“The morning with me?”
“Lizzy, the way I drink is not normal. I know that now. It changed me, and I was tired of not being me and being a different person; you made me remember who I am. I read a lot – drinking took that away from me, took my concentration – but I’ve read so much. I read your book,” he saw her blush slightly, “it was brilliant.”
He reached for her hand and was happy to note that she offered it willingly. It was good to feel the grasp of her fingers in his hand and held them like he was a little boy holding onto the string of a shiny balloon that he never wanted to let go.
“Lizzy, I didn’t stop drinking because of you, but what you said made me not want to start again. It made me realise that there are other things that are more important.” He could hear his heartbeat in his head, knew he had to be honest. “And I had to come back and tell you all of this so that when I did you would know.”
When she spoke, her voice was small and unsure, and there was a wobble to it.
“What would I know?”
“It was all for you, Lizzy. I needed to be the man worthy of you. I think I am now.”
“You always have been.” she said. “It just took me a while to realise it.”
Standing close to him now, she could see the straight little scar above his eyebrow that he got on a zip wire during Freshers Week, the dimpled mark on his forehead from where he had chickenpox, the red spot on his lip where she knew he had been biting it because he was nervous; all of the little parts of his story written across his face.
“Benn, I made a promise to myself that I would tell you how I felt, because, I don’t want you as a best friend. I want your laugh, and your grumpy moods – because I love the way your face scrunches up when you’re cross. I want to support you in what you want to do, I want us to be a real team – and that can be making your tea for you, or watching the cricket with you, or travelling around the world with you. But I want you to end each day knowing that I have your back, because I know you have mine.”
She scanned his face, could see the turn of his mouth twitching slightly, and she continued, knowing that once everything she felt for him spilled out, she would never be able to gather it back in and hide it away again.
“I want your cold feet on my thighs in bed, and to hold you as you fall asleep, I want us to work on things together and things apart. I want all of this. I want all of you, the bad bits, the good bits, the infuriating bits. Everything. I think I’ve always been yours, and I think you’ve always been mine too. It was just a question of timing.”
Lizzy held her breath, she had never done this before, never been so open and honest. Maybe it was genetics, or maybe it was simply that she feared rejection. She didn’t know the reasons, but she did know that she had spread out her dreams under Benn Williams’s feet, and she was hoping that he wouldn’t tread on them.
There was a moment of silence, but then he smiled, a massive complete all across his face kind of smile.
“I want that too! I want your bedhead and your sleepy yawns, I want your cleverness and your silliness – you are the most amazing woman I know. I want us to travel to places that we’ve never been to and I want to make hundreds of thousands of new memories with you, and maybe even make some babies with you. I want you to meet my kids, I want you to meet my mum!”
He wondered if he was getting a bit carried away with himself, and he knew that there were people looking at them now.
“You have burned in me like a furious fire for this whole time…and I’m sorry,” he squeezed her hand, “I’m so sorry for all this time that we have wasted, for all this time we could have already had.”
She closed her eyes and dipped her head, placing her forehead against his shoulder, breathing him in. As the tingles passed through him, he thought of all the missed opportunities, and he knew that he couldn’t – that he wouldn’t - let anything come between them again. There was a look, an understanding, a promise.
“Elizabeth Darcy, I want a future with you, whatever that entails. If you have a plan, or if we just make it up as we go along…You see, I’m not the way you found me, I’ll never be the same.”
She was looking at him with a confused look on her face and he immediately felt as if he had done something wrong.
“That’s Hall & Oates.”
The orange lady with the massive smile laughed, “Mr Darcy is trying to woo you with Hall & Oates?? Hey, Paula!” she shouted down the stairs, “Benn Williams is trying to chat up Lady Darcy with Hall & Oates!”
“What?” He looked confusedly from Lizzy to the orange woman.
“It’s a song!” The lady began to sing, slightly loudly and off-key. “What I want you got, and it might be hard to handle…”
The recognition streaked across his face and he laughed at himself, unable to stop smiling at Lizzy. The orange lady grabbed him for a quick selfie before grinning excitedly at them both and shuffling off to the long gallery.
“I told you I was bad at this,” he laughed.
“I think you’re awesome at this,” she beamed back, “and you know I’m never wrong.”
“Neither am I, so that bodes very well for the future!”
She leaned in towards him, stretching up on tip toes to kiss him on the nose.
“I love you, Lizzy, I mean it. Proper love, not acting.”
There. He had finally said it to her face, rather than practising it in his rear-view mirror. Now all he could do was watch and wait.
“Bennet Fitzwilliam, regular man on the street, I suppose because you were so sincere…” she teased, “that I should tell you that I love you too… and I’ve said it out loud now, so it’s real and everything.”
A massive grin – his famous Hollywood smile – spread across his face.
“Do you hear that?” He shouted over the bannister to the visitors below. “She loves me!”
There was cheering and clapping from the gathered audience as Lizzy threw her head back laughing. The sound fell like sunshine into his soul as he pulled her close and kissed her on the staircase of the house that played a part in both of their histories, his heart full of love and hope, and his arms wrapped tightly around his dearest, loveliest Elizabeth.
