"You have a very great lot of dresses."

There were more silks and sashes and muslins and Cashmirs and petticoats, and every form of clothing in the giant closet than Elizabeth had ever seen in one place in her life, including in a dressmaker's shop.

"I know! Yet I never have anything to wear! It is absurd."

Elizabeth laughed. "What do you want to appear as?"

"I do not know — some of these may fit you, Lizzy. I have not thrown them out as I kept getting taller and taller. Quite not the fashion anymore. I hear that everywhere."

"You are very much a fashionable figure for me."

"Yes, but I'm too tall. And we aren't even certain yet that I have stopped growing."

Elizabeth grinned. "What you need is a few simple pieces you like very much — that is the key to how Jane and I always look so beautiful. We do not have more than a half dozen really good dresses, but the ones we do have complement us exceedingly well. Yours… well these are almost immodest—"

"The ones Mrs. Younge suggested," Georgiana agreed with a disgusted expression.

"If you never intend to touch them, you should offer them out as charity."

Georgiana hugged Elizabeth. "I can do that? I felt as if… it would be somehow wasteful to simply get rid of dresses."

"Yes, many people like to have a chance to touch and use finer silks."

"Then I will do that!"

"And these," Elizabeth pointed to the other section of the closet, the one with the dresses she had seen Georgiana wear several times. "They are…"

"Dowdy! Too modest. And no je ne sais quoi. Not like your clothes. You wear everything so perfect."

"Yes… hmmmm. They can be trimmed into something that I think will fit you very well."

"Trimmed… can the modiste in the town do this, or must we return to London, and—"

Elizabeth laughed. "Have you never modified your own dresses?"

"No! Oh this is so exciting."

"It can be a great deal of work — though if any of your maids are versed in fine needlework we can ask them to help and direct them."

Georgiana almost bounced quiveringly. "So exciting. So exciting. So exciting."

"Now which dress should we work on — there is always a chance we make a mistake and ruin the dress so I think this one." Elizabeth pulled a little forward a finely cut woolen dress which she had never seen Georgiana wear, and that showed every sign of having been chosen for the girl by a clergyman's widow: Specifically Mrs. Annesley. Georgiana's companion was a woman for whose character Elizabeth had the highest respect, but she was not a master of fashion.

"You can fix it so it is not ugly!"

"We can fix it!"

"Lizzy! You are the best friend I have ever had!"

Such a statement required that Elizabeth hug her dear friend tightly. "You are a very dear, dear friend — I refuse to insult other dear friends by claiming them less than you. But you are as dear to me as anyone else I have ever known."

"Really?" Georgiana glowed.

"I would be very happy to switch you with Lydia."

Georgiana laughed. "That isn't a very surprising choice. I am much sweeter than Lydia."

They smiled at each other.

Such happiness and intensity of friendship required a moment of panic to follow.

There were sharp knocks on the door, and a strained voice very familiar to both of them came through the wood. "Georgie, Georgie," Mr. Darcy said, "I have just arrived back from searching for Elizabeth. Might I enter?"

Elizabeth's eyes widened. She frantically shook her head as Georgiana opened her mouth. "Don't tell him," she said in a rushed whisper.

"But—" Georgie said back as Elizabeth clasped her hand over Georgie's mouth.

Elizabeth looked frantically around.

Darcy knocked on the door again, "Georgie, I was told you were within?"

"I… I am fine. A moment, brother."

"Into the closet!" Georgiana whispered frantically.

Elizabeth opened the door and went to hide within, but drew back. She said very quietly shaking her head, "I'd wrinkle the dresses."

Georgiana tensely whispered back, "Don't be ridiculous."

Elizabeth dropped to the floor and then shimmied backwards under Georgiana's bed. The girl's eyes widened and then she grinned and with an expression of general mischief once Elizabeth had fully hidden under the bed. She opened the door to her brother.

Fitzwilliam Darcy's legs walked into the room. That was all Elizabeth could see of him as he paced restlessly.

Georgiana queried with a smile in her voice, "I am glad to see you so sudden — we got no note that you would return. Unexpected."

Darcy continued to pace, giving Elizabeth an excellent view of his tall riding boots, and sometimes, when he stepped close to the window on the opposite side of the room from the bed, she could also see his tan riding breeches wrapped around his finely shaped calves. The area under the bed was not in fact dusty, there were no spider webs, and everything seemed entirely clean.

When she escaped her present predicament, Elizabeth needed to deliver her compliments to the maid who cleaned Georgiana's room, and to Mrs. Reynolds for her fine instruction and management of the staff. In her childhood visits to beneath beds in Longbourn during games of sardines, she had discovered that their beds did certainly have dust and spider webs, and similar matters that a girl of eight, or at least Elizabeth at the age of eight, delighted in.

