Epilogue
Even with Richard’s help, they were three full days in London before Darcy had any word of where Miss Lydia might be, and more than once in that time he feared he would fail Elizabeth. But by week’s end, he had found Miss Lydia, just as he had promised.
He had travelled to London intending to do the obvious thing: find Wickham, pay his debts, and make him marry the girl.
But by the time the carriage reached the second posting inn, Darcy understood that the obvious thing was also a cruelty.
To bind a girl of sixteen for life to the man who had seduced her was not a rescue. It was a sentence.
And that girl, foolish as she was, would be his sister. She was owed the same protection he had given Georgiana.
So he had done the harder thing instead.
He had found them. He had forced Lydia to return to the Gardiners and her angry father. He had paid Wickham, not to marry her, but to go away.
He knew Wickham—his debts, his habits, his vanity, and the people in London who would shelter him.
Chief among them was Mrs. Younge, who had once helped Wickham attempt to elope with Georgiana and now let lodgings to the sort of guests who paid not to be found.
She knew where Wickham was. She named her price for it, and Darcy paid it without a word.
His focus was locating Miss Lydia. Richard’s was containing Wickham.
Richard had installed himself in the carriage and firmly refused to be left behind. It was a good thing, too, for it was Richard who knew which regiments needed bodies and were not terribly particular about where they came from.
Richard wrote it out in stark detail. Ensign Wickham could sit a horse, wear the uniform well, and make himself agreeable when it profited him.
He could also run up debts faster than a mess could hear of them, charm tradesmen into ruinous credit, and leave behind angry fathers, brothers, and husbands if given the leisure to do so.
He would be useful if kept busy, watched, and sent abroad at the first respectable opportunity, but could be rather expensive if permitted to be idle.
The northern colonel, being a sensible man who was in London recruiting men to fill his regiment, took the warning as intended. Wickham went north under orders and observation, with no illusion that Colonel Fitzwilliam or Darcy would ever forget where he was.
And Wickham, who had at last in his life met a commanding officer he could neither charm, frighten, nor outwait, counted his five hundred pounds with exaggerated care and went.
Darcy was glad that Elizabeth had accepted him before her letters came, and not only because he had longed for her for so long.
Elizabeth’s acceptance of his hand had also given him standing in the family.
He was no longer a stranger thrusting himself into the Bennets’ private disaster; he was to be their son, their brother, their ally.
If Miss Lydia Bennet needed to be forced from Wickham’s keeping, he had the right and the duty to see it done.
And he had.
That it could be done at all, that a girl could vanish in the night and be home within the fortnight with her name nearly whole, was a matter of discretion, speed, and money.
There were whispers, of course. But they were quieter than they might have been, and fewer than he had feared.
The elopement had been hushed up before the world could hear of it, and the Bennets, whatever their other failings, closed ranks like a regiment.
Mrs. Bennet had been herself, but she had been herself in her chambers. This had proved a mercy of some consequence. What might have become town gossip remained, for the most part, within Longbourn’s walls, where it did no greater injury than the peace of everyone obliged to live there.
In addition to the regiment for Wickham, Richard had found a husband for Miss Lydia.
He had identified, with a swiftness that Darcy did not care to examine too closely, a lieutenant of decent family, good temper, and little fortune, who was willing to take a wife, provided that wife came with three thousand pounds.
Darcy was prepared to supply it. He would have paid Wickham as much to marry her, and Lieutenant John Wilson was a far more deserving object.
Miss Lydia objected violently when the plan was first presented to her.
She had no wish to be married off like a parcel, she said, and no intention of being tied to some dreary officer who had lost half his teeth in Spain and meant to lecture her on economy.
She held this position for ten minutes, which was as long as it took for the lieutenant to be brought into the room.
He was not old or ugly, he had all his teeth, and he was wearing an expression of quiet amusement. Darcy appreciated that the man was only twenty-two—old enough to understand responsibility, but far nearer Miss Lydia’s age than Wickham had been.
“So,” said Miss Lydia, looking him over, “you are Lieutenant Wilson.”
“I am.”
“And you have come to marry me?”
“If I am so fortunate.”
Lydia laughed. “Oh! You say that because you have been told to do so.”
“No,” said he. “I say it because you are very pretty, and because I am not such a fool as to begin by contradicting you.”
