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Elizabeth

I t falls to me, I suppose, to tell what has since transpired. In the end, Pemberley suited me infinitely well, and we did not resort to a dissolution of our marriage so that I could inhabit a mouldy cottage. The fortunes of our friends, acquaintances, and relations, however, were variable.

Of those who did not fare well, George Wickham must be first on the list. He contracted a tropical fever and died one week after landing in Jamaica.

I must also report that my husband’s cousin, Lord Langford, not only lost heavily at cards, but he lost heavily with regards to his future.

Desperate to bolster the family fortunes, the Earl of Matlock arranged with his sister, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, to marry his son to her daughter, Anne, and combine the income of Rosings Park with that of Matlock.

But Lord Langford had enjoyed the services of the most celebrated Cyprians in London and had some very particular notions about what he deserved in a wife.

Upon seeing Anne, a girl he had not laid eyes on for more than seven years, Langford also went straight to Jamaica.

He writes he has no intention to return until such time as he is earl.

Meanwhile, he married a girl named Jenny of no parentage at all, making Darcy’s marriage to me a staid bow to convention by comparison.

The Earl and Countess of Matlock could not quite continue to be important figures in a society that laughed behind its hand at the shocking desertion of their heir.

After only a few faint snubs, they removed to their country house and are rumoured to be in a full scale of retrenchment that precludes their entertaining anybody.

Mr Collins never did regain the total approbation of his noble patroness.

He had, after all, brought the viper to her bosom, and in consequence, she barely tolerated him.

In turn, he became insufferable to live with, and Charlotte has since gone to live at Longbourn with my mother.

That convoluted tale would take far too long to enumerate, but suffice it to say, they get on remarkably well for two people so opposite in nature.

My sisters Lydia and Kitty were sent off to be finished in Switzerland.

Lydia, of course, did not return finished at all.

In fact, she did not return to England, having married a German count with more flash than substance.

Her letters are haphazard at best, and she swings from gay descriptions of going from one glamorous party after another to broad hints for money.

Kitty, by contrast, returned as polished as any deb could be, and we brought her out in a modest way which suited our distaste for hectic town life.

But for all her newfound sophistication, her country upbringing would prevail, and after two abbreviated Seasons, she returned to Meryton and promptly fell in love with John Lucas!

Georgiana managed a somewhat awkward debut.

We had returned to town a few months after our shocking elopement as it has since been styled and were treated with such uneven and occasionally outright false politeness from society, that her ball was attended by only twenty-two couples.

Mr Darcy’s friends, Lord Cobham, Mr Creston, and Mr Richardson, came and gamely danced the entire night with her.

That they covertly looked me over from head to foot did not bother me in the least, for I had no belly to satisfy their curiosity, and the fact that my husband very publicly adored me put much of everyone else’s speculation to rest. By the following Season, the prevailing wisdom of the bon ton had turned our shameful elopement into a love match.

A love match has so far eluded Charles Bingley.

He lives the town life, with the limpets of Mr Hurst, Mrs Hurst, and Miss Bingley still firmly attached.

Willum says he sometimes thinks Bingley is waiting for Mr Bromley to fall ill from one of his patients, so he can have Jane as a widow.

I reply that Caroline Bingley is very hopeful I shall die in childbed so she can have my husband.

Georgiana has remained at home with us, and she exhibits no inclination to find a husband. In this we are fully supportive, for if she has a life she enjoys and is surrounded by people who love her, why should she leave?

My sister Jane did learn to make jam, and we have just opened a jar sent to Pemberley from her kitchen.

She is serenely happy being Robert Bromley’s support in a life full of people who need his attention.

They have the happy advantage of being close enough to visit my aunt and uncle Gardiner any day of the week, and I hardly read a letter from Jane in which some mention is not made of a family party.

This year, they are coming to Pemberley for Christmas, and though I know they will enjoy themselves, I have no doubt that half the people on the estate will seek out Mr Bromley for some remedy or cure.

However intriguing the vagaries of fate when observed from the distance of time, they are eclipsed by the reversal of fortune enjoyed by my sister Mary.

She came to Pemberley with us after our wedding, and when we returned to London for Georgiana’s debut, she went to stay with Jane who, newly married herself and immersed in the strange world of medical life, was all at sea.

Between the two of them, they learnt to manage an establishment that was both a home and a medical office.

The day for them, as I understand it, began with a very early breakfast and the management of household business compressed into the hour before the door knocker began to sound.

Thereafter, they greeted various persons, made them comfortable in a small parlour, and showed them into the consultation room when Mr Bromley was finished with the patient he had attended just before.

This seemed a simple affair to me, but nothing is simple when dealing with persons who are sick.

There were those who had to be helped up and down the stairs, those that needed to be listened to, and those that had endless—often imaginary—complaints that required an attitude of concerned interest. Occasionally, someone would arrive in such a dire state of either disability or injury that an upstairs room, set aside for the purpose, would be opened.

There, the patient would stay until they could be safely moved—either to their home or to the undertaker.

