A week before the wedding, Mrs. Romney arrived, reputing from the carriage in a torrent of endearments and praise for England's charms.
"Mrs. Darcy, my dear Elizabeth, it is too wonderful to see you again," the Frenchwoman said, her arms wrapped around Lizzie and pausing between words to kiss the startled woman's cheeks.
"Welcome to England, Mrs. Romney," Elizabeth said warmly, returning her embrace.
Eleanor stepped back a fraction and examined her friend's face closely. "Marriage is not so bad, ma cherie, is it not? Tell me, how has your first month of married life been to you?"
Lizzie bit her lip and thought furiously. She should have expected close questioning as soon as Mrs. Romney departed her carriage, but she had not. To gain time she guided them toward the rose garden while servants bustled into the house with Mrs. Romney's parcels.
"Mr. Darcy is living with his friend Mr. Bingley and Netherfield Hall, a short drive from here," she said.
"And you are not also living at Netherfield Hall?" Eleanor asked.
"Not for lack of encouragement," Elizabeth admitted. "Mr. Darcy's sister, Georgiana, has spent every day here for the last fortnight, helping Jane finish embroidering her linens, thinking that was what was keeping me from living with them there. She's such a dear girl, and greatly looking forward to meeting you."
"But it was not the linens that kept you away," said Mrs. Romney evenly, ignoring her friend's misdirection. Lizzie sighed.
"He and I have been walking together almost every night, but I still cannot manage to make myself leave home and go to him," she admitted. "Surely everyone thinks me a most unnatural wife. But am I not?"
"Has Mr. Darcy been asking you to come to him?" her friend asked, a hint of threat in her voice.
"Only in the sweetest, most gentle way. When his sister asked him why I did not come, he said that they must not be greedy. He seems to long for my presence, and I feel guilty for denying him. But how can I go to him, with things as they are? We will go into Derbyshire together after Jane and Bingley marry next Monday. It is so soon. I cannot leave her when we have only a week left. But I have come to dread when Mr. Darcy must leave of an evening. I don't know what to feel or to do."
"Oh my dear Elizabeth, you are so good to have forgiven him."
"It is hard to bear grudges against the dead, even when they rise again."
Mrs. Romney laughed merrily. "When you wrote that he had appeared just when his termagant aunt darkened your door, I knew that some angel was looking down on both of you."
"I thought she might have had a fit of apoplexy, and I cannot be sure her state improved when her dear nephew reappeared," Lizzie said, smiling grimly.
"But his sister, she loves you already, does she not?"
"She's such a tender creature. I cannot imagine how she kept company with Mr. Bingley's sisters. She's not at all the haughty thing they made her to be."
"Then I shall look forward to meeting Miss Darcy as well," Mrs. Romney said, grasping her friend's elbow as they again circled among the flowers. Lizzie smiled at her.
"I do hope Mr. Darcy will be civil. Somehow you put the fear of God into him."
"And has he kept his end of the bargain?"
"So all the arrangements, for the estate and dowries, those were your ideas?"
"Mr. Darcy had some notion of what needed to be done. I helped him clarify those notions. Perhaps more than he wished to with a head full of old beer."
Lizzie looked at her friend with questions multiplying in her eyes.
"Oh yes, the night you spent at my house, he must have been quite in despair. His friend was not in nearly so bad a state."
Lizzie sat abruptly on a bench. "Tell me, what did he say?"
"My dear, it is not what he said. It is what he did. And the wildness in his eyes. He seemed most uncomfortable, feeling too much to be borne."
"He looks at me that way sometimes. I cannot know what to think or feel when he does. He ever seemed so guarded, so aloof, so proud."
"He was a man in desperate straits that morning, my dear. He was clinging to his amour propre with one hand and to the hope of you with the other."
Lizzie pressed her hand to her abdomen, staring into nothing.
"My dear?" Eleanor asked.
"I… he… loves… me…" Lizzie said, nearly gasping with each word.
"To be sure," Eleanor replied.
"And he is my husband," Lizzie said slowly.
"I saw you wed, myself. What is it, dear?"
Elizabeth was staring at what Eleanor was passing sure not a rosebush.
"So very much he loves me, Mrs. Romney. He has conquered his pride for love of me," she said, her voice turning incredulous.
"I have never seen a man overcome more pride for love than your Mr. Darcy," the Frenchwoman replied.
"And he had so very much to begin with. Oh Mrs. Romney, it is too much. Why should he love me so excessively?"
