Epilogue
The next morning, a distinctly unembellished wedding breakfast was held for Sir Walter Elliot and his bride after they were quietly wed in church.
Lady Caroline Elliot had all the pleasure of the Bennets in attendance at her wedding, a distinction she well deserved, and she was duly forgotten not long after her departure with her husband, which was also just as it should be.
That evening, the final night of the house party, the Gouldings held a farewell ball, and all of Elizabeth’s relations were in attendance. She and Mr. Darcy had selected a wedding date five weeks hence; by that time Jane would return from her wedding trip with Captain Wentworth.
Talk of what was to come hummed in the air as the merry party mingled merrily, but the young ladies were all in high emotion that they must part with their friends.
Elizabeth secured a promise that her dear friend Anne would be in attendance at her wedding when she married from London with Lady Rebecca.
“I shall be Mrs. Brandon by then, Lizzy, for the colonel and I do not see the point in delaying our own nuptials.”
“And will you be happy? You and he have both told me that you are past the passions of your youth, but I must hope you are both proven utterly wrong.”
Anne’s color heightened charmingly. “Lizzy, you and I have not been together as often this last week as we were before the colonel declared himself. Can you not think why?”
Elizabeth laughed. “What? Can you mean that you have been sneaking away together?” She spoke in jest, but Anne only turned redder.
“I will only say that if the colonel is less of a lover than he once was, had I met him in his youth I might not have reached the altar a maid.” Anne let out a hum of contentment, and Elizabeth felt her own color rising.
Mr. Darcy proved a daily temptation, now that she had given herself leave to adore everything about him.
“I am very happy for you, Anne.”
“And I am very grateful for all that you have done to restore my confidence, Lizzy. Truly, I must thank you for being such a friend as I have never known. But I am also very glad that you were not too swept up in managing everybody else’s romance to find your own. Your Mr. Darcy is a wonder.”
Elizabeth laughed. “And all it took was a hundred and fifty people badgering me about it for a month, for me to see sense!”
He was indeed a marvel to her. He danced thrice with her, as well as his sister and all of hers, her friends Anne and Harriet, and even her aunt and mother.
At dinner he regaled Mr. Bennet with a tantalizing description of his magnificent library at Pemberley, and won back the upper hand in his new mother’s estimation by telling her of the many fine guest rooms at his house in London.
The countess continued to stir the pot by demanding that the youngest Bennets come to her in town once Rebecca was gone off with Mr. Bingley, who meant to purchase a small estate owned by Richard, not twenty miles from Pemberley.
In her usual devious style, she incited a rivalry between the two future households, resulting in Lady Rebecca boldly declaring that she would be the one to find the youngest Bennet sisters husbands, not her mother, nor the Gouldings, nor any colonel’s wife in Brighton.
Of course, Lydia’s time with the regiment would have to be curtailed, with weddings to plan, but before Kitty could triumph over her sister’s deprivation, Georgiana swept them up in fanciful promises of what fun they should all have together.
In between dances with all the gentlemen, Elizabeth and her sister made bittersweet promises to write to Harriet and Marianne, who had both been asked to stay longer at Richmond Cove, to continue their courtships with Mr. Tilney and Captain Benwick.
Colonel Fitzwilliam would also remain in the area, looking for a small estate to purchase nearby, where he might reside with Lady Blanche after they were wed.
“He will come and live at Richmond Cove, in the end,” Lady Blanche boasted.
“Nobody with an estate in such a beautiful part of the country will wish to part with what they have, and once he has seen that, he will capitulate, for I think he will enjoy the havoc we wreak here every year. The countess shall always be welcome to join us, too, for I believe I have found a mother-in-law as devious as my own Mamma!”
Everyone Elizabeth spoke to was incandescently happy, and she reveled in sharing so much joy. It seemed a lifetime ago that she had felt such tremendous apprehension at attending the party, especially at the prospect of meeting with Mr. Darcy again, though now her heart was utterly his.
Aunt Madeline took every opportunity to tease Elizabeth about this, and thus was a fast friend of Lady Matlock.
Together the two ladies were echoed by all of Elizabeth’s nearest and dearest in marveling at the unexpected reversal of Elizabeth’s unfounded fears.
She had been so determined to cling to the conviction that her family would remain an obstacle to their relationship, but that night she could only laugh at herself for it, as Mr. Darcy seemed to come alive at receiving so much effusive affection and congratulation.
Already his family and hers had blended together quite perfectly, and they made a great many promises of being often together.
***
Indeed, so successful was the Gouldings’ tenth annual house party, that the friends and couples who met there remained merry, content, and very close for many years to come.
The Tilneys and the Benwicks, though the last to be wed, were the first among that year’s couples to have children, though the Darcys and Bingleys soon boasted heirs of their own, and little Wentworths and Brandons soon followed.
When Colonel Fitzwilliam became a father, he supposed that his beloved wife might retire from her role in the annual fêtes; it surprised none of the ladies in his family when he was proven wrong.
By the thirteenth house party, he had resigned himself to being a very willing accomplice in planning the event, for that was the year that the two youngest Bennets, Miss Darcy, and young Margaret Dashwood were invited to Richmond Cove, to experience all the same blissful shenanigans as their kin.
All four of them married to extraordinary advantage that year, but everyone who had wed after the tenth year refused to believe that anything could be superior to the happy month that they had all spent together at Richmond Cove.
Their stories evolved into tall tales told at parties, or recollections whispered intimately when the husbands and wives cajoled each other with memories of their scandalous folly.
Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy were forever teasing one another about phantoms and bargains and underwhelming first kisses, and they never failed to remind one another that everything is better the second time.