A Most Civil Proposal (47 page)

And as she crossed the room to embrace her father, Mr. Bennet was unable to stop what he had not done since he was a child. He wept.

At length, he regained his composure, and Elizabeth guided him toward the door to the library. “Come, let us join the others so that I can make my announcement. Then I must go to Longbourn and tell my mother.”

“Of course, dear Lizzy,” her father said, as he wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and offered his arm.

When Elizabeth entered the parlour on the arm of her father, she saw the sudden burst of joy on Jane’s face and the look of relief that Mr. Gardiner gave, both happy that father and daughter had managed to effect a healing of their breach. She was glad for their sake, yet saddened by the knowledge that nothing could ever make things the way they had been before. She was learning that not every dispute could be fully resolved, but she also knew that, for the sake of her family and for the life growing within her, the attempt must be made.

But as she looked into the smiling eyes of her husband as he crossed to her and accepted her arm from her father, she knew that some of the distance that would forever lie between her and her father would have occurred in any case. Her first loyalty now was to William and their family — Georgiana and Colonel Fitzwilliam now, and their children to come. As her husband leaned down to kiss her forehead, she allowed herself to be enfolded in his arms while she heard her father awkwardly open a conversation with her sister and Bingley. With her face against Darcy’s chest and his chin on top of her head, Elizabeth Darcy knew with absolute certainty that within these strong arms was where she belonged.

Epilogue

Pemberley, Christmas, 1857

Fitzwilliam Darcy looked down the long table and smiled at Elizabeth at the other end. Sitting at this table and the several tables surrounding it for Christmas celebration was the Darcy extended family — Darcys, Bingleys, and Fitzwilliams — twelve children, thirty-one grandchildren, and eleven great-grandchildren.

It makes an impressive array
, Darcy thought,
but how many more Christmas seasons can we gather together?
He was starting to feel his seventy-three years — that winter seemed worse than he remembered, making his joints ache and throb — and though he still rode daily when the weather permitted, riding was increasingly painful, especially in his knees and lower back. Elizabeth, thankfully, was less affected, and she still took her daily walks through the Pemberley grounds that she loved more than ever. And as it had been ever since that first night forty-five years earlier, they still retired every night to his bed.

I could not have wished for a better life,
he thought, looking down the table at his wife
.
As always, Elizabeth seemed able to sense the direction of his thoughts, both the satisfaction and the melancholy, and she accepted one and rejected the other, sending him a lovely smile that was meant for him alone. It was the same one she had first given him on that April day when they were married, and the sight of it dispelled his gloom as it always did.

Georgiana smiled as she caught the exchange, and she leaned over to whisper in her husband’s ear. Darcy could only shake his head as Richard snorted in laughter.

General Richard Fitzwilliam was resplendent in full scarlet dress uniform for the occasion, but, like many of his fellow officers, he had had little employment in his trade since Bonaparte had been sent into exile over forty years before. It was on that occasion when, after returning from the continent and despite his military training, he had been taken completely by surprise when he visited the Darcy home after the remnants of his regiment returned from Waterloo. There, while he still limped from a wound received in that last battle, he had been most sternly taken to task by his young cousin at the dinner table. Before Darcy and Elizabeth, she told him firmly that it was long past time that he stopped rambling about Europe making a scarlet target of himself, that it was time that he settled down to married life, and that the month of September would do most splendidly for their wedding.

He had looked at his other cousin in shock, only to hear Darcy respond calmly as he continued eating, “Do not look to me for support in this matter, Richard. We Darcys — as you have said so many times — are rather impulsive.”

