Epilogue
Ten years later…
Elizabeth Darcy looked up from her mother’s letter and met Jane Bingley’s eyes across the breakfast table.
“Well?” Jane asked.
There were many comforts to having Jane settled not twenty miles from Pemberley, but one of the greatest was this: when Mrs. Bennet’s letters arrived, Elizabeth need not bear them alone.
She could send a note, Jane would come the next morning if she could, and together they would divide their mother’s alarms into those requiring action, those requiring patience, and those requiring only a great deal of tea.
Elizabeth folded the letter slowly, though not before reading one sentence again to be sure it was truly as astonishing as she believed.
“Our mother writes that Kitty is determined to have the wedding breakfast at Lucas Lodge rather than Netherfield, for she says it is more romantic to leave her childhood home for her husband’s house, though, as Mama observes, Kitty did not precisely grow up at Lucas Lodge.”
Jane smiled. “I am so happy for her.”
“As am I. Though I confess I am happier still that Mama has found a subject to occupy her besides the dreadful inconvenience of my refusing to let her re-paper Netherfield’s breakfast room in purple.”
Jane laughed softly.
Elizabeth rested back in her chair and looked out toward the lawn, where a small troop of children had turned an ordinary morning into an expedition.
Her eldest son, Bennet Darcy, aged nine and already possessed of his father’s height in promise if not yet in fact, marched at the head with all the solemn consequence of a general.
Little Anne Bingley followed him with a basket, two of Jane’s younger boys dragged sticks large enough to threaten every shrub in their path, and Elizabeth’s daughters, Fanny and Eleanor, had clearly determined that the expedition lacked poetry and were correcting the defect by singing at the tops of their voices.
Georgiana’s eldest girl toddled after them under the watchful eye of a nurse.
“Bennet is leading them toward the stream again,” Jane said.
“He says he is leading them toward glory.”
“Will Darcy interfere?”
Elizabeth glanced toward the far side of the lawn, where her husband stood with Bingley.
Darcy had been looking over some estate matter with his friend, but his attention had strayed, as it often did, toward his children.
At that moment he said something to Bingley, then began walking after the expedition with the unhurried stride of a man who knew he was beloved enough to be obeyed eventually, but not instantly.
“He will redirect glory to the upper meadow,” Elizabeth said.
Jane’s smile softened. “He is such a good father.”
Elizabeth watched Darcy bend to lift little Anne Bingley over a patch of mud. He spoke to Bennet, who looked disappointed for precisely three seconds before Darcy pointed toward the hill. The expedition changed course at once.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said quietly. “He is.”
There had been a time when she had feared marriage might require some terrible surrender of herself.
Instead, she had found that being loved by Darcy made her more fully what she had always been.
He did not require her to become smaller, softer, less capable, or less opinionated.
He had, if anything, grown alarmingly proud of those qualities.
When tenants needed help, he asked her opinion.
When accounts troubled him, he brought them to her.
When she disagreed with him, he listened, and though he did not always yield, he had long since learned that “Elizabeth may be correct” was an excellent sentence to think before pride put on its boots.
Pemberley had changed too.
The lawns were no longer overgrown except in those places where Elizabeth insisted nature had arranged matters better than any gardener.
The north wing had been fully restored. Tenant cottages were sound, roofs tight, drains clear, and schools established where children learned more than their letters.
Darcy sometimes protested that every improvement Elizabeth suggested became three by the time she had finished explaining it, but he never did so with any true complaint.
Pemberley had returned to its former glory, but not precisely its former self.
It was warmer now. More alive. Less a monument to ancient consequence and more a home.
“Tell me the rest of Mama’s news,” Jane said, reaching for her cup.
Elizabeth unfolded the letter again. “Let me see. She writes that Mrs. Philips believes Kitty’s wedding breakfast must include white soup, though Mama thinks white soup unlucky after Lydia’s second flirtation with the lieutenant who turned out to have debts in every county between here and Brighton. ”
Jane shook her head, still smiling. “Poor Lydia.”
