“Yes, my love, yes there is nought wrong with being thankful. Until I leave the mortal world, I will be thankful each and every day for you being my wife, my love, my heart. For giving me a second chance, accepting me, and loving me. For being the mother of our wonderful children, for being the very best sister to our Georgie. Lastly for seeing beyond the hypocrite to the man that lay dormant within, the true man that I became. I love you with my heart, body, and soul, with all of my being, you are my dearest, loveliest Elizabeth.”
“As I do you, William, as I do you and always will not even death will end the love that we share,” Lizzy promised as she looked up into his eyes, smiling when she found they were firmly fixed on her alone.
Epilogue
The Bingleys:
On arriving in the Americas, both Mr Bingley and Miss Bingley, the former Mrs Hurst, had more than enough time to come to the realisation that they caused all of their own problems. Both had received countless warnings and they had elected to choose the path of ruination in catering to their obviously insane sister’s demands and wishes.
They fully acknowledged that she was delusional and rather than get her much needed help, they had enabled, placated her, and fed her delusions. That ended on the voyage across the Atlantic. It was resolved with firm and unshakable decisions that they would have Caroline committed to a facility for the insane as soon as they found a humane one. They decided to settle in Boston and the second sound decision that Bingley made was to contact Lord Longbourn’s and Sir Edward’s man of business once they reached their destination.
Within days of the Dennington Lines ship docking in New York, a completely insane Caroline Bingley was transferred to the Eastern State Hospitalnear Williamsburg in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Luckily for the delusional woman, her brother paid for her to receive the best and most humane care possible. She lived at the hospital for almost ten years before she was lost to a high fever. Her brother and sister had stopped visiting her after the first year when she was so lost in her delusions that she did not recognise them at all.
With the help of Gardiner and Associate’s man, Bingley purchased a nice but modest home in Beacon Hill, a very affluent area of Boston. His funds were invested as he had been advised to do, and rather than lose his money to hucksters, a number of whom found out at their peril that he was not the easy mark they thought he was, his investments grew at a very good rate. With his capital growing he increased Louisa’s dowry to thirty thousand pounds from the five that had been returned to her.
Bingley used his family’s knowledge of business to start a carriage works that flourished. Five years after arriving in Boston, he married the daughter of a very wealthy and well-known attorney. Louisa married a very well to do businessman. Without the distinctions of rank and class that they lived with in the Kingdom, no one cared where their money came from, just that they had it.
They were accepted in Boston society after which they never looked back. They both lived long lives with their families and eventually their many children and grandchildren. The irresolute and inconsistent man that had been exiled from England never reared his ugly head again.
Our Surviving Villain:
Lady Catherine de Bourghslipped further and further into her criminal mania. Toward the end, she thought herself the Queen of England. A few years after her commitment she contracted pneumonia all the while claiming that people of her ‘exalted’ rank ‘never got sick like the commoners.’ Not too long after contracting the disease Lady Catherine shuffled off the mortal coil.
The family was notified, and even if her daughter had wanted it, given the distance from Cumbria to Kent, transportation of a body in midsummer was out of the question. The once ‘great lady’ was interred without any pomp or ceremony, and no family gathered to say farewell to her. Considering her environs, she was buried with others that had passed away while consigned to or worked at the Falconwoodasylum. She would have been seriously displeased to learn she was buried between two commoners. No one in the family mourned her and her name was never mentioned again.
The Elliots:
As much as the former Miss Charlotte Lucas had decried love as a necessary ingredient to a good marriage, she was the first to admit that she had made a wonderful love match. She loved her Patrick with all of her being and did until his passing many years in the future.
After reciting her vows to Patrick, she never thought about her first ‘mistake’ and was thankful ‘that name’ was never mentioned. She delighted in marital relations with her Patrick and often surprised and delighted her husband with her imaginative ways to prove he was loved in ways many never got to appreciate. In her first year of marriage she gifted her husband and Gracie with a baby girl, much to the then six-year-old’s delight. She went on to present her husband with two sons over the next five years.
Elliot decided to retire to his estate, Riverdale, when Grace was seventeen, her sister, Sarah was eleven, her brother, Everett was nine, and the youngest, Paul was seven. Riverdale had once been a small estate producing less than three thousand a year. At the time of his retirement, thanks to the prudence and savings of the vast majority of his earnings along with his wife’s fortune all invested with Gardiner and Associates, Patrick Elliot had purchased a neighbouring estate and some extra land so that his estate was by then bringing in a clear profit of eight thousand per annum. They were able to settle five and thirty thousand pounds on each of their two daughters and fifty thousand on their second son.
Grace, after her coming out season, was introduced to, and eventually agreed to a courtship with the younger by one-year David Fitzwilliam, who would one day be Viscount Hilldale and eventually, far in the future, Lord Matlock after his father held the title.
