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“Do you know, when I woke upstairs after Dr Gordon dosed me with laudanum, I thought for a moment I might be in heaven—all I could smell was lavender and you.”

Lizzy blushed and then felt very silly that Darcy’s innocent remark could have evoked such a reaction when they had been living as man and wife for weeks. “You are roasting me!” she said, half joking, half in defence.

“Not at all!” remarked Darcy calmly. “And I feel much the same way now. This room is so evocative of the scent of you. It is steeped in the floorboards; wafts up when I fling myself back on the mattress. It seems I am almost floating above the sheets. It is quite a heady feeling. Tell me, what does your bedchamber look like?”

Lizzy described the furniture, the placement of the windows and even the ivy growing up the outside of the building that needed to be periodically peeled back from the window frame.

“Ah! This is ideal!” said Darcy. “Imagine... I could have ridden over from Netherfield in the evenings. There would have been no need for me to cry out ‘Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Let down your hair!’ because there was perfectly good ivy for me to climb!”

“You are forgetting Jane.”

“Well, she would have had to absent herself to the dressing room.”

“Mary would have been thrilled about that.”

“You are spoiling the narrative,” he admonished. “Then I would have climbed over the sill and grasped you passionately before carrying you to the bed and doing this...”

“Darcy!” exclaimed Elizabeth, coming up for air and completely abandoning the gentler ‘Fitzwilliam’ she typically employed in conversation with him. “I should blow out the candle!”

“Hang the candle,” said Darcy, not letting go.

In the morning Elizabeth woke first and spent several contented minutes watching her husband’s face in repose, lit by the soft light filtering through the muslin curtains. How handsome he was with his slightly hooked nose! So different to his altered appearance when she had first encountered him after his illness only months ago! Gone was the sallow skin and the hollows beneath his eyes. His skin had a healthy pink cast to it and his flesh looked plump once more. When Darcy’s lashes flickered open, she gave him a gentle peck on his cheek and bid him good morning.

“Do you know,” she said, continuing their previous conversation as if it had been seconds ago, “your first visit to Gracechurch Street was not the only time you have fainted on me...”

“I cannot recall another,” said Darcy.

“Do you not remember coming off your horse at Netherfield?”

“Certainly, and I never thanked you properly for finding me, so thank you, my dearest. But being knocked out does not count as fainting.”

“Of course not, you were out cold when your dog led me to you, but you woke when I was tending you and tried to kiss me.”

“Good Lord!” said Darcy starting up to prop himself on his elbow. “No wonder your uncle wanted me to marry you!”

“I did not tell my uncle, or anyone else for that matter.”

“You did not?”

“No. Well it hardly seemed fair. Clearly you were not in your right mind. You seemed to think that I was your mother.”

“Oh!” said Darcy, thinking on this for a moment.

“You appeared to believe you were about to be tucked up in bed.”

“Well, that seems innocent enough. So, what did I do? Pucker up and request a kiss?”

“No! You grabbed me and tried to plant a kiss on my lips. I struggled but you quite overpowered me. If you had not fainted dead away in the nick of time I would not have escaped.”

“Heavens!” said Darcy, unsure what he could say in his defence.

“In fact,” said Elizabeth. “After what happened in Mayfair, it seems overpowering young women to steal a kiss seems almost a habit with you.”

Darcy, who had never thought himself particularly licentious, was chastened. “What can I say but that I am sorry? Know that you are the only woman I have ever taken such liberties with. You seem to have rather a dramatic effect on me.”

Elizabeth laughed and they fell to kissing again.

The Gouldings paid an afternoon call to Longbourn on the Wednesday of the Darcys’ visit. The gentlemen arrived alone, Miss Goulding having married in March. The Gouldings’ lack of a female companion for the call might have raised eyebrows in other circles but it was well known in the area that the Gardiner sisters had resumed their old routine of visiting each other on alternate days and that Mrs Philips would thus be at Longbourn to act as chaperone. Both gentlemen were excessively glad that their call coincided with the visit by the eldest Bennet sisters. They congratulated Elizabeth on her marriage, which they had been apprised of by The Post. Darcy took tea with the Gouldings before begging their pardon and retreating to Mr Bennet’s study so that he might continue working on a mathematical proof he had started that morning. His behaviour so reminded Lizzy of her father that she had to repress a smirk behind her teacup.