Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Forgive me, Mr Reynolds; I simply cannot find the papers you asked me for. I have looked everywhere – far be it from me to complain of having such a splendid home as Pemberley, but this is one of the downsides to living at an estate of this size: when something gets lost, it gets properly lost."

The Darcys' steward chuckled. "I am sure they will turn up, Madam."

"I hope you're right, but the only place I have not checked is Mr Darcy's study, and I cannot conceive of how my charity receipt would have ended up in there. Though then again, I don't understand how they ended up anywhere but in my personal lockbox…"

"Do you want me to search my master's study, Madam?" asked Mr Reynolds.

Mr Darcy could not be made to perform the search himself, for however little husbands and wives might wish ever to be parted from each other, it is sometimes a necessity, and Mr Darcy was currently away on business.

"No, I will do it myself, thank you," Elizabeth replied, shaking her head. "I'm the one who has mislaid the receipt, so it is I who should suffer the pains of searching for them. And I am sure Mr Darcy would not object to me going into his study – my husband and I have no secrets between us."

Or so Elizabeth thought.

Elizabeth had reached the very bottom of the last drawer in her husband's writing-table before she found anything. What she found was not the receipt she was looking for, but it was all the more interesting for it. After feeling all the way into the very corners of the drawer, Elizabeth pulled out a long forgotten and slightly crumpled sheet of letter paper, covered in her husband's dear, careful handwriting – but it was not a letter; it was a poem, and several drafts thereof.

Elizabeth knew that she should put the paper back, forget she'd ever seen it, and continue her search, but self-command to such a degree was of course impossible. Instead, she held it up towards the light of the window, and as her eyes were first drawn to the finished sonnet (for it was clearly identifiable as such by the divisions of the stanzas), neatly written out at the very bottom of the sheet, that was where she began her illicit read.

With sparkling eyes, so dark and yet so bright,
your gaze met mine, when first you spoke to me
And said, as always ready for a fight,
that what kills love is often poetry

And at that very moment did I feel
a stirring that would into love soon turn
But from that love I do now seek to heal
so that I cease to always for you yearn

You said I was the last man you would wed
Oh! with those words you cut me to the quick
You made me wish my ardent love stone dead
– and one poor sonnet's said to do the trick

So now, if I have rightly plied my art,
my love for you will surely soon depart

Elizabeth gasped as she reached the last couplet. The poem was far from a masterpiece – or perhaps it was, seeing as its intent was explicitly to be "poor"? – and yet she had rarely been so moved by poetry before. Neither Cowper, nor Crabbe, nor Coleridge had managed to make her heart bleed the way Darcy did, in this sole but notable work of his. Poor, dear poet, so cruelly rejected by the woman he loved, taking that horrid shrew's own laughing advice so much to heart as to actually make the attempt to get over her through the means of verse. But even as tears stung her eyes, Elizabeth could not help but laugh at all the hallmarks of an amateur sonneteer: the awkward word order of many lines, the forced rhyme of "me" with "poetry," the ending couplet too little of a surprise…

Eager to earn more insight into the poet's mind, Elizabeth's eyes now moved to the earlier drafts of the poem, higher up on the page, with their scratched out words and lines abandoned half-way through. It was clear that her husband had pored over his paper for quite some time, which could hardly be surprising, as managing even a mediocre sonnet was sure to take some effort – yet it still touched Elizabeth as a proof of her husband's devotion to her.

"You really did love me most ardently," she muttered to herself as she read.

Much of the sheet was just covered in lists of rhymes, like "light, might, fight," "art, part, heart," and "cure, sure, lure, demure" (that last word scratched out, probably for not being very applicable to the subject of the poem). It also seemed that before Mr Darcy had settled on rhyming "poetry" with "me" he had tried the equally un-rhyming "as always prone to disagree," and he had also attempted to rhyme "the one on whom I dote" with "now need an antidote." The most intriguing line, however, was the one that read only "I raced, I rode." Had the impulse been abandoned as too truly poetic? How might the line have ended had Mr Darcy continued it?

Her search for the missing charity receipt was by now quite forgotten, for Elizabeth only had eyes for her poem. Soon, she had re-read it enough times to know it quite by heart.

"Goddess divine!"

Elizabeth fondly rolled her eyes at this proof of her husband's return to Pemberley. She had taken it upon herself to teach her husband how to tease and have fun, and now she was paying the price – or reaping the benefits.

"I'm here, my love!" she yelled back, and soon Mr Darcy appeared in the doorway.

