. Not Mr Bingley. Jane is with child.

Jane is far away.

Jane lives behind a wall of grey mist. Elizabeth cannot see her; she thought Jane could not see her either, but clearly she could. “Elizabeth, I think you are suffering from melancholy,” Jane said.

She did not say, “You have a melancholic character.” Elizabeth does not have a melancholic character. She did not have one before, at least.

Jane’s voice makes ‘melancholy’ sound like an illness.

Maybe it is.

**

Elizabeth thinks about Jane’s words, those words from three months ago, after breakfast, when she is back in her room. The room is grey. It is really not, of course. The colours of the walls were beautiful, Elizabeth seems to remember.

She wonders where all the colours have gone.

Maybe she lost some of the colours when her father died. Elizabeth was left with Jane, her mother wailing, and two sisters she despised. (Lydia is gone.) No, no, the word ‘despised’ is correct. Elizabeth despises her sisters—three of them at least—because she can see their mother in them.

But Jane was still there, and Jane makes everything better.

Then Jane gets married.

To a man she really does not love that much. But they are going to be thrown out of the house by their cousin, so, yes, Jane gets married.

The colours get a little dimmer.

Then there is the incident. Elizabeth’s reputation is ruined, et cetera, you know the story; she has to marry Mr Darcy.

She does not want to marry him. But she must.

On their wedding night, they fight. He says marrying her is a degradation. That she is beneath him, in every way. Elizabeth should fight back, she should answer, but she does not. She does not have it in her any longer. She just sits on the bed while he berates her. Finally, he stops.

He waits for her answer.

“Very true,” she says.

He just stares at her. She does not look at him.

Then they arrive at Pemberley. This huge, empty building, with nobody in it. Except her husband. And an army of servants.

Elizabeth despised her mother and her sisters. Now, her husband despises her.

How God must laugh.

**

It is on that day, Elizabeth’s first day at Pemberley, taking a stroll in the empty park, where she does not meet anybody, that she realises the colours are all gone.

**

It has been ten months.

That day, after breakfast, Elizabeth visits the tenants. She talks to Mrs Reynolds. She does what she has to do.

Dinner. They eat, at the long, empty table. Elizabeth is very polite. She talks a little. She smiles. She does not know how to act otherwise. When he asks how she finds the soup, she says it is delicious and that they should thank the cook. She asks whether he has had a good day; her husband says it was a productive one. Elizabeth nods, and smiles, and says she is glad, and then her thoughts wander.

To nothing.

When she returns, he is staring at her. He is worried.

He is very worried.

It does something to her, that look. It pierces the fog for the duration of one beat of a heart.

Then it goes back to grey.

But still, at night, she wonders.

She remembers his look. It was a strange look. Worry, yes, but not only that. If she listened to her intuition, she would even think she saw something like despair.

Despair is strong. Despair is…not what Elizabeth expected. She lets her mind wander for a while, pondering. Then she decides she was wrong.

Two days pass.

Everything is still grey.

**

Elizabeth is breakfasting on Tuesday when her husband enters. He puts something near her plate.

Flowers.

They are very red. Deep red. Red like blood, red like velvet, red like beautiful mysteries lurking behind theatre curtains. The red is so strong she almost gasps.

She raises her eyes to him. “You said you missed red,” her husband explains. “Those are from Lady Harden’s hothouse. I rode there yesterday.”

She does not say anything, just gazes at the flowers.

“I…I thought you might prefer poppies. I think I heard you once say how much you liked poppies, but they are impossible to find in February,” he explains. “Well, maybe in London. I sent a letter. I shall have news, soon. Next week, I think.”

She looks at him, her eyes sincere.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

He does not say anything after that.

The footman goes to fetch a vase. Elizabeth drinks her coffee, eats her eggs, looking at the flowers the whole time.

“Do you want the flowers to be put in your room?” her husband asks, after she has finished.

“No!” she says, a little too quickly. Truth is, she hates her room. She cannot breathe in her room. She does not dislike the breakfast parlour. The parlour is nice, with high ceilings and large windows, opening—on the grey out of doors, but opening nevertheless.

“No,” she repeats, smiling. “I like it here. I think I am going to stay and read in here today.”

He gives her a wan smile and observes her for a moment. Then he nods, and leaves.

**

She wonders, for a fleeting moment, how he was before.

How he was before the death of his sister.

But mostly, she just looks at the flowers.

The world is grey, and red.

Chapter Text

There are guests tonight, and Colonel Fitzwilliam is staying for a while. To be exact, he has stayed for a while, and leaves tomorrow.

Dinner goes well. Elizabeth is the perfect hostess; she behaves well. She shows education and taste.

“What the hell happened to your wife?” asks Colonel Fitzwilliam, later, when the guests are gone, Elizabeth has retired for the night, and he is playing billiards with Darcy.

“What do you mean?” Darcy asks. (He knows very well what Fitzwilliam means.)

“She used to be so lively, at Rosings.”

“Did you think her inadequate tonight?”

“No! For God’s sake, Darcy, you know what I mean. It is like a candle has been snuffed.”

“Yes,” Darcy says slowly.

(That is all he says.)

The game continues.

Colonel Fitzwilliam is not the type to give up easily.

“Have you quarrelled?”

“It is a forced marriage, Richard. On both sides.”

His cousin is having none of it. “Come on, Darcy, you liked her well enough at Rosings. I even thought… I even thought, for a moment there, you were going to propose.”

“Well, I did not. And I ended up married to her regardless.”

“You could have found a way out of it,” Fitzwilliam says. “Could have paid the family.”

Darcy does not answer. They keep playing.

Then suddenly he cannot pretend any longer.

“Lord, Richard,” he whispers. “I do not know what to do.”

His cousin nods. “Tell me what happened.”

“Yes, we quarrelled. On our wedding night. I shouted at her, and she just…took it, Richard. I thought she would protest. Insult me back, even. She never seemed to lack spirit. But she just… She said I was right, and she just… She just took it.”

“What did you say?”

“That she was beneath me.”

“Always the charmer.”

“And then… As you said. The fire is gone.” Darcy looks somewhere undefined, on the other side of the window maybe, but there is nothing on the other side of the windows. Just the night.

“Hmm.” Fitzwilliam plays; he thinks. “I have seen that, with soldiers.”

“Soldiers?”

“They are shocked, by…death, or a cannonball… Noise, blood, or the general merry horrors of war.”

“She has not seen the merry horrors of war.”

“I am not saying it is the same thing, just that they are similar phenomenon. What I mean, is… You did not kill her spirit with one fight. Something else happened. Several things, I bet. People… They are well, and suddenly—a series of events—things that would not affect someone else…”

Darcy thinks. About Elizabeth. Lydia’s dishonouring the family, with that man—that sergeant, from the North. Their father’s death. The family thrown out of their own house. Jane’s departure. Elizabeth torn from her friends, sent…here, with him.

“How do you… Those soldiers, did they get better?”

Fitzwilliam does not answer instantly. He plays.

“Some of them,” he says, lightly. Too lightly. “There are doctors, in London, you know.”

They talk about doctors for a while. Then they talk about other topics. Family. Money. Women (for Fitzwilliam).

Then Fitzwilliam says, “I know something that helps.”

“What?”

“Helping.”

“I am not sure I follow.”

“Helping others. That helps. Those soldiers, those who volunteered at hospitals, opened houses for the wounded, raised money—those are the ones who got better. But it does not have to be that complicated. Even helping one person, it—well—helps.”

Darcy frowns. That hardly makes sense. And even if it did, whom is Elizabeth going to help? Nobody needs help round here. It is Pemberley. Everybody is well.

“So, what about you?” Fitzwilliam asks. “After, you know, everything. After…Georgie. How are you?”

“I am well,” Darcy answers.

Chapter Text

The doctor comes. From London, very recommended, very expensive. Very sure of himself. When he comes, Darcy is not present. He should have been, but there has been some trouble with a mine, on another property.

The doctor listens to Elizabeth. They are alone, in the parlour, near her room. She tells him everything. She speaks about her night terrors, her fears. Then how those disappeared, suddenly. Leaving food with no taste, the view with no colours.

When Darcy comes back the next day, something is very wrong.

The footman will not look at him. A maid does look at him—with fear in her eyes—and almost flees. Mrs Reynolds appears. She is livid.

“I have to talk to you now, sir. It is imperative… sir,” she whispers. She seems almost afraid.

