Epilogue
Later that day, Mr Bennet’s permission was sought and granted for the marriage of Elizabeth to Mr Darcy. A date was set for shortly after the new year, and arrangements began to be made.
It soon became necessary for Elizabeth to make a trip to London, both to shop for her trousseau and to meet Lord and Lady Matlock, Darcy’s relations in Town.
Their approval was neither necessary nor being sought, but circumstances had made the introduction rather more pressing than it otherwise might have been.
A few weeks before the engagement, Mr Collins, Mr Bennet’s distant cousin and heir to Longbourn, had arrived somewhat unexpectedly for a visit.
Upon discovering Mr Darcy’s marked attentions towards Elizabeth, he had made every effort to convince her that Miss de Bourgh possessed a far stronger claim to the gentleman. His arguments had proved unsuccessful.
Mr Collins departed only a few days after a ball at Netherfield, clearly dissatisfied with the Bennet family as a whole, and promptly carried news of Mr Darcy’s attentions back to his patroness.
Lady Catherine did not act immediately, but the prospect of an engagement evidently proved too much to bear.
She arrived at Longbourn the day after Mr Darcy’s proposal, in a considerable furore.
That lady proved no more successful than her rector had been and departed exceedingly displeased. Mr Darcy arrived not long afterwards, having apparently endured a similar confrontation, and immediately apologised to Elizabeth for his aunt’s behaviour.
“She did not trouble me, William,” Elizabeth assured him. “It is fortunate, is it not, that I have never been particularly troubled by meeting peers—even when all they possess is a courtesy title?”
He regarded her with a mixture of amusement and curiosity. “Where did you acquire such confidence, Elizabeth?”
“I never did tell you who owned Netherfield, did I?”
She laughed, watching him absorb the unexpected answer.
“No,” he said slowly. “I asked, but you told me they preferred their privacy.”
“They did, and I saw no reason not to respect it.” Her smile deepened. “However, now that we are engaged, I suppose I can tell you. Lord and Lady Glenross resided at Netherfield for nearly four years, until her health required them to return to Scotland. Lord Glenross still owns the estate.”
For a moment, Mr Darcy merely looked at her.
“Lord Glenross?” he said at last. “The Marquess of Glenross?”
A laugh escaped him. “And all this time, you allowed me to believe your acquaintance with the former tenants of Netherfield was quite unremarkable.”
“I do not recall ever saying it was unremarkable,” Elizabeth replied. “Only private.”
Darcy shook his head at what she had revealed—and how casually she had revealed it.
“You will never cease to astonish me, Elizabeth,” he said.
After a quick glance assured him they were alone, he drew her into his arms and held her close for a long moment, apparently quite content simply to have her there.
Their trip to London proved unremarkable in most respects.
Lord and Lady Matlock had already endured a visit from Lady Catherine, but they were predisposed to think well of Darcy’s choice, if for no other reason than that his aunt so vehemently objected to it.
Lord Matlock, in particular, took considerable pleasure in vexing his sister, and his ready acceptance of Elizabeth appeared to owe at least something to that inclination.
The next development came in the form of a letter Elizabeth received while staying with her aunt and uncle in Gracechurch Street.
Even after his wife’s death, Lord Glenross had continued to correspond with Elizabeth, and news of her engagement had evidently reached him quickly. His letter contained congratulations, but also something Elizabeth had never expected.
My dear Elizabeth,
The news of your engagement, and to such a well-regarded young man, has given me greater pleasure than I can readily express.
I knew your Mr Darcy’s father only a little, and he was a very good man, and I have heard that his son has followed in his path.
My only regret is that my dear wife is not here to share your joy, for I know how delighted she would have been to see you so happily settled.
There is, however, one matter of which she insisted I should tell you only when the proper occasion arose.
As you know, we were never blessed with children of our own, and my nephew will eventually inherit both my title and the greater part of my estate.
My wife therefore asked, not long before her death, that twenty thousand pounds from the fortune settled upon her at our marriage be set aside for you.
It was her wish that the money should become yours upon your marriage, to be included in whatever settlements were made for your benefit.
I confess that I saw no reason to oppose her in this instance. She loved you very much, Elizabeth, and I believe she regarded you, in some small measure, as the daughter we were never fortunate enough to have.
The money has therefore been held for you these several years, and I shall instruct my solicitor to communicate with Mr Darcy’s without delay.
You may object if you feel compelled to do so. I assure you, however, that neither my wife nor I ever intended to allow you any choice in the matter.
Elizabeth was astonished. Had Lord Glenross been standing before her, she would undoubtedly have objected most strenuously. Yet she could not ignore the affection behind the gift, nor the knowledge that it had been Lady Glenross’s wish.
Mrs Gardiner eventually persuaded her that the wisest course was simply to accept it.
“If nothing else, Elizabeth, it considerably lessens the disparity between your fortunes. You were already a perfectly respectable match for Mr Darcy, whatever his aunt might choose to think, but now even his relations can have considerably less to object to.”
