Epilogue #3
“I have been too much in the habit of keeping my thoughts to myself. I grew up amongst reserved people, and being shy myself only made me more quiet. And I had no friends who could understand what it was like to…” To what? To be a female landlord in love with her steward?
She felt Mr Willers watching her, but she kept her gaze firmly on the floor, only a few inches beyond her own skirts.
“Your good opinion has always mattered to me. You speak to me as an equal, and I respect your abilities and saw that you respect mine. But, in the last few years, my feelings for you have moved beyond admiration and friendship.”
A cold sweat broke across her body. It was time to confess.
“Before you go, I must tell you that I have fallen in love with you. You have such a good heart, and a good mind too, and every moment I spent with you, I wished you loved me back. I mistakenly thought your manner toward me indicated your attachment, even if it did not equal mine. I am sorry for burdening you with my unwanted feelings. But I could not let you leave without telling you that I love you.”
For all her disappointment, Georgiana now felt better.
She had put the words and feelings out in the world, and now she knew she could survive at Pemberley without him.
As she stared at the ground, she wondered what she could say to Mr Willers to put him at ease, to assure him she would not presume on his kindness or his patience any longer.
His shoes came into view and his hands clutched hers, their warmth flooding her whole being.
“Georgiana,” he said roughly, “if it is true, say it again. Look at me and say it again.”
Her heart raced to hear her name. Meeting his eye after what she confessed would force her to heretofore unknown depths of bravery. She raised her head, and she felt that rush of awareness again when she met his eye. He stayed silent, gazing at her.
“I love you, Philip,” she whispered.
He gripped her hands tighter, and the adoring expression now in his eyes nearly overpowered her. “You have been the object of the tenderest affection to me for years. For so long, I have loved you deeply, passionately, and steadfastly.”
A moment ago she had only hoped her confession would give her a little respite from suffering, some confidence in having finally admitted her feelings. But now she felt exquisite happiness that nearly staggered her as much as travelling through Nine Ladies.
“If you felt the same, why did you say nothing?” she asked, staring into his eyes. “Why do you want to leave?”
“Over the past few years, I had often wondered if I might gain your affection, but I had no present hope. And after what happened in the music room in June—”
“Nothing happened.”
“But I wanted it to,” he entreated, leaning in closer. “I knew then that I had to leave Pemberley; I could no longer hide my feelings. It was the height of impropriety. I completely lost my senses. I almost kissed you, a woman younger than me, of a higher station, and my employer.”
“I wish you had,” she said.
Mr Willers was average height for a man and, with her being so tall, he stood only two inches above her. He scarcely had to bend his head to reach her lips, and her pulse quickened. He kissed her tenderly, slowly releasing her hands to wrap around her waist and pull her closer.
Her lips parted and he deepened their kiss, and she felt awe at the warmth and touch of his tongue. Georgiana kissed him with unreserved pleasure and he kissed her back with matching intensity.
Mr Willers exhaled a shaky laugh, cupping his palms to her cheeks. “I cannot believe it. I was certain you would never love me the way I loved you, and all along the affection I never thought you could return was already mine.”
“And so you wished to avoid me because you thought I could not love you?” Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth had been right after all. “You really want to marry me?”
He smiled widely and nodded. “Imagine my surprise that within half an hour of your return, I passed from a thoroughly distressed state of mind to something so like perfect happiness.”
“I feel the same. This one half hour has given me the same precious certainty of being beloved, something that when I fled in June, I had no hope of ever having.”
His bright expression fell. “I am sorry I forced you away. I had no notion that you loved me back. I thought I had to leave Pemberley to spare my own feelings and to make it impossible to impose myself on you. I never wanted to make you feel uncomfortable or put you in an awkward position.”
“I do not blame you, and I would never have had the courage to speak if I had not gone to see them. Polite society would call me indecent for even acknowledging such feelings, let alone following them with any action. But in their time, women speak first and do any manner of things we would find forward or strange or unfeminine.” She grinned at him and boldly kissed him again. “To what do we not owe them?”
