Bonus Chapter The Frog, the Viscount, and Forty Years of Perfect Posture
The gardens of Rosings Park were currently attempting to maintain their dignity under a May sun that clearly had no respect for decorum.
The peonies were showing off, the marquees shimmered with self-satisfaction, and the whole scene looked suspiciously like a military triumph staged by someone who had never lost a battle, or a tea service.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh presided over it all from the cool interior of the principal pavilion, looking through her lorgnette like a field marshal surveying enemy lines.
Beside her, the Countess of Matlock fanned herself with the lazy elegance of a woman who had long ago decided that true power lay in appearing mildly bored.
"I must say, Catherine," Eleanor remarked, her voice smooth as fresh cream, "the weather is almost as obliging as the bride. I half expected Mrs Fitzwilliam to insist on moving the breakfast indoors. She has always struck me as a creature more comfortable among gilt mirrors than garden gnats."
"She has sense," Lady Catherine replied crisply.
The tap-tap-tap of her cane against the floorboards set a metronome to her satisfaction.
"She understands that in Kent, my preferences carry slightly more weight than the local climate.
Besides, the girl has taste. She knows Rosings in May is a spectacle that money cannot purchase. "
Her gaze drifted toward the topiary garden. There sat Anne, actually sitting forward, beside the youngest Bennet girl.
Two months earlier, the sight would have required smelling salts.
Lydia Bennet remained, by any objective measure, a walking incident in primrose silk.
She was currently employing a cherry tart as a conductor's baton, her laughter bouncing across the lawn with enough volume to startle several elderly aunts into dropping their teaspoons.
And yet, something had shifted.
Lady Catherine watched with narrowed eyes as Lydia caught herself mid-gesture, straightened her shoulders with the instinctive correction of a girl who had endured three solid weeks of "gliding" lessons, and continued her story at only marginally less ear-splitting volume.
Anne, miracle of miracles, was laughing. Not the thin, polite sound she usually managed, but a genuine, startled giggle that brought actual colour to her cheeks.
Lady Catherine felt the familiar sensation of a plan succeeding exactly as intended.
"Anne is improved," she murmured, mostly to herself.
"The Bennet girl, vulgar, loud, and alarmingly resilient, has done what ten years of physicians could not.
I have decided. I shall take them both to town next Season.
Miss Lydia will be polished until even the most fastidious duke finds her endurable.
Anne will benefit from the reflected glow of a successful debut.
It is merely a question of application."
Eleanor's fan paused mid-arc. "A bold campaign, sister. Though I suspect the ton will require a great deal of… direction before they accept a Bennet under your sponsorship."
"The ton," Lady Catherine said, lifting her chin, "will accept whatever I inform them is acceptable."
She returned her attention to the main table, where Mr Richard Fitzwilliam of Thornwood, formerly Colonel, now master of a modest but respectable estate, sat beside his bride. Caroline Fitzwilliam looked magnificent in cream silk and an expression of quiet, hard-won triumph.
A footman approached carefully, as though the object in he was carrying was the Ark of the Covenant.
"A gift for the groom, sir," he announced. "From Lord Keathley and Mr Darcy. With their compliments."
Richard eyed the domed silver dish with immediate suspicion, every instinct warning him against it.
"If this is another taxidermied crow, Robert, I swear on my wife's hatboxes—"
"Would I do such a thing?" Lord Keathley called across the table, all wounded innocence. "At your wedding? In Lady Catherine's garden? I am cut to the quick, brother."
Darcy, seated beside him, took a slow sip of champagne and maintained a silence so eloquent it deserved its own coat of arms.
Richard lifted the lid.
A frog launched itself with unrestrained enthusiasm, as if it were a man finally escaping debtor's prison.
It landed, splat, squarely on Caroline's décolletage.
The bride did not scream. Caroline Fitzwilliam had spent a lifetime training herself out of such undignified reflexes. Instead, she went perfectly still, glanced down at the amphibian now comfortably settled against her collarbone, and said, in a voice dry enough to powder wigs:
"Richard. Remove it."
"Er, yes, my love—"
"Remove. It. Now."
The frog, sensing imminent peril, leapt again. This time it landed on the wedding cake, a five-tiered monument of buttercream arrogance, and began an ambitious ascent of the topmost tier.
Lord Keathley was weeping with laughter, clutching the tablecloth as though it were the last rope off a sinking ship. Darcy had buried his face in his hands, whether in mortification or suppressed mirth was impossible to determine.
"I will murder it," Richard declared, lunging. "And then I will murder you both. Slowly. With flair."
"You have to catch it first!" Robert gasped between wheezes.
The frog made a break for freedom, hopping merrily along the damask. Richard gave chase. A gravy boat toppled. Brown liquid spread across the pristine white of the tablecloth.
