Page 31 of The Next Mrs Bennet

E lizabeth and Darcy both had to fight their inclination to run to the family library. They did their best to maintain decorum as they walked out of the sitting room as fast as they could without breaking into a run.

“It seems that Lizzy is as keen to be asked as Liam is to propose to her,” Beth noted. She was beyond happy for her granddaughter. She was also grateful she had married at barely sixteen because at four and sixty years, Beth still felt as well as she had two decades past. She was fully aware of the gifts He had bestowed on her to allow her to see some of her grandchildren marry and possibly for her to meet some great-grandchildren.

“If she thought she could get away with it, I am sure our granddaughter would have dragged Liam out of this room.” Lady Anna smiled.

Becca heard Mama’s and Mother’s words and could not disagree with them. Lizzy was very ready to marry Liam, and he was completely besotted with her. Yes, God was being very good to them. A third child making a love match. She was confident that none of her children, or for that matter the children in the extended family, would ever settle for anything less than the deepest love and respect in their future partners. Now it was a short wait to hear the announcement. She wondered if Lizzy and Liam had reached the family library yet.

“Good morning, John,” Elizabeth smiled as she greeted the huge footman. “I feel safer now that I see you are ready to defend my honour,” she jested.

Biggs, whose face was usually inscrutable unless he needed to intimidate someone, came very close to smiling. He liked all of the Bennets greatly, but somehow Miss Lizzy had wormed her way into his heart as his favourite among them. “That I am, Miss Lizzy,” he responded as he schooled his features again.

Once inside, Darcy set the door as instructed and led Elizabeth to the centre of the room, which, thanks to a glazed skylight in the ceiling, bathed her in a pool of sunlight. He took one of her hands in each of his own and sank down onto one knee. He momentarily forgot what he wanted to say as he took in the beauty of his beloved. The sunlight behind her almost made it look like she had a halo around her head and shoulders. It fit because she was his angel. He forced his mind back to the task at hand, especially as Elizabeth was looking at him questioningly with an arched eyebrow.

His eyes locked onto her incredibly fine emerald-green eyes and felt himself getting lost in the intensity of the love shining back at him. Darcy shook his head to clear it. “Elizabeth Georgiana Bennet, you are everything and so much more than I ever desired in the partner of my future life. Until I met you, the question for me was, ‘will she deserve me?’ when I thought about my possible future wife. On that first night when I almost put my shoe in my mouth, I began to ask a new question: ‘am I good enough for her?’ You are by far the handsomest woman of my acquaintance. You are, however, so much more than your aesthetic facade.

“You, Elizabeth, are kind, compassionate, generous, gracious, and extremely intelligent. I do not even hold the fact that you have beaten me in chess twice as many times as I have you, against you.” Darcy grinned, and Elizabeth beamed a smile back at him. “I could go to the ends of the earth and back again and never find a woman even half as well suited to me as you are. Most importantly, my heart belongs to you. I love you. I love you with all that I am, and more than that, I could not respect you more if I tried. Without you, I would be lost in the barren desert of the broken-hearted because I could never marry another. Elizabeth, will you be that oasis in the desert and grant me your hand in marriage?”

“Fitzwilliam Alexander Darcy, you are the most handsome man I have ever beheld. As pleasant as you are to look at, your looks are not the thing which made me fall in love with you. You are, in fact, the best man I know. What draws me to you is your strength, your generosity, your intelligence, and so much more.

“I knew I was close to being in love with you before you travelled to Kent with the Fitzwilliams. It was when I did not see you daily that I came to understand my life would be empty without you as my husband. When I examined my feelings, I realised I had been in love with you even before you departed London. It seems I was in the middle before I knew I had started.

“Like you said that you would not marry another, the same is true for me. You are the only man for me. All of that is a long winded way of replying to your proposal. Yes. Yes, Liam, I will marry you and only you.”