"He is a man of strong passions, very strong. And when in his life has he not had what he wanted?"
"I believe he never wanted to come into Hertfordshire. He only did so to please his friend, Mr. Bingley."
"Soon to be your brother, to be joined to your excellent sister Jane?"
Energized by this turn in conversation, Lizzie and Eleanor rose to walk about the flowers once more.
"This Sunday the third banns will be read, and Monday they marry," she said, her eyes glowing softly at the thought of her sister's happiness.
Mrs. Romney looked at the young Englishwoman thoughtfully. "Do you envy your sister, my dear?"
"Perhaps I did a little, when we first started to plan the wedding. But once is enough, at least with my mother," she admitted. "But sometimes Mr. Darcy will catch my eye when Mama is planning some abomination. And that look makes me able to laugh at everything. I know everything will be all right."
"But of course it will, ma cherie," Eleanor said, laughing. "And if he does not do as you like—" she clubbed the air in illustration.
Merry chaos reigned at Longbourn. If new gowns were not being tried, if suitors were not being judged, if orders were not being given, countermanded and re-given, then Mr. Bennet was still seeking refuge in his library out of what he insisted was sensible precaution.
"For I would not have thought such silliness could rule here without Mrs. Bennet's youngest daughter," he declared to Lizzie one afternoon as they sat cloistered against the din. Kitty had used Mary's book to prop up a bonnet she was decorating and refused to give it up, claiming that the dry stuff could only be meant for millinery purposes. Mary's claims upon her mother's sense of justice went perfectly unheeded.
"Everyone is driven to distraction, Papa," Lizzie said, smiling fondly at her father.
"None of them has much wits out of which to be driven," he retorted. She frowned in mock reproof and he smiled, satisfied.
"How good it has been to have you about, these last few weeks, Lizzie. I will miss you, when you are gone off with your Mr. Darcy."
Lizzie blushed and started to correct her father, then trailed off. "That he is, I imagine," she admitted.
"Undoubtedly, my dear, you have the fondest husband in all of England. Which is just as it should be. I would have said any other man wasn't good enough for my Lizzie. I would have said the same of Mr. Darcy before he proved himself thus, but I don't think any could doubt him now. No, he is just the fellow for you. Though it means I shall have to get used to a household completely without sense, particularly in Jane's absence, well, so be it."
"Oh Papa," she cried, falling on her father's neck.
"Well, well," he hrumphed. "Things seem to have quieted down in the parlor. Out you go, I have work to do." Elizabeth slipped out while her father poured himself a quiet brandy.
A great stillness pervaded the parlor. Lizzie saw Mary happily absorbed in her great tome, her mother collapsed across the sofa, fanning herself gently, and Mrs. Romney and Kitty intent at the table before a bonnet in a delicate stage of manufacture, perched on what seemed to be a large quantity of straw.
"Ah, ma cherie," Mrs. Romney cried upon seeing her friend. "I am showing Catherine how to dress a bonnet as we do back home."
Lizzie began to move toward the confection under construction, when James' entrance drew her eye. He bowed toward Mrs. Bennet and announced Mr. Chester Romney and Mr. Darcy.
Mrs. Romney started, every inch in high tension. "Mon amour?" she whispered. A man appeared in the door. Elizabeth's eyes immediately slid behind him to where Mr. Darcy waited. With some effort, she drew them back to see the freckled sailor catch his wife. Eleanor hugged her husband fiercely before turning to Mrs. Bennet.
"My dear hostess, Mrs. Bennet, may I present my husband, Chester Romney, first mate on His Majesty's ship the Laconia."
Romney bowed to Mrs. Bennet then to Elizabeth, who approached to shake his hand.
"I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Romney. This is such a pleasant surprise." She glanced back toward Darcy. A small smile lit his face as she beamed at him.
Eleanor was introducing Romney to the other Bennet sisters — Jane having finally been drawn downstairs. Elizabeth slipped her arm into Darcy's and walked a few paces with him.
"However did you manage it, Mr. Darcy. It does seem your influence with His Majesty's navy knows no limits."
Darcy smiled and shook his head slightly.
"I've given places to a few retired sailors. The officers take it as a kindness." He smiled again and shrugged slightly.
Eleanor rounded on them, falling on Darcy with protestations of eternal friendship.
"Mr. Romney tells me that he has a week after the wedding as well! You are a saint, Mr. Darcy, a true saint!"
"Perhaps, in any case, St. Christopher would take an interest in me. Or at least, he seems to have done so."
Merry laughter rang through the parlor.