Sarah, Charlotte and Patrick’s second daughter, ended up marrying a very wealthy barrister in Liverpool. Lady Sarah Lucas was delighted that one of her Elliot grandchildren would be a Viscountess. Their oldest boy Everett, named for his late grandfather, would eventually inherit the very prosperous estate of Riverdale and married the second daughter of an earl. The youngest Paul, who, although with the fortune that his father settled on him did not need a profession, after Cambridge decided to read the law and became one of the most sought-after barristers in the Kingdom. He practiced in Liverpool and was instrumental in introducing Sarah to her future husband. He married the daughter of the head of his firm.
The Ashbys and Granvilles:
LordHarold Smythe and his beloved Lady Sarah, the Earl and Countess of Granville, had a long and happy marriage. For the first four years of marriage there were no children and Lady Granville had despaired that she was barren. The heir presumptive was very happy at the thought that he may still inherit. The mercenary man’s hopes were dashed when eventually Lady Sarah’s prayers were answered.
They were blessed with three children. The firstborn was a girl, Lady Margret. She was followed by the heir Lord Clayton, Viscount Longriver, and finally a daughter, Lady Henrietta. They spent most of the year at Granville Park, their main estate in Staffordshire, and some of the season in Town at Granville House until they were forced to start spending the whole season in London when Lady Margret came out. During her second season she met and fell in love with the Lord George Bennet-Darcy, Viscount Meryton and heir to all of the Longbourn estates and fortune. Lord Clay, as he was known by family and friends, married Sir Richard and Lady Jane’s second daughter, Elizabeth Fitzwilliam and the youngest, Lady Henrietta, fell in love with and married the third son of the Earl and Countess of Pemberley, the Honourable Alexander Darcy, who inherited the Earl’s second estate that had an income of just under ten thousand clear per annum.
Anne Ashby, despite Sir Frederick’s warnings against becoming with child again after her first son Lewis was born, three years later bore a second son named after his grandfather, Rudolph Ashby, the Earl of Ashbury. Although somewhat weakened after her second son, Anne, who was close to all of her extended family, insisted on becomingenceinteagain as she wanted a daughter.
Her wish was granted four years after Rudy, but it cost her the ability to bear any more children after her daughter named Elizabeth Anne Ashby was born. Sir Frederick opined that it was a good thing that she could not have another babe as he did not believe that she would survive increasing again.
Their first-born son, Lewis, would eventually inherit Sherwood Park. His brother Rudolph, called Rudy by his friends and family, inherited Rosings Park when he attained the age of five and twenty. He had lived at Rosings Park from the time he completed his studies at Cambridge, learning all facets of managing his estate from the extremely proficient steward that his Uncle William had recommended all those years ago. He also got help from his parents, uncles, and aunts each year when the extended family came to Rosings Park for Easter. In what could only be viewed as irony, he married his cousin Lady Priscilla Darcy, the seventh of eight Darcy children and the fourth and last daughter granted to the Darcys. Lady Catherine, had she been alive, would have been seriously displeased that the shades of Rosings Park would be thus polluted by her grandson marrying the daughter of that ‘artful woman’ who had ‘tricked’ her nephew into marriage.
They lived a very long and happy life together, and although Ian Ashby lost his Beloved Anne after five and thirty years of blissful marriage, he was a very contented man and had no thoughts of remarrying and took excessive joy in spending time with his family.
The Fitzwilliams:
As all indicators pointed to in her coming out season, Lady Tiffany Fitzwilliam and Lord Wesley De Melville, Viscount Westmore, fell irrevocably in love. He chafed at the restriction of not declaring himself until the end of her first season, but being a gentleman of the utmost honour, he stayed true to his pledge to Lord Matlock. The day after the season ended, he proposed and was accepted before he could fully make his request and promises. They had a very happy marriage with five children, three sons and two daughters, and when that sad day came that Lord Jersey went to his eternal reward, they made a very fine Lord and Lady Jersey. Luckily the dowager Countess Jersey, Lady Sarah De Melville, survived her husband by more than twenty years and lived to see great grandchildren.
In early 1820 Lord Reginald Fitzwilliam passed the running of Snowhaven to Andrew Fitzwilliam, Lord Hilldale. He wanted his heir to experience running multiple estates before it became a necessity with his passing. Lord Matlock still participated in the House of Lords, but rather than be tied to their estates, when the Earl was not needed in Town, he and Lady Elaine would sojourn at one of the estates of their children or nieces and nephews to spend time with the rapidly growing number of grandchildren, grandnieces, and grandnephews. As much as Reginald Fitzwilliam, the Earl of Matlock, loved a good political debate, he loved spending time with his beloved wife even more.
The Earl survived a good number of years before he passed on to be with God in heaven. His Countess followed him some years later, after seeing a number of great grandchildren born.
