They received the Gardiners at Pemberley, and Mr. Darcy said they must come by any time, that Mr. Gardiner could fish in the stream, that the children might enjoy gamboling in the fields.
She and Mrs. Gardiner walked together and she found herself spilling all of the story to her aunt, every spare moment of all that had befallen her.
And her aunt was horrified, gasping out protests again and again, saying, “Appalling!” and “You poor child” over and over.
It warmed Elizabeth. Would that she could have had her aunt here as she was expecting. It would have been good to have someone sympathetic.
But she found herself saying to her aunt, “No, no, it has turned out right in the end, I think. I am likely the luckiest woman in England.”
“Well, you have been through ever so much, Lizzy,” said her aunt.
“Yes, but Mr. Darcy is quite devoted.”
“Yes, I can see that,” said her aunt.
“And I am mistress of all this.” She gestured to the grounds of Pemberley.
“It is quite a lot to be mistress of,” agreed her aunt, smiling.
“And I am safe now, you know? I have so much to be thankful for.”
“Yes,” said her aunt. “Yes, you are lucky, Lizzy. I am lucky, too, of course. Both to have you as my niece and to have such a husband as I have, such children, such a life.”
Elizabeth smiled at her. Yes, lucky, indeed.
She must own itwastrue.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THEY DID NOTventure back to London until the following springtime, and Georgiana came out in society and immediately caught the eye of a young viscount who courted her fervently until Georgiana agreed to marry him and all was well.
If there were whispers about what had befallen Elizabeth and her husband, Elizabeth was unaware. Everyone was far too polite to speak them to her face, and she professed that she was distracted, for she was increasing again, and her husband seemed to find her belly just as arousing this time as he had before. She was showing much earlier, which she knew was typical for second babes and which she was not entirely pleased about, but which her husband seemed to find endlessly pleasing.
They were back at Pemberley for the summer again, when she was too round to be seen in public. She even had to miss Georgiana’s wedding, which saddened her.
Soon enough, her labors were upon her again, and she went much faster this time, to her relief, only laboring for about five hours before she gave birth to another little girl, who they named Hannah.
The next babe, born two years later, was also a girl, and Mr. Darcy began to joke that he would not be able to break the entail after all, and that Elizabeth was going to find herself unable touse the dower house in the event of his death, and that they must make haste and make even more babes.
But her fourth and final child was a boy. They named him Bennet, in honor of Elizabeth’s family, and he was as sweet tempered a babe as she had ever borne, she had to say. He seemed to know that they had been waiting for him.
Sometime that year, Caroline came back from the pig farm, because both of her aunts had died and it had to be sold. She was a decided old maid at that point, no prospects of marriage, and was shuffled back and forth between her brother’s and sister’s household.
But Elizabeth heard that Caroline had mellowed, had grown humble, and spent much of her time doing embroidery of bible verses and humming hymns to herself.
Everyone, apparently, was going to have their redemption.
Wickham had a country congregation in Cheshire, and he gave stirring sermons about the wages of sin and how he had been given another chance to turn his life around when he had not succumbed to that bullet wound. If he ever knew he had fathered Patience, he certainly didn’t acknowledge it.
Years later, when Patience was about fourteen, they got word that Wickham had been felled by an illness, that a fever had taken him away. He was dead, and his congregation mourned him.
Elizabeth and Georgiana went to his grave one day, together. They stood over it and there were others around, talking of what a good man he had been.
“I wish I could be charitable and allow him to have that,” said Georgiana, “but I feel as if I wish to tell everyone what a scoundrel he was.”
“Oh, but he was quite open about that,” said Elizabeth. “A reformed scoundrel.”
“Do you think he was truly reformed?”