These sudden emergencies threw the whole house into a tumult.

In all cases, this general bustle was a world away from the simple life of a country squire’s daughter.

After the last patient was seen out the door, tea would be called for, and after Mr Bromley forced down a few sandwiches and cakes, he would leave for an afternoon of traversing half of London to see to his homebound patients.

Then commenced the work of running a gentleman’s modest house, which in truth, required a great deal of effort since they could hardly afford an army of servants.

Throughout this period, Jane adjusted to a life with a tenth of the leisure she was used to, and Mary, thoroughly occupied, thrived.

My middle sister might very well still be there as a spinster were it not for the arrival of a wounded man, half carried up the steps by an alarmingly large soldier named Sargeant Brown.

“Colonel Fitzwilliam!” Mary cried out, and with tears streaming down her face, she went to him.

Grimacing a brave smile, he winked at her and said, “Mary Bennet, what a delight to see you again.”

While supervising the movement of artillery from Pirbright to the Hyde Park Barracks, an ordnance exploded just outside Richmond, killing three men and wounding half a dozen more, Colonel Fitzwilliam being one of them.

Feeling himself more fortunate than the rest, with only three shards of molten metal in his shoulder and back, Richard declined the medical services of the brigade doctor who approached him with bloody sleeves.

With a makeshift bandage and a bottle of brandy, he directed his batman to take him straight to Bromley in London.

He later joked that if a sawbones were going to finish him off, he would prefer it be someone he knew.

The truth was that he very nearly died, but after surviving a harrowing fever, he convalesced in the doctor’s sick room and credits my sister’s assiduous care with his survival.

The recovery for Richard was long and fraught, but in the midst of the difficulty, he realised that no woman in the world made him feel more comfortable or more at ease than my sister.

And Mary, who had been in love with my husband’s cousin almost from the very first moment of seeing him, willed him to live by means of her considerable and intense devotion to his care.

As he gradually became well, Colonel Fitzwilliam began to go downstairs to dinner with the family, to sit in the parlour, and to think on settling into a comfortable life much like that enjoyed by Jane and Robert Bromley.

He wrote to Darcy, and in a few months, he sold his commission, confessed his undying love to Mary, and after a simple ceremony, took her to Staffordshire.

There, he bought her a pretty little house where she set up a kitchen garden and made herself endlessly useful.

Richard, having been wounded and suffering a loss of the full function of his shoulder, decided he would rather find a business which could support wounded soldiers than passively work the land, and so he bought Mr Bingley’s last pottery factory—amiably priced on account of their friendship—with this aim in mind.

The giant, Sargeant Brown, did not go to Staffordshire.

He had stayed at Mr Bromley’s house while caring for his colonel.

He was called upon to assist with patients from time to time, and in doing so, he developed an interest in doing something other than soldiering.

Because of his brute strength and sheer size, he became an expert bone setter as well as my brother-in-law’s factotum.

Between them, they became known for their work with joints and bones, and they hired rooms in Harley Street.

And Jane, heavily with child, was glad to call quits.

She quietly set about hiring a nurse to take over her public duties and to see to the relocation of the workplace to a site somewhere removed from her parlour.

When last I visited, she looked less careworn and more beautifully serene than ever.

Postscript

I sat up in bed, and after asking for the curtains to be opened to a brilliantly lit day, my husband came quietly into the room as the maid slipped quietly out.

“Is she sleeping?” he asked in a tender whisper. How many times we have melted over an infant—either an animal, a niece, a nephew, or one of our own?

“Not for long,” I whispered back. “She is a loud one, I am afraid.”

He carefully sat next to me and kissed my hand. “Assure me you are well, love,” he said.

“Caroline Bingley will not get you this time, sir.”

“She will not get me any time.”

He pushed a few strands of hair from my forehead, causing the breath to catch in my throat. He still has the capacity to make me feel infinitely loved.

After a moment of silent reflection, he said, “Robert tells me he has never known a woman to have an easier time of it than you, but I confess, I hate the sound of my children being born.”

“Like your daughter, I am not quiet,” I said with a low chuckle. “But what is this?”

He handed me a small box, and I opened it to see two finely crafted silver buckles. This is our ritual and after four darling raven-haired babies, I now have a collection. As with each set, they will be engraved and given to our love children.

“We are like these buckles,” my husband mused as he stared helplessly at the silver baubles and then at his first daughter.

When I looked up at him questioningly, he said simply, “A matched pair, my fiend.” He kissed the palm of my hand. “Now rest, Elizabeth. There is a houseful of people who want to come see you, and I shall not share you until you have slept for half the day at least.”

I stifled the urge to kiss his hand. My husband is easily undone by such demonstrations of worship. Instead, I said, “I would rather not be alone just now. Will you bring a chair close and bear me company?”

A look of great tenderness stole over his face, and I could no longer resist. I kissed his hand and fell into a peaceful rest, secure in the knowledge he would be there when I awoke on this special day and always.