This last scene is one of springtime. A lonely cottage with an overgrown garden and a drooping wych elm sits between two hills, and a green-eyed, catlike girl emerges from the newly painted front door to sweep the path. If anyone wonders why this pretty housemaid should smile, it is because, at that moment, her mistress has company, which is always, I suppose, a good enough reason for a woman to smile, but especially so if the visitor is pleasant, tall, and gentlemanlike, which this guest certainly is.

At present, this gentleman sits elegantly poised on a large blanket spread across the only clearing the overgrown garden has to offer. His friend, the proprietor of this humble country cottage, is a young woman of middling height, plain dress, and even plainer exterior. They are talking between themselves of the “monstrous thing” at her feet, which is wrapped in brown paper and string and bound for Egerton’s in London, her third in as many years and a behemoth of pretty words and decadent sentences, full of “lovers’ sighs” and “tearful adieus.” Behind them, a few feet away, the promised lady’s companion, Mrs. Helena Crosbie, of excellent and unsullied reputation, sits slumped in her chair, snoring and emitting sleepy grunts. A thunderstorm wouldn’t wake her, which suits the others just fine. In fact, a forgetful memory and an insatiable appetite for sleep played an instrumental role in her securing the position in the first place.

“Tell me what you shall write next,” Darcy said, helping himself to another slice of cake.

“I think I have run out of ideas,” I replied.

“Never!” my guest cried out.

“Oh yes, I’m afraid so. Try as I might, I can’t think of a single worthwhile subject to write about. I am done composing novels about servants and beautiful ladies and great houses. I require a challenge—a new story to tackle.”

“Well, I shall help you think of something….” Darcy furrowed his brow.

Three years had come and gone since I moved into Darcy’s cottage. Within a week of my arrival, I forgot all about the Collinses and their tyrannical infant. In my own sitting room, I unwrapped the first bound copies of Leonora’s Adventures: Chronicles of a Tragic and Deeply Unhappy Queen. A year later, I added The Strange and Peculiar Tale of Mrs. Caroline Collingwood and Her Most Unlucky Housemaid to my modest bookshelf. As for my sisters: Kitty, engaged when I left her at Longbourn, had since settled in a great mansion in Norfolk, and Jane, who proved equally successful as wife and mother, gave birth to her second child, a healthy, laughing boy whom she and Bingley named Fitzwilliam. Having grown fond of Bath, Lizzy convinced Darcy to purchase a house for her in one of the fashionable seaside neighborhoods. To the rest of the world, even to Jane, all was exactly as it should be between Mr. and Mrs. Darcy. Every year, they attended enough balls that the appearance of conjugal joy seemed undiminished; in front of their acquaintances, they laughed and gibed and bartered terms of endearment with convincing authenticity. But at Pemberley, they continued to live and to sleep, even to dine, separately, and Lizzy, who had become a staple of the most glamorous parties in both the city and the country, was frequently away from home. At least half the year she spent in England’s most famous spa town, under the pretense of needing to take the waters for her health; another three months she passed in London, which left only three to spend in Derbyshire. Mama, finding an aloof companion in her second daughter, moved to live with Jane and Bingley permanently, much to the chagrin of the happy couple.

As our lives took shape and deviated from what we had known of each other in our youth, letters grew fewer in number, though I continued to write my sisters and Mama. Jane and Kitty proved assiduous in keeping me apprised of dinners hosted, new introductions, and the vicissitudes of married life. Mama could always be counted on to complain about her nerves, but my letters to Lizzy asking after her health and happiness went unreturned.

Aside from my writing and books, my friendship with Darcy remained the single most important part of my life. In his person, I discovered the intellectual outlet I’d craved since childhood, and the many evenings spent in his company eventually dissolved all memory of the unhappiness which had been caused by others, keeping at a distance the distress caused by Lizzy’s silence. Not a day passed during his visits that wasn’t also spent in laughter, and I became as easy in his company as when I was alone. To love him was to love the better part of myself, and this was as natural as breathing.

But returning to this scene in springtime, the plain young woman suddenly says, “As it is a few years ago, you will have probably forgotten. But do you remember what you said to me after you’d read the first chapter of Leonora?”

Darcy shook his head.

“You asked me if I’d ever been to Denmark or lived in a castle or worn a ‘dazzling gown encrusted with precious stones of a hundred brilliant facets each’ when you knew full well that I hadn’t done any of those things. I was thinking the other day how you were absolutely right. I should go away. After all these books and with all this money, I should see and experience what I’ve been writing about for years.”

“That’s impossible,” Darcy grumbled.

“Why?” I pressed.

“It just is…you can’t possibly go on your own.”

“I don’t intend to go on my own. Sarah and Mrs. Crosbie will accompany me. Traveling with a companion and a servant is not unheard of.”

Darcy tossed three lumps of sugar into an empty teacup with annoyance. “Your new fortune has gone to your head,” he chided. “Money has that effect on people, unfortunately. Well, there’s only one thing for it. I shall go with you.”

“But you’re needed here!”

“Georgiana is perfectly capable of running the estate with Mrs. Reynolds’s and Henderson’s help.”

I did not speak for a long time. Then, glancing over my shoulder to ensure that Mrs. Crosbie was still asleep, I slid my hand tenderly through the crook of Darcy’s arm. “But this is an adventure I want for myself…with Sarah and Mrs. Crosbie to accompany me, of course, but not…not with you. Tell me you understand.”

He stayed silent for a while, brooding. Then he poured all the sugar out of his teacup, into the saucer beneath it. “I can see you’re determined to leave me,” he finally said.

“I am.”

“You might even forget me while you’re away.”

I sighed. “As unlikely as such an event would be, I must acknowledge the possibility of my bringing back a French or Spanish husband to live with me in this cottage, whereupon I would, I’m afraid, be forced to forget you. His jealous foreign temperament would also have the unhappy consequence of preventing you from visiting me nearly every day, as you do now.”

At this, the gentleman flushed. He muttered something I didn’t catch, for I was then looking beyond his head, over the hills, to the horizon from which the sunburned roofs of Italian villas, the bowl-shaped domes of cathedrals, the mellifluous waves of the Tiber would soon rise. I thought briefly of a foolish young girl who had once, a long time ago, made a foolish wish. In a dream, she had asked the Holy Virgin to make her beautiful and had wept to find herself unchanged the next morning. She couldn’t know then the strength of her own wings: how high she’d soar, how marvelous her many flights and how diminished in size and importance the people and places she left behind would eventually become to her as she dared the brilliance of the sun.