Page 42 of Ever After End

EPILOGUE

F riday, 12 June, 1822

Ever After End,

Somerset

Elizabeth lounged upon a pile of pillows under a white canopy by the lake at Ever After End. She looked over at the water as twenty-year-old Edith Darlington was rowed past by the third son of an impoverished viscount, Mr Geoffrey Putnam. Giving thanks that her young friend was not in need of rescue from the lake, Elizabeth looked about sleepily for her family.

Eight year old Bennet Darcy was fishing at the edge of the water with his father and four year old brother Fitzwilliam. Six year old Anne Theodosia was on a pony led by a groom and her nurse close by.

Nearby, Mrs Theodosia Darlington sat surrounded by the couples that had married after meeting at her house parties over the years. This summer, Ever After End would host a very different kind of house party. Edith was to be married on the first of August to a man she had met in Derbyshire while visiting Pemberley, and she had envisioned a very different sort of celebration this summer .

A few feet away sat Mrs Irving, Miss Bates as was. After seven happy years of marriage, Mr Irving had sadly died of a stomach complaint. Mrs Darlington invited the parson’s wife, who had become her close friend over the years, to join the chaperones at Ever After End, for Mrs Higglebottom died the year that Barnaby did not return with the swans from his migration, and they were missing a chaperone. Mrs Irving visited cherished friends and relations in Highbury, Yorkshire, and Derbyshire often, and enjoyed watching over the guests at Ever After End each summer.

Edith had enjoyed a long engagement, and spent nearly a year planning and writing letters all over the country, even some to America and Canada. This summer, Ever After End was filled with the couples who had met there each year and their families, and so many had accepted that Darcy had leased an enormous manor that was empty three miles away to hold all of the families that Ever After End could not accommodate.

Each day, the green was covered in guests and children, pilgrimages were made to Glastonbury Abbey, Glastonbury Tor, Bath, and the other places that guests had visited during their courtships. Considering the sheer number of guests this year, the majority of the couples and their families would leave on the 22nd of July, and only those closest to Mrs Darlington and Edith would remain for the wedding. The estate had been more than profitable for four years now, but the matchmaking parties had become a tradition at Ever After End. Mr and Mrs Putnam would return to live there after their wedding trip, and the parties would resume the following summer; the profits would be set aside for dowries and futures for their children.

Theodosia Darlington had never before considered how much of a difference she had made in the world until the night before, when Edith read aloud at dinner some letters sent to her in praise and love by couples who had emigrated to America, Canada, across the continent, or in one case, India. Sketches of children were included, and small tokens of gratitude accompanied the missives. Whenever Mrs Darlington considered it, and looked around at all of the lovely families that existed because of her estate, she became quite overwhelmed.

Elizabeth noted Jane and Charles Bingley playing shuttlecock with their five daughters, Dorothy, Theodosia, Louisa, Caroline, and Elizabeth; Mary and Mr Elwood were on the water in a rowboat with their son, Theodore. She rose and looked about for the bonnet that she had cast aside before resting, and settled her hand on the small bulge in her stomach. She expected the next little Darcy to arrive sometime in November.

She eventually gave up on finding her bonnet, and, shading her eyes from the sun with her hand, set off for the lakeside and her family.

“Mama!” Anne Theodosia cried when she saw her mother. Elizabeth’s daughter scrambled down from the pony and ran to her mother, who waved the nurse away for a well earned rest of her own.

“Mama, may I go inside and write a fairy tale with Miss Larkspur?” Anne begged. Miss Larkspur was a favourite of Anne’s.

“Miss Larkspur is sitting there under the tent, darling.” Elizabeth pointed out her daughter’s prey, and watched as she ran to her favourite person in Somerset. Caroline Bingley had indeed caught Miss Larkspur’s ear before their long ago departure from Ever After End. Miss Larkspur’s next romance after their house party in 1812 about the gentleman who eschewed all the ladies who pursued him until he found one that must be convinced was now on its fourth edition, and had been adapted for the stage.

“Do you think the characters in her fairy tale will live happily ever after?” Darcy asked, coming up behind her and wrapping an arm about her side.

“Of course, darling,” Elizabeth laid her head on his shoulder. “There is no other conclusion at Ever After End.”