Fitzwilliam never recovered from his initial stunned amazement, easily succumbing to Georgiana’s well planned campaign, and he was to that day uncertain whether he had ever formally proposed. Nevertheless, he was present along with friends and family as Darcy escorted a beaming Georgiana to his side in the Pemberley chapel and his bachelorhood came to an end. Between Georgiana’s fortune, his half-pay, and various gifts from his father and Darcy, the newlyweds had purchased a modest house in town and settled down to bear and rear three children, eleven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Elizabeth well understood her husband’s thoughts as his eyes swept the large room, taking in all the various sons and daughters and their offspring, sitting either at the large table or at one of the other tables set up for the occasion. She knew the pleasure he took in the presence of all their family in this sacred season, and she also knew the reason for the bittersweet expression that accompanied his look of satisfaction. She knew that their long married life was in its closing stages, but the thought did not rouse her to melancholy, for she knew how unlikely their happiness must have appeared to so many others all those long years ago. And she was cheered that her smile at him blew the winds of sadness from his face, as he could not help returning her own smile. And she had to laugh at Richard’s oft-repeated comment on the Darcy ‘impulsiveness,’ especially since he had fallen victim to a version of it himself.

Not,
she thought to herself with an inner smile,
that he ever seems to have regretted the manner in which Georgiana had out-manoeuvred him!

Elizabeth looked around the room herself, seeing not only those in attendance but also those who were missing, including her parents. After her father’s apology to both Darcy and herself, she had eventually been able to again enjoy his company even though he and Darcy had never been truly comfortable with each other. But at least both her mother and father had lived long enough to see four of their five grandchildren born.

At least Mama was spared much of the pain of seeing Longbourn possessed by Mr. Collins,
she thought,
though little good it did him.
Lady Catherine, who had never reconciled with her nephew, had released Mr. Collins from her service six months after Mr. Bennet’s death, and that foolish man had tried to assume the role of landed gentleman. He had taken a chill while trying to make a show of inspecting his new estate and had never recovered, passing on within two months of taking possession of Longbourn. The entail had also died with him, and Longbourn had passed to the management of his wife, Charlotte, who accomplished that task even better than her own father before passing it on to her eldest son.

After her mother’s passing, Elizabeth had brought Mary to Pemberley, and Mary still remained, though she seldom left her room these days. Her reading remained as avid as ever, though her tastes had changed as the years passed and as her need for thick spectacles and bright daylight increased. At her own request, she sat that night at a corner table with the youngest of the children, for in her later years, she had developed an affinity for the children she had never borne. Elizabeth had to smile as she watched the young children swarm around her sister while Mary told them the Christmas Story, answering all their questions about Bethlehem and the Christmas Star and Wise Men and all the other facets of that happy season.

Elizabeth looked fondly at her other sister as Jane sat with her beloved Bingley. She did not think the couple had ever had a single serious dispute in their many years of marriage. She and Jane had sat and talked long into the morning hours the previous night, and Elizabeth now mentally smiled in remembrance of that talk, with both herself and Jane sitting on her seldom-used bed. It had been like a return to their time before their marriages, and their talk had ranged the years and the experiences, the loss of loved ones and the birth of children, so many events of happiness and some of sadness. They were both conscious of the aging of their husbands, Bingley even more than Darcy, though he was seven years Darcy’s junior. As they sat in their thick robes and warm, woollen nightgowns against the chill that even the bright fire could not wholly dispel, Elizabeth and Jane had laughed in remembrance as they compared the sensible garments they now wore to the daring and revealing nightgowns they had first worn for the delight of their new husbands — nightgowns recommended and urged on them by their eminently sensible Aunt Gardiner.

Dear Aunt Gardiner,
Elizabeth thought with fond recollection. Her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner had spent much time with Darcy and herself, either in town or at Pemberley, and Darcy had loved the couple dearly. She remembered his tears of grief as they laid Mr. Gardiner to rest at Pemberley, for they had brought her aunt and uncle to live with them as Mr. Gardiner’s health failed. Aunt Gardiner, who was ten years younger than her husband, had lived on with them, content but no longer complete without her husband, and her passing two years ago had not brought the tears that her husband’s passing had occasioned. It was clear to both Elizabeth and her husband that Mrs. Gardiner had not minded her approaching end and was more than ready to be re-united with her husband. She was buried beside him behind the Pemberley chapel, and Elizabeth often came upon Darcy as he stood silently before the white headstones that were not far from those of his own parents.

