Epilogue 2
Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy kissed their daughter goodbye.
At age twenty, Juliana had that day married a good man and was about to embark on her bridal tour.
Her sisters and brothers gave her an enormous group hug, and then she allowed her husband, Louis Sheffield, to hand her into his new carriage.
“Goodbye, Jules!” called Mark. “We love you!”
“Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!” Rose cried.
Peter and Marianne behaved with admirable decorum, waving rather than shrieking.
After the carriage turned the corner, the Darcys’ four remaining offspring, ages eight to eighteen, hastened back to the wedding breakfast.
Elizabeth did not realise that her tears had fallen until her beloved husband asked, “Happy tears?”
She sighed. “Mostly, but not entirely, I have to admit. Also, I wish to complain about this long-game nonsense. I was thinking that the long game might stop once our children become adults, or marry, or reach some other goal. Now I believe that the long game lasts a lifetime.”
“You are correct, of course. But turn and look.” Fitzwilliam gently held her shoulders and turned her to face the veranda where most of the wedding breakfast action was still occurring.
“Our sisters are all here, with their families,” he said.
“Charlotte Weber is here with her sons. Richard and Margaret are here with their four. Bingley’s elder sister is here with her daughter.
The Tanners and the Johnsons are here with five children between them.
Is it not beautiful to see how all of the effort and waiting, the love and the heartache—all of the various long games—blend together in a tapestry of laughter and tears and arrivals and departures and joinings and partings? ”
“It is beautiful.”
“And you know what else is beautiful?” he asked her.
She just leant back on him and lifted her mouth to nibble on his neck.
He somehow managed to ignore the distraction and answered his own question, “The Hall of Mirrors, in what was the Palace of Versailles but is now the Museum of the History of France.”
Elizabeth shivered with anticipation. Her husband had whisked her off to Scotland, Ireland, and Italy during the Napoleonic Wars, but now they could finally see other destinations—including spots in and around Paris, France. She was thrilled with their upcoming plans.
“Another thing that is beautiful, Fitzwilliam, is you. Even though you are quite, quite ancient, you look as handsome as the day I met you, all those millions of years ago.”
“And by millions, you mean six and twenty,” he said, laughing. “As to beauty—you are even more beautiful now than you have ever been, Elizabeth, which should be impossible. However…. Do you know what is not so very beautiful?”
“What?”
“Calf’s-feet jelly,” he replied.
They both laughed.
She said, “Later, for certain.”
He pretended to pout. “Not now, for a quarter hour?”
“Later, for more than an hour.”
“That, my dear, sounds alluring.”
“As for now,” Elizabeth suggested, “let us rejoin our guests.”