“What is it?” Darcy asks as soon as they are alone.

“Sir, the doctor has come.”

“Yes? What did he say?”

“Sir,” Mrs Reynolds explains, not meeting his eyes, “Mrs Darcy is locked in a tiny closet upstairs, on the third floor, screaming.”

“What?”

“He said—the doctor said—that Mrs Darcy was very ill. That she needed a shock, to ‘restore’ her brain, sir. He said that terror and hunger and…I refused to obey him, but Jenkins—Jenkins did not know what to do because you said to ‘do all the doctor said’, and the doctor imposed on him, I think, saying it was imperative, that you would be furious if there was disobedience and… But Mrs Darcy, she is not ill! She is not mad! She is a little melancholy sometimes, yes, but…”

“Where is she?”

When Darcy arrives on the third floor, yes, Elizabeth is screaming. He tries to open the closet, but the doctor has the key. He kicks the door down. Elizabeth throws herself into his arms, sobbing.

“Oh, please, please, please, get me out of there. Oh, please I am begging you…” He is dragging her into the light, and she is clutching his shirt (it is a light blue shirt) and trying to breathe. She begs, “Do not put me back in there. Oh God, do not put me back… I shall be happy. I swear I shall be happy, just do not put me back…”

“Never,” he is whispering in her ear. “Never.” She is burying her face in his shirt (light blue shirt). “I swear,” he breathes. “I swear to God. Never. That will never happen again.”

The doctor is back the next day, with his assistants. He explains that Mrs Darcy should come with him, to his clinic, in London. Mrs Darcy is such a good case, a perfect case, he declares. He has a new method, with icy water and isolation and shocks—physical and of the mind. Elizabeth is there listening, and Mrs Reynolds is there listening, and the footmen are there listening, and some of the maids have gathered in the hall, and Darcy throws the doctor and the assistants out, politely, paying them their dues, saying thank you so much, but we do not require your services any longer. He walks them to the door then shakes the doctor’s hand, keeping a straight face all along, and tells him in a very low voice, that only the doctor can hear, that if he ever comes back, he is going to kill him, chop up his body, and feed it to the dogs.

When Darcy comes up two hours later to see Elizabeth, she is herself again.

Bathed, dressed, her hair done.

Tense smile.

Perfectly composed.

“Mr Darcy,” she says, “I apologise for my behaviour. It seems I lost a part of my rationality up there.” She smiles and adds, “Never a good idea when you are trying to prove you are not crazy.”

Darcy is not composed.

“I am so sorry I was not at home to prevent this. That man—that man is out of his mind. This will never happen again.”

“Thank you. That is very reassuring. But of course,” Elizabeth continues, extremely politely, her smile just this side of terrified, “this is what a husband would say to reassure his wife, to calm her before the men arrive the next morning to take her to Bedlam.”

Darcy looks at her with dismay.

“Is that what you think is happening here?”

“I…do not know,” says Elizabeth, in a light tone. “Is it?” Her smile disappears; she stands up and begins to pace the room. “You are trapped with a woman you do not esteem or want, Mr Darcy,” she explains, her voice imperceptibly shaking, “and now, you are told she is not completely well. Would not ‘the clinic’ be a perfectly clean, acceptable way to get rid of an undesirable partner? And if I protest, if I panic,” she says, with an edge of, well, panic in her voice, “it will be more proof that I am crazy.”

“Elizabeth,” he begins… And suddenly, all his wife’s formality vanishes, only supplication and dread in her eyes, and he cannot think straight. “Dearest,” he says, and she does not register it, she does not notice, for now. “I do not want to get rid of you. On my parents’ grave, on Georgiana’s memory, I will not do it. That man—those men—will never come back, I swear…”

She is listening. Her eyes are focused on his shirt again. Light blue. The shirt is the first thing she saw when he pulled her out of that dark closet. The light blue is what she was clasping when he took her in his arms, repeating words of reassurance.

She nods. She thanks him. She spends the whole night awake, haunted by vivid, terrifying dreams—no, by visions, worse than dreams, because dreams are unreal, and this is very real. People—women—undesirable wives or mistresses or fallen daughters are tortured in hell, yes, right now, labelled ‘crazy’, experimented upon, laughed at. Elizabeth has heard the stories, but they say—they say the reality is worse.

At least those visions are in colour.

The doctor does not come back.

After a while, she realises he never will.

The next day, and the next, and the next, she sees light blue everywhere. It is connected to him. To her husband. To his shirt. It is connected to ‘dearest’—yes, she heard it, she just—noticed later. What a word to use.

Light blue is connected to her husband’s embrace, to his smell. To the intense emotion in his eyes when she looked at him with such gratefulness, after he pulled her out.

The sofa in the summer drawing room is blue. And there is a vase, with red flowers, on the table.

She sits down.

She looks around.

The world is grey, and red, and light blue.

Chapter Text

“Your alliance is a degradation.”

“My family’s expectations, the inferiority of your birth…”

It is not that she feels inferior. Or that she believes her alliance has been a degradation. She does not. She does not degrade herself, even in her own mind. No. It is the feeling that he does. That he is at her side, day after day, looking at her, feeling degraded.

That is where the grey comes from. Well, part of it.

**

“I am sorry if I speak out of turn,” Mrs Reynolds says.

They are in the autumn parlour. They are drinking tea and going through all the weekly, necessary decisions.

“I just want to say, Mrs Darcy, from me and the servants, that we’re so happy you are… I mean, we were so worried, when that doctor was here.”

Mrs Darcy pales. For a moment, Mrs Reynolds thinks that she is going to say something sincere, for once, something personal, something that is not amiable and polite and sensible and pleasant, but the moment passes, and Mrs Darcy is composed again.

“Obviously, it was…a scary moment,” she answers, smiling. “And not my finest, I fear, Mrs Reynolds.”

“Madam, that man was out of his senses. And dangerous.”

Mrs Darcy’s smile becomes weaker.

“Mrs Darcy,” Mrs Reynolds continues, “everybody appreciates you a lot here. You are always kind, calm, and generous. We all hold you in the highest esteem.”

Mrs Darcy seems stunned. Like this is a complete surprise to her.

She smiles, a weak one, but yes, a real one. Her eyes glint. Maybe tears.

“Thank you, Mrs Reynolds,” she whispers.

**

It means a lot. Thinking she is in a house full of allies. Not full of enemies, who would bear witness against her and send her to icy water and shocks. To oblivion. But then, she remembers, oblivion is off the table. Thanks to her husband.

She sees it often, that scene. She plays it in her mind. She is in his arms. He is whispering in her ear. She is clutching the shirt. (The light blue shirt.) He is…shivering with emotion, almost.

A strange man’s embrace—no reason to affect her so.

She supposes it has been years since she touched another human being. No, not years. But long.

How long since he touched someone?

**

Mrs Reynolds is still talking. Elizabeth has missed a part.

“… and he was not like that before,” Mrs Reynolds says. Elizabeth raises her head. She listens. “Oh, he was never the most talkative of boys, but he smiled a lot. He was always so kind. And he laughed, when he was a young man—with Mr Bingley and the colonel. They could be quite wild.”

“Wild?” Elizabeth smiles—another real one. “My husband was wild?”

“No, I mean, forgive me, Mrs Darcy, that was badly expressed,” Mrs Reynolds says, amused. “I mean, comparatively. But then, you know, his sister.”

Elizabeth nods.

“We all thought, this fog will lift when he gets married,” Mrs Reynolds continues. “And then you came, a pretty young bride… But clearly…”

**

Elizabeth wonders all day.

She wonders when they are eating luncheon, she and her husband, mostly in silence (polite, not unpleasant silence). She wonders when he is gone, all afternoon. He is taking care of his duties; she is taking care of hers.

Duties are like flies. They come, buzzing; Elizabeth swats them one by one. They are incessant. They are worthless. They make no sense.

But now the wondering is like a glue. Holding things together.

Mrs Reynolds said, “fog.” She said, “We all thought the fog would lift.”

Elizabeth wonders.

Fog?

What does the world of her husband look like?

Her word is grey—and red, and light blue. She looks at the red flowers in the vase. Her husband has an arrangement with Lady Harden’s gardener now, and red flowers are brought regularly to Pemberley. They appear, like magic, in the rooms she walks into, like those fairy tales where flowers just blossom on the princess’ steps, but of course she knows the process is much more complicated here. It is not magic, sadly. It is money.