Elizabeth had been smiling from the moment she first heard her husband's voice, but now her smile blossomed even more fully, her dark eyes sparkling. She laid down her work and jumped up from the sofa, and as Mr Darcy spread his arms, she stepped into his embrace.

"I've missed you, Elizabeth," he said, and she felt his voice reverberate in his chest.

For a moment Elizabeth didn't reply, she just breathed in Mr Darcy's scent through his skirt, smiling contentedly. Then her grin turned wicked.

"I have missed you too, my love – but it was a tremendous comfort to me to read your words as you were gone," she said, a laugh barely concealed beneath the words.

"My words? Have you been re-reading old letters in my absence? If I had known, I would have sent you a new one, however shortly I was gone."

"That is very kind of you, but no. I've been reading something much better than a letter. I did not know that you were a poet, Mr Darcy."

Elizabeth leaned up to see her husband's reaction to her words. At first, he merely looked confused, but then he changed colour.

"Elizabeth – !"

"The ending couplet was quite inspired, I must say," Elizabeth returned, with a laugh.

"Thank you. I cannot at this time quite remember what it was, but I do remember being particularly proud of it."

"'So now, if I have rightly plied my art, my love for you will surely soon depart,'" Elizabeth quoted.

"Ah, yes. Well, there's an example of my abominable pride getting the better of me if there ever was one, for it would have been much more in the spirit of the exercise to have used 'heart' for the rhyme, as I had initially intended."

Elizabeth threw her head back laughing, but after this display of mirth she grew quite serious.

"You know that I dearly love to laugh, but I have to admit I could not fully think of this poetic foray of yours as a laughing matter. It saddened me greatly to think of the state you must have been in when you wrote your sonnet."

Mr Darcy pulled his wife in closer. "Oh, Elizabeth! It pains me to have given you pain. But you must know that the poem was never meant for your eyes – nor anyone else's, for that matter. In fact, I must ask how you came to lay your eyes on it."

Elizabeth laughed again. "Yes, that you very well may ask, for I found it when searching through every last inch of your study, and you can hardly have been expecting me to do so. I did it when on the hunt for a mislaid charity receipt that Mr Reynolds needed me to get ahold of – so you see I had good reason to do so, and thus you must forgive me my impertinence."

"There is nothing to forgive – but ah, do you mean your receipt for your gifts of several copies of Madame d'Arblay's novels to The Ladies’ Association for the Improvement of the Industrious Poor by Means of Reading and Instruction?"

"Yes! How did you know?"

Here, Mr Darcy looked rather sheepish. "I have a confession to make. In my hurry to pack all of my papers for my meeting with Mr Carlton's solicitor, I must have picked up your receipt as well. It confounded the solicitor greatly when I presented him with that instead of the deed he'd been expecting – thankfully I had brought the correct papers with me as well."

"Oh, thank goodness!" Elizabeth laughed. "Mr Reynolds will be so relieved that the receipt has not been lost. Please make sure to inform him that this happened at no fault of my own."

Chuckling, Mr Darcy kissed the tip of her nose. "I will."

With the mystery of the missing charity receipt finally solved, Elizabeth returned to the subject currently most dear to her heart.

"There is something else I've been wanting to ask you about the poem. Did I really say one poor sonnet?"

"You did," Mr Darcy replied, with the assurance of a man who has revisited the relevant memory a million times.

"That is very odd, for I am sure I must have meant to say one good sonnet. At least, those verses that Mr Gresham wrote for Jane really were quite pretty indeed – and they seem to have done their job much better than yours did.

"Are you telling me that had I only put more work into perfecting my poesy, I could have succeeded in my undertaking, and vanquished my love for you?"

"I am – so I suppose that I must rejoice in having misspoken!"

This exclamation earned Elizabeth one of those smiles of Mr Darcy that had once been so rare.

"Do you remember," he said, "your reply to my question back then, of what you would recommend to encourage affection?"

Elizabeth first winced, then smiled, when she recalled what her answer had been.

"I do: dancing."

"Good advice indeed – and I am sure Georgiana would be happy to play us a jig after dinner tonight, if we ask her."

"That sounds delightful – and speaking of Georgiana, we should go find her this very minute, for I am sure she has missed her brother as much as I have missed my husband. It is very rude of me to monopolise you like this!"

Elizabeth was already turning away to leave the room in search of her sister-in-law, but Mr Darcy reached for her hand to stay her. When she turned back to her husband, he gave her a formal bow.

"May I have the next dance, Mrs Darcy?" he asked.

Smiling, Elizabeth curtsied back. 

"You may."