Page 1 of Mrs. Gardiner: Matchmaker (The Pemberley Collection #3)

Mrs. Gardiner pressed the visit to Pemberley for one reason, and one reason only: to reunite Lizzy with Mr. Darcy.

It all started months ago, after her niece returned from Kent, when she stayed with them on her return trip to Longbourn. Mrs. Gardiner had gone into Jane and Lizzy's chambers to drop off a book she knew Lizzy wanted to read, and that's when she saw it—the letter from Mr. Darcy.

Normally, she wasn't one to pry, but the page had fallen to the floor, and she could see the signature of who sent it—and she was shocked. So shocked that she picked it up, and after stepping out in the hall to determine she was alone, she moved back into the room quietly and read it. Mrs. Gardiner wasn't glad to have done such a thing, of course—violating her niece's privacy was no proud moment of hers.

But it explained a number of things—the first of which was Lizzy's melancholy upon her return from Kent.

It turned out that Lizzy and Mr. Darcy had an argument, and here in his letter, he was addressing her accusations and defending himself, justifying his actions. Mrs. Gardiner was saddened to learn of the manipulation of poor Mr. Bingley, but knowing how crude her sister-in-law Mrs. Bennet could be, and as hard to read as Jane really was, she couldn't really blame the man for coming to the wrong conclusions. It was an honest mistake that surely anyone might have made.

As for Mr. Wickham...Mrs. Gardiner always knew something was not right about that man, even if she humored Lizzy on that score in the past. What he nearly did with Mr. Darcy's young sister—why, it was horrible. She felt a surge of sympathy for the poor man, trying to raise his sister in the wake of their parents both being gone.

But what struck her the most about such a letter, was its stealthy admission: Mr. Darcy had proposed marriage to her niece.

The line revealed it in his address about why he objected to the marriage of Jane and Mr. Bingley: "My objections to the marriage were not merely those, which I last night acknowledged to have required the utmost force of passion to put aside, in my own case"— in his own case? Goodness!

It didn't take long for Mrs. Gardiner to put two and two together—Lizzy refused the man's proposal, and presumably did so on the grounds of him meddling with Jane and Mr. Bingley, and his alleged poor treatment of Mr. Wickham.

Oh Lizzy, what a fool she's been—Mrs. Gardiner couldn't help but wonder what her poor niece must be feeling now, after learning the truth behind everything. If Lizzy's morose quietness since Hunsford was any clue, then Mrs. Gardiner would gamble that the girl's primary feelings were of regret and acute mortification. Mrs. Gardiner cringed to read Mr. Darcy's statements about the Bennets, yet she couldn't deny her husband's sister's want of propriety, and even Mr. Bennet's bad behavior, too, of lazily hiding away in his library and letting his estate dwindle to nothing, while his younger girls ran practically wild. She sighed.

What could be done for her niece?

She had heard about Lizzy's rejection of this Mr. Collins person from Mrs. Bennet all through Christmas—how would Mrs. Bennet react when she learned that Lizzy had rejected a man of ten times Mr. Collins's consequence? No wonder Lizzy was keeping mum about it—if her mother found out, she'd never hear the end of it for the rest of her days.

After Jane and Lizzy departed back to Hertfordshire with young Miss Maria Lucas, Mrs. Gardiner contemplated to herself if there was anything she could do. She noticed that Lizzy hadn't once uttered anything negative about Mr. Darcy since her return from Kent.

Could the girl have changed her opinion of the man?

There was one night, many weeks after Jane and Lizzy had departed, when an idea came into Mrs. Gardiner's mind.

"Dear," she said to her husband as he readied for bed, "You know, do you really think you're going to have enough time to visit the lake country this summer?"

He looked at her with some surprise. "Do you not want to visit the lakes?"

"Why, of course I do. But it seems you are spending more and more time at your office."

"That's because I must, if we are to be away for as long as we plan. Why do you ask?"

She smiled at him wistfully as he slid into bed next to her.

"I miss seeing you, is all," she said.

He kissed her. "Well, I miss seeing you too, my darling. But what is there to be done? If we are to be gone for most of the summer—"

"But that's just the thing. Maybe we can shorten the trip, and visit somewhere else instead."

He furrowed his brow. She went on, "Maybe we could visit Derbyshire?"

He looked at her and then laughed. "I see what this is. You want me home more, and you want to visit Lambton, is that it?"

She beamed, knowing he was already going to agree. "Of course. You know me so well, Mr. Gardiner."

"That I do, Mrs. Gardiner."

He agreed to the change, and he agreed to spend less time at the office. She showed him her appreciation in the best way a wife knows how when she is in her husband's bed, and as she lay there after, she smiled to herself.

Lizzy would get another chance with Mr. Darcy, Mrs. Gardiner would make sure of that.