Chapter Text
The window was lightly frosted, obscuring the view over what was once her home. If one spoke technically it was still her home, but in her heart she knew it would never be the same.
Elizabeth found she didn't mind the cold; usually it had her pulling a shawl around her shoulders and teasing her husband about the drawbacks of having, as her mother would have called them, such spacious rooms. Today, however, it seemed to suit her mood.
She was looking down upon a coffin. Well, the hearse, but it was impossible not to visualize what was inside, even from this distance.
It was unthought-of that a woman would follow the coffin from the church to the graveyard. Women did not attend funerals.
Elizabeth, ever impertinent, wished to buck that trend.
Inside was a man she loved with all her heart; how could she not want to never let it from her sight?
Of course, he would not have wanted her to make a spectacle and cling to the coffin weeping and wailing. She did not want that either; she did not want pitying eyes turned on her by everyone who knew of her loss. What the loss of such a man meant to her, and her family.
So she waited. She stood stock still in that room, overlooking the grounds and thought of how long she'd been mistress of all she saw. How she had never dreamed she would ever get the chance to be loved by and love in return that honourable and decent man.
It should not have happened -- not after Lydia. But she should have trusted in the generosity of spirit that so often resided in the hearts of men. Jane had so often chided her over her negative view of others, her making sport of her neighbours and human folly. She'd become so entangled in that forest that she'd lost sight of the trees: that there was human goodness in the world. Those who would not turn their backs on friends, people who would open their hearts to others -- all those truly good things in the world that Jane saw in everyone and Elizabeth had always thought were merely illusions.
With the benefit of hindsight, Elizabeth now she'd wished she'd told him every day how much she appreciated and valued him. Of course he'd known. How could he not know? He'd always said how expressive her eyes were. They would tell him the moment he'd stepped inside the house after a ride that she'd found his coat stained with ink, or they'd tell him that their son had spoken his first word. Surely he had seen her care for him in them as well?
Elizabeth had not believed in their kind of love. It was such a different love than she'd experienced before she'd met him. She'd told Jane that she would only marry for the deepest love. She'd meant it, but she'd not known of what she spoke.
That conversation between sisters had been about an idealized form of love, one that didn't really exist. What she and her husband had had was real. It was the kind of love that supported them through their days, and brought comfort and peace.
Elizabeth gave a small smile; of course it was not devoid of passion, quite the opposite. How could any relationship with her at its core be anything less than fiery and challenging?
With that thought, she turned from the window and slipped from the room. She deftly avoided the gathering of villagers and family alike -- at least those able to come to her side when they'd read her halting express. The smudged ink and tears should have alerted them to the seriousness of her missive even if she wondered whether they could have made out the words she found so hard to put on paper.
Why had he gone riding? He'd loved riding; Elizabeth secretly suspected he liked the idea that his wife was not proficient on horseback. It allowed them their own space. She'd had interests that never interested him. The difference in their degree of sociableness alone meant that she'd enjoy activities that would only mortify him.
Again, one of those idealised notions of love: that the happy couple would always wish to be by the side of each other. That nothing could part them. They needed nothing when they had each other. Elizabeth had found that was all folly. She could she could readily support absences of her husband; whether they be measured by the hour or the day or the week, without even a twinge.
It did not mean she loved him any less, indeed after attending to one of Jane's lyings in, all she could think about in the carriage was how she longed to see him and share with him all that she could not in a letter. But separations, happy separations, meant she was still Elizabeth. She was not merely a wife or one half of one entity. She was her own person.
Her musings carried her along the path she knew so well to that familiar church. She'd found the spot and sunk to the ground.
It all seemed to mean nothing now, except for possibly the fact that at least she had not disintegrated on the spot when she'd seen him brought in lifeless. If she was one of those couples immortalised in books she would have died with him.
She was determined not to be like that; they were connected but she could survive without him. It did not feel like that at the moment but she knew it to be true. She had everything to live for, after all.
Except, nothing was there. No headstone marking his achievements and she felt empty.