“Do you think they’re going to stay there all day,” Paula said to her friend.
“If that were me,” the older lady laughed, “I think I’d stay there for the rest of my life!”
Epilogue
Lizzy gently padded through the hallway, the stone floor warm against her feet on the summer morning – she walked past the sideboard with its collection of pictures in a mismatch of frames; her favourite was the one of her and Benn at her dad’s wedding. They were standing together, his head pressed gently against hers, her arms around his shoulders, his hands on her waist. It was a perfect moment of tenderness and happiness, captured accidentally and now printed forever. Another showed Harriet at her College Ball, dressed in emerald green and gold, next to her Imogen was throwing her leg up in the air, smiling with glee; pictures of Esther and Anya, no-longer little girls but teenagers blessed with their mothers looks and their fathers humour; Joyce and Hugh at the villa in Cap Ferrat sipping champagne and looking fabulous; Charlie and his boys on the balcony at Pemberley, and at the front in pride of place was a small photograph of Lizzy and her mother, taken at the house in Chelsea the day before her fourth birthday.
Joyce Hutchinson retired at the end of the season. She left Pemberley under the watchful eye of a new management team, who loved the house almost as much as she did. Hugh took her travelling and they spent summers in France, surrounded by their blended family of children and grandchildren. Eventually Mrs Darcy got used to be called ‘Your Grace’, but she did thoroughly reprimand her husband once when he nipped to Harrods for a box of teabags. She never got used to wearing a tiara at formal events, but she did get used to being loved deeply by the man she adored every single day. Their wedding had been small and simple, held in a semi-private part of the garden which
seemed to have been designed to naturally lend itself to the occasion; Joyce had walked down the aisle with her sons on either side as the scent of the rose garden planted by Lady Anne Darcy floated towards them.
“Hello, you,” he said, unable to believe they were finally doing this.
“It’s about time,” she laughed, as she took his hand.
Later in the evening, as the families sat in the marquee that had been erected on the west front lawn, Charlie would declare that this was a love story that had been forty years in the making. Joyce had smiled at Hugh, all at once the reverent twelve-year-old who had visited Pemberley with a papery guidebook and now as Lady Darcy, her own history now written into that of the house that she loved – not just as the woman who had managed it for so long but now as part of the family who had built it. Pemberley had always been magical, an enchanted castle hiding away in the peaks and valleys and as Hugh pulled her onto the dancefloor, she knew that whilst the journey to get to this point had not been easy, she was stepping into her destiny knowing that every choice had brought her to this moment.
They danced under the twinkling fairy-lights hanging from the roof of the marquee as their loved ones stood cheering from the sidelines. She saw Gareth and James, the two boys who had grown into men almost overnight, both fathers now to adorable children; Charles and Joseph Darcy – both handsome and so very tall, looking like their father; Harriet, the girl she had known since birth, blossoming into a true descendant of the Darcy women who had gone before her; Imogen, stronger than she appeared and radiant in the evening light. And then, happy, laughing and completely incandescent, there was Elizabeth, being held tightly by the handsome actor who was looking at her as if she was the most precious thing in the world.
Sam and Imogen broke up just after Hugh’s wedding, but they remained firm friends and were often found wandering up to the Cage together or hanging out in the Ranger station. It was only when Imogen got accepted onto a course at a college in Preston that Sam realised what he felt for her, declaring himself in front of everyone at the Staff Summer Party after two fruit ciders and a sambuca. Imogen wasn’t sure what she felt but decided that she was happy enough in Derbyshire – her boarding school accent even gaining a soft northern twang, which she quite liked.
Imogen fully believed that fate had smiled upon her that terrible evening, when tired and empty, she hadn’t realised that she was drifting off into the light before being brought crashing back to earth; she was meant to return to Pemberley, was meant to start the new chapter of her story in the historic lands that had belonged to her family for centuries, and now she had a new job there, helping to protect and preserve it for years to come. Welcome home, she thought, every time she crossed the railway bridge and juddered over the cattle grid, not just the place where she lived, but the place where her heart resided.
Harriet loved the little flat at the top of the tower and didn’t see any point in moving her life across the county in cardboard boxes for nine months of the year, when she could easily commute to the Textile Design course that she was undertaking at the University of Derby. With the approval of her mum, she changed her name to Darcy-Wickham. Granny Wickham had never known how much her mum had pushed Matthew to put his name on her birth certificate, how much she had wanted him to recognise the baby who was his mirror image as his own, and he hadn’t realised how much he had wanted it until it was too late.
Now nearly eighteen years later, Harriet embraced it and the family branches of the Wickhams and the Darcys became more permanently entangled and written down officially on the Darcy family tree. Living together in the small flat, Harriet and Imogen were often seen driving a little too fast down the driveway in the yellow Mini, singing Wannabe by the Spice Girls and drinking coffee out of travel mugs as they headed towards campus.
Matthew stayed in Malibu with Tamsin, her fame in the US eclipsing his own and reducing him in some ways to the position of holding her handbag whilst she pouted and smiled for the cameras. She was still devoted to him and, despite the reservations of a few close friends, they worked as a couple, with enough love and mutual respect to build something truly solid. He spent lazy days writing, giving himself a few years off, wanting to spend time with his children.