But. But, there is thought. Behind the money. His thoughts.

She is writing letters, in the drawing room where she spends most of the time now, because the sofa is light blue. Light blue hums like a musical note.

Yes, what does the world of her husband look like? Is it foggy? Is it grey?

Does anything pierce the fog, ever?

Dinner. (She observes him. She is trying to guess the colours in his mind.)

There was despair in there, she remembers. (Black?)

Night comes.

**

It was a good day.

For a while, at the beginning, at Pemberley, when life was sinking into grey waters, she counted the bad days and the good days. The good days were when something good happened. Or something interesting. Or peculiar. Like a cup of good coffee. A visit where someone uttered a clever joke. Once, she woke early and saw the sun rise over the grounds, through her window, and it was magnificent. A silken drape of beauty thrown over the sky—that morning, she had tears in her eyes too.

But soon it seemed grey was all there was, so she stopped counting.

But today, the wondering. About him. It kept everything else at bay.

**

The next morning. Breakfast. Mostly in silence (polite, not unpleasant silence).

**

The next morning. Breakfast. Mostly in silence (polite, not unpleasant silence).

Nothing is happening. The grey is winning again.

**

The next morning. Breakfast. Mostly in silence (polite, not unpleasant silence).

“Would you like to take a walk with me?” she asks. (After coffee.)

He says, “Yes.”

She did not think before asking. If she had, she would not have asked. He has his flies to swat.

But soon they are out of doors, and she has her hand on his arm.

**

She forgets everything. She just walks, in the beautiful, cold light of the morning. Feeling his warmth near hers.

They go far. The lake (almost white, reflecting the sky).

The lime trees, black, nude. Witches’ fingers. Writing dark letters in the air.

The hills. The sky.

Everything white and silver.

She thinks about ‘the inferiority of your birth’ and ‘the degradation’ again, but not in a bad way.

Silver threads are connecting her to her husband, she realises. One of the silver threads is the shared memory of that night, of what he said. It is always there, this thread, whatever happens. It does not matter the number of breakfasts they take together, the insults stay there, their shared knowledge of them connecting them.

But there are other threads.

One silver thread is flowers appearing wherever she goes.

One silver thread is her hand clutching that shirt (while he is shivering).

One silver thread is that she is wondering about him.

One silver thread is all those breakfasts together (after all).

One fragile, glimmering silver thread is that he said ‘dearest’.

(What a word to say.)

The sky is huge. And endless. And silver.

Chapter Text

“When I came back into Hertfordshire,” Darcy says, on one of their walks. “When I came back into Hertfordshire, the second time. I…”

He stops. She waits.

Crocuses are appearing in the fields around, piercing the frost. They are very yellow.

The rest of the sentence does not come. Elizabeth tries to guess. The problem is—she does not want to think about that time. Her childhood, yes. Her youth, yes. After the death of her father…no. It is all hidden in a fog regardless.

Around them, crocuses everywhere. Bright, violent yellow.

Egyptians revered them as a symbol of the return of the sun. (Her father explained it to her.)

Silence. Walking. Silver air, silver cold. Stunning winter dawn.

He changes the subject.

“That night, Elizabeth. Our wedding night. I…”

He hesitates, and she says, quickly, “I am not particularly keen to revisit the subject, sir.”

He does not say anything after that.

**

Crocuses are beautiful but leave her with a taste of dread.

**

Not that subject. It would destroy everything.

He would apologise politely, coldly. Not really meaning it. Maybe he would speak a little more about how unsuitable she is (in a polite, reasonable way).

It would destroy everything, rip off all the delicate silver threads. Rip off ‘dearest’, and the blue shirt, and the tender smell of his skin.

No.

**

Of course, the unfinished conversation is a new thread connecting them.

A yellow one. Like the crocuses.

**

The day passes. It is not a pleasant one.

The yellow thread is pulsating. The other beautiful secret bonds (all delicacy and grace) are shattering—no, not shattering. Vanishing. No. Dimming. Disappearing from view like faraway stars erased by the glare of a blazing sun.

**

Elizabeth wants to retreat into the grey. Grey is safe.

She cannot.

In the grey she can rest.

She is restless.

**

Of course, their chambers are connected. She has her bedchamber (a grey one), her parlour (charcoal), and her dressing room (no particular colour). He has the same, she supposes. The two main rooms are connected by a door. Always closed, of course. She locked it after their wedding night, she supposes. She does not even remember doing it.

They both hear noise through the door, sometimes. Often. Steps. The floorboards creaking. The muffled sound of voices—his conversation with his valet, her conversation with her maid. (Those are rare. The maid is hard grey.)

**

It is night. Her maid is gone. She hesitates. On the other side of the door. Her chamber is grey, of course, as is the air, as is her future slumber.

She knocks lightly. She opens the door. She enters.

**

It is all golden and brown on the other side.

The fire is still burning, candles are lit, and the valet is folding garments. Her husband is sorting books on an oak sideboard. They both turn to look at her.

Mahogany tables, brown (maybe dark green) walls, golden light. A lot of books, scattered. Leather bindings, brown or dark red. Maroon drapes. The fire.

She wonders whether it is what the inside of her husband’s soul looks like.

She is not moving. “James, can you leave us?” her husband says, in a casual, polite voice.

The valet vanishes.

**

“How are you tonight, Elizabeth?” her husband says. “Do you want me to ring for some tea?” (In a casual, polite voice. Like his wife in his bedroom is an everyday occurrence.)

“Tea would be lovely, thank you,” she says, smiling, and then she enters the room for real. (In a casual and polite way. Nobody will say that Elizabeth Bennet—Elizabeth Darcy—is not always perfectly polite.)

I wanted to say how much I enjoy our walks together, Mr Darcy. And I do hope that the slight unpleasantness of this morning will not prevent us from walking together again, is what she came here to say. With a light smile, to pretend the topic is less serious than it really is.

But now the words will not come out.

“This is a beautiful room,” she says instead.

“I think so too,” her husband answers. He is in his shirtsleeves, not completely undressed yet. “It was my father’s.”

Elizabeth looks at the books. Memorises the titles. She looks at the mahogany table.

He looks at her.

Her hair prepared for bed. Under the dark-grey dressing gown, a sophisticated silk shift and a bed jacket. Off-white, both. Off-white feels intimate.

It feels true.

It fills him with despair.

She looks at the other table. Where the valet left the garments. “Oh, this is the light blue shirt,” she says. Lightly.

Every artificial sentence of small talk she utters pains him a little more.

He feels like ending it all. No, he does not. A gentleman never would. A Christian never would. But he understands why people do it. When everything is meaningless, a shallow and cruel image of what it is supposed to be. When the fire is so near, it would warm you up, but you raise your hand to it, and the wind freezes your heart.

“You know,” she says, “I have this silly idea…” She turns to him. She smiles. She walks to him.

He pays attention. Her tone is light again, breezy, but a little too breezy. Like she is going to say something important. “I have a…liking for… I notice…colours,” she explains.

He nods. “I know you like red.”

Now she is near him.

“Yes.” Facing him. Very near. “And also,” she says, “I like your blue shirt. Because you were wearing it when you freed me from that closet.” She raises her hand.

No icy wind blows.

“When you opened the door, and I…”

She puts her hand on his chest.

He stops breathing.

She stops breathing.

Chapter Text

Darcy’s world is made of concentric circles.

It is dark, mostly. Night. In his mind, the circles look like Celtic ruins, made of crude grey stones, on a grassy plain, dimly lit by the moon. It looks like Scotland, that he visited, with his parents, when he was very young. Scotland at night.

The first circle represents him. Ghosts live there. She does too.

The ghosts are his parents and Georgiana. She is Elizabeth, of course. She is a being of pale fire. Her hair is undone; she is wearing only a thin linen shift. It is a strange image, considering he has never seen her in such a state of undress. But that is how she was in his dreams, when he fell for her, at Netherfield—yes, it happened in Netherfield; afterwards, he just fell deeper.

The second circle. It is larger. There reside people he is responsible for. People living at Pemberley—on the estate, or connected to it. Bingley belongs there too, as does Colonel Fitzwilliam—Darcy is not responsible for Colonel Fitzwilliam, but his cousin sleeps there regardless. Circles are not always logical.

