Epilogue
Pemberley
Over time, the staff at Pemberley became accustomed to Lady Darcy’s eccentricity.
She had a way of knowing things before she was told—anticipating what they had come to ask her, sending a footman with medicine to a tenant family the very day a child fell ill, or taking a person’s hand to congratulate them on a new baby before they knew themselves.
She became someone very special, and they quietly celebrated the day that Mr. Darcy had brought his new bride home.
What Mr. Darcy himself made of it was a matter he kept close, as he kept most things.
He was not a man given to wonder aloud, nor to asking questions; for he had married Elizabeth knowing her gift.
But there were moments—a stillness that came over him at dinner when she tilted her head before the butler had knocked, or the way she would set down her book and say he will be well of a sick horse before the groom had crossed the lawn—when he watched her with an expression that bespoke a quiet satisfaction, a private understanding that he was the luckiest of men, whose wife was quite remarkable.
Elizabeth, for her part, seldom spoke of it, for it had become such a natural part of her, and those who lived at Pemberley that it was as unexceptional to her as the colour of her hair.
When in London, it was often remarked that she and her husband, more often than propriety allowed, would hold hands whenever they were close.
But a Baroness, suo jure, was allowed her affectations, and she was always welcome in the highest circles.
It was Jane’s letters she looked forward to most, arriving twice weekly from Netherfield with their cheerful, unhurried news.
She was with child, and Elizabeth had known it before the letter came, for she had read the very same letter a dozen times.
She smiled at the confirmation, folded the letter, and looked out across the park where the late autumn light was just beginning to slant across the trees.
It was indeed a painting come to life, just as she had seen on her very first day at Pemberley.
Miss Bingley was deeply mortified by Darcy’s marriage, but could congratulate herself that she had paid Jane, on her marriage to her brother, all the affectionate delight and professions of regard that the occasion warranted, however much it pained her to do so.
Such confessions of joy were enhanced, naturally enough, by her new sister being related to a Baroness—her entry to the ton.
She hoped to capture a baron—at the very least, a baronet—but settled, at the age of seven and twenty, for the second son of a viscount, whose only prospect for advancement was his elder brother dying before siring an heir.
Sadly, for the Honourable Mrs. Adkins, as she was, the obligatory heir and a spare and another spare arrived before that less than happy event.
If Lady Catherine de Bourgh had been well and not slipped into melancholia, she would have been extremely indignant on the marriage of her nephew.
She would have written him a letter so abusive of Elizabeth—whom she considered a harlot—that it would have severed all intercourse between them.
Fortunately perhaps, her daughter Anne never told her of their marriage, and when they visited, Elizabeth was careful never to suggest that she was more than just a friend of Mrs. Collins, the rector’s wife— a woman merely come to pay her respects to the great lady who had once ruled over Hunsford and Rosings.
Kitty and William Goulding were married not long after his return to his regiment.
In the tradition of Bennet women travelling unaccompanied to Spain, she begged Mr. Bennet for his consent to her marriage; persuaded Uncle Gardiner to lend her a cabin on his packet to Oporto; and used her connection to General Fitzwilliam to obtain an escort to join Captain Goulding’s regiment bivouacked at Ciudad Rodrigo on the Spanish border.
She had hoped to meet Lydia, but discovered her sister was travelling with the guerrilleros in the north.
In a simple ceremony cheered on by the riflemen of his company, the regiment’s chaplain married Kitty and her beloved William beneath a hot Spanish sun.
As an officer’s wife, she was always by his side throughout his long and distinguished career.
He stayed with Wellington throughout the Peninsula campaign, crossed the Pyrenees, and fought the final battle at Toulouse.
After Waterloo, having been promoted to major, he was posted to upper Canada, then to India as a colonel commanding a regiment, before being promoted to Major General and knighted for his military service.
Mary found that being related to a Baroness afforded her sufficient consequence to marry a clergyman of excellent connections.
The man, as pious as any, rose through the church hierarchy to become Bishop of Lincoln.
Wisely, she never quoted Fordyce, who had said that your judgement will be seen in joining frugality and simplicity together; in being never fond of finery; in carefully distinguishing between what is glaring, and what is genteel; in preserving elegance with the plainest habit.
