EPILOGUE
Five Years Later
"Happy anniversary, my lovely, darling Elizabeth." Mr. Darcy rolled toward his wife and gathered her close, having just woken, his voice still rough with sleep and unguarded in a way it never was before the household at large.
"Fitzwilliam, darling. Happy anniversary." Elizabeth answered him groggily, eyes still closed, her body loose and pliant with sleep, entirely unwilling to relinquish the warmth of the bed a moment before she must.
"I love you, dearest." He kissed the back of her head, his hand tracing slowly along her arm, the gesture so familiar now, after five years, that it had become something closer to breathing than to conscious affection.
"I love you too, my handsome husband." She turned to face him, burrowing into the warmth of his chest with a small, contented sound, though she stubbornly kept her eyes shut, unwilling yet to greet the day, or to let this quiet, private moment give way to whatever the morning would ask of her.
Elizabeth had always considered herself an early riser.
Five years of marriage to Fitzwilliam Darcy, however, had taught her that the honour belonged properly to her husband, who woke without fail before the sun and met each day eager for it, as though the world itself could not be trusted to begin properly without his oversight.
She preferred to rise with the light itself, unhurried, and though their habits differed in this as in a great many small things, they had long since made a point of breakfasting together each morning regardless, in the small sitting room that joined their two chambers, a habit neither would have willingly surrendered for any inconvenience of scheduling.
"Are you ready for today?" he asked, drawing her closer still, something quieter beneath the ordinary lightness of the question.
She nodded, sleep still heavy in her eyes, though a real eagerness had crept into her voice despite it. "I can hardly wait."
He lingered rather longer in bed than was his usual custom, watching her a moment in the soft grey light before the sun had fully risen, before rising at last, kissing her softly, and drawing on his banyan against the morning's chill.
He gave her one more quick peck on the cheek before rising from bed. "I am for the nursery, Elizabeth."
"I shall join you shortly, my dear." She rolled contentedly into the space he had left behind, still warm with the shape of him, and let her eyes drift closed once more for just a little while longer.
He made his way down the passage to the nursery, only a few doors distant, his bare feet silent on the familiar boards, and heard the happy chatter of two small voices before he reached it, a sound that never failed to lighten something in his chest, however many mornings he had already woken to it.
Elizabeth had suffered two early miscarriages in their first years together, losses that had grieved them both deeply, and left Darcy uncertain whether they ought to try again, fearful always for his wife's health.
She had insisted, and their perseverance was rewarded when she carried a child safely to term, delivering a healthy son in the third year of their marriage, to her husband's astonished joy.
To their further surprise, she found herself with child again soon after, and before either had quite reconciled themselves to it, two small Darcy boys had claimed the nursery entirely.
He opened the door upon his sons, John, now two years old, and William, lately turned one. They had brought immeasurable joy into the household, to Elizabeth, to Georgiana, and to Darcy himself, who treasured nothing so much as this quiet hour each morning spent entirely in their company.
Hannah, their elderly nurse, sat with the boys upon their favourite round rug when he entered. "Good morning, boys," he said warmly, and they scrambled up to meet him, his eldest offering a proper "Good morning, Papa," and his youngest a cheerful "'lo."
"Good morning to you both, and to you, Hannah. Have they behaved well this morning?"
"Very well indeed, sir," the elderly maid replied with a warm smile.
"Excellent." He gathered them both into an embrace before settling onto the floor. "Now, boys, today is a very special day. Do you recall what I told you last night? We are for Tarw House this morning, to see a very fine ceremony."
Too young yet to grasp the occasion, the boys had no notion they were about to witness something genuinely new in the world, the first examination day for the young women of Tarw House.
***
It was Elizabeth who had first pressed upon her husband the importance of a woman's education, and it had taken remarkably little persuasion before he agreed to endow a small school of her own devising, one dedicated to girls of the lower and labouring classes, particularly those, like poor Sarah Lawson, whose circumstances had left them few honest paths forward.
Elizabeth could not undo what had befallen Sarah, who had, in the end, married the soldier to whom she had been engaged at fourteen, a marriage that had, by every account reaching Longbourn, settled into something quieter and more contented than Elizabeth had once dared hope for her, though the thought of it still caught at her from time to time, unbidden.
She could not undo the past, but she was resolved, all the same, to offer other girls in similarly straitened circumstances a different future entirely, one that did not depend upon the mercy of whichever man happened to notice them first.
Her school would provide room, board, and a proper education, funded entirely by the Darcys, and it would offer something almost unheard of besides, instruction reaching well beyond the usual accomplishments thought suitable for girls, into subjects generally reserved for boys destined for the church or the bar: Latin, mathematics, natural philosophy, and logic.
To bring the scheme to life, the Darcys had taken a modest estate some ten miles from Pemberley and engaged a schoolmaster and several tutors to teach it.
The elder girls received the foundations; the most promising among the older students went on to more advanced study, with an eye toward positions as governesses of real learning, as schoolmistresses in their own right, or, where a family's connections and a young woman's particular talent allowed, toward keeping accounts or managing correspondence for some sympathetic house of business.
Elizabeth had given the school its Welsh name, Tarw, literally an ox, but used besides to signify a fierce and steadfast leader, in memory of the inn where she and Mr. Darcy had sheltered during their escape.
She liked to think it spoke also to the strength required of any young woman bold enough to reach for an education so far outside what the world expected of her sex.
Darcy took no small pride in his wife's undertaking, whatever murmuring it provoked among certain quarters of the ton, who considered a learned woman a decidedly unfashionable article.
Elizabeth had feared that censure once; in time, she found she cared for it a good deal less than she had expected, buoyed always by her husband's steady support.
And she was not without allies; several among the ton, upon seeing the scheme in earnest, came forward with funds and connections of their own, glad to be associated with so novel a cause.
Ordinary schools for young ladies of the middling and upper sort concerned themselves chiefly with accomplishment, music, drawing, deportment, and a smattering of moral instruction, and offered no examination, no formal mark of achievement at their conclusion.
Elizabeth was determined her own pupils should sit a proper examination, conducted before witnesses, with results read aloud and the most distinguished students publicly commended for their attainments.
It happened, by no design of her own, that the very first such examination day at Tarw House fell upon the anniversary of her marriage.
Among the young women examined that day was Miss Jenny Woodson, the very girl who had vanished from Meryton some five years before.
At Elizabeth's urging, Darcy had engaged a man to make inquiries after her, and she was found within a matter of weeks.
She had fled to London, the victim of a soldier's cruel deception, hoping only to spare her family the shame of her condition while she sought some means of supporting herself.
Through Colonel Fitzwilliam's assistance, the man responsible was found and made to answer for his conduct; Jenny herself was given the choice of marrying him or not, and chose, with some relief, not to.
The Darcys brought her back to her family first, where she was received with open arms and profound gratitude, before offering her a place and a purpose of her own.
Through her confinement, Jenny studied under a tutor engaged by the Darcys, and showed, before long, a particular gift for mathematics.
Two months after the birth of a healthy daughter, she entered Tarw House as one of its first pupils, and had worked with real determination ever since, her little girl now four years old, and both of them settled at the school among Jenny's fellow students, though always welcome at Pemberley for the holidays.
Her results that day were the finest of her class, and the schoolmaster had already spoken to Darcy of keeping her on as an instructor in accounts and arithmetic, once her own studies were complete, work she seemed to want more than any other, having found in teaching younger girls something of the purpose she had once feared lost to her entirely.
***