In the third circle lives his family. Darcy’s cousins, uncles. Aunts. His duty is to respect them, to help them, to visit them. If something goes wrong, he must make it right. If he cannot, then the fault is his.

In the fourth circle moves a strange crowd, of people he is connected to somehow. He is not responsible for them, but he owes them courtesy, politeness. Efficient men with a profession—lawyers, merchants, barristers, who do good work for the family. Friends of his parents. Friends of his friends. To all those people, he must be loyal. He would not refuse his help if they ever asked.

In the fifth circle there is society. Society includes the third and fourth circles, but it is also an entity of its own—an abstract crowd of people and judgments and obligations. Society’s opinion should be respected, of course.

Then, there is the rest of the world. It is endless. When he was young, he was curious. Scotland was so fascinating. Now, curiosity has died.

The rest is already so heavy to bear.

**

But back to her.

Elizabeth was fire. (She is white fire still.) But she was blazing, burning, when he met her—he was already walking in the shadows, three ghosts as his daily companions. And she, fiery with life and light and laughter. He did not have the right to take her, of course. He could not buy her and bring her home, because of the third, fourth, and fifth circles.

Elizabeth would have been good for the second circle, though, Darcy was thinking, at the time, at Netherfield and at Rosings, when he was watching her and listening to her with quiet desperation. She would have been perfect. A good friend to his close friends. A good mistress of Pemberley—she would have helped him carry the load—and of course, in the first circle, in his arms, she would have… She… The sun would have risen.

But no. It would have been selfish. Marrying just to please himself—what an idea! For love? How self-centred. Egotistical. No.

Then he got her, despite everything. When he realised what he had done to her, after their wedding night, the third, fourth, and fifth circles disappeared from his view. Society is still there somewhere, of course, moving like a big, ever-hissing snake. But he cannot see it any longer—the night is absolute on that part of the plain.

That night, after he berated her. When she sat down on the bed, raised her eyes to him, and said, “Very true,” to all his insults. Brutally, he could not remember. Why the judgments and the opinions of those circles had even mattered. Why he had even listened, even for a second, to the hiss of the snake. All his fears of misalliance and gossip crumbled, reduced to nothingness and rubbish— —when he realised he had destroyed all his hopes of ever seeing the dawn.

**

How God must laugh.

**

So, yes, he is very unhappy.

It is well. He deserves to be

(Georgiana’s ghost is sitting by him, with a shy smile.)

**

And then Elizabeth puts her hand on his chest.

And it is real.

And it is true.

And it is burning like hell.

**

Elizabeth’s hand lingers for a few moments. Then she smiles and walks away. She says something about tea. The door opens, tea is served, they drink, they talk, politely, then she goes away, to sleep.

**

It is morning. The breakfast parlour. She arrives, she sees him, and smiles.

He smiles back.

They go walking. (Crocuses everywhere.)

He is very happy.

No, it is not happiness. It is a sort of fever.

He is burning.

**

Waiting for her next smile. Her next touch.

He does his tasks for the day. They are not flies. He does not swat them. Everything is connected and makes sense. It is just that there are a lot of them, and they are heavy.

In the evening, when he goes home, Elizabeth smiles at him again.

**

In the morning, they walk.

They mostly stay silent. But sometimes he points and explains. The history of that chapel. Of the village. Of that farm. Of that man. There is a tree, and a bench. They sit there. Across the lane is a beautiful old stone cross, half buried, with a broken Virgin Mary. A remnant of more Catholic times. Faraway, the old abbey—in ruins. He tells the story.

Before their walks, they (the bench, the cross, the farm, the man, the abbey) were hazy. Now, when Elizabeth sees them without her husband, they vibrate with the sound of his voice, with the feel of his presence, with the knowledge imparted.

They glow. They are secret and special.

**

One day her husband touches her.

He has forgotten his gloves, and when he realises it, they are already far under the white and silver sky. It is not that cold. They go on. She has her arm in his, so his hand, his bare hand, reposes on her wrist. It does not have to, really, but somehow, it is.

There is a naked part between her coat and her gloves. His fingers trail on her skin.

It is barely a touch at first.

She does not say anything. She does not pull away.

They keep walking. In perfect silence.

His fingers touch her skin again.

They keep walking.

He does not say a word. **

Next morning, she enters the breakfast parlour, and smiles. He smiles back—then he is serious—his eyes follow her, when she sits, when she fills her plate, when she pours coffee. His gaze is intense. In that way he has, in that way he always had, Elizabeth suddenly realises. Even when they were not married. When they were just acquaintances.

“Would you like some more coffee, Mr Darcy?” she asks. (Nobody could say that Elizabeth Bennet—Darcy—is not always perfectly polite.)

“I was thinking,” he answers. “You said you like colours.”

“I do.”

“This winter is endless,” he says. “And very grey.”

“It is getting better,” she says, raising her eyes to him.

She thinks he stops breathing there for a while. But maybe it is her imagination. Maybe it is all in her imagination. The wrist, the glows. The shirt. ‘Dearest’. Maybe she is grasping at straws. Worse. Maybe there are no straws.

It is a while before he speaks again. “Well, I was thinking,” he finally continues. “About colours. It is still the Season.”

He hesitates. Then, “How about going to London for a few weeks?”

Chapter Text

London is brittle and beautiful and dangerous. Cutting like a crystal shard.

Julia Fitzwilliam. Darcy’s cousin. Twenty-eight, fashionable, funny, married to the Fitzwilliam heir. Taking Elizabeth shopping.

Noise, busy streets, yelling, strange smells, carriages, expensive teas in expensive establishments. Gorgeous fabrics. Deep, shimmering hues. A new maid, sent by Julia. New dresses, new gloves, new shoes, new shawls, new words. London words. Silks. Satins.

No time to think. Elegant ladies with pearls being introduced to you on the pavement.

Julia is perfect because she is new. She does not know about Elizabeth. About the melancholy, about the grey, about the doctor and the screaming in the closet. Julia does not know about the Elizabeth of before (in Hertfordshire), she does not know about the Elizabeth of after (at Pemberley), she just knows about the Elizabeth of now.

So, Elizabeth of now can try a new skin. (Julia will not know it is new.) The new skin is joyful, witty, sophisticated. Almost like the Elizabeth from Hertfordshire, but that Elizabeth (from before) was not a skin.

That Elizabeth was real.

**

Elizabeth does not see Darcy much during the day. He has a lot of business in the city. And she has Julia.

But at night…

They are always out, together. She and her husband. Theatre, dinner, dinner, ball, theatre, concert, dinner, repeat.

Elizabeth is drinking life. Sucking it, like a vampire sucks blood.

See, Elizabeth does not feed on loneliness. She feeds on people. Like…like her mother, really. (Dreadful thought.) Elizabeth feeds on conversation and laughs, friendships and crowds, connections and humans.

On parties and ideas and irony. Her husband, she suspects, feeds on loneliness. Well, maybe on solitude. Nobody really feeds on loneliness.

He is right about London colours—she drinks them too. She is sucking them hungrily. Colours in actors’ costumes, garish wallpapers glowing in the candlelight, the infinite gay nuances of the masquerade’s crowd. Colours are intellectual too; Elizabeth finds them in phrases of music, in poetry readings, in political debates, in literary discussions—in colourful insults overheard through a window.

(Hearing them, treasuring them, storing them for grey days to come.)

It is raining a lot. Elizabeth likes it. London is hazy, like a modern painting.

So yes, together, she and Darcy, every night. For hours, from seven till midnight, often later.

He never touches her—except when she is taking his arm, of course. Other husbands, they touch their wives on the elbow, the arm, the shoulder, the waist. Her husband almost does it, once—when they enter their theatre box—his hand moves towards the small of her back. He hesitates—the hand moves away.

Elizabeth has a red dress. Crimson. He bought the fabric for her. (“I thought you might like this,” he says. She does.)

He does not touch her the evening she is wearing the dress. But she feels like she is wearing him. Like he is touching her all over. (Unnerving thought.)

She sees Julia a lot. They laugh a lot. Elizabeth tells her about the doctor.

It is still raining. The grey in the streets glimmers. They have tea. She and Julia. Again.

Elizabeth’s new skin (joyful, witty, sophisticated) is far from perfect. There are dinners where Elizabeth feels fragile, lost. She falters. She says something—that does not fit exactly. That is just a little to the left, or to the right, like a missed throw at cricket.

