Epilogue #2
Mrs. Albright also brought news of Mrs. Younge, who had taken rooms in Hackney and called them a boarding-house. No respectable family would now receive her reference, and no careful parent would knowingly send a daughter under her roof. It was not justice, perhaps, but it was distance enough.
Fitzwilliam’s old practice had been winding down since they decided to remain in Derbyshire for the winter. What had begun as necessity had become decision. By September, only the formalities remained: papers returned, fees settled, cases transferred, recommendations written.
It had not been abandoned or hidden away.
Mr. Brentwood had taken what he could; Hartwood had overseen the rest with professional dryness and real approval; Jenkins had obtained a better situation and written his gratitude in a hand so laboured Elizabeth read it only once before leaving it for her husband.
Fitzwilliam had closed that chapter as he closed things: carefully, honourably, and with every loose paper accounted for.
There had also been final word from Dublin some weeks earlier. Elizabeth had not asked for particulars, and Fitzwilliam had not offered them. It was enough to know that John Wickham was dead, and that no more letters, claims, debts, or borrowed consequence would come from him to trouble Pemberley.
George Wickham had vanished soon after. Whether from prudence, debt, or the sudden discovery that grievance without protection was a poor profession, no one seemed eager to determine.
By four o’clock, Portman Square had ceased pretending not to hurry.
Georgiana passed with two sheets of music and the calm air of someone who had already survived three objections and expected two more. Kitty followed with a paper parcel under one arm and a look so guilty that Elizabeth stopped her at once.
“What is in that parcel?”
“Nothing.”
“Kitty.”
“It is not for the drawing room.”
“That was not my question.”
Kitty clutched it closer. “It is only the newest stable adventure, and Lydia will want to see it.”
“Lydia may see it after dinner.”
“Not before?”
“Not if we want her to speak of anything else.”
Kitty considered this, then nodded. “That is wise. She would want to arrange copies before the soup.”
“She has become very responsible about other people’s children.”
“She says they are less troublesome than grown people because they are grateful for pictures.”
“Another simple principle.”
Kitty laughed and darted away before Elizabeth could confiscate the parcel.
At half past five, Elizabeth went upstairs to dress.
Her pearls lay ready before the glass.
Elizabeth touched them once before Evans fastened the clasp. They had looked different by candlelight at Pemberley; she did not require the memory named to feel it.
“The pearls, ma’am?” Evans asked.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “The pearls.”
Evans fastened them while Elizabeth watched herself in the glass.
She did not see a woman just recovered. That had been finished months ago. She saw a woman a little flushed from the hurry of the day, eyes bright, hair properly conquered for the present though not, perhaps, for the evening entire.
Fitzwilliam entered as Evans withdrew.
He stopped just inside the door.
Elizabeth met his eyes in the glass. “If you undo anything, I shall call Mrs. Albright.”
“That would be unwise.”
“For whom?”
“For Mrs. Albright.”
Elizabeth laughed and turned. “Do I pass?”
He came to her then. His eyes went first to the pearls, but his hand rose instead to one curl near her temple, set it back with wholly unnecessary care, and lingered there.
“You know you do.”
“That was not sufficiently extravagant.”
“You are reopening Portman Square,” he said. “If I am extravagant now, you will accuse me of delaying you again.”
“I might accuse you while believing you.”
His mouth curved. He kissed her cheek, a safer place than her mouth and therefore a choice both prudent and disappointing.
“You are very fine, Mrs. Darcy.”
“Better.”
“And very dangerous.”
“Best.”
He offered his arm.
They went down together.
The Gardiners arrived first, because Mrs. Gardiner believed punctuality a kindness and Mr. Gardiner believed it a refuge from argument.
Lydia descended after them in a bonnet that had not been improved by restraint and with a face of such bright curiosity that Elizabeth had to remind herself not to smile too openly.
“La, Lizzy, I declare the house looks quite new!” Lydia cried, embracing her before remembering to be grand. “Only not like new paint. New like—oh, I do not know. Like someone means to enjoy it.”
“An excellent distinction,” said Mr. Gardiner.
Mrs. Gardiner looked about the hall, then at Elizabeth. “My dear, it is very good to see it full again.”
“It has not begun to be full,” Elizabeth said. “You are merely the first wave.”
Lydia looked past her. “Is Ellie awake? And has Kitty finished the copies? I promised the children they should not be kept from them forever.”
“You promised on Kitty’s behalf?”
“They asked so particularly.”
“Then naturally you had no choice.”
“None at all.”
