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She did not know. Perhaps she would never know, indeed, why it was that two people came together in such a way and fit together so well.

She did not fit easily with many people, it seemed. But when she did fit, it was lovely.

The wedding came quickly and she told herself, again and again, that she would not be as Elizabeth had been, utterly transformed by whatever it was the wedding night was.

That was foolish, she thought. It must be quite, quite rare.

She didn’t even need that, after all. She only needed it to be nice.

No, she only needed it not to be horrid. No, she did not need it at all.

She girded herself up against it, and then, well, she was quite the same as she’d been before that first kiss, still and stiff and tense and worried.

Her husband noticed, however, in that darkened room where they were to spend more time alone together than they had ever spent, and he murmured to her, “Are you still thinking that I do not want you, that you are not pleasing to me, not handsome, whatever it is you seem intent upon telling yourself about yourself?”

She only shook her head, pressing her lips firmly together.

He brushed aside her hair, which was down around her shoulders, hanging and gleaming in the low lamplight. “I want you, Caroline Fitzwilliam. I want you badly.”

And she couldn’t help but feel that warmth stealing into her again. She couldn’t help but smile.

“I think you want me too,” he said. “I think you’re nervous.”

She bobbed her head in assent, but what she said, was, “Not at all.”

He laughed. “Well, neither am I, then. Nervous, that is. Not even the least bit nervous about pleasing you.”

But he did please her. He was very careful and very deliberate and asked ever so many questions and touched her like she was fragile and precious and, well, cherished.

Was she transformed when it was over? Oh, she didn’t know. Perhaps.

Perhaps, yes, she was transformed entirely.

And then, they were alone in town, and staying at his family’s town house, and the real and true realities of what their marriage was to look like had come to light.

Her dowry was quite enough that they could afford to use it to buy one house, but they could not have both a country house and a house in town.

He hadn’t had much to say to her about money; she suspected he was ashamed. So, it was her who broached the subject, that they should speak to her brother about investments.

“Go into trade?” he said to her, raising his eyebrows.

“Well, you’re not going to make much money in the army, are you?” she said. “If we want to have children, we should think of what future we can give them. Will your mother and father find it too far beneath them to think their son is doing such a thing?”

“No,” said the colonel, “not at all. I am only thinking that I am a very stupid man not to have considered it already. It’s a good thing I married a woman who’s much smarter than I am.”

It was good they saw to it quickly, because he had her with child in two months.

She sent a letter to Elizabeth telling her the news.

It’s quite early and I can’t be entirely sure, but I am feeling sick in the mornings and I definitely have not seen my bleeding this month, so I am fairly convinced.

Don’t spread it about, but I wished to tell you.

She received a reply, We are both increasing at the same time! This is fantastic news. After all, we always wished to raise our babes together, did we not?

And so, while they were making investments and waiting for dividends, and while her husband was called to duty (though he was not going to France, thank goodness, but to Belfast), Caroline went to Pemberley herself and there, she and Elizabeth lay in the warm grass of the Derbyshire summer, watching Lydia and Georgiana run around giggling and making flower crowns and wading into the nearby stream and trying not to get their skirts too wet, whilst their bellies grew and the babes within them did as well.

But they were just as much giggling girls as Lydia and Georgiana were, in the end.

They would watch the girls and talk to each other of how their babes would grow up like brothers and sisters and how they would all be like a family to each other, no, truly a family, since their siblings were married to each other and since their husbands were cousins.

And when summer began to fade, and they were both increasing far too much to be seen in public, the colonel came back and the investments were bearing fruit, and they bought a house.

Not a country house, not a grand estate, nothing of that nature.

But they did have their own little space together, and and Caroline was the mistress of her own domain, and the babe started moving round inside her, and she was happy.

She missed Elizabeth, of course, because she and her husband were back in town now.

That was the sort of house they’d purchased.

Their plan was to spend the winters and springs here in their town house and then travel where they might be invited in the summers and falls, making extended stays with family.