Elizabeth smiled faintly. “I rather doubt twenty thousand pounds will silence Lady Catherine.”
“No,” her aunt admitted. “But it may deprive her of at least one argument.”
Mr Darcy had already heard of the unexpected bequest. A letter had arrived at his solicitor’s office that same day, and the man had promptly sent him notice of it.
The money was to be settled upon Elizabeth, in addition to the provisions Darcy had already made for her, and the matter was soon arranged to everyone’s satisfaction.
Mr Bennet would, of course, be informed of the additional sum as part of the marriage settlement, but it was generally agreed that nothing need be said to Mrs Bennet for fear of unnecessarily exciting her nerves.
That settled, Elizabeth and Darcy proceeded with their plans and spent a little more than a se’nnight in London. They kept mostly to themselves during that time, though they attended the theatre one evening, taking care to do so without attracting undue notice—or so they hoped.
In any case, their presence in Town excited little comment, and they returned to Hertfordshire with the Gardiners and Kitty accompanying them.
The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day passed quickly, and on the second of January, Elizabeth and Darcy were married in the church at Meryton which Elizabeth had attended since childhood.
They married by licence, having judged it the simpler course, an arrangement which particularly delighted Mrs Bennet, who considered a marriage by licence considerably more prestigious than one solemnised after the calling of banns.
To say that the newly married Darcys were happy would have been an understatement. They argued on occasion—rather more frequently at the beginning of their marriage than as the years passed—but soon discovered that reconciliation could be every bit as enjoyable as the quarrel had been provoking.
The summer after their marriage, they travelled north to Glenross Castle, Lord Glenross’s ancestral seat in the Perthshire Highlands.
Elizabeth was delighted to see the gentleman again and equally pleased to explore Scotland in the company of her new husband.
They travelled at a leisurely pace, making numerous stops along the way and turning the journey into a wedding tour neither would soon forget.
For a couple as much in love as the Darcys, it surprised no one when the journey bore fruit. Elizabeth discovered in the autumn that she was with child, and the following spring safely delivered an heir, the first of five children who would someday fill Pemberley’s nursery.
The rest of the Bennets eventually settled well. Jane married Mr Bingley in the spring, that gentleman having proposed shortly after the Darcys’ wedding in January. His sisters were displeased with his choice, but they liked the connexion to the Darcy family so said little in objection.
Mary married later that same year, though her courtship began in a rather less straightforward fashion.
While Elizabeth and Darcy were travelling in Scotland, Mary was staying at Pemberley with Georgiana.
During a visit to Lambton, she encountered Mr Andrew Livesay, a gentleman whose estate, Ashcombe, lay only a few miles away.
Without the Darcys in residence to provide a proper introduction, Mary could do little more than learn his name, though apparently that was enough to leave an impression upon them both.
Upon Elizabeth’s return, Mary mentioned the gentleman with sufficient frequency to arouse her sister’s curiosity.
Elizabeth, discovering that the Livesays were respectable neighbours whom Darcy knew by reputation, promptly included Mr Livesay amongst several local families invited to dine at Pemberley.
Mary found herself considerably less interested in displaying her accomplishments that evening than she had once been. Mr Livesay, however, appeared no less charmed by her for the omission, and Mary remained in Derbyshire with her sister as their acquaintance steadily deepened.
When Mr Livesay eventually proposed, he travelled to Longbourn to seek Mr Bennet’s permission. By then, however, Elizabeth was far enough advanced in her pregnancy that Mary chose to marry from Pemberley rather than require her sister to travel south.
Mrs Bennet was exceedingly displeased by this arrangement, though her complaints were considerably softened by the satisfaction of having Mary so comfortably settled.
In the years that followed, Kitty and Lydia also married, though neither made so distinguished a match as her elder sisters.
Kitty, much improved by the time she spent with the Gardiners and by Georgiana’s friendship, eventually married a respectable gentleman of comfortable fortune and sensible habits.
Lydia required rather longer to acquire the judgement her younger years had lacked, but eventually made a respectable match of her own.
Her connexion to the Darcys undoubtedly broadened the society into which she was introduced, though by the time she married, she had at least learned enough discretion not to disgrace the advantages it afforded her.
Thus, in time, all five Bennet daughters were comfortably settled—an outcome Mrs Bennet considered no less than her due.
Likewise, Georgiana made an exceptionally good match. During her second season in London, she met Lord Glenross’s grandnephew, the eldest son of the marquess’s heir presumptive, and their acquaintance quickly developed into something more.
While Darcy was pleased by the likelihood that his sister would one day be a marchioness, he was rather less pleased by the knowledge that she might eventually make her home in Scotland.
Georgiana married the young man when she was twenty, and Darcy gave her away with considerably more reluctance than he cared to admit.
Years later, Elizabeth would occasionally tease her husband that neither of them had expected anything of consequence to come from being stranded at a country inn. Darcy invariably reminded her that he had begun hoping otherwise before their first evening there had ended.
As it happened, that brief sojourn had led to more happiness than either of them could ever have imagined.