Epilogue The Happiest Truth #2
Seemingly satisfied with her role in the felicity of his impending marriage, Mrs. Long patted his shoulder as she walked away. “You shall do, Mr. Darcy. I see you have quite captured her heart and that tongue of hers.”
Darcy cast a furtive glance about, hoping the spectacle of his mortification had gone unnoticed.
Jane and Bingley were adrift in their own gentle orbit; Georgiana and Mary plotted some pianoforte intrigue; and Mrs. Bennet advanced through the crowd with the single-mindedness of a homing pigeon in pursuit of a new prospect.
She must never know about this , he thought with a fierce protectiveness. She chose me in the mud. She chose me in the hedgerow. If she knew the gift of a fortune was the cost… No, she can never know.
“Mrs. Long can be trusted with the utmost discretion,” Lady Sophia’s gaze sought his, as if he had said his thoughts aloud. “It is a requirement of receiving my correspondence. The advantage of being the daughter of a duke is that one learns early how to curate one’s social circles.”
“Yes…” Darcy glanced at Mrs. Long, whose expression suggested she was about to burst with secrets. “But why, Lady Sophia? Why did my mother ask you to intervene?”
“She loved you, Fitzwilliam, and you were too young when she left us. She made the request three days before she passed, and I have been watching and waiting ever since.”
The set ended, but instead of returning to Darcy, Sir William steered Elizabeth toward the refreshment table, gesturing toward a pompous-looking man in a bottle-green coat. “Ah, Lord Rokeby! You must meet Miss Elizabeth—the woman who has quite revolutionized our little Meryton!”
“Your mother knew your father’s wishes,” Lady Sophia lowered her voice.
“She loved him, and she honored his judgment in nearly everything. But she knew that his expectations for your marriage would make you miserable, because he required positions and strategic alliances. He had married your mother for her connection, acquiring the Earl of Matlock as a brother-in-law. She knew the cost, and she did not want you to bear that cost.”
“She never told me.”
“She could not tell you. Your father was alive. His expectations were clear, and Anne would not contradict him openly because she respected him too much. But she asked me, privately, to counter his directives. To find the woman who would set your heart on fire, as she put it, and she was very specific about the fire, Fitzwilliam. She did not want a woman who would manage your household, improve your connections, or look well beside you at dinner. She wanted a woman who would love you despite your arrogance and impeccable lineage. A woman who you could be interested in the rest of your life, and who would demand that you be worthy of her rather than the reverse.”
“And you have been waging this campaign for years?”
Lady Sophia allowed herself a slender, triumphant smile.
“I cultivated acquaintances wherever you wandered. Why else did I persuade you to take the townhouse beside mine? Yet you were a most recalcitrant subject—averse to dancing, critical of every eligible young lady. I began to despair that Anne’s wish would ever be fulfilled. ”
“And then Mrs. Long wrote about the insult,” Darcy said.
“Yes, and it hit me that I should look deeper than the surface civilities. That a young woman with fine eyes and no fortune, who was insulted by the proudest man in the county, would then refuse a dance with him. I believe Mrs. Long recorded her words as, ‘Do not suppose that I moved this way in order to beg for a partner.’ I began to take note. And then, when Lady Catherine complained about the creature who had entangled you in Kent, I was more than intrigued. And when your cousin reported that you had left a Kentish parsonage in the worst state he had ever witnessed—soaked through, having written a letter you were not certain had been read—I knew.”
“You knew what?” Darcy asked, his breath catching. “About the letter?”
“Your cousin saw you hand it to her, although he knew not the reason. It was, of course, a severe breach of propriety, and it got me to wonder… That a woman who could reduce Fitzwilliam Darcy to letter-writing despair was very probably the woman your mother had described. Imagine my felicity when I wrote Mrs. Long, inquiring about a friend of Mrs. Collins, and she confirmed that this young lady was none other than the Bennet girl with the fine eyes and sprightly wit.”
Darcy groaned, the sound of a man utterly vanquished. He could only pray that the particulars of his disastrous proposal and her withering refusal remained mercifully concealed.
“Well, knowing that she had somehow vexed you, although I had no inkling of the extent, I next called on you to propose the gift with you as the trustee. You, Fitzwilliam, fairly gave your feelings away by the way the color drained from your face and then flooded back to the tips of your ears. Hence, I put the fortune in motion. Everything I owned was required to bring her to London, to you, where your mother’s dream might have a chance. ”
The music ended. Elizabeth curtsied to Lord Rokeby and turned toward the wall where Darcy sat, her eyes finding his across the room with the instinct that had become as natural as breathing.
She did not know. She had no inkling that her fortune was the fruit of a scheme, her sojourn in London the result of careful orchestration, her path since April shaped by the wishes of the departed and the will of the indefatigable.
She believed she had chosen him in the hedgerow, guided by nothing but her heart.
That innocence was everything.
“She must never learn of this,” Darcy said.
“No.” Lady Sophia’s voice was firm. “She must never feel that her love was arranged or obligated. The gift was freely given. The fortune is hers regardless of whom she marries. And her heart—” She paused.
“Her heart is her own, Fitzwilliam. She chose you because you poured tea for her mother, threw balls for her terrier, and pruned her dance card without flinching. She chose you because she wanted to. That distinction matters more than any intelligence I ever gathered.”
Elizabeth was crossing the room now, her stride quick and purposeful, her face lit with the radiant, unguarded expression she wore only for him.
“Your mother would have adored her,” Lady Sophia murmured. “The arguing alone would have delighted Anne beyond measure.”
“I know.” Darcy rose from his chair. “They would have liked each other immensely.”
“Go.” Lady Sophia waved him toward the dance floor. “Dance with your bride. Enjoy the fruits of my scheming. And when she asks why you are smiling, tell her it is because you are happy, which will be the absolute, glorious truth.”
Darcy crossed the room and gathered Elizabeth into his arms. She wore the ivory gown with the gold thread, and her eyes held a spark of mischief that signaled she had been watching him as he watched her.
“Mr. Darcy, you have been sitting against that wall for two sets,” she teased, though her hand rested against his chest with possessive warmth. “I was beginning to think you had taken root.”
“I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.”
He bowed as the orchestra surprisingly struck up the first bars of a waltz. “Might I have this dance?”
“I would be delighted.” She curtsied, and the curtsy promised a hundred dances and a thousand arguments and a single kiss in a hedgerow.
He led her onto the floor, drawing her close, his hand steady at her waist. He turned her, quick and breathless, and suddenly he was soaring, she with him, spinning until the assembly dissolved and nothing remained but the two of them.
A love chosen, freely given, and fiercely kept.
The End