“Itisclever,” Mr. Darcy said, and there was dry amusement in it. “He has presented our happiness as fulfilling an administrative need.”
She glanced over at the others in the room and pressed a quick kiss to his lips.
He blushed. “Princess Elizabeth,” he murmured, “you are going to be the most magnificent disruption to my orderly life.”
“I certainly intend to be, Mr. Darcy.” She smiled up at him, feeling gloriously reckless and entirely certain.
From the window, Adrian’s voice carried across the room with a dramatic disgust: “For heaven’s sake, thereareother people in this room!”
This pronouncement produced stifled laughter from everyone else.
But neither Elizabeth nor Darcy paid it the slightest attention.
Epilogue
The ship rose and fell with the rhythm of calm seas, and Darcy stood with his hands braced against the rail, watching his betrothed.
Elizabeth’s gaze was fixed on the horizon. The wind had pulled several of her curls loose from their pins, and they danced about her face in a manner that was enticing and distracting.
Behind them, the deck was mercifully quiet. Sir Edmund Xavier, theactualThurnian envoy who had joined them in London after the debacle with the fraudulent Sir Reginald, was below deck, no doubt reviewing protocol documents for the third time that morning. Elizabeth’s new maid, a sensible woman named Peters, and her companion, Mrs. Crawford, had retired to their cabin an hour ago, both looking vaguely unwell. Adrian’s servants were also occupied elsewhere, leaving the deck blessedly free of witnesses to what Darcy suspected would be an increasingly emotional morning.
“Is that it?” Elizabeth asked, nodding at a dark smudge on the horizon that was growing larger every moment.
Adrian appeared at her elbow, squinting into the distance. His expression told Darcy that he had seen that coastline a hundred times or more but would never tire of it. “Yes,” he said, “that is Thurnia.”
Darcy watched Elizabeth’s face and saw the flicker of apprehension cross her features before she mastered it. She had been quieter than usual this morning—not withdrawn, precisely, but thoughtful.
“You love it,” Elizabeth said softly.
Adrian did not look at her. “I do,” he said. “I always have. Even when I was away at school, even when I was furious with King Frederick for sending me to England when I would rather have been running wild through the hills with my brothers—I loved it.” He paused, then added, almost to himself, “I always shall.”
“I shall try,” Elizabeth said at last. “To love it, I mean. I cannot promise I shall succeed, at least, not right away. But I shall try.”
Adrian turned to her then, and his smile was warm. “That,” he said, “is all anyone could ask.”
Darcy decided it was time to intervene. He crossed to stand beside Elizabeth, close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed hers, and allowed himself the small pleasure of her immediate smile when she glanced up at him.
“How long?” he asked Adrian.
“An hour, perhaps,” Adrian said. “A bit more, if the wind shifts.”
One hour until Elizabeth was swept up in royal protocol and palace intrigue and a hundred demands that had nothing to do with him. An hour until she would become, in the eyes of the Thurnian court, Princess Elizabeth first and his betrothed second.
At least they had the assurance that the betrothalwouldbe honoured. If Elizabeth’s grandparents had changed their minds on that score, Darcy would not have been allowed to accompany her.
“Are you ready?” he murmured to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was quiet for a moment, and then she said, with determined optimism, “I am.”
Adrian straightened from the rail with a thoughtful expression. “Good,” he said. “Because there are a few things we ought to discuss before we arrive.”
Darcy tensed. “What else could there possibly be?”
“Oh,” Adrian added, as though it had just occurred to him, “you should know—the matter ofMr.Reginald Whitmore and Mrs. Hobart is decided. They have been sent to Valenberg.”
Elizabeth’s head turned sharply. “Valenberg?”
“Grandmother’s cousin is a duchess there. They are to spend the next decade working in her charitable institutions. Hospitals, orphanages, that sort of thing. They shall be required to make a public apology, report each week on their charitable works, and explain publicly what they have done to atone.” His expression was unreadable. “They shall be at the bottom of the hierarchy in these places. Quite the fall from grace, particularly for Whitmore.”