As the wife of a bishop, she was often called upon to wear gowns of the highest quality, but always characterised by modesty, distinguishing her as a well-bred, conservative, married woman of the upper gentry.
Mr. Bennet outlived his cousin. Mr. Collins and his wife, Charlotte, were not blessed with children, and Longbourn, on Mr. Bennet’s death, would pass to his daughters. With their full agreement, he bequeathed Longbourn to Lady Catherine Goulding.
Lydia. Two years after Salamanca, Elizabeth, who had been in regular correspondence with her sister, received a letter which had been long awaited.
Oviedo, Asturias
Dearest Lizzy—
You may have guessed it already, for you seem to anticipate my letters before I have sent them.
I am to be wed. This has been a very difficult choice.
Surely, if Mama disapproved of my being in Spain, then she is likely as not to disown me completely.
Not because of my marriage, for my betrothed is a very fine man, but because I have had to renounce the Church of England and convert to Catholicism.
Certainly, I was not a religious person—truly, quite the opposite.
But I have discovered, through instruction into the Catholic faith, a meaning to life that hitherto I was not aware of.
Be that as it may, I have been admitted to the Church with an open heart.
You certainly have guessed it. I am to marry Don Mateo.
He is the son of a hidalgo of Asturias, whose family have held their lands since the time of the Reconquista, and who has fought these five years past with the guerrilleros against the French with a ferocity of which I am sure you are aware.
He is not rich—the war has seen to that—but he is brave, and good, and he loves me with a steadiness that I confess I had not thought to find in any man, least of all a Spaniard.
I know what you are thinking, and yes, his eyes are very dark and very fine. But of course, you know him very well.
He confessed that he thought to follow you to England, but knew, in his heart, that you could never love him as a man should be loved by his wife.
Should I be jealous, that the first Bennet sister he fell in love with was you?
Not at all! True love brooks no jealousy.
Anyway, it shows his very good taste! I love him dearly, as he loves me.
Mama will say I have thrown myself away.
I know it as surely as you do. But I find I cannot bring myself to care very much, for I am happier here, in this half-ruined city with its mountains and its bells and its smell of wood smoke and orange blossom, than I ever was at Longbourn.
Tell her, if you please, that I am well.
Tell her I am safe. Tell her, if it helps, that Don Mateo’s family have a coat of arms, though I confess I cannot read a word of the Latin motto.
I think of you all very often. Kiss Jane for me, and tell her I am glad about the child—I am sure you knew before she did. Write soon.
Your most affectionate, and now thoroughly Spanish, sister—
Lidia
Post Scriptum. His horse is called Rodrigo—I thought you would like that.
Elizabeth read the letter twice, and then a third time, and found herself laughing—really laughing—in a way she had not done since Jane’s last visit to Pemberley.
She had seen it, of course; had seen Lydia’s happiness in a dozen remembered moments, had seen the face of Don Mateo before his name was written.
But seeing it confirmed in Lydia’s own hand, with its inkblots and its postscript about the horse, was something else entirely.
She folded the letter carefully and set it on the writing table. Outside, the first snow of an early winter was beginning to settle on the park, very softly, without any fuss.
She thought of her mother. Mrs. Bennet would, in due course, take to her nerves with considerable dedication; would declare herself betrayed; would then, when it became known that Don Mateo’s family were of ancient lineage, however reduced, revise her opinion upward by several degrees.
Elizabeth knew this too, as she knew most things, and felt a great tenderness for her mother’s absolute predictability.
She took up her pen.
My dear Lydia—
I had indeed guessed, and I could not be more glad of it.
Tell Don Mateo that he has the good opinion of the Darcys, which I am told counts for something in England, though I suspect in Asturias it counts for very little.
Tell him also that his horse has an excellent name, but I am not sure Don Quixote would have approved.
As for Mama—leave her to me.
She paused, and looked again at the snow, which was settling now in earnest along the stone balustrade. Darcy would be back from the south field within the hour. She could feel it, not as a memory but as a simple certainty. She dipped her pen again, and smiled.
I am, as ever, your most affectionate sister, who knew before you told her, and loved you all the better for telling her anyway.
Dona Isabella
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* THE END *