Mrs. Bingley’s Sister (The Austen Novels)

Epilogue

The day of the wedding finally came, but it was a very quiet affair. The Llewellyns attended, and so did the Fitzwilliams. On Elizabeth's side, the Bingleys were there, and so were Lydia and her children.

The wedding was a small affair due to proprietary rules regarding mourning; they did not desire to make a big show of the event on account of Mr. Bennet's (and technically Wickham's) recent passing. There was no wedding breakfast—Darcy and Elizabeth merely retired to Pemberley after they were married and enjoyed the privacy they finally sought after many weeks of an engagement and many years of mutual desire for one another.

One particular person who was gleeful of the wedding was little Lizzy Bingley, their goddaughter. She was more than pleased that her favorite aunt was marrying the handsome Mr. Darcy, and she told them quite frankly that she wanted a baby very soon, so that she could be named that baby's godmother.

"We must make haste in giving Lizzy a baby to play with," Darcy had said playfully in Elizabeth's ear as they rode in the carriage back from the church to Pemberley, "I say we make it our first priority, right away."

As far as other family were concerned, Jane was glad that Elizabeth was finally settled, though she was initially quite surprised at the match. Elizabeth hadn't so much as breathed a word of it all these years to Jane, so the unexpectedness of it did sting a little. But in time, the two felt more of their old camaraderie, and Elizabeth promised not to keep anything from Jane any longer.

"I feel I am more on an even keel with you, Jane," Elizabeth would say after her marriage, "Before, I felt my problems to be a great and unnecessary burden to you, as you were a mistress and a mother and all, and I was but your spinster sister. Now though, I shall not hold back—expect me to come to you for much, dear sister. Prepare yourself, for you shall be my first consult in all the ways of being mistress of a grand estate and motherhood, when the time comes."

Two people who were probably the most happy about the match (yet outwardly showed it very little, for propriety's sake) were Sarah and Smith. Sarah stayed on as Elizabeth's lady's maid—now she was the lady's maid to the mistress of Pemberley. Smith, having been working for his master a very long time, extended a very warm and friendly welcome to Sarah, as they had been relatively friendly to one another downstairs during the Christmas house party at Pemberley, each liking the other due to their master's and mistress's liking of the other. Sarah was very proper and never spoke directly of her mistress's feelings, of course, and Smith did likewise, but as they got on together at Pemberley, traveling with their master and mistress, they became quite endeared to one another, so much that many years later Smith would endeavor to ask Sarah to marry him, and she, most undoubtedly, would say yes.

The Darcys got on well in their life together, and their first son, Bennet, was born not ten months after their wedding. They would go on to have six more children, three daughters and three more sons, and they played well together with their cousins: nine Bingleys, five Wickhams, and five Ellisons. That is right, dear reader; Mr. Ellison, who once entertained designs on Miss Bennet, moved to Derbyshire in late 1823 and was introduced to Mrs. Wickham. They surprisingly got on well; his love for melancholic poetry seemed to blend well with Lydia's coarseness, and slowly he endeared her to some more artistic outlets for her deeper emotions, poetry reading being the primary source. They bonded and fell in love, and soon they were married, and she had more children. She remained in Derbyshire near her eldest sisters, and all their children knew one another for the rest of their days.

Darcy and Elizabeth's goddaughter always had a special place in their hearts, as a sort of "first child" of theirs in a sense. One summer, when an unmarried, twenty-year-old Lizzy stayed at Pemberley with her Darcy relatives, she was sneaking around the upper rooms with her twelve-year-old cousin, Bessie, and they found a sheet of paper hidden in an old writing desk, a letter that was signed EB and very romantic.

"Listen to this— You pierce my soul— who wrote this? EB— that is surely Aunt Darcy, is it not?" Lizzy said, reading the letter aloud and sighing alongside her naive and romantic little cousin.

"We should ask Mama if it is hers," Bessie said. Lizzy shook her head.

"Oh no! We could never do that! It is wholly improper! And besides, what if she wrote this to another man?"

Bessie's eyes widened at this thought, and she said, "Surely not. She loves only Papa!"

Lizzy gave her a conspiratorial look. "Or she had a secret lover before she ever met uncle Darcy!"

Bessie looked concerned at this, and Lizzy couldn't resist teasing her cousin so. Lizzy knew very well that her aunt and uncle met many years before they married—they were named her godparents, after all, and she was seven years old when they wed—but teasing her little worrisome cousin was good sport.

She kept this up for about a week, before a maid discovered the letter in Lizzy's dress pocket and revealed it to the mistress of the house, who went to Darcy and said, "Look what Nancy discovered in Lizzy's dress!"

She shoved the letter into his hands. He looked at it and smiled, rereading it with a dreamy look on his face.

"Your letter to me..."

"How on earth did it get to be in Lizzy's possession?" Elizabeth asked with a laugh. "Where could she have found it?"

Darcy was puzzled on that account, but then he recalled the writing desk from his chambers had been moved to another room when they had the mistress's and master's chambers redone some years ago.

"I suppose Smith overlooked it when he cleaned it out before it was removed," Darcy said thoughtfully. He looked at Elizabeth with a grin, and she shook her head at him, already knowing what he was thinking.

"You know Lizzy has likely been tormenting Bessie with this," he said. "She has probably speculated that you wrote secret letters to some lover or other."

Elizabeth laughed aloud. "Why is she so impertinent?"

"I told you many years ago—she reminds me of you," he said, giving her a kiss on the lips before saying, "Shall we find her and play a little joke on her of our own?"

"What do you have in mind?"

He chuckled and rubbed his chin in thought. "You should tell her that the discovery of such a note has caused strife between us, because yes, it is true, you have had a secret lover all these many years."

Elizabeth laughed at the idea of this, but she could not find it in herself to agree to such a plan. What she did decide to do, however, was sit the girls down (for even the younger girls liked romance, too) and tell them the story of Darcy and Elizabeth, a story of pride and prejudice, a story of misunderstandings, missed connections, and long lost love.

She gripped the note in her hands and smiled at her husband as she left him to find Lizzy, Bessie, and her other daughters. How Elizabeth would enjoy telling them their love story—troubling beginning, precarious middle, happy ending and all.

The End