He was as surprised as anyone when his little pet project, written in ten days and filmed on a budget by a small production company, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and even more surprised when he won. Linda, still his stalwart and confidante, asked for more money, better benefits and a bigger office, already anxious for the busy years ahead.
Maggie and Pete welcomed their daughter, Jeannie, named for her nanna, into the world at ten past midnight on Christmas Day morning. Pete was instantly besotted, and Maggie would later confide to Lizzy after copious amounts of Pinot G that she didn’t realise how much she loved him until she saw how much he loved their daughter. Maggie took a senior role in the northern Austenation offices and the family moved back to Lambton into a cottage that had once been occupied by a Bridget Wickham, which seemed like too much of huge coincidence for the whole move not to have been predestined. Pete rolled his eyes at his wife and put the kettle on for the removals men.
Benn finally won an Academy Award for his role as Oscar Menzies. Audiences and critics agreed that it had been his best work and he semi-seriously declared in his speech that his career had now peaked. Over the next few months he read fewer scripts, took on less work and decided that he had spent too much of his life away on location. He went back to theatre; it had always been his first love and there was something about standing on a stage in front of an audience and feeling the immediate emotional response that kept him safe and grounded in a way that hiding on film sets in trailers had never been able to do.
He found interesting and unique tales and constructed narratives that truly made people think, he started to direct. It was his production of ‘Cat’s Paw’ by a new writer, Louisa Garrett, that caught the attention of critics – it moved to the larger theatres of Manchester, then the West End, before winning an Olivier Award and professional acclaim for the man whose portrayal of Mr Darcy had been called ‘oversentimental and brooding’ by the film critic in the Daily Mail.
Despite the success, Benn continued to base himself at the small theatre in Buxton, where people gradually forgot that he had ever been in the movies, where his face blended into the crowd on the high street and people only occasionally asked him if he had been on Coronation Street. He also loved the convenience of being able to commute from the house hidden near the entrance of the Pemberley estate, never too far from the woman who would hold his hand at night whenever he reached for it.
Lizzy found that it was always a lot of fun when the man of your dreams was in your bed, or kissing you on the staircase in some grand, romantic gesture like the film star he was, but it was always a bit disconcerting when you realised that he liked to leave dirty socks on the bedroom floor, loved cricket to a level of boredom and would argue about practically anything if you let him get away with it, especially if he thought it would get you riled.
Sometimes he would swan about the house in a majestic manner, huffing and puffing; she would laugh with Esther and Anya which got him even grumpier, before sending him off to his Man Cave at the bottom of the garden whilst they ordered pizza and watched a film without him. He would return a few hours later and she would pull him into his place on the sofa, throw her legs over him and stroke the curl behind his ear until he nuzzled her gently and they would go to bed. The girls would roll their eyes at each other and turn up the volume on the television.
She never did go back to a law office but did write another book. And another, and another. Her books become bestsellers. One was turned into a TV series, and there was talk of a film. Lizzy found that the ideas came to her quickly, and she found inspiration around the world as she travelled far and wide with Benn, following in the footsteps of his great great great grandma. It was a trip that the BBC were desper
ate to film, but an offer they declined. Some things were meant to be private and this was definitely one of them.
The happy couple would go for long, meandering walks across the parklands watching as the wind brushed through the grass, the light catching the rustling blades; the spectral image of imagined rabbits darting across the moorland. Laughing, talking, giggling they would walk back to their house in time for dinner with their dog, Jethro, who had been adopted by them after a heated discussion where the extended Fitzwilliam-Darcy-Wickham family all had differing opinions.
The kitchen would be filled with children and sisters, all gathered around the large table, eating and playing games until Lizzy would lose too much money at Monopoly and tell them all to go home, Harriet shrieking with laughter, Anya defending her in French, Esther kicking her dad under the table whilst he called his girlfriend a bad sport, and she stormed off in a huff. He would later find her reading a book, placating her with coffee and cake, and by doing the washing up, which was, he found, always the quickest way to her heart.
It was nearly midnight amid the celebrations of the Pemberley New Year’s Eve Ball when, casually and without ceremony, he presented her with a sapphire ring that had belonged to Mabel Darcy and removed from the Darcy family vaults for this very occasion. For a man who had done this before he felt strangely nervous. He knew that he would never be her firsts in so many things. He knew that he had come too late, when all these things had already been woven into her, were already lines written in the book that he had read, and he loved the woman she was because of all the firsts that had already been, but he wanted her lasts in whatever form they came. His gaze had never wavered as she nodded yes, and they kissed until the clock stuck twelve and the tune of Auld Lang Syne echoed out into the courtyard. Benn knew that the happiness he had been looking for was stood before him in sparkly bumblebee shoes.
They celebrated their nuptials in the small chapel at Pemberley the following May, much to the delight of the press who reported ‘Mr Darcy and Lady Darcy’s’ wedding alongside a picture of Colin Firth, obviously. They honeymooned in Paris and nine months later found they were starting all over again
Becoming Lady Darcy Page 48