“Poor Lydia? My dear Jane, you know that Lydia has done very well for herself. She only had to fall madly in love with three officers unable to support wives before Darcy intervened with what he called a list of respectable possibilities.”
Jane’s eyes danced. “A list of gentlemen for Lydia?”
“Did I never tell you about it? A terrifying document. Ranked by income, character, family, temper, prospects, and, though Darcy denied it, height.”
“Height?”
“Lydia was particular.”
Jane laughed outright then, and Elizabeth joined her.
It had been one of the more unexpected triumphs of Darcy’s domestic life.
After Lydia had thrown herself into one attachment after another, each more romantic and less practical than the last, Darcy had invited her to Pemberley under the guise of cheering Elizabeth.
In truth, he had quietly arranged introductions among several gentlemen who had once served under him in the militia, men whose characters he knew and whose circumstances were sufficient to bear the weight of Lydia’s spirits.
Captain Harwood had not been the handsomest of them.
That honor, Lydia had once declared, belonged to a lieutenant who quoted poetry badly and owed money to his tailor.
But Captain Harwood was cheerful, honorable, steady, and amused rather than overwhelmed by Lydia’s liveliness.
Within months he proposed, and Lydia, after announcing that she had never truly admired any gentleman before, accepted him.
They now had four children, all loud, healthy, and adored, and Lydia wrote with great indignation whenever anyone suggested her own daughters were not the quietest and best-behaved children in their neighborhood.
“Kitty will be happier than any of us expected,” Jane said. “I always liked Samuel Lucas.”
“As did Kitty, though it took her some time to notice it.”
Samuel Lucas, heir to Lucas Lodge, had admired Kitty for years with such unobtrusive constancy that no one but Charlotte had fully perceived it.
Kitty, having been improved by a longer stay with Jane and then by visits to Pemberley, had at last learned to value kindness over scarlet coats.
She and Samuel would suit very well. He laughed at her fluttering anxieties without mocking them, and she admired his good nature enough to become steadier in his company.
“And Mary?” Jane asked.
Elizabeth found the next paragraph. “Mama writes that William Colin has won a prize for Latin translation, Thomas preached a sermon to the nursery cat, and little Edward has declared that Fordyce is dull.”
Jane pressed her lips together, but the laugh escaped anyway.
“Mary must have been horrified,” she said.
“Undoubtedly. Mr. Collins, however, wrote a three-page reflection on the dangers of youthful irreverence, which Mama enclosed last week and which Darcy accidentally dropped into the fire.”
“Accidentally?”
“Very deliberately, but with an air of great innocence.”
Mary had married Mr. Collins within a year of Elizabeth’s wedding.
Mr. Collins had been only mildly miffed when Elizabeth chose Darcy, for he quickly realized that the next best thing would be to marry a sister of the wife of his patroness’s nephew.
Mary, being the next eldest and the only Bennet daughter willing to accept him, had agreed on one condition: the Bennet name must not disappear from Longbourn.
Mr. Collins had been scandalized. Mary had been immovable.
In the end, they compromised by naming their eldest son William Colin Bennet, though the boy had been called William by every sensible person from the cradle.
Two more sons followed, Thomas and Edward, and all three had spent enough time with their Darcy and Bingley cousins to escape the worst excesses of both parents.
William was scholarly without being pompous, Thomas earnest without being absurd, and Edward possessed enough mischief to keep Longbourn from becoming entirely moral.
When Mr. Bennet passed away five years after Elizabeth’s marriage, the grief had been quieter than Elizabeth expected and deeper than she could easily explain.
He had not been a perfect father, and perhaps that had made mourning him more complicated rather than less.
In his later years, he had tried more. Not always successfully.
Not always soon enough. But he had tried, and Elizabeth was grateful for that.
Upon his death, Longbourn passed to Mr. Collins, and Mrs. Bennet removed to Netherfield with Kitty and the three Gardiner children. Jane and Bingley had been leasing Netherfield from Elizabeth for five years by then, and at first everyone declared the arrangement convenient.
It lasted six months.