He dropped his hands from her face and said cautiously, “Will you ever go back? To see your family in the future, I mean.”
The dear man looked as tense as he had when she strode into his house.
Was he afraid his wife would go somewhere he could not follow, leave him for another life in a different time?
Georgiana clutched his hand and pressed a kiss to it.
“No. I promise I will never go back. I will never so much as visit Nine Ladies. My life is here, and my brother and his family are exactly where they belong.”
“Your brother,” Mr Willers repeated with a sigh. “We have one or two very serious points to consider, my love.”
That was always his way, to consider every point from every angle, to be deliberate and be thorough and examine every possibility. His tone made her fear that their happiness must somehow be diminished, but his calling her “my love” reassured her. “What is the matter?”
“The matter is this evening I ate dinner in the servants’ hall with Reynolds and the butler.
Yesterday, I played whist with the vicar, the apothecary, and a gentleman farmer in Lambton.
My father and grandfather were clergymen, and your grandfather was an earl.
Your friends will want better for you than someone of my rank and connections. ”
As far as she was concerned, it was a union with the highest promise of felicity, and without one difficulty to oppose or delay it.
“You forget I am thirty and have a strange situation. Many will just be surprised anyone wants to marry me at this advanced age, especially when Pemberley will remain my property and not my husband’s. ”
Mr Willers passed an affectionate gaze over her and pushed a few strands of hair behind her ears. “Who would not want to marry you?” he whispered before kissing her lightly. “And I hope you have room in your heart for a man with more years behind him than ahead who needs spectacles to read.”
She nodded happily, and he then turned more serious and said, “When your cousin the earl visits, would his heart not revolt to find me at the head of Pemberley’s table?
When we visit Lady Catherine, God help us, would she let me in the door?
My condition in life is decidedly beneath yours, and every advantage to the match appears to be on my side.
There will be unkind talk if you marry me. ”
Georgiana shook her head at his worries.
“Anyone who loves me should know that your good sense and good principles delight me. My friends could not wish me in better hands, regardless of your rank in society. And anyone who disapproves of such goodness, such respectability of character, I have no interest in acknowledging.” She had to suppose that his access to her personal fortune and the Pemberley estate income would be enough to open more doors for him than he realised. But she knew he cared for none of that.
“It will still be a trial, my love. Many will assume I married you for your money, and many will drop your acquaintance if you marry beneath you.”
“And I will not think of them again if they do.” She put her arms around him, revelling in finally being able to do so. “In my heart, it is so suitable and unobjectionable a connexion, but what about you?”
“I am resigned to being thought a fortune hunter if I can call you Mrs Willers and wake up beside you.”
She blushed fiercely, but agreed. “What about knowing that your children have to take my name to inherit the use of Pemberley’s income?
You know that in two hundred years, your descendants will give everything back to my brother.
As much as we have made decisions together over the years, it will continue as an equal partnership rather than my ceding everything to you, as a wife is supposed to. ”
“That does not give me the slightest hesitation,” he said, resting his hands on her hips. “Our children will learn to make their way in the world knowing they have the benefit of Pemberley’s income—so long as they take care of it. But our sons will have to make something of themselves.”
“Like you did,” she said in an admiring tone.
He had been a clergyman’s son who trained as an attorney before her brother hired him.
Maybe their sons would find a path in the law, or the army, or the church, or some other future course she could not comprehend.
“Will you continue to work as Pemberley’s steward?
I cannot imagine you ceding that position to another man. ”
He gave her a hesitant look. “Do you care if your husband has employment?”
She grinned at the word “husband.” “I want him to be happy. But if you are our steward, I am not paying you a salary since you will already have my thirty thousand pounds at your disposal. I need not compensate you twice.”
He laughed and pulled her in close. “That is perfectly fair,” he said, kissing her deeply. “I always knew you were an incomparable woman.”
“But you could not have loved me at first.”