Why had she expected a monument to miraculously appear the moment the last shovel full of dirt had been -- her shoulders heaved with the effort to stop the sobs mounting in her throat.
"Mama?"
That voice, calm but hesitant, made her double her efforts to still her countenance. After all he was her everything, he and his sisters.
"Thomas," she gave him a thin smile.
"You should not be here."
"Do not deny me this," she replied.
"There is nothing here," Thomas looked angry and confused. At the tender age of seventeen he was the man of their family and he had been raised to believe in that. Elizabeth would not be able to shoulder a burden that Thomas would not share and she was not sure she was ready to hear him give her the type of instruction he thought that an adult man should give his mother. He was still her baby.
"There is everything here, Thomas," came another voice that understood everything too well, having buried her husband some years previously.
Thomas looked like he might spar with his aunt but he gave into cold politeness, so like his father, in the face of the unfamiliarity of the situation and the feelings with which he was grappling.
"Yes, Aunt."
Elizabeth rose and kissed her sister on the cheek, "Thank you for ... "
"Lizzy, do not thank me."
Elizabeth thought again of the many times' she had thought badly of her sister-in law's manner; her lack of strong will. She had been so kind to her and her children. She knew what Elizabeth was thinking, because she had thought it too; Elizabeth had not given her that credit before and now she could only reflect upon her own behaviour as a sister.
"What shall I do?" whispered Elizabeth, "I am so lost."
"You have me..."
"It is all right, Aunt, I have already --" Thomas sounded convinced that he had solved all the family's problems but trailed off in the face of his aunt's searching look.. Elizabeth's heart broke for him, but she could do nothing in the face of her heart breaking, too.
"Come, Thomas."
Elizabeth let out a breath she was not even aware she had been holding as she watched Thomas submit to his aunt's command. It should be her comforting him, but she did not know how.
Elizabeth did not know how long she stood there watching and contemplating, some unquantifiable period of time, until she heard footsteps behind her. It would be someone coming to fetch her inside from the cold.
"I'm so sorry, Lizzy. I'm so sorry."
Elizabeth turned to see Kitty, her coat firmly buttoned. Elizabeth stood for a moment just staring, the tears she had almost contained, straining to burst forth once again.
"I'm sorry, I am late."
"No," said Elizabeth, "I am so glad you came."
"Do not say that, Lizzy. Why should I not come?"
"I'm sorry. But it was good of you to come. I know you -- " It was the truth; Elizabeth had been surprised to see her. It had been some years since they'd set eyes on each other, and many more since they had spoken to each other more than simple pleasantries. Elizabeth was not even sure who had told her of her loss.
"It is in the past, Lizzy. I wish I'd been a better sister to you."
Elizabeth shook her head. How that statement should be the reverse! "I think, with my own children, I see the pain caused by our parents and their favourites, I cannot blame the rifts between us -- between all of us, by that alone, but ... "
"I do not think this is the time to rake over old troubles, Lizzy."
"Not even if it would distract me from what -- " Elizabeth's gaze had turned back to the fresh dirt.
"You and the children are welcome to stay with us --"
"I could not impose."
"It would not be an imposition. Jane too -- "
That at least explained who had told Kitty. She could see Jane conspiring, although she would never call it that, to discover who should take the poor nestlings in. For that was how she felt, alone and abandoned.
"Of course any decision must be made amongst you all, but we love you, Lizzy. You must not shut yourself off from us anymore. I have forgiven. I am not even sure there was much to forgive."
Elizabeth shook her head mutely.
"I have a letter for you." It seemed such a non sequitur that Lizzy could not help but blink rapidly. She searched her sister's face and only saw a sort of resolve. The kind of resolve made instantaneously because one was not sure what one should do. Kitty had never had a great amount of resolve as a girl, but she'd grown into the kind of woman who once she'd made a decision stuck with it.
"I do not know if it will anger you or -- " Kitty held out a sealed letter with a finely gloved hand.
Lizzy took it and stared at the writing. She knew that writing and her heart sank.
"Mr Darcy? Mr Darcy has written to me?"