Page 120 of A Life Diverted

The family was at Pemberley to celebrate Christmastide.

All of the extended family was present except for Jane and Andrew, as Jane had delivered a baby boy not eight weeks previously.

Both Elizabeth’s mother and Aunt Elaine were present for the birth of Andrew Thomas Fitzwilliam Junior in late October and remained with Jane for over a month.

Elizabeth had been playing chess with Uncle Robert.

She was not quite at his level yet, but she did win—without him giving her quarter—occasionally.

Her birthfather sat down with them, while the rest of the family was enjoying a sleigh ride.

As Elizabeth had a slight cold, Mr. Taylor had recommended she keep warm and out of the snow.

“My parents are aware of William’s ardent interest in their granddaughter,” the Prince had stated.

“Will they approve of William, Father?” Elizabeth had asked worriedly.

“They will under one condition,” the Prince stated as he gave Uncle Robert a conspiratorial look.

“I will not be able to refuse the King this time, will I?” Uncle Robert stated with amused resignation.

“Of what do you two talk, if I may know?” Elizabeth asked inquisitively.

“In order to marry a royal prince or princess, one must be a marquess or, in a lady’s case, a marchioness or higher,” the Prince had explained to his daughter.

“In my father’s time, the Darcys were offered the vacant dukedom of Derbyshire,” Uncle Robert explained. “My late father respectfully refused the title, as did I—twice.”

“Why did you refuse it, Uncle Robert?” Elizabeth followed up.

“We felt we did not need it, we—my father and I—were happy to be gentlemen farmers without being a member of the peerage and having to spend time in the House of Lords,” Uncle Robert had clarified.

“But now, Darcy here will not refuse it again, so that if you and William decide it is what you want, he will be allowed to court you officially — and become betrothed, if the courtship reaches its natural conclusion,” her birthfather stated with a smirk.

Uncle Robert had said not a word to refute the statement.

Elizabeth smiled, not because of the way the Darcys would be forced to accept a dukedom they had previously refused—multiple times—but the demonstration of a father’s love for his son that he would accept the title to ensure William’s—and by extension her own—happiness.

On the way home from Pemberley, the family spent a few days at Hilldale, where all of little Andy’s Bennet aunts, and lone uncle, had made his acquaintance.

Mary, who would be sixteen in a matter of days, could not get enough of Andy.

All of them loved their nephew, but for some unknown reason, Mary more so than the rest.

Elizabeth smiled as she thought about Mary and the close friendship that had grown between her and Elizabeth’s Uncle Wes.

He did not have much time with them as his sister had, because he assumed the role of the Earl of Jersey.

However, when not busy in the House of Lords, Wes could be found not far from his niece’s family, specifically not far from Mary.

The more Elizabeth came to know her Grandmother Sarah, the more she came to love the woman.

Grandmama Sarah, as Elizabeth called her, had apologised many times for not being stronger in standing up to her late husband.

Since Elizabeth shared her philosophy that one should remember the past only as the remembrance gives one pleasure, Lady Sarah chose to live in the present.

Her year of mourning ended in December, six months after Wes and Marie’s mourning period.

Elizabeth had been willing to add her grandmother’s name back as a middle name, but Lady Sarah demurred telling her the names were perfect as they were.

Elizabeth spent hours asking questions and hearing all about her birthmother, as a little girl as she grew up, whenever they were in company. She loved hearing how similar she was to the woman who had given her life.

As Lady Sarah came to know the Bennets, it was not long before she understood why Priscilla had chosen them to raise Elizabeth as a normal little girl rather than the childhood she would have had in a gilded royal cage. It was not many months before Ladies Sarah and Francine became quite close.

Fanny told her new friend how sorry she was that Priscilla went to her grave believing she had been rejected by both parents, which had led to Lizzy changing her middle names.

Sarah relayed she had no ill feelings about the name change, as it was done with the information at hand and no one was aware of the control her late husband used to exert over her.

She relayed to her new friend the conversation with Lizzy which put the issue to bed for all time.

Elizabeth liked her other grandparents, aunts, and uncles—the King, Queen, Princes, and Princesses—and cousins.

However, given their positions in society there was always a formality that none of the others in the extended family had.

Elizabeth was told the King had become ill some years earlier, but she never saw any evidence of sickness during the times she was in company with her royal grandfather.

Of all of her royal aunts, Elizabeth was closest to Princesses Elizabeth and Amelia. When with the royal family and her Aunt Elizabeth was present or not, the rest of the family called her Princess Beth—as the Queen had decreed—to differentiate between them.

Elizabeth put her book down as she had an epiphany. She loved William so very much that if Uncle Robert had been unwilling to accept elevation to the dukedom, or if there were no option of elevation, she would have renounced her royal title happily in order to be with William.

There was not a shred of a doubt in her mind that William was the right man for her, and the only man she would ever be willing to marry. Oh, how ardently she loved her William.

~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~

At Darcy House, a day before the Darcys were to return to Hertfordshire, William knocked on his father’s study door. “Welcome, William,” Robert Darcy said as his son took a seat in front of the huge oak desk. “Why the pensive look?”

“Lizzy will come out in a month, or little more, and I know she loves me as I love her, but I have remembered something about who can be allowed to marry a prince or princess,” William reported.

“You mean that you must be a marquess or above to marry a Princess of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland?” Darcy surmised. “It was a rule the King instituted after the Prince of Wales and his so-called wife, and then Uncle Freddy marrying the daughter of an Earl.”

William nodded. “We have an ancient and noble line, but you are not a duke, nor am I a marquess,” William pointed out.

“You heard I, and my father before me, turned down a title from the crown, did you not?” Darcy asked.

“Yes Father, I heard that,” William responded with a quizzical look.

“We were offered the Dukedom of Derbyshire. The last duke died without an heir some sixty years ago. You will be a Marquess, the Marquess of Derby, before asking the King for permission to court Lizzy,” Darcy told his son.

“You would do that for me so I might be with my Lizzy?” William asked, in awe of his father.

“William, I would do anything I needed to in order to secure your and Gigi’s happiness,” Darcy returned, his voice gruff with emotion. “When we see the Prince at Netherfield, I will ask him to pass my acceptance on to the Crown.”