Pemberley, December 1822
Elizabeth Darcy sat in Pemberley's nursery, surrounded by her children. Charlotte sat on Elizabeth's lap, and Elizabeth pressed her lips against the toddler's forehead every minute or so. They became bigger so quickly. She loved the sweet smell of a small, well bathed child.
Soon the guests and their many children would begin arriving.
Her two older daughters, Jane and Anne, were next to the toy bin, engaged in complex planning for how to entertain their cousins later today.
Bennet sat next to Elizabeth on the couch. He waved his hand in front of Charlotte, and she giggled and grabbed at his fingers.
"Are you ready for everyone to arrive? Eager to see cousin Lizzy again?" Elizabeth quizzed him. Bennet was the oldest of her children. He was adorably like his father. Dark hair, features that would be very handsome when older, and a solemn manner.
It made her want to hold and squeeze the dear boy and never let him go.
"I am, Mama. I shall show her my new horse."
"A fine scheme. She will think Ares is very impressive."
"I hope so."
Bennet and Jane's oldest daughter had been near friends since they were very young. Jane and Elizabeth had decided, while the two were still in their cradles, that it would be wonderful if their children married.
Jane and Bingley only had daughters so far. Fortunately, Bingley had ample money and no entail. When Darcy paid him back, Bingley had placed all of the money in a fund for his daughter's dowries.
Elizabeth carefully put Charlotte on the floor, and the girl happily toddled towards her sisters.
Bennet smiled and happily let Elizabeth embrace him and kiss his cheeks. That was another way Bennet was like Fitzwilliam. He loved hugs and little touches between loved ones. "My sweet little Benny."
He squirmed away and protested, "You know I wish you to call me Bennet."
It would break her heart in a few years when they sent him off to Eton.
Elizabeth ruffled his hair. "One day you will leave us and demand all your friends call you Darcy."
"Yes." Bennet nodded his head, like Fitzwilliam did when stating a certain truth. "I know."
The nursery maid opened the door. "Ma'am, they have sighted the Windham's carriage starting up the drive."
Elizabeth stood and called her daughters over so that she could kiss them one last time before going down to greet Anne and her husband and children. Elizabeth's two older girls were adorable, though Jane's adventurousness gave Elizabeth more sympathy for her own mother than she'd ever expected to feel.
She, of course, was Darcy's favorite. After all, she looked and acted just like her mother.
On the other hand, Anne's mannerisms were similar to those of her aunt Jane.
A moment after Elizabeth reached the entrance hall, Darcy entered it coming from his study. Her heart still skipped when she saw him. Especially when he smiled at her like that.
"Lizzy." He kissed her.
A minute later, she laughed happily and pushed him away. "What will our guests think if we are too busy kissing to greet them?"
Darcy smirked. He took her arm, and they walked onto the estate's wide porch. "Anne already knows what we are like."
Elizabeth giggled wickedly. They had been almost scandalously open in showing affection to each other during the first years of their marriage. As Bennet became older, they had become more discreet since him finding them in a too tender moment was more frightening than Anne or a servant doing so.
Anne had lived with them for two years. Then she'd fallen in love with Mr. Windham's oldest son, and Elizabeth was delighted that her friend was still so close. The couple had had two children so far.
Elizabeth and Darcy strolled down to meet their friends as their carriage rolled up the end of the long drive. It was a gorgeous December day with crystal clear air and a beautiful unbroken expanse of white over the park's fields. Elizabeth loved the crisp clean smell and the way the morning air nipped at her cheeks in the few minutes they would be outside.
Anne glowed as she leapt out of her carriage, not waiting for her husband to hand her out. She embraced Elizabeth and whispered, "Do not tell Fitzwilliam, we wish to make a production of the announcement, but I am expecting another."
Elizabeth embraced her friend back, carefully not examining her figure to see if the babe showed.
The older Mr. Windham followed his son out. Anne's daughter bounced out of the carriage and eagerly pushed a doll into Elizabeth's face so that cousin Elizabeth could admire the gift from her mother.
By trying in every respect to be different from Lady Catherine, Anne had become, in Elizabeth's opinion, a nearly perfect mother. Her children would likely never meet their maternal grandmother. Anne had not seen Lady Catherine since the day Elizabeth and Darcy became engaged, and she did not want to see her mother ever again. Lady Catherine, as near as they could tell from the letters Charlotte sent, was satisfied with this.
The arguments following Darcy's marriage had led to a break between Lord Matlock and his sister. Lady Catherine sat alone, ruling over a mostly empty Rosings Park. However, while the house staff were paid by Lady Catherine's own portion, the steward served Anne and her husband.
Mr. Collins had, at the advice of his wife, sided with Anne and Lord Matlock. Charlotte confessed in her letters to Elizabeth that she was delighted to not need to pay court to Lady Catherine any longer. Charlotte was content with her situation and happy with her children. However, Elizabeth would never believe her friend had made the right choice when she married Mr. Collins.
