EPILOGUE #2
As Mistress of Pemberley, Elizabeth had grown steadily in both confidence and wisdom these five years, moving with increasing ease among circles of every kind, managing her household with real skill, and building, with her husband's full support, an institution she could be justly proud of.
Darcy, for his part, had grown a good deal himself, learning, not without difficulty, to loosen his old habit of command, to include his wife in every decision touching their family, and to master his temper when disagreement arose between them, as it still often did.
Together they had learned to listen properly to one another, to weigh each other's views with real seriousness, and to meet each other, more often than not, somewhere in the middle.
For all their happiness, Elizabeth still found herself uneasy sleeping anywhere beyond Pemberley, their house in town, or Longbourn.
The kidnapping had left its mark upon her, an old wound that faded only slowly, and never entirely.
When Wickham and his men were finally run to ground in Scotland, some eighteen months after their escape, Elizabeth was called to give evidence at trial, and found the ordeal harder than she had anticipated, old fears she had thought long buried rising up again with unexpected force.
She had always privately blamed the trial's strain, at least in part, for her first miscarriage.
It emerged during the proceedings that Wickham and the man called Chub had left their two remaining men to guard the prisoners while they drank and played at cards in a nearby tavern, and did not discover the empty cell until some hours after Darcy and Elizabeth's escape.
The search that followed, aided by their hound, very nearly succeeded, the men closing to within arm's reach before the stolen pony carried its riders clear, one shot fired after them in a final, failed attempt to bring Darcy down.
Having taken the only horse for five miles in any direction, Wickham's party was left to make the return journey on foot, losing precious time they could not recover, and their quarry was never found again.
Difficult as the trial proved, Elizabeth found real relief in its outcome: all four men convicted of kidnapping and attempted murder, and sentenced to transportation, banished from England for good, precisely the fate Darcy had predicted for Wickham from the first. The scars of that fortnight never left her entirely, but she did not bear them alone.
Her husband, who had lived through every hour of it beside her, remained her steadiest comfort, and Colonel Fitzwilliam, since risen to Major General, proved another, sharing in his own quiet way the parts of that ordeal he rarely spoke of elsewhere.
He became a fixture at Pemberley in the years that followed, as dear to Elizabeth as any brother.
It was through these repeated visits that the Colonel's path crossed, again and again, with that of Charlotte Lucas, until the two of them found in each other something neither had quite expected.
Three years after Darcy and Elizabeth's own wedding, the family gathered in London to see Major General Fitzwilliam married to his own beloved wife, the former Miss Charlotte Lucas.
Though Pemberley lay a considerable distance from Longbourn, the Darcys' house in town made visits a good deal easier, and the two families moved between them often.
The events of that terrible fortnight had changed the Bennets as much as it had changed Elizabeth.
Mr. Bennet took a far more active hand in his daughters' lives thereafter, attending every assembly, engaging closely with the neighbourhood, and working alongside his wife to see their two youngest raised with rather more prudence than before.
Lydia and Kitty, for their part, developed little further taste for the company of young men beyond their two brothers by marriage, and turned their energies instead toward their own studies, dividing their winters between Netherfield and their summers at Pemberley.
Jane married her Mr. Bingley, to the quiet dismay of his sisters, whom she saw rarely thereafter, the Bingley ladies having settled decidedly on town life over country visits.
Mary flourished under her parents' renewed attention, and in time met and married a thoughtful young scholar, introduced to her at an event held in support of women's education, hosted by the Darcys themselves.
Georgiana adored her new sister from the first, and grew close besides to the three youngest Bennet girls, the four of them forming a lasting friendship.
She counted the long, sun-filled summers when Kitty and Lydia came to stay among her happiest memories, grateful for the new life the Bennets had brought into her brother's household, and her own.
***
"Domina Jenny Woodson, primo loco," the schoolmaster announced, and Elizabeth watched Jenny step forward to receive her certificate and the school's highest commendation, her daughter clapping delightedly from the front row.”
Elizabeth watched from her seat beside her husband, who leaned close to murmur in her ear. "Congratulations, my dear. Look what you have built, for Jenny's sake and so many others."
Tears bright in her eyes, she turned to him. "No, Fitzwilliam. Congratulations to us. None of this would have been possible, not without you."