Chapter 34 #4
“Then I give you leave to marry my sister. Now to warn my other brother that if he lets my Lizzy slip into a shadow of compliance and quietness, I will be very severe on him and haunt him day and night, as would the rest of the family! However, I do not believe that will happen. He loves her far too much and worked too long and hard to earn her love.” She nodded once at him and Hugh’s laugh erupted just as the orchestra finished playing a note.
He executed a perfectly respectful complete bow before Jane then led her over to Darcy with only a pat on his back of support, ignoring the quizzical look he received, before he slipped away to steal a moment with his Mary in the brief pauses between the sets.
Jane had admonished Darcy in a similar way when she danced with him. He took her warning with good humour and understood the genesis of the pat of support that he had received from Lord Birchington.
Just before the set was complete Lady Jane Fitzwilliam was ruminating about how she was looking forward to returning to Brookfield. By the time her sisters completed their wedding trips, she would be well and truly comfortable in her role as mistress of that estate.
The Fitzwilliams had one more wedding to attend for Charlotte and Elliot.
Luckily Lizzy and Mary would be back from their wedding trips before their friend resigned the name that she despised to become Mrs Patrick Elliot.
Jane was looking forward to the visit to the new Longbourn and seeing all of her family again when they visited the area to witness the ceremony being solemnised.
The final set was called not long before five o’clock in the morning.
It was a waltz, now widely accepted among the Ton.
The last to allow the dance were the patronesses of Almack’s, though Lady Jersey had tried to get her fellow patronesses to countenance the dance long before they had.
Once the royals started to include the dance routinely, the resistance of the other patronesses finally crumbled.
The final set was enjoyed, especially by the couples who were to marry in just over four and twenty hours.
Not being the first time that Darcy and his beloved Lizzy had danced the waltz, they already moved as one with hardly any light visible between them.
‘How I love this woman!’ Darcy told himself as he bowed and she returned a curtsy at the end of the dance.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
The night before the wedding the Rhys-Davies hosted a dinner for all of the family and those that would be family on the morrow.
Darcy’s cousin, the Archbishop who would be officiating at Westminster Abbey, was present with his wife and three children.
His daughter Mary Faith and Lily Gardiner spent the dinner in each other’s company.
The Phillips were included. Their other Meryton friends did not feel slighted to be excluded, as they understood that the invitees were all family or soon to be family.
There were many toasts to the couples willingly walking into the parson’s mousetrap the next morning.
Before dinner, the Archbishop met with the couples together and then each separately to go over the order of service that he would use when he officiated their marriage ceremony.
During the separation of the sexes, he sought out his cousin Darcy. After he seated himself with his glass of port in hand, he turned to his cousin. “I hope you know that you will be marrying a rare gem on the morrow,” he stated to his cousin.
“Believe me Cousin, I am well aware of the rarity of the woman that I have been able to win, after our beginning…” he cut himself off with respect to his mother-in-law’s request. “God certainly moves in mysterious ways.”
“William, what are you talking about?” Pressed the Archbishop, his curiosity aroused.
Darcy imparted a very short version of his folly. At the end of it, his cousin, who very rarely if ever was left speechless, was left so for a good while before he was able to recover his wherewithal.
“Well I never, William!” he managed to get out after thinking for a minute or two.
“If after all of that you were able to earn her love and she agreed to marry you, then unless God or His Son decree something to the contrary, I believe that yours will be a love that survives for eternity. I am most pleased that your betrothed took you to task the way that she did. George and Anne would be very proud of the man that you have become,” the Archbishop said with conviction.
Feeling somewhat choked up because he knew that his cousin had been very close to his honoured, late father, Darcy said nothing, instead squeezed his cousin’s shoulder.
Once Darcy moved away, Patrick Elliot sat next to the head cleric of the Church of England and had a very enjoyable theological discussion that lasted until the men joined the ladies in the music room.
The guests returned to their respective houses relatively early given the time that the ladies would start their momentous day on the morrow.
Both Darcy and the Marquess managed to steal a kiss from their betrotheds before the Bennets departed for their townhouse.
They were filled with anticipation as the next time that they kissed their lady, they would be married to them.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
That night, both Mary and Elizabeth were asked to meet in the sitting room between Lizzy and Charlotte’s chambers. Expecting just their mother, they were somewhat surprised to be joined by Jane as well. They were even more surprised when Jane started ‘the talk’.
“You two had asked me questions before and I told you then, and it still holds true, that I will never discuss what is private between Richard and me. Listen to Mama, her advice was sound and I will add that you have nothing to fear. You remember what I told you when you asked me?” Both brides nodded.
“I will add only this. Learn from each other and from the experiences of your husband, the more you are both happy, the better it will be for you as a couple. Honesty, as I said before, is everything in a marriage. In all facets of it.”
“W-w-what if my husband is as i-i-inexperienced as I?” Lizzy asked, embarrassment flushing her cheeks as it was not normally a discussion before women were married.
“Then, sister,” Jane said as she took both of her Lizzy’s hands in hers and looked into her eyes, “you will learn together. Like you, your husband likes to read and educate himself. As I am sure like you have, he has studied and you will explore and learn together starting with a blank canvass that you will fill with things that are special only to the two of you.”
“Hugh and I have not spoken about if he is experienced. I chose not to have him tell me, though he was willing,” Mary said to reassure her mother and sisters that Hugh would not hide his past from her, “but I chose to adopt Lizzy’s philosophy.
He has sworn to honour the vows that we will say on the morrow, in a matter of hours actually, absolutely as I will, so there is no reason to revisit the past.”
“You are both marrying the perfect man for you.” their mother said with some depth of emotion.
“One is forlorn when she loses her daughters even to such estimable men that you are marrying in the morning. Now, about the wedding night…” Fanny proceeded to give her second and third daughters a nearly identical speech she had given to Jane.
When she was complete, any apprehension that the two may have felt that night was relieved.
Lizzy blushed as she thought of the dreams that she had about William. If the reality was even close to her dreams then she would be a very happy woman.
The girls went to bed to get as much sleep as they could with the excitement and anticipation that roiled inside both sisters.
‘Jane has the right of it, I have studied about the act and I pray that William has as well,’ Elizabeth thought as she drifted into the open arms of Morpheus, hoping that soon her dreams would become reality.