Epilogue The Happiest Truth
Darcy’s cravat was too stiff. He shouldn’t have asked his valet to starch it with so much buckram that it felt more like a wooden brace than neckwear.
But here he stood in the Meryton Assembly rooms, against the walls, now sweltering in the June humidity.
Too hot, too small, and pathetically provincial, decorated with the ambition of a market town aspiring to elegance.
The candles were the same. The musicians were the same, or possibly their sons.
The punch was, by the smell of it, precisely the same vintage, and Darcy suspected it had been aging in the bowl since October.
He did not mind any of it.
Or so he told himself. Elizabeth was enjoying herself. Laughing gaily and dancing with another man.
The knight was the host, and as the host, he had insisted on his duty to open the ball with the most significant woman in the room, which was Darcy’s beautiful bride-to-be.
It is a public honor , Darcy reminded himself, his teeth grinding behind a smile of rigid politeness. It is a civic duty. It is, quite frankly, a trial by fire.
He despised the necessity of sharing her.
Every gentleman in the room seemed to feast their eyes upon the woman who now laughed at Sir William Lucas’s latest witticism.
Her cheeks glowed with the pleasure of being the evening’s celebrated guest—a considerable ascent for the second daughter of a gentleman presently losing his dignity, and his shillings, at the card table.
The assembly was in her honor. The town fathers had proposed it after Elizabeth returned from London.
Darcy could not stop watching her, even though the watching dug holes in his gut. She had agreed to marry him, and one would suppose that a man who was betrothed did not have to endure watching his future wife dance with another man.
“You are brooding, Fitzwilliam.”
His puckish godmother, Lady Sophia, glided to his side, an emerald in a sea of muslin, and settled into the chair next to his with the languid grace of a duchess holding court. She surveyed the assembly with a keen, assessing gaze that missed nothing.
“I see you’ve chosen the wallflower’s post, Fitzwilliam. How uncharacteristically retiring of you.”
“I am merely observing,” he replied stiffly.
“You are staring at your intended with an expression that would scandalize the patronesses of Almack’s, if any of them were present, which mercifully they are not.
” Lady Sophia arranged her cane against the chair.
“The Meryton assembly is considerably more forgiving. They expect besotted gentlemen to stare. It confirms their romantic sensibilities.”
She glanced toward a group of young ladies huddled near the window.
“You are permitted to move, my dear. In fact, you are currently failing your duty as a guest of honor. That young lady in the blue muslin has been glancing this way for ten minutes, hoping for a partner. If I were forty years younger, I would be quite insulted if you did not find me tolerable enough for a set. Do go and be useful.”
Darcy blinked, momentarily disarmed by the suggestion. “I have not been introduced to her.”
“It is a public assembly, Fitzwilliam, not a private viewing of a painting,” she cut in, her eyes twinkling. “You cannot simply hover against the wainscoting like a disgruntled ancestor.”
She watched, amused, as he hesitated, his gaze snapping back to Elizabeth.
“I should not allow Elizabeth to miss a step should she look to my designated spot and find it empty.”
“Hmmm… I suppose you are careful of the perils of the dance floor. Fear not, Fitzwilliam, your boots are quite resistant to being trodden upon, although I couldn’t say the same about your heart.”
As if she overheard Lady Sophia’s words, Elizabeth turned in the set, her eyes flashing with amusement at his discomfort before taking a turn with the next man on the line.
Her silk swirled, and her feet were light, but it was the sheer joy of dancing with people she’d known all her life that tightened Darcy’s chest. He would be taking her away from this when they married.
And his family never attended the public assemblies in Lambton, nor did they host balls, as Pemberley had no mistress since his mother’s…
The thought of his mother was a phantom that still held the power to chill him. How he wished she could have known Elizabeth. How he wished she could see her now.
“She is a vision, is she not?” Lady Sophia murmured, her tone softening into a sudden, poignant resonance.
She leaned in, her gaze tracking Elizabeth as she spun, her laughter trailing behind her like a silk ribbon.
“Anne always said she would be. ‘The woman Fitzwilliam marries will dance with joy in her step and laughter in her eyes,’ she told me. ‘For only such a woman could draw him out of his solemnity and into the light.’”