As they walked into Pemberley's splendid, though somewhat outdated, entry hall, Darcy asked the older Mr. Windham, with a slightly awkward air, about one of the tenants on the land he had sold to Windham.
Even now, after almost ten years, her husband still felt a responsibility towards his old holdings. Lord Matlock had tried to convince Darcy not to sell the land, but Darcy wished to make a grand gesture proving he now cared more for Elizabeth than the matters which had obsessed him for so long.
It was very sweet and romantic, but… Elizabeth had felt conflicted at the time.
Darcy had believed it the right decision from the point of view of money matters. A belief proved right when everyone's rents sharply fell after wheat prices collapsed in 1815.
Mr. Windham had needed to forgive part of the rents owed to him to keep the tenants from exhausting their capital and going bankrupt. However, his son had just married Darcy's very wealthy cousin, and he laughed when Darcy suggested he felt guilty about the matter.
Only a quarter of an hour after Anne arrived, Georgiana and Wickham's carriage rolled to a stop.
For many years their marriage had been troubled and unhappy. However, the couple now were happy, and Elizabeth was near certain the improvement in Wickham's character would be permanent.
After the settlement was made on Georgiana, Wickham continued to gamble, and he perpetually had large debts to tradesmen and friends hanging over his head. Georgiana and the children spent a great deal of time at Pemberley to save the expense of renting a good house, so he could use the bulk of his income to repay debts of honor.
Darcy and Elizabeth adored their sister and nephews, and Wickham spent most of those months away. On the whole Elizabeth had been happy when Georgiana was resident with her. Darcy always was deeply annoyed when they found themselves obliged to put up an extra one or two hundred to cover debts to tradesmen that Wickham thought it beneath a gentleman to pay. Fortunately, Wickham soon found it very difficult to get credit from shopkeepers, and Darcy absolutely refused to help any merchant who gave Wickham credit a second time. The sums were never great enough to be more than frustrating.
Over the years Georgiana became exasperated with her husband. Wickham would not change, and he clearly valued his clothes and the accoutrements of being a gentleman of fortune more than her. Because of how much time he spent enjoying himself away from her, in many ways the children looked more towards Darcy as a father than Mr. Wickham.
Then he was shot.
A gentleman grew tired of Wickham's endless delays over repaying a large gambling debt. In the following duel Wickham's lower arm was shattered by a bullet, and he refused to let it be amputated until an infection had set in. Georgiana had been at Pemberley with her children when the duel occurred in Bath.
She still loved Wickham and rushed to her husband's side. For the next three months, she frantically nursed him while Wickham wavered on the edge between death and life. He suffered repeated fevers, and on three separate occasions the doctor gave up hope before Wickham at last recovered.
Something changed in him after his extended brush with death.
It had been four years since, and he had not touched a deck of cards. The months of complete dependence on Georgiana's care, without which he would certainly have died, left him with a real affection and admiration for his wife. When he recovered, Wickham resettled his family in the market town nearest Pemberley. He'd been a genuinely devoted and decent husband since.
When their carriage arrived, Wickham helped Georgiana out with his remaining hand, and his children ran out to embrace their aunt and uncle. Darcy and Wickham shook hands. For the past year a genuine, though extremely cautious, friendship had begun to grow between the two. Time had made Darcy believe Wickham's transformation might be permanent.
At noon General Fitzwilliam and his father arrived by horse. Lord Matlock was nearly seventy, and he'd gone deaf in one ear, which made him tend to yell even more. However, he was still vigorous and could be found on a horse whenever possible. An hour later Jane and Bingley arrived with their four daughters. Then Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner a few hours before dinner.
It was a huge happy group.
Bingley and Darcy laughed and talked in their perfectly complementary manner. General Fitzwilliam, who so far was an eternal bachelor, sat in the midst of the ladies and made them all laugh. Jane spent a half hour in the nursery visiting her nieces and nephew.
People wandered between the drawing room and the library and the galleries with their views of the park. The old galleries that had once been filled with the finest expensive art work in England were now filled with much cheaper sculptures and paintings that Elizabeth liked. For his part Fitzwilliam did not care.
He did care about the library, which they'd stocked over the years by constantly looking for chances to get books cheaply when estate libraries were ransacked by debt collectors or uncaring heirs. They had decided they wanted a large variety of books instead of the most expensive or impressive editions.
Darcy had initially wished to spend most of his income and only put one or two thousand a year towards reducing his debts — which, after all, had been reduced by the sales to Mr. Windham to a sum only a little greater in value than the entirety of Longbourn. That very modest sum was still vast in Elizabeth's untutored eyes.
He wanted her to have everything his wife could possibly deserve.
Elizabeth didn't want him to spend money for her. He had married her; he was unchangeably convinced they belonged together. She could never want more.