Elizabeth’s thoughts were not as cheerful as she thought of Lydia and Kitty. Kitty had died in childbirth thirty years ealier, and Lydia had disappeared to America, embittered by her experience with Wickham and estranged from Elizabeth and Jane by her continued refusal to treat Darcy with respect — even after Mr. Bennet recanted his objections. Kitty’s death had been tragic, but at least she had prospered under the care of Jane and Elizabeth, eventually marrying a respectable man and bearing two sons before her untimely death. Afterwards, her husband had brought up their two surviving sons to be fine men, who even now sat at one of the side tables with their families.

But Lydia was simply a waste,
Elizabeth thought sadly, and she had not heard from her youngest sister since she had turned one and twenty. On coming of age, Lydia had received a fifth share of their mother’s fortune and had disappeared to America after sending Elizabeth a venomous letter blaming her for all her misfortunes. In all that time, Lydia had never again communicated with any of her family, and Elizabeth had no idea what had become of her youngest sister.

As for Wickham, he had never again surfaced in their life though he had at length been released from prison some seven years after she and Darcy were married. But Elizabeth had certain suspicions about Mr. Wickham, for Major General Fitzwilliam had suddenly left his wife two weeks before Wickham was released. He had departed in company with former Colour Sergeant Henderson, who had finally taken off his uniform to enter service with the Fitzwilliam family in town, and the two men had not returned for some three weeks. After their return, neither man would ever answer a direct question as to where they had gone or what they had done. But Elizabeth had noted that her husband had never evidenced any curiosity about Fitzwilliam’s disappearance even though such an apparent desertion of his sister ought to have aroused Darcy’s protective instincts. Nor had Georgiana, in her turn, ever shown any curiosity about where her husband had disappeared. In any event, Elizabeth had asked no questions of Darcy since she had her own suspicions of what Major General Fitzwilliam and Colour Sergeant Henderson had been doing during their sabbatical. She suspected that Wickham had been confronted with Fitzwilliam and Henderson upon his release from prison, and those two men had given him a choice of leaving England immediately and forever or else meeting Fitzwilliam on the field of honour. It was also possible that Fitzwilliam had simply cut down the other man in cold blood, but she assigned that a rather low level of probability given what she knew of Fitzwilliam’s character. Whatever the actual facts were, it was noticeable that, when Fitzwilliam returned, both brother and sister were curiously uncurious. This fact was so singular that Elizabeth was convinced further enquiries into what had actually transpired during that absence were unnecessary, and her opinion proved correct since
that man
never plagued the happiness of her family again.

Lady Catherine had also never again plagued her family though she knew that Darcy had been unhappy when his attempts at healing the breach had been spurned. But Lord Matlock had consoled Darcy, telling him,
‘At least you tried your best, nephew. It is not your fault that Catherine continues to reject your peace offerings. At least we gave Anne some comfort and happiness before the end.’
Lord and Lady Matlock had brought Anne to live with them some months after Darcy and Elizabeth had married, and there the frail woman had stayed though her health had continued to decline until her death five years later.

Most interesting was Bingley’s sister, Caroline, as she sat beside Jane and Bingley that night while she held and rocked Elaine Bingley, Jane’s great-grandchild, on her lap. Caroline had rather surprisingly married a Scottish doctor of modest means about three years after her brother’s marriage, but she had been so devastated at his death from the influenza after only five years of marriage that Elizabeth and Jane had been forced to literally take her under their care. That formerly haughty and supercilious lady had been in a state of shock and breakdown after her husband’s funeral, for she appeared to have loved Andrew McGrath quite deeply and had become almost another member of the Bingley family. The couple never had children, for Caroline had miscarried twice, and it took many months after her husband’s passing before she could even attempt a smile. For so many years, Caroline McGrath had been such a true friend that Elizabeth had a difficult time recalling the arrogant and deceitful woman who Bingley had once banished from his house.