This fall, however, they wished to be alone together.

Elizabeth’s babe was born earlier than Caroline’s, in the last week of October.

Caroline did not deliver until mid-November.

She’d had a letter from Elizabeth by that point, detailing that the labor lasted “much longer” than she had anticipated, and that it was the length of the ordeal, the seeming unendingness of it, that had been worse than the actual pain.

But Caroline’s labors were brief, and the pain was excruciating.

She wondered, when she wrote to Elizabeth later, if it were a trade-off of sorts.

If you had the same amount of pain, but either spread out over a long time or concentrated all at once.

Caroline couldn’t say if she would have rather labored for three nights, as Elizabeth had, or only the five hours of sheer agony she had experienced.

Either way, it was done.

She had a little girl who she had named Mabel.

They both had girls, in fact. Elizabeth’s daughter was named Jennifer.

It was into this sleepy late autumn, then, that Mr. Wickham appeared again.

When Caroline had spoken with her husband about the man, she had come away with the impression that the colonel was frustrated.

He knew that Mr. Darcy felt some sort of compassion for the man, but the colonel felt none.

To the colonel’s way of thinking, everyone suffered, and suffering—in and of itself—could not be an excuse for visiting suffering on others.

He felt that Mr. Wickham should be dealt with, swiftly and with prejudice.

For her part, Caroline agreed. She was the sort of person who felt that there was a proper way to conduct oneself and that if one could not be proper, one should face consequences.

However, nothing had been done about Mr. Wickham.

Mr. Darcy had simply packed off his wife and his sister, and now his new babe, and had ensconced them in the fortress of Pemberley, and had made no attempt to seek the man out or to deal with the specter he posed.

The colonel had groused that it was only a matter of time until Mr. Wickham reappeared.

The colonel had been correct.

JANE AND MR . Bingley were visiting Pemberley that November, along with their new baby son James.

Jane had given birth only a few months before Elizabeth, and the two spent their time together with their children, and then alone with each other when they had given the babes off to their nurses to be seen to and to give their mothers some much-needed respite.

Lydia was also still at Pemberley. She and Georgiana were the closest of companions, however, and the two younger women did not spend their afternoons with the elder Bennet sisters on every occasion.

The afternoon that Lydia went missing, then, no one noticed except Georgiana, and she did not report her friend missing until dinner, for she was too loyal to Lydia and did not wish the other girl to get in trouble. But when pressed, she admitted that she had not seen her since luncheon that day.

It took only a bit of inquiry with the servants to discover that Mr. Wickham had been skulking about and that he and Lydia had been seen conversing together.

Elizabeth felt alternately ill with worry and then angry with her sister. How was it the girl could not have understood the danger of this man after he had already abducted her once? She had barely escaped with her reputation intact and she had run off with the man again?

A search party was mounted.

Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley rode off in search of them.

They found Mr. Wickham at a nearby tavern, but Lydia was not with him.

Around this time, Lydia reappeared at Pemberley, saying that Mr. Wickham had lured her off the grounds with the story of needing assistance with his horse.

He claimed the animal was stuck in a fence, and that he only needed her to help soothe the creature whilst he worked its leg free.

However, she said, when they got to the horse, it was tied up against a tree, not stuck at all.

Lydia had left him, then. As for why it taken her so long to get back to Pemberley, that was down to having gotten turned around in the woods and walked too far in the wrong direction.

Sullen and dirty, she demanded a bath and stalked off away from Elizabeth’s scoldings, saying, “Oh, la, Lizzy, you sound just like Mama!”

Elizabeth pursued her through the house, demanding to know why Lydia would go anywhere with that man when she knew what sort of person he was and how he must only wish to sow discord.

“Oh, I know not,” Lydia said, cross. “It is only that he always has something to say, no matter what it is you say to him. One begins to feel as if it will simply be easier to do as he says, if only to get it all over with!”

Elizabeth wasn’t sure what to make of that.