Summer at
Pemberley
a Jane Austen fan fiction
by Lucy
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Epilogue
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At this very spot he had stood some two years back awaiting
word that his carriage was ready and he could depart this place which he had then
felt would forever be in his memory as the place of his private agony. Such
conflicting emotions had then battled for supremacy in his troubled mind and
heart: anger, despair, disdain, pure broken-heartedness. For some time
thereafter it was anger that was supreme, but at that moment as he had stood at
the window looking across the park in the direction of the parsonage house,
perhaps it had been despair that was absolute as he wondered if she had yet
read his letter. That she would he had never doubted, but another concern
altogether was whether she would soon, if nothing else, acquit him of cruelty.
He could not have imagined during those tortuous anger imbued days which
followed that she would do so much more than acquit himÑthat she would forgive him,
she would respect him, she would love him as fully and ardently as he loved
her.
Darcy heard the click of the door's latch behind him, the
gentle clasp of its closing and he swung around with joyful expectation, his
wife's name upon his lips. The anticipation and adoration that shone from his
eyes was unmistakable.
"Hoping for your lovely wife instead, Darcy?"
Colonel Fitzwilliam inquired good-humouredly.
"Yes," replied he forthrightly.
"Well you shall have to do with me for the moment. Come
sit and have some conversation with me while you wait."
Darcy obliged his cousin and sat, but felt less than
conversational. It did not matter, for the Colonel was quite talkative, in one
of those rambling, self-indulgent manners that he acquired from time to time.
"I am so grateful you and our aunt have mended your
dispute, Darcy. Rosings was so unremittingly awful last Easter. You cannot
possibly imagine."
"So you have said before."
"Our aunt was irritable and sulking and our cousin as
hopelessly insipid as ever. How such a creature ever came to be I cannot
conceive. We Fitzwilliams are many things great and terrible, but insipid never
was among them. Although it must seriously displease our aunt, we shall just
have to fault Sir Lewis de Bourgh's line. Mrs. Collins was the only hope of
sensible conversation and surely anyone who married that fool of a man cannot
really be altogether that sensible. Certainly there was no amusement to be
had."
"I am sorry for your tedium, Fitzwilliam, but you can
hardly think that concern entered my mind at all," Darcy replied dryly.
The Colonel snorted inelegantly. "You of course care
nothing for all I suffer on your behalf."
Darcy merely smiled good-naturedly at his cousin's
breeziness, waiting for him to continue.
"Marriage appears to be a bit of a contagion in our
set of late. I ran into your friend Sir Patrick at White's. I was quite
surprised to hear he was to marry Bingley's sister. He never struck me as the
type to renounce bachelorhood."
"Apparently he is. They are to marry in the summer. He
has asked me to stand with him, which my wife finds very amusing."
"What do I find very amusing?" asked Elizabeth,
just entering the room at the allusion.
"That I am to stand with Sir Patrick at his
wedding," Darcy replied with a warm smile as he rose to greet his wife
with an affectionate kiss to her hand.
"Well, it is undeniably amusing," she replied as
she tilted her head to the side, smiling archly.
"So it would seem," Darcy laughed softly.
At the sight of Elizabeth the Colonel was once again as
pleasantly impressed as when he had first joined them in London for the trip
into Kent. The ladies in his family all seemed to get weak and pallid with
motherhood, but his cousin's wife was more vigorous and lovelier than ever. As
the Colonel watched their innocuous, familiar exchange he was recalled to his
mother's words when they had become engaged and she had made Elizabeth's
acquaintance. "Your father and brother may not approve of the match, to say
nothing of your aunt, and society may require some time to assimilate the
rather intense surprise that Darcy should take as his wife an unknown quantity
of a girl, but you shall see, her lack of rank and fortune notwithstanding,
that girl shall be the making of Darcy. He shall not repine his choice."
And by goodness if she had not been correct and among their circle of family
and acquaintances they were universally considered the very picture of conjugal
felicity.
The Darcys soon excused themselves from the Colonel's
company as they wished to call on Elizabeth's old friend Mrs. Collins. The
Colonel had intended to accompany them, but Darcy had maintained that his
cousin's call could certainly wait, for he sentimentally desired to be alone
with his wife on this first walk across the park.
"How is my son?" Darcy inquired as soon as they
were alone and leisurely crossing the lawn.
"Your son is sleeping soundly."
"And his nurse, she has everything she requires?"
"My dear sir, what a question to ask! Lady Catherine
would be mortified to apprehend that you have such little confidence in her. We
are at Rosings after all, and she is most particular."
Darcy chuckled at his wife's impertinence. Almost
breathlessly, he replied: "Yes, we are at Rosings."
They soon arrived at the groves that separated Rosings Park
from the lane which led to the parsonage house. As they entered into the shade
Darcy lifted his hand and covered Elizabeth's as it rested in the crook of his
arm. When he spoke, his tone was easy and cheerful.
"Do you not find it quite unfathomable, my love? We
are so much of one mind now I cannot comprehend how we so completely
misapprehended each other when we were first acquainted, and most particularly
here at Rosings. Why when I was sure to have quite clearly made an assignation
to meet in these very groves, you were equally sure you had quite clearly
warned me off. We are both, of course, well aware that was only one of our more
harmless misconstructions."
"I suppose it is quite remarkable that we each should
have so dramatically misread the other's intentions, but I suspect all that
truly matters is that now we are, as you said, of one mind, and in one
another's complete confidence."
"Yes, just so," he replied with a warm smile as
he pressed her hand affectionately.
"How do you feel now we have returned to Rosings,
Elizabeth?" he continued. "And more particularly, now we are to
return to that parlor which shall forever be the place of my infamy."
Elizabeth could not but laugh at such a description.
"We are each so different from what we were on that day, my life is
certainly so very much altered that I do not imagine it will seem at all
familiar. And you?"
"I am in a state of grateful wonder, to tell the
truth."
"Grateful wonder? Pray, explain."
"When I last walked these grounds I was in a state of
such misery. How I had tortured myself with beliefs I now know to be so
inconsequential to an honorable and happy life. And how disgracefully did I proceed
to insult you with my misguided assertions. Yet now we are returned, together,
with our first-born. You are my wife and I believe it is fair to boast that we
have an uncommon and exemplary marriage. Considering how unforgivably
ungentlemanly I was to you that day, I suppose I shall always feel a sort of
grateful wonder that I was somehow able to earn your forgiveness and your
love."
Elizabeth voiced no reply to such a heartfelt statement,
she only looked at her husband and in her soft and expressive eyes he saw
clearly the sweet indulgence and love that filled her heart.
As they entered the parlor that had been the scene of such
pain and anger, there was no sense of quiet mortification, no reciprocal shame,
no unresolved anxiety. Darcy and Elizabeth merely exchanged a knowing,
significant smile which silently communicated the shared knowledge that it was,
strangely enough, precisely the dreadful clash they had held in this room which
had set the foundation for the forthrightness and honesty they both cherished
in their union.
It was but a brief moment of mutual awareness before they
turned their attentions to the Collinses. Elizabeth kneeled to kiss the checks
of the little girl presented for their attentions. When she looked up from the
girl toward her husband she thought she had never seen him so handsome. Darcy's
entire bearing impressed her with a sense of such profound happiness and firm
peace as she had hitherto not observed. So much was it the case not even Mr.
Collins' foolish, sycophantic bantering could wipe away the delicate smile that
sat upon his lips.
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