Being reminded that Ben needed her went a long way to bringing Elizabeth out of the melancholy into which she had fallen. Six months later, she was with child once again which led to Priscilla Frances Darcy being born at the end of March 1815. Prisci, as she was called to differentiate her from her Grandmama Cilla, was born with a thick head of raven coloured hair, the birthmark, and dark blue eyes. Much to her father’s delight, by the time Prisci reached five months of age, her eyes had turned emerald-green like her mama, Grandmama Cilla, and Great-aunt Elaine.
For the next four years, Elizabeth had not become with child again, and just when she thought her childbearing days were over, a second son, Robert Alexander, was born in May 1820. Like his siblings, he too had the birthmark.
In October 1821, Elizabeth had begun to increase again, which explained the state she was in as she organised the wedding for Giana and James.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
“Ellie, you are not overexerting yourself, are you?” Darcy demanded as he walked into the ballroom where the wedding breakfast would be held. “Mrs Reynolds will make sure that everything will be just as it should be, so there is no need for you and Mother Cilla to be worrying about this now.”
Elizabeth did not miss the sad look in William’s eyes when he mentioned the housekeeper who had begun to work at Pemberley when he was four. She could have retired a few years earlier, but the venerable woman had been determined to remain in her post until Miss Giana married.
As the aforementioned Miss Darcy had waited for theman she loved to propose to her, she would be five and twenty when she married James, who would turn six and twenty in June upcoming.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
James Bennet graduated from Cambridge at the end of the 1815-1816 school year at the age of twenty. Thanks to the final defeat of the Corsican tyrant he and a group of his friends had embarked on a grand tour which had lasted the better part of two years.
When he returned in July 1818, he threw himself into learning how to manage Longbourn which he prayed would not be his for many years.
What James was not aware of was that Lizzy’s sister-in-law had fallen in love with him by the time she had turned eighteen. He had always enjoyed spending time with Giana but had been obtuse to the fact that she saw him as more than Lizzy’s brother.
In May 1821, at Robby’s first birthday party which was celebrated at Longbourn. Fanny Bennet, who was tired of waiting for her son to wake up and see what was before him, took him by the ear to the privacy of her and Thomas’s sitting room. There, she asked James if he was blind to the fact that Giana loved him and had been in love with him for some years already.
As James had been so focused on learning to manage Longbourn, he had missed that altogether. He had been in love with Giana for a few years but had never detected anything beyond a family friendship from her.
Fanny had refrained from cuffing her eldest son on the side of his head. She had reminded him that a proper lady, and Giana was very much so, could not do anything until the man spoke. From that point on James paid much more attention to his interactions with Giana, and by the end of the summer he had requested a formal courtship. They had become engagedat the end of January 1822, which would culminate with their wedding in two days.
When James had applied to Richard and William for the courtship, both men had asked him what had taken him so long. James had blushed with embarrassment. Nevertheless, his application had been granted.
For the wedding ceremony, Henry would stand up for his older brother while Mary was Giana’s matron of honour; thus, returning the favour Giana had done by being her maid of honour at Mary’s wedding.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
“I love how close all of our sisters have been to one another over the years,” Darcy said as he walked with his wife on his arm towards a drawing room where many of the family were assembled.
“You will hear no argument from me…at least on this,” Elizabeth arched her eyebrow saucily.
In what was now over ten years of marriage, the love, respect, and passion she and William shared still burned white hot, in fact, rather than wane over the years, it had increased.
“Minx,” Darcy replied with the oft playfully used response.
“Who would have thought our Mary would be a marchioness and future duchess? Not that the title is important, what is important is that she and Francis are deeply, irrevocably in love.”
“Amen to that,” Cilla said as she followed her daughter and son-in-law to the drawing room.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Mary Bennet had come out during the season of 1817, when she turned eighteen. She had caught the eye of Lord Francis Russell, the Marquess of Tavistock, who was nine years her senior.
Tavistock had been disinterested in any woman he had met as a potential wife until he was taken with Miss Mary Bennet. His parents, the Duke and Duchess of Bedford cared not that the lady who had caught his eye was untitled, as long as she was gently born. It did not hurt that the Russells were close to many of the Bennets’ connections.
At first, Mary had not believed that a future duke was seriously interested in her, that was until the Marquess began to call on her. By June 1817, she had accepted Francis in an official courtship. Before the end of August, they were engaged and married from Longbourn in late October of the same year.
About a quarter of the land at Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire—the principal estate of the dukes of Bedford—was designated for the Marquess’s use, and there was a rather fine manor house where the newly married Russells lived when in the country.
In August 1818, Mary delivered a son and heir who they named William John. A daughter, Anna-Rose, was born in May 1821.
Even after she was married and living in Bedfordshire for part of the year, the friendship between Mary and Giana never cooled. It was Mary who had suggested her mother speak to her obtuse son regarding his blindness to Giana’s feelings. Giana would be forever grateful for Mary’s intervention.
