“Exactly!”
“And you… ah… declined?” Fitzwilliam asked timidly.
“Of course I declined!” Jane replied emphatically, as if there was no other possible answer.
At the look of confusion, she elaborated. “I told him I already have two silly, ignorant, and nasty sisters, and his charms were not sufficient to endure the pain of doubling the quantity.”
Fitzwilliam laughed heartily, and once he got going, I had to join in, which naturally triggered the same thing in our little gang, even including Jane eventually.
And with that laugh, I began to think I could fall in love with Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy. It would not be a punishment. It might even be easy!
I suppose our next challenge came a fortnight later.
With a week to go before Christmas, we were just about fed up with the demands. My mother wanted us to marry in Meryton; she wanted to supervise purchase of my trousseau; she wanted to organise the wedding breakfast: she wanted to drag me about the country to boast about my supposed good fortune—and so forth. Every other day Fitzwilliam and I alternated on which one suggested we just elope to Scotland and be done with it, and each time, the other argued rationally that we would pay the price when we entered society.
Our first big argument came in response to certain actions of our families. He tried his best to endure my family’s silliness, but there was always a level of criticism in his responses. Perhaps I was just looking to find fault, but a fortnight after the ball, after the Bingleys had abandoned ship back to London, I saw entirely too much of my father in my intended. It did not help that I agreed with him, and in fact, it probably hurt. We would discuss the foibles of my family versus his, but he always chastised my mother for things that he might allow in his titled relations.
He was obliged to go to town to consult directly with his attorney regarding the marriage articles, and he would return with his sister, who had been at Pemberley when we became engaged. He could have had both delivered to Meryton without leaving if we were happy with each other’s company, but we seemed to fall in and out of love on a weekly basis, and we were in an out phase, so off to town he went.
He had been gone two days, which seemed to be just enough to miss him (well, more than a little if I was honest—absence makes the heart grow fonder and so forth). He was due back that afternoon when Longbourn was invaded by Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her merry band of villains.
The august lady was accompanied by her sickly and annoying daughter (who seemed to think herself cradle-betrothed tomy intended), her brother (the earl of something or other), his wife (the Louisa Hurst of their gang), the viscount (Mr Hurst), some Darcy judge or other (let us just call him Mr Bingley), and who knows who else.
They sailed in acting like they owned the place, criticising my mother’s décor, the arrangement of the house, the unconscionable effrontery of having five daughters out at once (learnt from Mr Collins, I presume). Their blathering made my neighbours at the Netherfield ball seem decorous by comparison. I might ordinarily have been distressed by their rudeness, but I actually enjoyed the spectacle. At the very least, the man I would be chained to for the rest of my life would neverbe able to criticise my relatives again as long as he lived!
I cannot even remember a tenth part of what was said. There was a great deal about ‘circles’ and ‘spheres’ (perhaps they were aficionados of geometry). They somehow took objection to my relatives, which I might have gone along with, except they criticised thewrong ones!Myrelatives in tradewere the best of the lot, and I was in no mood to put up with their foolishness. Lady Catherine acted like royalty, even though she was an ordinary commoner just like me and only had ‘lady’ as a courtesy title.
The family’s arguments were long, loud, vulgar, and repetitious. They could mostly be summed up with Lady Catherine’s coup de grace: “Heaven and earth!—Of what are you thinking? Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?"
It was an interesting question. It was obvious I brought no consequence to the union, but since their basic argument was that they had consequence to the skies anyway, I struggled to follow the logic that says they needmoreof what they already had in abundance.
My salvation came in the form of Roberto, a Spanish carpenter who appeared right behind my Aunt Philips, who visited to gossip with my mother. Roberto was there to replace a rotten board in my father’s library, and I just thanked the heavens for such an elegant solution.
I suggested very politely to Lady Catherine and her clique that we would be more comfortable in the Green Parlour, for though its windows faced full west, in the early afternoon in the middle of December it was perfect. Once they were on the way into the room, I dragged my father from his library with the excuse he needed to get out of Roberto’s way. I chivvied my mother, father, and aunt into the parlour. While I was at it, I ensured Kitty and Lydia were inside, whilst Jane and Mary were out.
It all came together perfectly when Mrs Hill appeared with a tea tray on a trolley. I dropped two bottles of brandy on the trolley, shoved it in the room, slammed the door, and instructed Roberto to nail it shut (noisily). Using more pantomime, I indicated two hours was sufficient, instructed Mrs Hill to leave the board in place, and took Jane and Mary for a walk to Meryton.
We met my intended coming up the drive before half an hour passed, so I set up a little test. I did not mention what state he would find his relatives in, and fortunately all their carriages had been pulled around the back. His first indication of a problem was a long-winded screech from one of our relatives from the room, coupled with loud banging on the door—I still have no idea which relative it was, or even whether they were mine or his.
Then I waited for his chastisement, or his criticism of how I handled the ordeal, or his subtle hints that my relatives were worse than his, or his consternation that this was no proper way to handle conflict, or—
As it turned out, I underestimated him! His idea of criticism was grabbing me about the waist, kissing me within an inch of my life, and spinning me around until he knocked poor Mary over. It was not our first kiss, but they had been few and far between, and it was the first one I suspected might light the house afire.
Good Lord, it was going to be a long fortnight until the wedding!
Once Roberto let our hostages free, things proceeded about as you might expect.
The passage of a fortnight and the few kisses I had shared with my intended reduced my ire to the point where we came to a tentative agreement regarding the wedding. We set a non-negotiable date and time, and then told the room they could do anything they wanted as long as both sets of relatives agreed, and we did not have to be involved beyond appearing appropriately dressed at the correct time and place.
My relatives and his eventually bowed to theinevitable(or more likelyimplacable), reached some accommodation, and my father even became friends with the earl and the judge, much to my surprise.
We eventually settled on a ceremony in London, and it was not too awful a spectacle. It served the purpose of introducing me to high society. Oddly enough, most of the criticism society would have aimed at me ended up pointed at our various relatives, mostly because they were such easy targets. That, coupled with my husband’s legendary reticence, paradoxicallyhelpedme enter society, because I was thegood Darcy.
By the time I stood up in church with Fitzwilliam, I was happy and sickeningly in love, much to my chagrin. I had gone to London assuming we would leave most of my Meryton neighbours behind, but most of the families showed up anyway,thus reminding me that Meryton is only twenty miles from London. By that time, the Netherfield Ball was as ancient as the previous war, and we left the church in a state of supreme happiness.
Our wedding trip to the lakes and Scotland was all anyone could ask for, and we returned to Pemberley very much in love two months later.
I suppose we were like every other couple in the world, late to the realization that a wedding is not theendof a story but thebeginning. It took us much of the first year to learn to let our love smooth over life’s bumps. Being with child early on did not help matters, but by the time we welcomed Jane Charlotte to the world, we had been through our rough patches and were even more absurd in our affection.