This delighted her. Darcy could not imagine why.
“Are you very poor?” Miss Lydia asked.
“Very.”
“Then you want my money.”
“I want your money extremely,” said Wilson, without embarrassment. “But if I dislike the person attached to it I shall decline it all the same.”
Miss Lydia peered up at him. “Do you dance well?”
“I dance with confidence, which I am assured is nearly the same thing.”
She laughed, and then, with no warning at all, stepped forward and turned him slightly by the sleeve. “Stand there. The light is better.” She studied him. “Yes, you will do very well. Red suits you.”
Darcy was mortified.
Wilson looked down at her hand on his sleeve, then back at her face, and smiled—not foolishly, not triumphantly, but with real amusement and, Darcy thought, actual pleasure.
“You have a decisive manner, Miss Lydia.”
“Of course I have. How else is anything to be settled?”
“I begin to see the advantage.”
“You must not be dull,” she warned him.
He tipped his head thoughtfully. “I shall attempt not to be.”
“And you must not order me about.”
“No,” said Wilson. “Not unless you require it.”
Miss Lydia folded her arms over her chest. “I shall never require it.”
“Then I shall hope never to be obliged. But if you are determined to cross a street without looking, Miss Lydia, I may be forced to interfere.”
Miss Lydia stared at him for one startled instant, then burst out laughing. “Well. You are clever. That is better than dull.”
By the time a quarter of an hour had passed, Miss Lydia had informed Mr. Wilson where they ought to be seen first, how many dances he owed her, and that she had always preferred lieutenants to captains, for in her experience, captains were often conceited.
When she asked whether anyone had noticed how well they looked together, the lieutenant’s eyes followed her with unmistakable warmth.
By the end of the interview, Miss Lydia had decided the arrangement had been all her own idea.
The lieutenant, informed of his good fortune, appeared grateful, and even a little enamoured, which Darcy thought boded as well for the marriage as anything could.
That no one at Longbourn considered the matter mended entirely was understood. That Miss Lydia considered it mended entirely was equally so.
They had been wed three weeks later.
And now Darcy stood in Longbourn church beside Bingley. By the time Darcy and Richard had returned from town, Bingley had already taken up residence at Netherfield again and was engaged to the eldest Bennet daughter.
His friend looked so happy at the sight of Jane Bennet coming up the aisle that Darcy wondered how anyone in the church could bear to look at him for long.
Then Elizabeth came into the church on her father’s arm, and every thought Darcy possessed deserted him.
She was not transformed. That was the wonder of it.
She was only Elizabeth, in a pretty gown suited to a country wedding, with morning light touching the side of her face and a smile she was trying, with imperfect success, to keep demure.
But she came towards him freely, openly, with no doubt in her step and no shadow in her eyes, and the sight of it struck him with such force that for one long minute he could not have moved if the church had caught fire around him.
When she reached his side, Mr. Bennet put her hand into Darcy’s and gave him a dry look that suggested he knew very well the condition to which his new son had been reduced.
“I had been led to understand, Mr. Darcy, that you were a gentleman of uncommon composure,” he said, in an undertone. “I see my daughter has made a conquest of that also.”
Darcy, finding himself unequal to any defence, could only bow his head with what dignity remained to him.
“Take care of him, Lizzy,” Mr. Bennet added, with a faint lift of his brows. “He appears to have been quite overcome, and if he faints now, your mother will insist upon reviving him herself.”
Elizabeth glanced up at Darcy, her eyes bright beneath her lashes.
“You must breathe, Mr. Darcy,” she murmured. “It is generally expected of bridegrooms.”
He chuckled softly despite himself. “I shall endeavour to oblige you.”
“An excellent beginning,” she said softly. “I have great hopes for you.”
He looked down at her hand, small, steady, and strong, and felt the last of the church, the company, and the watching world retreat to the edges of his awareness.
There had been a time when hope had been all he dared ask of her.
Now, after one hastily prepared picnic and the unexpected gift of another chance, she stood beside him, teasing him at the altar, joy itself having become a private language between them.
Darcy had acted upon impulse exactly once in his life, and it had got him Elizabeth Bennet.
On the whole, he thought, he had better not risk it again, for he could not hope to improve upon the result.