Darcy was up on his two feet in the blink of an eye. It was then he remembered something. “I have a ring to give you; it is the same one Darcy men have gifted their betrotheds for several generations. My mother charged me to give it to the woman who captured my heart when she made me promise I would seek a love match just as she and my father did.”

“Liam, as long as I have you as my fiancé, I am well contented. I am grateful you have a ring for me, but I would be just as happy without it,” Elizabeth assured him. Then she put her hands on his shoulders, and while she pulled his head towards her, she got up on her tiptoes. She only stopped when their lips met.

Knowing Elizabeth, Darcy was not overly surprised that she was the one to initiate their first kiss. He was not at all put out that she did, in fact, quite the opposite. He found his passion rising to meet her own. He had always suspected Elizabeth was a passionate woman, and he was more than pleased to be proved correct. Rather than allow her to withdraw, Darcy snaked his arms around her back and pulled her towards himself so that there was no daylight between them.

The kisses deepened as their pent-up desire for one another was allowed a measure of freedom. When Elizabeth felt his tongue on her lips, she instinctively opened her mouth, and soon their tongues were locked in a dance of love.

It is said that all good things come to an end, and so too did the romantic interlude between the newly engaged couple when John Biggs knocked rather loudly on the door. They jumped apart so that when he pushed the door open after a minute, there was an acceptable distance between them, although their swollen lips told the tale of what they had been doing prior to the interruption.

“We need to go and speak to my parents,” Elizabeth said as soon as she was sure she would be able to utter a coherent sentence. Her heart was still racing, but her breath was not so ragged any longer.

“Uhm, I may need a minute or two before I am presentable,” Darcy said as he tried to hide the prominent bulge in his pants from his fiancée’s eyes.

‘ So that was what I felt against my belly, ’ Elizabeth realised silently. Besides having grown up on a working farm, Elizabeth had two younger brothers who, when they were much younger, had been known to escape their baths and run around in a state of undress. Hence, she was fully aware of what the bulge was. She did not stare at it because the last thing she wanted was to further embarrass her Liam. “If I go and request that Mama and Papa join us here, and I take my time to give you, say five minutes, would that be enough for you to be seen?”

The fact she knew it was not a time to tease him but rather was aiding him so he would not be embarrassed only made Darcy love Elizabeth more. “Thank you, my love; that would be more than enough time,” he responded gratefully. Darcy knew all he had to do was think of Caroline Bingley, and his problem would shrink rapidly.

Elizabeth rose onto her tiptoes and gifted Liam a kiss on his cheek before she sailed out of the family library, floating on the winds of love.

“It was almost fifteen minutes when I knocked,” Biggs said without looking directly at Miss Lizzy; the tips of his ears were decidedly pink.

“Thank you, John,” Elizabeth sang as she made her way, slowly, towards the family sitting room. She stopped and looked at some of the portraits in the hall to make sure that Liam would have as much time as he needed to bring himself back under regulation. It was almost five minutes from the time she left Liam until she walked into the family sitting room.

There were many questioning looks when Elizabeth returned alone. The younger girls could not understand what the possible reason was, but the parents and older people, on seeing Lizzy’s lips, had a fairly good idea why she was alone.

“Mama, Papa, would you come with me to the family library?” Elizabeth requested without looking directly at her parents. She was sure everyone could tell what she and Liam had been doing. She reminded herself that her courage always rose when she felt intimidated, so she lifted her head and looked directly at Mama and Papa.

Bennet was about to make a comment which would have made Elizabeth blush to her roots, but one look at Becca and it died in his throat. “Your mother and I will accompany you back to that room,” he said instead.

In the hallway, Bennet slowed a little so that Lizzy was a few steps ahead of him and Becca. “You stopped me making sport of Lizzy,” he whispered.

“Indeed, I did,” Becca owned in sotto voce . “There is a time and place for everything; that was neither the time nor the place. Do I need to remind you how many times you and I kissed before we were married?”

“That was different.” Bennet effected a fake pout. Becca raised her nose in the air in an imitation of Miss Bingley.