Darcy went still. The room seemed to expand, the noise of the fiddles drifting into a distant, muffled hum. He looked at Elizabeth—at the way she held her head, at the reckless, untethered joy in her face—and felt the ache of his mother’s ghost in the room.
“My mother… she spoke of this?” he asked, his voice rough. “Of my future bride?”
A woman drifted into his peripheral vision. She was stout, dressed in the style of a matron who had consulted fashion plates from several seasons past, and he sincerely hoped she wasn’t eavesdropping.
“My dear boy.” Lady Sophia’s tone was fond, edged with exasperation.
“Anne had very particular hopes for you. Hopes she entrusted to me in her final days.” She tapped her cane meaningfully against the floorboards.
“She spoke of a woman who would force you to decide whether your pride was worth the price of your happiness. She knew you, Fitzwilliam. She knew that when you finally found a woman who did not care a fig for your ten thousand a year, you would be utterly and gloriously undone.”
A sudden weight pressed upon him. “You have been searching for her all these years?”
“I have been your mother’s executor,” she replied simply.
The unfashionable matron whose most distinguishing feature was her loud orange turban hovered closer like a particularly obnoxious horsefly.
What Darcy wouldn’t give to whisk her away, but Lady Sophia seemed oblivious.
“And I have been gathering information from my correspondents throughout all the counties of England on a quest for such a rare creature.”
At this, the turbaned woman caught Lady Sophia’s eye and curtsied deep enough that the tip of her turban tickled Mr. Darcy’s nose. He swallowed the urge to sneeze.
“Mr. Darcy, I am Mrs. Long, Lady Sophia’s correspondent.”
Darcy turned a sharp, incredulous look to Lady Sophia. “You have been using the local gentry to monitor my social movements?”
“I have been your mother’s eyes and ears since you refused to court my Allegra,” Lady Sophia replied, unfazed by his mounting mortification.
“Time was running out, and the great house of Pemberley had been without a mistress for far too long. Mrs. Long wrote to me after that first assembly in October. A most illuminating letter.”
“What exactly did she enlighten you with?”
“You called my favorite girl barely tolerable.” Mrs. Long’s voice held supreme satisfaction.
“I was standing not ten feet from you when you said it. Elizabeth pretended she had not heard, but I saw her face, Mr. Darcy. I saw exactly what that insult cost her. I wrote to Lady Sophia that very night because I had been tasked to report on any woman who sparked your interest—and no woman had ever sparked enough emotion in you to make you rude.”
Darcy felt the floorboards sway beneath his feet. He risked a glance toward the dance floor, his pulse racing. Elizabeth was currently turning in the set, her face bright with laughter; she was mercifully distracted by the figures of the dance.
“Lady Sophia, this is beneath you. Employing a network of spies.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say I employed anyone,” she said, smoothing a wrinkle in her silk glove.
“With so many godsons and goddaughters to shepherd, I often find it prudent to strike up correspondence with the most observant individuals in a neighborhood. If one is to invest in a townhouse or a carriage for one’s darlings, one should at least be aware of the particulars.
In your case, I was tasked by your mother, and Mrs. Long’s letter was the first one that offered hope. ”
“Yes, my observational skills are dedicated to the most noble of causes,” Mrs. Long affirmed.
“I wrote to Lady Sophia about everything. The exact wording of your barely tolerable comment, and how you were persuaded to dance with her at the Lucases’ card party, only for her to demur.
Oh, and the way you stared after her at every gathering thereafter with an expression that was quite incompatible with your claim of indifference.
” Mrs. Long smiled. “I have been watching Elizabeth Bennet for twenty years, Mr. Darcy. She is the finest young woman in Hertfordshire. When Lady Sophia asked if there was anyone who might suit her godson, I had my doubts about our Miss Elizabeth; I confess it freely. I feared that our Elizabeth would be ill-served by your reputation for excessive pride.”
“I… I cannot imagine why,” he managed, his cravat now indistinguishable from a hangman’s knot.
“But Lady Sophia assured me you had potential.” Mrs. Long’s gaze, as well as Darcy’s, shifted to the floor where Elizabeth was sharing a quip with Sir William. “You had excellent raw materials. You merely required finishing. And she did the finishing. Just as your mother had hoped.”
Darcy could say nothing. He sat paralyzed, watching Elizabeth move. She was radiant, utterly untroubled by the conspiracy of matrons and duchesses that had brought them to this moment.