It took more than a year, and a great deal of advice from the Gardiners, before a comfortable balance was achieved that allowed both a very elegant mode of life and consistent reduction of the debts.
Since everyone was talking happily, Elizabeth left the drawing room to ask the cook about when the roasts and other dishes would be ready. If she snuck a morsel, or two… she would walk it off the next day.
Their entertainments would never be famous for their extravagance or the fifty exotic courses served, but in Elizabeth's opinion anyone worth having to dine wanted good food and good company more than an opportunity to marvel at eating a bird imported from Egypt or China.
Their furniture and decorations were sensible, comfortable, and durable — what tradesmen like Elizabeth's aunt and uncle would buy, not what great aristocrats like Darcy's relatives preferred. They kept everything until its use had run out. Darcy had a pair of good hunting horses, but not his own pack of foxhounds.
With these and similar economies, Elizabeth and Darcy lived far better, and more rationally, than her mother and father. They were able to reduce their debts by several thousand each year, even in the worst years of the agricultural crisis, since the prices of their expenditures had gone down, though not nearly as far as their income.
When the last of the debts were paid off two years ago, they had not changed their mode of life at all. More than five thousand a year was being set aside for the dowries of her daughters. Even though the money would be split several ways, unless she had several more daughters, each girl should have nearly as large a portion as Georgiana's had been.
When Elizabeth returned to the drawing room she found the gentlemen loudly talking in one corner. All of them, except Wickham, were making joking bets about the outcome of the hunt planned for the next morning.
Anne waved for Elizabeth to join the ladies. She held the scroll of a watercolor painting, which she unfolded when Elizabeth sat in the middle of the group.
During the years when she was at Pemberley, Anne had tried to develop accomplishments with a fervor. She hired excellent music masters, and drawing masters, and language tutors, and she planned to study everything. Elizabeth laughingly joined Anne, when it did not interfere with her rigorous schedule of kissing Darcy and enjoying the glorious Derbyshire countryside.
While Anne gained a fluency in French and Italian, she had no singing voice and did not enjoy the piano or screen netting at all. However, she loved to paint. It was how she and her husband had become close. She picked a hill that was on the border between what Darcy had sold to Mr. Windham and the land that still belonged to Pemberley and attempted to paint every perspective visible from there.
John Windham had ridden near the day she started, and after that first conversation he visited every morning and kept Anne company while she drew.
"Lizzy, what you think? Is it not very like? It is to be a gift for you and Fitzwilliam."
It was a painting of Bennet with that serious solemn expression he'd inherited from his father. "Oh, I love it. We shall hang it in the study."
Presents and gifts were exchanged, Elizabeth read the letters from Mary, Kitty and Lydia, all of whom had married happily. Papa visited on occasion, but he always left before the holidays to avoid crowds. After dinner the children were brought to the drawing room, and they ran about the room laughing and playing. With Georgiana seated at the piano, they sang carols together. Everyone was happy, and the evening was perfect.
At last, it was time to retire.
Elizabeth had watched Darcy for the last hour with that impatience she often felt when they were among other people. He was so handsome, with his broad shoulders, and thick dark hair, and the wicked smile he flashed at her when he saw that she watched him like an infatuated bird of prey.
The love of holding, and kissing, and being his wife never palled. It never would. They would be old and grey together, and she'd be annoyed any time company kept them past ten o'clock because she wanted to kiss her sweet, dear, masculine husband again and again.
When the drawing room had emptied, Darcy pulled Elizabeth next to him and kissed her hard. He then blew all of the candles out himself, following an old habit of small economies. As he did so he said, "Mrs. Darcy, I do not wish to presume, but I could not avoid suspecting that you were hoping to get something from me for the past hour. There was a quite… intent look in your eyes."
"Really. How strange. I thought my eyes were just wandering absently."
Darcy took Elizabeth's hand and squeezed it warmly as they walked out of the room and shut the door. "I have noticed, my dear, that often when you are not focused elsewhere, that your eyes wander in my direction. It is almost as though you enjoy looking at me very much."
"How strange. I truly had no notion I did so."
"Have I never mentioned it before?"
"Ah. I think you have. But I believe I was looking into your eyes when you did so. They are very blue. Did you know? And I fear I never can think clearly when I look into them. There is something in them that makes me feel very queer."
They entered their chambers. Darcy put the candleholder down on the table and said with a hungry look in his eyes. "Tell me. Tell me how you feel queer when you look in my eyes."
"But sir…" Elizabeth looked down as though she were a shy maiden. "It is very improper. I know I should not talk about such things."
He kissed her on each cheek and then nibbled on her ear. "Lizzy, tell me," he whispered.
"Well…" Elizabeth touched one breast and then the other, "I feel tight here and here. And also down —"
Darcy pulled her into a passionate kiss.
That never changed.
From the very first time Elizabeth had kissed Fitzwilliam Darcy, every kiss was the most perfect moment of her life.