When she walked into the family library, Elizabeth was pleased to see that Liam was facing the door and had no reason to hide anything. Her parents followed her in. Elizabeth led Liam to a settee while her mother and father sat on one opposite across a low table.

“I assume Liam proposed,” Bennet began. The engaged couple nodded.

“And Elizabeth accepted me,” Darcy stated proudly. “We ask for your consent and blessing.”

Becca and Bennet looked at one another briefly. “I assume you love one another,” Becca asked. There were two emphatic nods. “In that case Thomas and I give our permission and hearty blessings. We can only hope you two will be as happy with each other as we are with one another. Now, have you discussed a possible date for the wedding?”

“We have not,” Elizabeth replied. She turned to her betrothed. “Liam, what would you say if we asked Mary and Richard if they would share a double wedding with us?”

“In principle, I would not object. My only hesitation is that their wedding date is in March, and I was hoping we would be married in December, or after Twelfth Night at the latest,” Darcy replied. “That being said, if you want to marry in the same ceremony with Mary and Richard, I will wait.”

“I too would prefer not to wait so many months,” Elizabeth responded thoughtfully. She turned towards her parents with her eyebrow arched. “Would you truly object to them marrying sooner?”

Like they were wont to do, Becca and Bennet communicated silently. He cocked his head in question, and she gave a quick nod. “If Mary and Richard do not object to advancing the date of the wedding, your mother and I are not averse to it.” Bennet stood and collected a calendar hanging on one wall. He sat and opened it to January of 1812. He pointed to a date and looked at Becca questioningly. She nodded. “What of Wednesday, the fifteenth day of January?”

Elizabeth looked at Liam, who gave an enthusiastic nod. “May I go and invite Mary and Richard to join us?” she requested of her parents. Both agreed. She was up in an instant, and in far less time than it took her to reach the sitting room after the proposal, she returned with an inquisitive Mary and Richard in her wake.

“Mary and Richard, as you may have guessed, Liam proposed, and Lizzy accepted him happily,” Becca told them once they were seated on the settee with Lizzy and Liam.

The two expressed their wishes for happiness to the newly engaged couple, as well as their sincere approbation.

As soon as they had done so, Becca continued. “The reason…” She laid out what had been discussed. “If you two prefer to wait until March, that is what you will do. In that case, Lizzy and Liam will wait, or they will marry on their own.”

Glee was an understatement of the looks on their faces when Mary and Richard looked at one another. Both nodded at the same time. “Thank you, Mama and Papa, Richard and I do not object at all to advancing the wedding by two months. In fact, we are extremely grateful to you for allowing it.”

“Do not thank us,” Bennet grinned, “if you want to thank anyone, it is your sister and future brother. Had they not suggested this, you two would have married in March as planned. Unless either of you thought to request an earlier date?”

“No, Bennet, we did not,” Richard returned happily. “In that case, we owe Lizzy and Liam a great debt of gratitude.”

“After I suggested we would only marry in March, I did not think I could come to you and ask for a change of the date,” Mary explained. “After all, you allowed us to become engaged sooner than you had wanted.”

“Mary dear, like any of our children, you may always speak to us about anything you feel you need to,” Becca told her third daughter. “If you had not promised to wait until March to marry, it would not have changed the reply we would have given you if you had come to us about advancing the date for Richard to declare himself.”

“Now you tell me that,” Mary huffed in an overly dramatic manner, causing smiles all around.

“Come,” Bennet grunted as he stood up and offered Becca a hand to assist her up from the settee. “We need to make some announcements for the family. I dare say the one about Lizzy and Darcy will be superfluous; everyone saw the dreamy look in Lizzy’s eyes when she came to collect us.”

Both mother and her second daughter had held their breath, thinking he was going to jest about the state of Lizzy’s lips when she entered the sitting room. Both exhaled the breaths they were keeping in when Bennet said what he said.