"I was advised," Darcy said at last, "to return to Pemberley by Richard. I cannot find her. She has disappeared entirely. And until she chooses to be found, I cannot find her."

"Richard?" Georgiana had a sly tone to her voice, and Elizabeth suspected that Georgiana had sent her favorite cousin the knowledge of Elizabeth's presence at Pemberley.

"The man absolutely refused to help me look for Elizabeth in any practical way." Darcy paced back to the bed and sat on it, his weight making the mattress to press Elizabeth uncomfortably into the ground so that she could barely breathe. In compensation she was able to look at the back of his ankles from five inches distance. Elizabeth rather liked the trade.

From how Darcy settled himself, Elizabeth thought he was putting his face in his hands.

"Fitzwilliam," Georgiana said with what Elizabeth recognized as a faux angry tone, "I cannot understand why you are so committed to finding Lizzy — I mean Miss Bennet. Miss Bennet. She left you! With no provocation, no… reason to leave you, when you desperately wanted to marry her, and kept telling her how much you wanted to marry. And then she left you because…"

"Oh Georgiana! I wronged Elizabeth. You shall never believe, seeing me as you do, how I failed the woman who I love most."

"Fitzwilliam, what did you do! There is nothing you could say which would justify a girl choosing to not marry you, after she accepted your offer."

The girl was laying it on a bit thick. Elizabeth would need to coach her a bit more upon subtlety.

Darcy caught no sense that Georgiana was making fun of him as he groaned and stood up. "Georgie, I… I told her I did not want to marry her." Darcy walked to the window and stared out. Or at least Elizabeth thought he did, as after all she could barely see the tops of his knees.

He sighed.

Elizabeth's heart seized. What would he say next?

"But you do?" Georgiana's almost worried voice caught Elizabeth's feel of anxiety as well.

"Desperately," Darcy replied with a sigh. "I want to marry her more desperately than anything I have ever wanted. More than… Jove, I have been a fool. Such a fool. From the very first a fool. I cannot tell you the particulars, but… from the very first I pretended to myself I did not wish to marry Elizabeth, when she is the most beautiful, the most perfect, the sweetest, the kindest, the most honorable, the most clever, the most — I love her. If I can only find her, and tell her."

Elizabeth's heart pattered quickly. Did Darcy truly think this of her?

Georgiana cheerily asked, "Imagine Elizabeth is here, right now in this room, what would you say to her?"

"I would say to her that I ardently admire and love her — No, I already said that once to her and then I broke her heart — the kindest, sweetest, most tender heart in the world."

Darcy sat on the bed again. For a long time. Five or six strained breaths. Elizabeth really would have preferred it if he planned out sweet things to say while not sitting on top of her.

He stood up again. "She is my choice. Always my choice. My one true choice. I would tell her that I was wrong. My judgement before was ill judged, every word I spoke against her family, her position, and about the importance of seeking wealth and connections. It made me no better than a Candlebacon, I mean a Wickham. I would tell her that I know better now, and that if she would only let me, I would spend my entire life proving to her that I choose her."

"Awwww." Georgiana's voice swooned. "That was beautifully said."

And then Elizabeth sneezed.

"Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!"

Whatever got into her nose took three powerful, and slightly painful, trapped in tight conditions under the bed, sneezes to clear.

When she stopped sneezing, she found herself staring from inches away into Mr. Darcy's clear beautiful eyes as he'd knelt down to look under the bed.

Darcy had imagined many times what it would be like when he at last met Elizabeth again. How she would look at him, what she would say, how he would convince her to marry him. The fantasy of finding Elizabeth had been one he'd contemplated many, many times.

On occasion this fantasy ended with both of them sans vêtements.

However, despite having imagined meeting Elizabeth at least a hundred times in the past month, he had never, not even once, contemplated the possibility that she would be hidden under his sister's bed.

The two rather awkwardly stared at each other. Some deeply ingrained instinct made him say, "Miss Bennet! How do you do?"

"More passion!" Georgiana exclaimed.

Elizabeth coughed again, and she tried to slither forward, and extended her hand out towards him. "I cannot get myself free of this bed."

"I told you to hide in the closet," Georgiana said, kneeling next to Darcy. "Who cares if the clothes get crumpled?"

Darcy took Elizabeth's arm with a firm grip upon her elbow and then he counted to three, and pulled her forward, till she was mostly out from under the bed.

Elizabeth lay gasping on the floor for a minute red faced as she pulled her legs — very pretty legs whose white stockings were on ample view — back under her.

"Last time I'll hide under a bed," she exclaimed sourly.

"It is easier playing hide-and-find as a child," Darcy agreed as he offered her a hand to help her stand.

And then they were standing there, once more inches from each other's faces. And they looked into each other's eyes. The desire was still there in Elizabeth's eyes. It was still there in his eyes.