“I apologise,” she says to Darcy, in the carriage, afterwards. “I lack practice. I fear I played a few fake notes in the conversation.”

“I do not think anybody notices.”

“You do.”

“That is because I knew you before—I can see the difference. But even with…” He pauses. (Even with what? Elizabeth wonders.) “Even now,” he continues, “you are more charming and clever than any woman present.”

She is speechless.

**

The Matlock dinner.

Darcy’s family. Who elegantly, sharply disapprove of her. Not of her, exactly—her they could not care less about. No, they disapprove of the ‘circumstances’. The incident, the damage, the marriage. All of them do, except Colonel Fitzwilliam; but Colonel Fitzwilliam is getting slaughtered at Waterloo. So, they feel free to slaughter her.

(Julia is present, but she does not intervene.)

It is done with needles.

Long, thin, metallic needles (sentences) piercing Elizabeth just where it hurts.

Elizabeth of old would have laughed. Elizabeth of old would have parried the needles with ease. This Elizabeth feels naked.

She parries, though. She smiles. She makes neutral, amiable answers. (Nobody could say that Elizabeth Bennet—Darcy—is not absolutely…you know.)

But she gets paler and paler.

Suddenly, her husband’s hand is on her shoulder.

She does not see him coming. But yes, suddenly, he is at her side, in the drawing room, touching her.

Dinner. Darcy puts his hand on her arm often. On her elbow. Or even, once, on her shoulder, around the chair. (A bold move.) He talks. He is very calm. He catches most of the needles in the air and lays them serenely on the table, near Elizabeth’s plate.

As a gift.

But he cannot catch them all. At the end of the meal, Elizabeth is getting tired of catching. She is beginning to miss some. Darcy’s hand is warm though.

“Sadly, Mrs Darcy, a life in the country—with such a family—may not have prepared you for all the pressures of London,” Lady Matlock says.

“You are very right, Lady Matlock, it did not,” Elizabeth answers. “But my father always said that navigating the daily absurdities of a small town would teach me to survive in any society.”

Julia smiles. “Of course, you needed a doctor to survive Pemberley’s society, Elizabeth. So I wonder whether your father was right, and whether you will really be able to navigate this one.”

People laugh. Elizabeth sits petrified. No words come.

“See?” Julia adds. “And here we all thought you had an answer for everything.”

Two weeks of shopping and tea and ‘intimate’ conversations. And now, wielding the blade, waiting for Elizabeth to be weary, and…strike.

Then, at the end. Near the drawing room door. “Shall I come tomorrow to fetch you, Elizabeth?” Julia asks. “We still have to go to that fitting—the green silk. It will go perfectly with your complexion.”

Elizabeth cannot insult Darcy’s cousin. To be honest, she does not feel strong enough. “I am so sorry, your ladyship,” she whispers. “I am not sure I shall have time tomorrow.”

“Come on,” Julia protests. “Is it ‘your ladyship’ now? I am sure—”

“What my wife is too polite to tell you, your ladyship,” Darcy interrupts, “is that you are not welcome in our house any longer.”

Everybody hears.

**

The carriage. The night.

It is still raining.

The carriage gets stuck in the street.

The water has risen somewhere, near the river. Some streets are impassable. They are stuck. They are sitting side by side, shoulders touching, under the blanket.

Elizabeth should say thank you. She cannot say thank you.

Wait. Why can she not?

“Thank you,” she breathes.

He looks at her. She cannot really see him in the dark. She imagines the look. So many possibilities.

Silence. Then she says, “You never told me how your sister died, Mr Darcy. It seems… Is there…something…I do not know about?”

It is a hunch. Things she overheard in the Matlock drawing room. The ladies’ faces when they pronounced the name “Georgiana,” or rather, when they did not.

(It is a hunch, but Elizabeth knows she is right.)

New silence.

“There was a man…” Darcy starts.

“Oh my God.” Elizabeth shivers.

(Georgiana was fifteen.)

“He was the son of my father’s steward,” Darcy explains. “He was raised with us—Georgiana trusted him. He seduced her.” Elizabeth is silent. “They spent a few nights in different inns together, then the carriage had an accident on the road to Scotland. They both died.”

Elizabeth cannot speak.

**

She should take his hand, she thinks. She cannot.

Wait. Why can she not?

She cannot.

**

Men are talking near the carriage. Coarse voices. Street conversations. Darcy listens. He asks the footman to open the door, he gets out. He speaks with the men. Elizabeth cannot hear.

It is still raining.

When Darcy comes back, he says, “There have been storms in the North. I am worried.”

“For Pemberley?”

“Yes. I think we should go back.”

The rain is falling harder.

Chapter Text

They find an express at the house. Pemberley has been flooded; the situation is dire. Darcy leaves on horseback the next morning; Elizabeth will join him with the carriage.

“I apologise. I thought your London stay would be more pleasant,” he says, when he is at the door.

“My stay in town was very pleasant,” Elizabeth answers. “I enjoyed it immensely.”

He stares at her, trying to divine her thoughts, her emotions. Trying to interpret her smile.

Trying to guess whether there is…more.

“I am talking, of course, about yesterday’s dinner,” he adds, with a smile of his own. (Apologetic. A little shy.) “My family’s behaviour, and Julia’s, was unpardonable.”

Elizabeth shakes her head. “It is of no importance. None whatsoever.” Then she hesitates, and it is her turn to look shy. “I mean—I understand their judgment is of great importance to you, and…”

“No,” he interrupts. “No. It is not.”

It is in direct contradiction with what he told her on their wedding night. They look at each other; there is so much more to say, but Pemberley is waiting.

(It is a lie. The truth is, he is terrified.)

“I hope we shall come back to town sometimes,” Elizabeth says softly.

“We shall.”

They are still looking at each other.

Darcy does not know how to say good-bye. (He does not want to.)

So many things to tell her.

They say good-bye. He leaves.

**

Four days later, in the morning, Elizabeth’s carriage arrives at Pemberley. Near Pemberley. Because she has to travel the last mile on foot.

Three villages flooded, and the main house. The water has receded now, and Elizabeth can enter the…her… She can come home. She is aghast at the damage.

It gets worse. After the first flood, a dam broke uphill, she learns, creating a second disaster. Now Lambton is underwater, and another village, and…

No time for grey. No time for self-reflection or melancholy. Darcy is in Lambton. She does not see him. Elizabeth’s duties are food and shelter, for more than two hundred people. Women and children.

People everywhere in Pemberley House. On Pemberley’s ground floor, the part that has not been flooded. Half of Pemberley’s first floor.

Fires and warm soup and running around with Mrs Reynolds and the servants. It is like they are allies in a war, she and Mrs Reynolds, giving orders, making hard decisions. Thinking in essentials. One woman has seen her three children drown before her eyes. News come from Lambton, and it is bad, and it is night. Darcy does not come back. Then it is morning and people are coughing. Elizabeth thinks of pneumonia, of children dying.

“They ingested unhealthy water,” the reverend explains. “Miasma.” Fires, blankets, hot tea, hot remedies. One baby has a high fever. He is near death. He vomits. The Elizabeth that once looked for colours in the snow seems to be a thousand years away.

If she ever existed.

It is raining again.

The men are still in Lambton and the other village, trying to save what they are able. They need food. Elizabeth and three kitchen maids (and mules and a cart) go there, taking everything they can.

Elizabeth has not seen Darcy since he left the house, in London.

In Lambton it is water and mud and dead bodies. (Lying in the mud.) ‘Only’ a dozen. (It could have been so much worse, everyone says.) The activity is dwindling down. It is over, mostly. People who could be saved are safe, the others are dead. The water will recede.

(If it ever stops raining.)

Darcy is nowhere in sight.

She looks for him.

He is that way, someone says. No—he left to inspect Brooks’s house, someone else explains. Someone talks about the church cellar. Then apparently, he is helping to empty the Andersons’ barn.

Except he is nowhere.

The sun is going down. Elizabeth panics.

She walks north, following the water. Someone said Darcy left that way, an hour ago.

She walks.

**

The noise and voices of the village fade. She keeps walking, calling him.

Nothing. No one.

**

Only water and flooded houses and darkening skies. The world is brown and silver. A universe in dual tones. The sky is an endless mirror. Emptiness and death. She keeps walking. She goes farther and farther, the only spark of life in a perfectly still world. In fact, she has never felt so alive. In the worst way possible: pain, exhaustion, fear. Searing fear.