Lady Keathley, Jane, rose with a serenity that came from having once calmed four Bennet sisters and their mother during a rain-soaked assembly. She produced a napkin, captured the frog mid-leap, and deposited it neatly into an empty champagne flute.
"There," she said, handing the glass to a stunned footman. "Contained. Kindly escort him to the pond. Gently."
The table fell silent.
Robert gazed at his wife with naked adoration. "I knew there was a reason I married you."
"You married me because I tolerate you," Jane replied calmly, resuming her seat.
Richard collapsed back into his chair, gravy-stained and murderous. Caroline dabbed at her neckline with a handkerchief, rebuilding her composure one precise press at a time. The cake sagged slightly to starboard, victim of amphibian hubris.
"Retribution," Richard said, levelling a finger at his brother, "will be swift. Merciless. And creatively timed."
"I look forward to it." Robert raised his glass. "To the happy couple!"
"To the happy couple!" the guests echoed, because what else was one to do when a frog had just attempted to conquer a wedding cake?
From the principal pavilion, Lady Catherine lowered her lorgnette. The corner of her mouth twitched, once, very slightly.
Eleanor nearly dropped her fan at the sight.
"Boys," Lady Catherine pronounced, the single word containing the sum total of her opinion on masculine maturity since the dawn of time.
Across the lawn, a new figure approached the main table. The man had blond curls, an easy stride, and familiar blue eyes. Lady Catherine's breath caught for half a heartbeat before reason reasserted itself.
Not Anthony. Anthony was dead these fifteen years. This was merely genetics being unnecessarily cruel.
Colonel Edmund Lindon reached the table, clapped Richard on the shoulder, and was immediately pulled into a back-slapping embrace.
"Lindon! You made it!"
"Wouldn't miss it. Mrs Fitzwilliam," he bowed to Caroline, "my deepest sympathies. And my congratulations. In that precise order."
Caroline's mouth curved. "Colonel Lindon. How comforting to know my husband's friends hold him in such high esteem."
"The highest. No one else I would stop your carriage for."
Lady Catherine watched the exchange, fingers tightening on her cane.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Another cane struck the flagstones, sharper, slower, more deliberate than her own.
She turned.
Augusta Prestwick, Dowager Countess of Wexford, advanced across the lawn in violet silk that should have been funereal but somehow managed to look victorious. Eighty if she was a day, and entirely unconcerned by the fact.
Their eyes met.
Forty years folded themselves into one crystalline, venomous instant.
"Lady Catherine." Augusta's voice carried the length of the lawn, warm, musical, lethal. "Charming. Truly charming. You always did have such a gift for… presentation."
The pause before "presentation" was a stiletto.
Lady Catherine rose. Her spine could have ruled empires.
"Lady Wexford." Each syllable was frost. "What an unexpected honour. I had not realised you still ventured out to such events. At your age, one might expect a quieter occupation."
"Oh, quiet is so terribly dull. Besides, Edmund insisted." She gestured towards her grandson. "He speaks so highly of dear Richard. I simply had to see the bride who finally brought him to heel. A Bingley, I understand? How enterprising."
The Countess of Matlock had gone unnaturally still. Her fan had stopped.
"Mrs Fitzwilliam is a woman of taste and discernment," Lady Catherine replied. "She chose freely. A refreshing departure from marriages founded on… necessity."
Augusta's smile took on the gleam of a well-honed blade.
"Pamela's marriage was founded on devotion.
She had a husband who adored her to her final breath.
" The harpy tilted her head slightly. "But then, you would know all about devotion, would you not?
How does dear Anne fare? Still unwed, I hear.
Such a pity. She always seemed so delicate. "
Lady Catherine's knuckles blanched on the head of her cane.
Edmund Lindon, displaying excellent tactical sense, began to edge backwards.
"Grandmother, perhaps we might find our seats—"
"In a moment, dear." Augusta did not look away. "I am merely renewing an old friendship."
"Friendship?" Lady Catherine inquired, her voice dangerously soft.
"Acquaintance, then, if you prefer." Augusta's smile sharpened. "You did share a Season with my daughter, after all. Such memories."
She dipped the shallowest of curtsies, devastating in its perfection, and glided away towards the seating area, leaving silence and scorched earth in her wake.
Lady Catherine remained standing. Her face was stone. Her pulse was war drums.
Eleanor cleared her throat. "Well. That was—"
"Do not," Lady Catherine said. She sat. The motion was controlled. Precise. Volcanic. "Not. One. Word."
Eleanor returned to her fan with alacrity, knowing fully well when retreat was the only sensible option.
Across the lawn, Augusta Prestwick settled into her chair, smoothed her skirts, and smiled the small, satisfied smile of a woman who had waited forty years for precisely this moment.
And somewhere, in the ornamental pond, a liberated frog considered his narrow escape from matrimony and decided he preferred the single life after all.
*
The End