Epilogue
Elizabeth
Six months after our marriage, Lady Catherine came to Pemberley.
She had not announced her visit. A carriage appeared in the drive in the middle of a December afternoon, followed by a second carrying enough luggage for a military campaign. Fitzwilliam, summoned by a servant, joined me in the drawing room with a resigned expression.
“She has brought Anne,” he said.
“Then we shall receive them.”
“My aunt might stay several weeks on principle.”
“We shall survive. I survived five Bennet girls in a single house.”
“Your courage humbles me.”
Lady Catherine entered as if reclaiming a wayward estate. She greeted me with regal coldness, inspected the drawing room, criticized the arrangement of the flowers, and asked whether the east apartments were properly heated.
Anne stood behind her, pale but smiling.
I embraced her with more warmth than her mother judged proper.
“I am happy you have come.”
“Fitzwilliam invited me,” she replied softly. “Several times.”
Lady Catherine pursed her lips.
She did not forgive me that day. Nor did she apologize.
But she stayed for Christmas, discovered that Pemberley had not collapsed under my management, and was forced to admit that Fitzwilliam appeared happy.
Her disapproval gradually softened into a bearable irritation, which, for her, was nearly the same as affection.
Anne extended her stay after her mother left.
Kitty also came to spend two months with us.
Away from Lydia, she became less agitated, more curious, and reasonable enough to surprise everyone.
She and Georgiana formed a friendship no one would have predicted.
Mary preferred to remain at Longbourn, where my mother’s undivided attention after three daughters had left allowed her to gain confidence.
Lydia wrote letters filled with officers, balls, and plans that changed every week.
Jane and Bingley settled on an estate less than thirty miles from Pemberley.
My mother still judged this distance excessive, but she consented to travel it in a comfortable carriage provided by her two sons-in-law.
My father, freed from the immediate threat of his debt, began managing Longbourn with a diligence that astonished his neighbors.
He claimed that Darcy had made boredom respectable.
One evening, after our guests had left, I found my husband in the library.
Snow was falling beyond the windows. The fire lit his face and the open book in his hands. He looked up when I entered.
“Lady Catherine asks why we have not yet announced an heir.”
He slowly closed his book.
“And what did you answer her?”
“That we are applying ourselves seriously to the question.”
A sudden heat darkened his gaze.
“Elizabeth.”
“She stopped asking questions.”
“I understand why.”
I came to sit on the edge of his desk.
“What were you thinking about?”
“The first time I asked you to marry me.”
“You choose dangerous memories.”
“I was wondering what you would have answered if I had waited one more day.”
I smiled.
“I would have refused you.”
“Without hesitation?”
“With an eloquence that would have wounded your vanity for years.”
“It was wounded nonetheless.”
“It needed to be.”
He rose and came to stand between my knees.
“Must I then thank your father’s debt and my impatience for the rest of my life?”
“No.”
I put my arms around his neck.
“The debt made me speak the first yes. You earned the second.”
“And which one married us?”
“The second, naturally. The first belonged to fear.”
“To whom did the kiss in the pavilion belong?”
“To curiosity.”
“And this one?”
He leaned in without yet touching my mouth.
“To your wife.”
I kissed him.
His hands slipped beneath my skirts with an assurance that six months of marriage had made familiar without making it any less thrilling. I laughed against his lips when he lifted me from the desk.
“Fitzwilliam, the door isn’t locked.”
“You once reproached me for my lack of adventurous spirit.”
“I was young and reckless.”
“You still are.”
He turned the key in the lock, then returned to me.
The snow erased the paths around Pemberley. In the warm library, my husband knelt before me with the same gravity as his second proposal, though his intentions were now far less proper.
I ran my fingers through his hair.
“I love you,” I murmured.
He looked up.
Even after six months, those words still transformed his face.
“Say it again.”
“You’re still demanding.”
“Terribly.”
I smiled.
“I love you.”
Once again, he believed me.