She keeps calling him.

The rain falls harder.

“Here!” Darcy’s voice.

“Where?”

“Here!” he repeats. “Hurry! The boy is trapped!”

The house. The flooded house, in the middle of the river—there was a whole hamlet there, now Atlantis. She enters the freezing river—feet, calves, knees. It is getting dark. There is a wall, and the door is open, but it is flooded to the lintel. It is the only way in. Grey, mud, cold. She cannot swim.

“Hurry!” he says. “I am not going to be able to hold him when…”

She dives under.

Chapter Text

She is in.

Cold. Dark. A very small room. Very low ceiling. Dwindling light, through the broken window. Water gets to Elizabeth’s chest.

The head of the little boy is hardly visible; Darcy is deep in the water, holding him.

“His foot is stuck in…” Darcy starts. Elizabeth tries to look. “No,” Darcy whispers, “hold his head, let me.”

She holds the child. She is so cold. She talks to him, trying to reassure him. Darcy dives into the grey, muddy water, once, twice. “I cannot see anything,” he grumbles, and suddenly—something must have happened, somewhere, maybe uphill—maybe another dam has broken, because of the rain—there is a wave, water bubbling by the entrance. Darcy has dived again. The child gasps; he is free. Darcy reappears.

“The water is rising!” Elizabeth cries, in case Darcy is too dazed to notice.

“Damn,” Darcy mumbles, then, “Go!” he orders. The boy dives down in the direction of the door and disappears. They hear him yelling something outside; he sounds safe. Darcy turns to Elizabeth—but it is already too late.

The current is too strong. They see it by the window. The river has grown huge. The water is rising fast. Soon it will touch the ceiling.

“Damn,” Darcy repeats. Elizabeth’s feet hardly reach the bottom. She is shaking from the cold. He takes her in his arms. They stand immobile for a moment, heads very close. Even her thoughts are frozen.

“Elizabeth,” he begins. Then, “Wait.”

He disappears underwater.

She stays alone.

He reappears.

“Do you know how to swim?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“There is a passage down there, leading to the wine cellar. You have to dive down and then up. I shall help you.”

“No. I cannot do it. You should go. You will come back later,” she lies. “With help.”

“Down, and up. I shall hold your hand,” he repeats. “Now.”

Underwater they go. It is not difficult. Now they are in another room, looking exactly like the one they just left. Stone walls, low ceiling, the water is even higher.

“We shall have to do it again,” Darcy explains. “The wine cellar is connected to another, and then I think we can reach the Jones’s farm. It is on higher ground.”

She cannot protest any longer. She follows him. Then they must do it a third time, going through a completely flooded room, no air at all.

Underwater. For an eternity. Oblivion. She is moving through living darkness.

The underworld. Liquid.

They come out in what was a courtyard and is now a lake. She can breathe again. The world is real again. They move forwards, holding on to the walls. They get into the (flooded) farm.

The water is still rising. It is almost night.

Darcy disappears for the second time.

“To the east,” he says when he comes back. They make progress, along the walls, going east. He is right, the ground is rising. When they arrive in the other part of the farm, Elizabeth’s feet touch the ground.

It lasts for another eternity—following him, going from house to house. Soon they can walk, waist high in the cold water, and suddenly they are on dry land (not dry, very muddy) on an island (not an island, a hill, now surrounded by water). There is a house. They run. Well, she tries. In truth, she can hardly walk. Her dress is so soaked, she is carrying lead.

Then Darcy breaks something—a wood shutter maybe. They get inside.

**

A drawing room, lost in shadows. Maybe a rich farm, or some nice cottage, deserted. The air is humid. Darcy fumbles in the shadows, looking for the tinderbox.

“Get out of your clothes,” he orders.

She does not demur. It is life or death. Except, she needs him, because she cannot remove her dress alone. He helps her, then he starts the fire. Soon, she is down to her (soaked) shift; she looks around, climbs on a table, she reaches the curtain, and pulls it with all her might. It comes crashing down.

The flames are getting higher.

“I shall help you,” she says in return. Men’s clothes are so tight. She helps him out of his boots, out of his breeches.

He is totally naked. He hangs his clothes and hers to dry.

The fire is burning brighter, but she is still shaking. She grabs the curtain. “We should try to keep warm,” she says.

He nods. He gestures at her shift. “You should take that off.”

She does. He hangs it to dry also. He takes her in his arms. They wrap the curtain around them.

They sit down near the hearth.

**

At first, she does not think.

Exhaustion does not even begin to describe it. Cold does not even begin to describe it. She is not even really conscious.

**

Slowly, it gets better.

**

Her thoughts were frozen too. They begin to wake up.

She is naked, in the arms of a naked man. She should be horrified. She is not.

It is not important.

What is important is they are both alive.

Getting warmer.

**

Time passes. One hour, maybe two.

Her eyes are closed, but she can see them from afar, like she is a bird. The two of them, near the fire, both naked. She imagines the light of the flames dancing on their skin (in truth, they are huddled under the curtain, but that is how she sees them). She pictures the yellow and orange lights, the infinite nuances of their flesh, the shimmering of the velvet curtain.

Then (in her mind) they are not in a drawing room any longer, but in a cave, deep down in the earth. They are near the fire—another fire. Strange paintings on the wall—bronze and ochre and coral.

**

Time passes.

**

He is in the first circle, and she is in his arms.

He feels the grass under their feet, the crude grey stones around. The night and the Scottish stars. It is raining, softly, but they are somehow protected. Or maybe it is raining for real, out of doors.

The other circles do not even exist. They are alone, on the top of the hill, under the white moon.

**

Now she begins to feel conscious of him.

His legs against hers. Her back against his chest. His head touching hers. His stubble, caressing her cheek.

His heart beating.

**

He feels her skin under his fingers. Her breast, above his wrist. The softness of her belly. He imagines the whiteness of her thigh.

He feels her breathing.

**

Their right hands are so close to each other.

Elizabeth takes his.

Their fingers intertwine, and his whole body tenses. Then he kisses her neck, her right shoulder; he is feverish, desperate. Her cheek, her temple. She leans into him. He moves a little. She turns to her left; she nuzzles her head into his shoulder. (He is kissing her head, her brow, her face.)

She falls asleep.

Chapter Text

The sun is rising.

Warmth, light. Elizabeth wakes up.

She rises slowly—she is alone. Her clothes are dry. She dresses.

Everything is slow and beautiful.

The rays of light, through the broken shutters. The water outside. So peaceful.

She hears her husband in another room (the kitchen, she guesses). She does not want to go and see him yet. She does not know what will happen, and she wants to hold on to beauty for a while. She wants to hold on to the previous night, to the fire, to the curtain, her dreams, and the cave. To his touch and his embrace. To what happened before she drifted off to sleep.

The moments—the memories—are floating in a bubble. It is fragile (and silver).

Elizabeth sits on the sofa. She closes her eyes. She imagines the room, the subdued colours around her. The shimmer of the bubble floating in the air. Fairies are stuck in it.

She wants the present to last forever.

**

She goes to the kitchen. Darcy is trying to toast some stale bread. It smells like coffee and bacon.

“Oh, God bless you,” she says, laughing.

“Yes,” he answers. There is light in his eyes when he looks at her. “I do not remember being so hungry in my entire life.”

(She is ravenous.)

She helps him prepare breakfast; she finds preserves in a cupboard. They go back. There is a dining room; she opens the shutters, he puts the food on the table. They eat. They talk. Not about the flood. About…coffee and bacon and butter and honey and other breakfasts, at Longbourn, at Pemberley, or in London. They talk about the family that lives in the cottage. He smiles. She laughs—food tastes so good.

They talk about eating from expensive plates with silver spoons, on their own private desert island, in the middle of the muddy water. How strange it is, to be guests and ghosts in someone else’s house.

He cannot take his eyes off her—does not even try.

“You saved my life,” he says.

Elizabeth is very surprised. “Not at all, Mr Darcy. I believe it is quite the opposite.”

“No. I could not have left the boy to his fate. He would have drowned, and then it would have been too late for me to escape—the water would have been too high.”

“You still could have swum to the next farm. Without being burdened by a terrified, helpless woman. I am, of course, always loath to contradict my husband, but I do believe you are the hero of this story, sir.”

“Well,” he answers, smiling. “Maybe this is a disagreement we do not really need to settle.”

