Epilogue
EPILOGUE
M rs Kingston travelled with her housekeeper, Mrs Martin, to Brighton, where she leased a neat little apartment that had a window overlooking a lane that led straight to the sea wall. Her letters were increasingly carefree. She had made a few friends, she had learnt to net purses, and she had worked upon her understanding of French. Her pronunciation, she confessed, was unlikely to improve any time soon. She also had a little gig and pony, and she wrote she had emulated her very good friend Mrs Darcy by driving anywhere she pleased.
Of those of us intimately involved with that lady, my sister Mary became closest to her. It came as no surprise that after many regular visits to Brighton, Mary left Longbourn and took up her residence there. She had, she admitted, come to appreciate a spinsterish life without the encumbrances of duties which must interfere with her painting. Brighton was too full of scenes to ever bore her, and her friend Maria, she confessed, was a most restful companion .
“I am surprised your mother allowed her to go,” Mr Darcy remarked after I read my sister’s letter at breakfast.
“Ah. For this boon we must thank Jane, who has given Mama an infant to harass with her anxieties.”
My husband and I enjoyed a private, supremely tender smile between us, which Kitty, who was visiting, failed to notice. She was far too busy staring longingly at Colonel Fitzwilliam, who had come for a few days before travelling to Matlock to pay a duty call upon his relations. He, too, was reading a letter, and had much to consider of late, for Anne de Bourgh had died, and he had been named heir of Lady Catherine’s holdings. I strongly doubted Kitty knew she had fixed her affections on a man who would decide Mr Collins’s fate until such time as he inherited Longbourn. Ah well, life is nothing if not a wildly entangling and occasionally ironic series of events.
Colonel Fitzwilliam put down his letter, and after a lapse in conversation during which he relished bites of Pemberley’s famous sausages, he said, “I suppose it falls to me to tell my parents about their niece.”
John Lucas had returned from the Continent with a terribly interesting scar on his jaw and an unmistakable swagger. He was leaner, more muscular, and sporting a dashing moustache. He had also earned a promotion that apparently made him feel qualified to call upon Georgiana in London. How he knew she had gone to town with Mrs Annesley was highly suspect, but the lady was now of age and had an ally in a sister-in-law who did not look askance at secret engagements. I was forced to cover a guilty grin over the affair by earnestly sipping my tea.
Her erstwhile guardians had been forced to concede that at least Major Lucas was not a fortune hunter. Georgiana, meanwhile, had exhibited every sign of being madly in love with ‘the idiot’ and, they had grumbled but half-heartedly, for obviously, worse things could—and almost did—happen.
“I would be happy to speak to them,” Mr Darcy then replied reasonably, “but I know you prefer to imagine yourself to have been put upon so that you may claim I am in your debt.” He buttered his toast thoughtfully, and with a touch of amusement he said, “Matlock has come around a little of late, but I suppose Georgiana’s defection to the ranks of those of us with ties to Meryton might set us back.”
At this, Colonel Fitzwilliam then looked across the table at Kitty, and with a wink, he said, “We should all be so fortunate, Cousin.”
As it had done once before—on the last dinner I enjoyed with my family before my engagement ball—time fell around me like a magical, star-filled blanket. This scene, this simple moment seated at a table with members of my dear family, became quite profound all of a sudden. Life, I realised, was swift and ever-changing, but love does not come or go. It does not belong to time. It only ever grows.
Upon sensing my sudden introspection, Mr Darcy stood, spoke in a low voice to the footman at the sideboard, and came around the table to take my hand.
“Might you excuse us?” he said with a nod to our company. He turned to me as though no one else were in the room. “Come along, Swiftling,” he said gently as he searched my upturned face. “I believe you are in need of an airing.”
Soon we were in the drive. “You remember Pearl, do you not?” he asked as he casually lifted himself into the saddle. He reached for me, I stepped up to his boot, and in a flash I was nestled against his chest. With one arm around my waist, he flicked the reins with the other, and then he spoke, almost in a whisper, into my ear.
“We should ride while we still can, my love.”
Though we did not gallop, we did wend our way up a little vale and topped one of the grand old hills that cradled Pemberley. There, harassed by a playful little breeze, we sat silent, as one presence, outside of time, partaking of a glorious scene spread out far below us.