The two announcements were met with happiness and approbation by all. A nod from Devonshire to the butler initiated some footmen entering, each with a tray of flutes of champagne. Once everyone had a glass, Devonshire proposed the toast to the newly engaged couple.

Beth, Lady Anna, and Lady Elaine sat together on a settee as they watched the celebration still continuing around them. “I recommended that Mary speak to Becca and Thomas about advancing the date of the wedding, but my granddaughter said she could not as she had volunteered to wait until then,” Beth related to her best friends. “It seems she and Richard are indebted to Lizzy for gaining two months of married life.”

“I know Richard will not be sorry,” Lady Elaine stated. “Did you know he was going to seek a profession before he became the master of Rosings Park? He hated the thought of being idle. Thankfully, since his resignation became final, he has not had time to sit and brood, what with spending time with Mary and making plans for his estate.”

“Is there any word on Catherine’s fate yet?” Lady Anna enquired.

“Reggie heard earlier today,” Lady Elaine revealed. “She is to be tried for murder. If she had shown a shred of remorse for what she did, Reggie and William would have had her transported.” She shook her head. “As sad as it is to say, I do not think Catherine knows what remorse is; she certainly has no empathy for any other. At least with William’s influence and a word in the Regent’s ear, knowledge of the trial will be kept away from society at large. If, or when, the ultimate punishment is carried out, her name will not be reported in the broadsheets.”

“We have much happier things to hold our attention,” Beth pointed out. She had never had the displeasure of meeting Catherine de Bourgh, and for that she was not sorry.

The three matrons noticed Liam slipping out of the room. Lizzy passed their position shortly thereafter. “Lizzy dear, where is Liam going?” Lady Anna asked.

“He is using Grandpapa’s study to write an announcement for the papers,” Elizabeth related. “He said that he wants everyone to know of our engagement as soon as may be. That way, in his words, no one will think I am available to them.” She smiled dreamily when she spoke of her fiancé. Fiancé, how well that sounded. “By the by, Mary suggested that her ball double as an engagement ball for us as well. I could not agree to that. It is Mary’s night.”

“Lizzy has the right of it,” Lady Elaine agreed. She had a glint in her eye as an idea struck her. “We will hold an engagement ball at Matlock House a fortnight after Mary’s coming out. It is right that I give one as Richard’s mother, and as Liam is a surrogate son, it will be perfect.”

“And Lizzy dear, Janey and Andrew will have returned from their wedding trip, so they will be able to attend the engagement ball,” Beth enthused.

“As long as it does not detract from Mary’s coming out, and Mama agrees, I have no objection. And yes, Grandmama, it will be very good to have Janey in London again,” Elizabeth agreed. She was sure that Mama would not disagree, so it was almost certain there would be a ball at Matlock House. Now if only she and Liam would be allowed to dance more than three sets…

Darcy wrote out the notice, and once Bennet agreed to the wording, it was sent to the respectable newspapers to be published as soon as possible. On their return to the family sitting room, the two were informed of the engagement ball.

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

On Friday morning, the London papers carried the announcement of the engagement of the master of Pemberley to Miss Elizabeth Bennet, granddaughter of the Duke of Devonshire. Any of those who gnashed their teeth in private were very careful not to speak against anyone connected to such powerful families. The memory of Miss Bingley’s ruin and expulsion from society was still fresh in their minds.

Four days later, thanks to the sabbath in-between, the London papers bearing the announcement of the engagement of Fitzwilliam Darcy to Miss Elizabeth Bennet arrived in Scarborough.

Caroline Bingley had a tantrum for the ages. The difference was that her brother was not present to witness it.

Bingley had left England’s shores as soon as he had sold the last of his holdings. Knowing that his sister would be her own worst enemy if she had access to the principal of her remaining dowry, he made it ironclad that she was only to receive the interest and not a penny more.

Miss Bingley had written letters to her sister and brother-in-law begging them to take her in, but no replies had arrived. She still did not understand why things had gone so badly for her and blamed the damned Bennets, especially Miss Eliza.