A/N: I don't own what you recognize. And I love my reviewers. Thanks so much for reading and commenting.
Reader, I married her. I, George Knightley, married Emma Woodhouse. We had four children together. Although I had known her since she was born when I was five, I fell in love with her when I was twenty-nine and she was twenty-four. Three years later, I made a pact with her to marry her when she was thirty if we were both still unmarried at that point. I made that pact knowing that I would still be unmarried when she was thirty because the only woman I would ever marry was the same woman with whom I was making this pact.
I watched her fall in love other men. I watched as they hurt her. And I accepted the fact that I would never have her heart. She would never love me the way that I loved her. I would survive. I had my job, my beloved job. I would be fine. Maybe someday I would meet a woman who would love me the way that I wanted to be loved. But for now, I had Emma as a friend.
Then, a year before her thirtieth birthday, Emma found herself single and pregnant. And somewhere between June and October, she discovered that she loved me. And I discovered that there is nothing more beautiful in this life than to love and be loved. Our first child, Elinor, was born in the fall of 2012, a mere two days after I married her mother. Her brother, Maxwell George, was born in April of 2015. Audrey Caroline was born in July of 2018, and our youngest, Evelyn Beatrice, was born in October of 2020.
Paul Churchill and Jane Fairfax, on the other hand, divorced quickly on the grounds of adultery. Jane left Ann Arbor after only one year there and moved back to North Carolina with Oliver. From what I've heard, she married again a few years after leaving Ann Arbor and is quite happy. Paul left Ann Arbor at the same time as Jane, but he headed to West Virginia. I don't know what became of him as he and his brother lost touch after Paul left town. In one of the wiser moves of their lives, Hannah and West did choose to maintain contact with Jane and her son.
West and Hannah remained in our social circle. They had two children; Noah was born in 2014, and Adrienne was born in 2017. Emma probably derived a little more pleasure than she should have from the fact that Hannah gained more weight in her first pregnancy than Emma had with Elinor and then Hannah found herself almost unable to lose that weight. Betsy might have jokingly predicted this possibility at one point in the past, but no one had ever seen it actually coming to fruition.
As to what ever happened to Hattie, I don't know. After her breakup with Paul, Hattie and Emma grew apart until they completely lost contact. To be honest, I wasn't unhappy about that. I never completely liked Emma's friendship with Hattie. I didn't think that they were positive influences on one another-and in the end, Emma came to agree with me.
Emma and I lived a happy life with our family. And oddly enough, I came to thank Paul Churchill's stupidity for bringing such great happiness into my life. Without him, I never would have married my darling Emma or become the father of the four most wonderful children ever born. And thus I learned that even bad situations can bear wonderful fruit.
The End
A/N: Please leave any and all final thoughts for me. I really appreciate you taking the time to read my story.