And then, as they leaned forward to kiss, drawn by that passion neither of them could control, Darcy caught sight of Georgiana grinning in the corner of the room.

Georgiana was grinning too widely.

She'd known Elizabeth was there, and made him to say what he felt about her just so that Elizabeth could hear.

Georgiana had known.

This entire time while he'd been desperately searching for Elizabeth, Georgiana had known and kept her hidden from him here at Pemberley.

"How could you do this to me?"

Georgiana got that mulish face that reminded Mr. Darcy of Papa when he was determined to stand upon principles. "You made your choice clear to Lizzy. I wasn't going to interfere with what you wanted."

"You knew I was looking for her and—"

Elizabeth took his hand and squeezed it softly. "May I apologize for leaning upon your house's hospitality without properly asking permission? I did not want… I could not yet face you."

And once more, it was as though Georgiana was not present in the room.

"You heard me just now. Elizabeth, I have spoken what is in my heart, and in my soul, and I will repeat it once more, and again and again, until you understand, I choose you. Always, forever. In every way you. It is you, your beautiful soul, your sweet loving dedication to what is right, your way of laughing and seeing through me, the happiness I feel next to you. I choose you, every time."

"I heard you, but you hurt me. I… I have never felt so bad as I did that night."

"I know. I shall always live with that memory. Every day since the way you looked has tormented me. Even that night — I realized, somehow during my dreams, I knew I wanted to marry you, that night I chose it. I think even as you sneaked subtly from Longbourn, I knew that I would choose to marry you and—"

"Why couldn't you have known then! When I asked you. Why? Why? Why?"

"Oh, Lizzy. I…" He did not have anything to say which sounded sufficient as an excuse in his own ears. "I was a cursed fool."

She was still holding his hand.

Darcy pulled his Elizabeth to himself, holding her against his chest, with his arm around her. She sweetly breathed, a perfect weight in his arms.

Georgiana was still grinning at him. Like she had all along. Darcy gestured with his head for her to leave the room. She shook her head and mouthed, "Chaperone."

Darcy mouthed back, as Elizabeth still clung to him, crying, and while he brushed his hands along the smooth cotton back of her indoors dress, "I don't need a chaperone."

Georgiana shrugged and threw her hands in the air. She mouthed back, exaggerating the motion of her lips, "What?"

"I don't need a chaperone." This time Darcy spoke aloud.

Elizabeth wetly giggled and looked up at him. Her eyes sparkled with tears and glowed with love. "If there ever has been a couple who needed a chaperone, it was us."

He wanted to kiss her. By Jove even here, in his sister's bedroom, in front of his sister, he wanted to kiss her.

"You mean it?" Elizabeth asked. "Do you truly mean it?"

"Not one day, not one hour has passed since you parted from me when I did not think of you. My dreams have been filled with your kisses, my days have been filled with longing and worry — I have been so anxious for you. I was terrified, Bingley and Colonel Fitzwilliam insisted — wait a minute. Richard knew. He must have known. Him too?"

Darcy looked rather betrayed.

Elizabeth giggled, her wonderful happy sound. "I have been betrayed as well, since I thought my presence here was only to be known by Georgiana, Mrs. Annesley and Mrs. Reynolds, and I also surmised during the past half hour that another was informed."

"Well?"

"Aren't you both glad I told him?"

Darcy was.

At least if Elizabeth was.

He looked at her. Close in the eyes. "Are you happy?"

"You never even asked me to marry you! Do you remember, I was told we were to marry, but you never made a proposal." She sounded exasperated.

"Ah. I see that you acted most properly then," Darcy replied with a smile. "I would not marry a man who had not proposed to me either."

Elizabeth grinned back at him. "You would not marry a man at all."

"Elizabeth Bennet." Darcy knew what she was inviting him to do. At least he desperately hoped that she wanted him to do this. He kneeled on the rug in front of her, and took both her soft hands between his hands. He laced their fingers together, and his heart bumped as much at this intimacy as it would at a kiss.

"Dearest, sweetest, Elizabeth. My love, my life, my choice. I wish to spend my life with you, I wish you to be the companion of my days, and the mother of my children, and the one who I hold each night, and the woman who fills my life with brightness and joy from her laughter. You are my choice. The only choice I want to make. Every fragment of my being longs for you. And it is no hyperbole when I say that if you accept my hand, I shall be the happiest man in England."

Elizabeth said nothing for a moment. She shyly lowered her eyes, and then looked directly into his eyes again. "Yes. Fitzwilliam, yes. I… Yes!"

Darcy rose to his feet, and pulled Elizabeth into his arms and kissed her.

Their kiss was interrupted by Georgiana pumping her fist and shouting, "Yes!"