Georgiana appeared then, graceful and pale in white muslin with a blue sash, and took Lydia’s hand with a sweetness that was not submission. “I put you near Mrs. Gardiner at dinner, but not beside her, because I thought you would prefer to tell her things rather than be watched by her.”
Lydia stared, then laughed. “That is clever of you. I do like to tell Aunt Gardiner things.”
Mrs. Gardiner gave Elizabeth one quick look, full of understanding.
Elizabeth did not answer it. The hall was filling.
Jane came next, with Bingley beside her and Caroline behind them. Jane’s beauty had softened into something quieter and more luminous since marriage, and there was a guarded tenderness in the way Bingley offered his arm, noticed the draught, and tried not to be obvious in any of it.
He failed, but lovingly.
Elizabeth kissed her sister. “You look very well.”
Jane blushed.
Bingley said, “She is very well. At least—that is, she is well if she does not stand in draughts.”
Caroline removed her gloves. “Charles, a woman may survive a hall.”
Jane laughed softly, and Bingley looked both corrected and unrepentant.
Caroline turned to Elizabeth. Her eyes travelled over the hall, the flowers, the arrangement of servants, the people moving through the house. “Mrs. Darcy, you have opened the place handsomely.”
From Caroline, it was almost an embrace.
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said. “Georgiana saved us from lilies.”
“Then Miss Darcy has taste as well as courage.”
Georgiana, who had come near enough to hear, coloured but did not shrink. “Only dislike of headaches, Miss Bingley.”
“An excellent foundation for taste.”
The Pratts arrived in the same cluster as Mary, which spared Elizabeth the trouble of pretending not to notice how carefully Mr. Pratt gave her sister his arm.
His wedding was to take place before the new year, and he looked both happy and terrified, which Elizabeth supposed proper in a man whose music Mary Bennet would play before half his acquaintance.
Mary, for her part, was composed enough to deceive anyone who had not seen her grip her reticule with the hand that now wore Mr. Pratt’s ring.
“Lizzy,” Mary said, and stopped.
Elizabeth took both her hands. “You need not look as if you are about to be examined.”
Mary’s mouth twitched. “I am always about to be examined. The distinction is whether the examiner knows his business.”
“And tonight?”
Mary glanced, despite herself, toward Mr. Pratt.
“Tonight,” she said, “I believe he does.”
After that, the arrivals became less individual than orchestral: friends from the Halls’ circle, acquaintances of the Pratts, old callers of Mrs. Marwood’s who had learned that Mrs. Darcy’s Portman Square was neither closed to them nor governed by grief.
Miss Hall entered already in conversation with Mrs. Belwick; Colonel Fitzwilliam followed Uncle Edward and immediately complained that Elizabeth had seated him by improving people; Mr. Hartwood appeared grave and punctual; Mr. Beaker arrived with his wife and looked faintly startled to be received socially rather than summoned professionally; Mr. Terling bowed over Elizabeth’s hand and immediately began assessing the hall carpet.
The house received them all.
Elizabeth saw Lydia laughing too brightly but accepting Mrs. Gardiner’s quiet correction; Mary standing near Mr. Pratt but not hiding behind him; Georgiana speaking to Mrs. Pratt with nervous dignity; Caroline rescuing Bingley from saying too much about Jane’s shawl; Fitzwilliam greeting Hartwood not as a man escaping his old life, but as one who honoured it.
Then dinner was announced, and Portman Square attempted the greater trial of feeding everyone at once.
It acquitted itself well.
Elizabeth sat at the head of her table and felt, not solemnity, but an almost wicked delight.
This had been Mrs. Marwood’s dining room once, excellent, correct, and restrained.
Tonight it was crowded. Conversation crossed and tangled.
Glasses flashed. Richard made Mrs. Belwick laugh.
Caroline turned a potential awkwardness into a discussion of Italian singers.
Mr. Beaker found himself in conversation with Mr. Gardiner and looked grateful to discover that commerce at dinner need not be an ambush.
Near the centre of the table, Lydia was informing Mrs. Pratt that Kitty’s books required at least four copies, because the Gardiner children had already formed expectations.
Mrs. Pratt said, “Books?”
“Stable adventures,” Lydia said. “Not improving, except by accident.”
Across the table, Kitty went crimson with pleasure and mortification.
“Mama writes that Ellie is the prettiest child ever born,” Lydia added.
Mary lifted her eyes. “After mourning that she was not a son.”
Jane coloured. “Mary.”
“It is true.”
“It was only two pages,” Lydia said. “The other two were instructions for preserving her complexion.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Then we must be grateful. I had feared disappointment would last longer.”