“Worsley,” Darcy acknowledged the man in a tone that suggested he was doing him a great favor. For once, I appreciated Darcy’s distant dignity. “Allow me to make known my wife, Mrs. Darcy, and my sister in marriage, Mrs. Wickham.”
“We have had the pleasure of meeting,” Worsley said, darting a fleeting look in my general direction. Michael joined us, and I proudly introduced him to Lizzy and Darcy.
“How do you do?” Darcy said. “It gives me great joy to meet the man who is betrothed to my wife’s beloved sister.”
The air left my lungs. For Darcy to publicly express his approval of the union carried great power in a society that revered men of wealth and standing. Michael’s eyes lit with surprise, and then happiness.
“I am the most fortunate of men,” Michael said. He looked at me askance. Darcy’s approval was not sufficient; he needed to hear my acceptance of his proposal directly from me.
Our gazes locked. “And I am the most fortunate of women.”
Michael smiled widely at this acknowledgment, and I grinned back, exhilarated that we could be together after all.
Darcy, and Lizzy, had made it so.
Darcy turned to Worsley. “I trust you have heard the excellent news?”
Worsley flushed. “I offer my deepest congratulations to you both.” He dared not defy someone of Darcy’s stature. His circumstances in life were dwarfed by Darcy’s. By escorting me to church, Darcy had publicly acknowledged my role as a treasured member of his family. In doing so, he shielded me with the full force of his influence. And made my marriage to Michael possible.
Lizzy beamed. “They truly make a lovely couple. Wouldn’t you agree, Squire?”
“Yes,” Worsley said tightly. “I certainly do.”
Michael offered his arm, and I excitedly took it. The parishioners, who’d closely followed the conversation, shocked me with murmurs of congratulations as Michael led me up the aisle toward the exit.
“I look forward with great anticipation,” Michael said as he tucked my hand deeper into his elbow, “to your walking the opposite way down the aisle, to the altar.”
Anticipation rippled through me. “I cannot wait to meet you there.”
“Three weeks,” he said, “just long enough to read the banns, and then I will make you mine.”
“And you,” I said, “will be mine. Forever and always.”
I glanced back over my shoulder and caught Darcy’s eye. He dipped his chin, and, despite his dour expression, I registered the smile in his eyes.
At long last, after many years of wondering why Lizzy tolerated the man, I finally glimpsed what my sister saw in Mr. Darcy.
Lace and LarcenyNIKKI PAYNE
“I cannot boast of knowing more than half-a-dozen, in the whole range of my acquaintance, that are really accomplished.”
“Nor I, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley.
“Then,” observed Elizabeth, “you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman.”
“Yes, I do comprehend a great deal of it.”
“Oh! certainly,” cried his faithful assistant, “no one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”
“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”
“I am no longer surprised at your knowingonlysix accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowingany.”
Jane Austen,Pride and Prejudice
Caroline Bingley, Elizabeth Bennet’s famously snobbish foil inPride and Prejudice, deserves a second look. If I may play anthropologist for a moment, Caroline constructed her entire sense of meaning by mastering the narrow avenues of power available to women within the rigid class structures of Regency England. As a member of the gentry without title or fortune, her currency was performance—of gentility, of refinement, of perfect social positioning. So how jarring it must have been to watch Elizabeth Bennet—who neither genuflected nor performed ideal womanhood—win the very proximity to male wealth Caroline had been trained to secure.
That’s why I had such fun placing my Caroline in a Western road-trip narrative. The wide-open frontier dislocates her from the polite rituals and quiet hierarchies of drawing room society. In the dust and uncertainty of the American West, she’s forced to trade performance for survival, wit for warmth, and control for connection. Can she do it?