She smiles in return. “Indeed.”

**

“Are we going to be trapped here for a while?” she asks, when they are at the window, looking at the water.

“We could be. We have enough food to survive for a week. But someone will come along.”

Someone does. Five men, on the opposite bank, calling, looking for them. Darcy hails them. An hour later, a rowing boat comes.

**

Pemberley.

It is a day of a million tasks, a million moments. As soon as they set foot in the house, they are engulfed. Half of the families of the estate are still sleeping on the ground floor. Darcy organises the men; he sends letters and expresses—asking for help, buying food. Buying new seeds for spring—most of them are lost.

Water begins to recede around noon. Fast.

Houses reappear from Atlantis. People are sent to save what there is to save, begin the clean-up process. Elizabeth has only one task: taking care of everything, for two hundred and fifty-three people (Mrs Reynolds counted them).

Elizabeth and Darcy—they are together, but never together. She is running around. He is talking to people and giving instructions.

She is too busy to think of the silvery, shimmering bubble. She wonders whether it has split.

And then…

Darcy is talking to his steward and two other men. She is walking through the room.

Their eyes meet.

It is like he has been waiting for this—yes, for their eyes to meet. Like she has been waiting also.

Now she is burning.

She cannot look at him any longer; she cannot even breathe. She flees down to the kitchen. “You should have some tea, Mrs Darcy,” says Mrs Abbott, the cook. “Sit down here with us for a while. It is a jungle up there.”

It is a jungle up there. Elizabeth laughs and sits down. She drinks the tea; she talks and jokes. She tells the story of the boy and the cottage and the water. The boy is alive, by the way. Safe and sound, at Pemberley, with the others.

She longs to go back upstairs. To see whether she can meet Darcy’s eyes again.

She goes upstairs. Their eyes meet again.

Forget about the bubble. Spikes of burning metal, hope, and fear. She smiles and nods and walks away. Darcy follows her into the hall, moments after. He calls to her, walks to her, takes her hand in his. He begins to say something. Someone comes along; he has to let her go.

Then that is what they do all day. Their jobs. Their eyes meet. They steal moments. In halls. Between two doors. They touch. A quick squeeze of the hand. A brush on the shoulder. A hand on her waist, in passing. He always initiates it.

She burns.

**

She almost cannot believe it.

And then she begins to doubt it.

**

It is a wave of grey. Of panic.

**

“Elizabeth, I have to speak to you,” Darcy says, in a hall, between two doors, her hand in his. “Please. I want to… Tonight?” he asks, and she just nods.

Panic rises higher.

She does not know why, really. She is a rational being, and if she thinks rationally about what happened over the last few days (weeks? months?) the verdict seems clear. She is twenty-two, not an innocent in the ways of the world. The Elizabeth of before has flirted at dozens of balls and is (or was) perfectly capable of sparking interest and recognising attraction.

But the Elizabeth of before had not drowned in grey.

This Elizabeth is afraid—of hoping and losing hope, of giving herself and being trampled upon, of loving and being spited. This Elizabeth sees it, though. She sees how beautiful it could be; she sees the possibilities and the grace. She wants to cry at the idea that it could not happen. It would save them; it would save both of them. She knows now how near he is from drowning too, how maybe he has already drowned, and she is the one that can drag him back. Yes, she is so desperate she wants to beg.

So she does.

**

Night.

When she retires to her chambers, her hands are trembling. She sits on a sofa in her parlour; she watches the door. The one that leads to his chamber, to the blue shirt, to books and mahogany.

He enters. He is pale and nervous. She politely asks him to sit down. He does.

Then she kneels before him.

“I do not know what you want to tell me, sir, but please—listen to me first.”

She sees him freeze. But she has to go on. “I know that you despise me—not me, exactly, maybe,” she adds quickly, “but my family and my connections—but… Please listen.” He is livid, petrified. “Please—I beg you—let me be a wife to you. I can be a good wife to you. I can help you. I can be your companion, your confidante. I can love you. We can both…” She shakes her head; it is difficult to find the words. “We can both…”

She loses her voice. Then she finds herself standing up—she does not know how. He has his hands on her arms; his grip is so tight.

“There is nothing I want more,” he whispers, and she does not move—she is frozen too now, hardly breathing, their foreheads so close, everything so close. “Elizabeth, there is nothing in the world that I want more,” he repeats, his voice breaking. “I…”

He is caressing her arms. He stops.

“But you are in the throes of a misunderstanding,” he says, his voice still broken. “That is why…why I have to speak to you.”

“I am not sure I follow, Mr Darcy.” (She has no voice either.)

“Please, sit down.”

She does. She is scared again. He paces the room.

“When I came back into Hertfordshire,” he begins. She simply listens. “When I came back into Hertfordshire, the second time. I…”

Chapter Text

“When I came back into Hertfordshire, the second time,” Darcy says, “it was to see you.”

Elizabeth frowns. “I…am not sure I follow.”

He does not meet her gaze. “I fell in love with you very early on. Even before you and your sister came to stay at Netherfield, I believe. But I was convinced that the disparities in our families’ situations made an alliance between us impossible. Then I saw you again at Rosings Park, and…”

Darcy raises his eyes to her—she is petrified. He is very pale; his voice is low, tentative.

“I remember each of our dinners, each of our walks. Every detail—every word, every gesture of yours. I was struggling. I walked to the Parsonage a dozen times, wanting to propose, but then—I…” His voice breaks. “I was a fool.”

There is a pause. The fire crackles. Somewhere below, two hundred and fifty-three people are trying to sleep. Somewhere east, houses are still submerged under freezing water. Elizabeth feels stretched between two times, two realities. Her mind is going to tear, like a sheet of paper.

“I left—again, for London. I could not forget you,” Darcy explains—it is almost a whisper. “I came back home—to Pemberley—but I could not forget you here, either. I saw you in every lane, in every room.”

Elizabeth closes her eyes. She can see it too, her ghost, near the lake, under the lime trees. In the hall, near the eastern window. Down the stairs, looking up at him. She feels like crying.

“I heard about the death of your father. Bingley was already betrothed to Amelia… But I…” Darcy stands up, begins to pace the room. “I knew the house was entailed. I had heard that money was—that you were in reduced circumstances. You had to move away, to give room to your cousin. Miss Bingley informed me with a sort of—glee.”

Elizabeth could see it. Could hear it—Caroline Bingley’s voice. Coming through a fog. It was all very far away.

“I mention the glee,” Darcy adds, “because that moved me. I imagined the worst. I saw your situation as even more dire than it really was, I suppose. I imagined the Miss Bingleys of the world, sneering at your family. So I had to see you.”

Elizabeth is very still. “To propose?”

“Maybe—yes—I do not think I had reached a decision, one way or the other.” He shakes his head. “I suppose I deliberately placed myself where I would not be able to resist my feelings for you.”

“But…” Elizabeth protests. She cannot make sense of his words. Everything is upside down. The geography of the past, falling apart, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. “I… You did not even visit—did you?”

“I did.”

Elizabeth stands up too. “I apologise, Mr Darcy,” she says. “After my father’s death, after Jane’s marriage, I… Everything I remember is hazy.”

She takes a few slow steps. It is raining in her mind. Pieces of time, of reality, falling around her, crashing to the floor. In that tiny cottage, near her aunt Phillips—a cottage they were not sure they could really afford, that they were not sure they could really keep. Her mother, screeching. In the narrow halls, under the low ceilings. Saying—screaming—that it was Elizabeth’s fault Jane had to marry so low (a reverend—rather poor). Screaming that if Elizabeth had accepted Mr Collins, they could have waited. Jane would not have been forced to throw herself away.

Loud accusations. Incessant. Ghastly. True.

“I visited the day after my arrival,” Darcy says, “to offer my condolences to your family. Then a second time—I do not recall the pretext I used. Your mother rang for tea. You were there—in the drawing room—but you did not speak. You were wearing a black bombazine dress—with a little lace, just here…”

He moves his hand in the direction of Elizabeth’s collarbone—the gesture is so tender. So gentle. Sadness is choking her again.

“I am sorry,” she repeats. “My memory is all a haze.”

Her turn to pace the room. Trying not to walk on the pieces (her past, lying on the floor).

“So that is why you agreed to marry me,” she says.

“Yes.”

“After the scandal…” Elizabeth hesitates. “After you found me in that barn… It was clearly an accident—and, even so, after Lydia’s elopement had dishonoured us all, you could not have been expected… You were not honour bound in any way to…a daughter of such a family. All the blame would have fallen on me. And yet…you acceded to my mother’s every demand.”

“I loved you. I still do.”

He cannot keep his eyes away. He is staring at her, studying her with such an intensity as if he wants to see through her skin—straight to the inside of her soul. To see every movement, every thought.

Silence falls.

“But…” Elizabeth massages her temples.

The wedding night.

Darcy’s anger, his insults.

“But then…”

She does not have to say it aloud. He sits down. He seems very tired. “Dearest, I cannot explain myself,” he whispers. She hears despair. Fear. “I… My conduct does not make sense to me, either.”

Two hundred and fifty-three people, trying to sleep downstairs. And both of them, now.

“You have to understand how…miraculous it all was,” he explains. “The barn, your mother’s pleas—they were the perfect pretext. I had been struggling between love and duty, and suddenly, both were aligned.

You were ruined, I had to marry you. But I still…”

Family. Society. Expectations. Circles. The snake, hissing in his ears, telling him how selfish he was.

“There is no excuse for the way I acted that night. I was not thinking straight. I suppose—if I have to find an explanation…” His voice is low, again. “I suppose I believed that if I voiced my misgivings aloud, we would fight. You would be offended, furious. You would tell me how ridiculous I was.”

“You wished to lay it all to rest,” Elizabeth says, slowly. “You wanted to give me your black pebbles of doubt, so I could laugh at them and crush them and reduce them to dust.”

“I… That is a strange way to define it, but, yes. I suppose you are right.”

“And instead, I…”

She stops.

“And instead,” he says, “I crushed you.”

**

The conversation ends there. He stays on the sofa, watching her. She is pacing the room, kicking pieces of time as she goes. Memories changing their skins. Worlds shifting and restructuring. It is an unpleasant process. She sees herself through Darcy’s eyes: a silent, sad maid sitting in a parlour, in a black bombazine dress—whom he wants to save. Whom he wants to hold in his arms and cherish.

He sees her ghost in every lane, and then he saves her, and he gets the ghost.

She returns to that moment in the parlour—that piece of her past that she does not even remember. She sees it like a scene in a play. Her mother is serving tea. Kitty must be out, visiting. Mary must be in the other room, reading—there is no pianoforte for her to play. Mary hates Elizabeth now. Elizabeth not marrying Mr Collins is the reason there is no pianoforte for her to play. After the barn, Elizabeth begs Mary to stay silent—to not go to her mother—but of course Mary does her duty. So much resentment in her sister’s eyes.

But back to that moment (the one Elizabeth does not even remember). The parlour. Darcy’s second visit. She is sitting on the beige sofa, far away from her mother. Far away from him. Maybe it is a sunny day, light filtering through the glass, dust dancing in the air. Her black dress, with a little lace around the collar—Elizabeth is not talking. Darcy is looking at her.

A false image, from a false memory. It changes the past, though. A little. It cannot change her father’s death, her mother’s hatred, her sister’s bitterness. Jane’s loss. But—Elizabeth was so lonely. And now she knows, there was somebody who—who loved her.

Those grey days begin to take on a fragile, silver hue.

“Elizabeth,” Darcy whispers, now, at Pemberley. (He cannot take his eyes off her. Like in that memory. The false one.) “Elizabeth, I can bear anything—your anger, your reproaches—but not your silence. Please, I beg you—tell me what you are thinking.”

There is no anger. Instead, she feels her heart is bursting. She wants to stand up back in that drawing room, in the tiny cottage, in her black dress, with her mother watching. She wants to walk to him and tell him that she is so sorry—for everything that has not yet come to pass—that she did not understand him before but that she understands him now. That they can avoid months of pain; that she wants to love him now.

She looks at him in the present. What he sees in her eyes is enough. He stands up and walks right to her—then stops (love and shyness and fear). She puts her hand on his heart—on the light blue shirt (except, it is not really the light blue shirt, of course).

He covers her hand with his.

**

Their first night is awkward and tender. Everything in the dark. The candle on the side table has burned out. Elizabeth keeps her shift; he keeps his shirt. His gestures are tentative, and she does not know what to do. It does not hurt, but it is so odd. Out of her realm of experience. She has no words, no context for what is happening.

The room is different, she realises, while their bodies are intertwined. He is kissing her. She feels his skin and his weight. Her bedchamber—it was grey—it had been grey for months. Now…well, it is still dark, with the curtains drawn, but—it is different.

He stammers words of love in her ear and she—she holds him so tight.

**

The sun has risen.

She opens her eyes. He is sleeping besides her.

She hears him breathing. Everything is so still. She stays still, too. Moving is a risk. The moment could shatter.

Memories move in the air, a slow silver dance. The sad ones, the new ones. Melancholy. Joy. His words. His embrace.

Images of the night. The closeness and the flesh—again, she has no words—a gentleman’s daughter does not learn those. She wonders whether she will ever get used to this strange, gorgeous, barbaric ritual.

She wonders if women who—fallen women—when they—if they ever become blasé about such intimacy.

She feels like she never will.

**

Elizabeth starts. The sun is warmer—it must be late. Two hundred and fifty-three people and the servants, waiting—her maid and Darcy’s valet are helping downstairs. She rises up from the bed as silently as she can. She dresses as silently as she can. She braids and twists and pins her hair as silently as she can.

The result is…commendable. Twenty-one years at Longbourn, five sisters, one maid.

“You look beautiful.” His voice.

“You must be in love, Mr Darcy.” She laughs. No jewels; she is wearing an old dark-purple dress. The fabric can survive sick children, stew, and crying widows.

She sits on the bed. To smile at him. He grabs her by the waist. “You are not thinking of leaving, I hope.”

“It seems I cannot.” She lies down on the cover, alongside him. Rising on one elbow, studying his face. She kisses him, once, on the lips.

“You must understand, I would like to leave,” she states. “I very much desire to speak to Mrs Reynolds about mildew, sickness, and soup. But would a dutiful wife disobey her husband?”

She thinks he is going to answer in kind, that he will joke along, but he does not. He keeps watching her.

“I am so happy,” he says, slowly.

She is very conscious of the stillness of the room. Of the rays of the sun, on the bed.

“I should not be,” he continues. “People have lost everything—lost loved ones. It will be years till they recover. The estate will suffer substantial losses. It will be years till we recover.”

“I shall be by your side,” Elizabeth says.

She feels sadness again—tenderness too strong in her heart, the desire to shield him against the future and the past, against exhaustion and heartbreak. She caresses his cheek; she touches her lips once more. Afterwards, his eyes are a little too bright. He puts his hand on her nape, draws her closer.

Kisses are silver and endless.

“Still, I do not feel guilty,” he says. “My thoughts are too full of you.”

Elizabeth reflects for a while. “The flood is not your fault,” she muses, after a moment. He looks at her ponderingly. “You feel everything is your responsibility,” she explains. “But this disaster is the will of providence. It is not mismanagement.”

“It is mismanagement,” he grumbles. “But not mine.” Elizabeth heard it downstairs—the dams, it seems, were not well maintained.

“That is why you can allow yourself to be happy in this moment.”

“Your mind works in bizarre ways,” he whispers. Before drawing her close again.

**

She goes downstairs. She enters the summer drawing room. The large glass doors are open; they connect the east parlour and the music room beyond. Elizabeth freezes.

The image is so striking, she can hardly breathe.

Colours, inching closer.

This part of the house was flooded during the first rising. The waters have receded, leaving everything covered in mud—a lost, monochrome world.

This morning, clean-up began.

On the right, greyish beige, everywhere. To the left, servants moping and wiping and washing and polishing—exposing golden oak floors, blue sofas, red tapestries, lavender walls.

Colours, eating the grey away.

Metaphor, embodied.

**

Her husband comes down. He stands behind her; he puts his arms around her waist again. Together, they watch. Mrs Reynolds walks through the room, giving instructions to an army of helpers. She seems exhausted, and it is only ten.

She hardly notices them.

“You know,” Elizabeth whispers to her husband, when the housekeeper has gone, “you are right. My mind works in bizarre ways indeed.” She hesitates. “I… Sometimes, I see the world differently.”

He hesitates too. Then, “So do I.”

He tells her about the circles. She tells him about the colours.