Page 52 of The Blackmail of Mr. Darcy
Epilogue
In the decades that followed, Elizabeth and Darcy proved resoundingly that men and women with no previous experience with intimate acts could, indeed, please one another and beget heirs as well. Unfortunately, given the fact that neither ever shared a single syllable about their intimate histories with anyone else, nobody was able to learn from their example.
That said, all their friends and families and servants witnessed their love for one another in every caring word, every protective deed, every tender gesture. Their five children—two boys, followed bytwo girls, and a final surprise baby boy—flourished in their loving homes, and Georgiana easily learnt what true mutual regard looked like. Eight years after Darcy and Elizabeth married, Georgiana found her own marital bliss with the son of an earl.
The Bennet sisters did not have a front-row seat to the Darcy marriage, and they struggled more to achieve their own happy relationships.
Jane did end up marrying Charles Bingley, but after his years of flirting with many women and enjoying the favours of many courtesans, Bingley struggled with the idea of being with justone woman. However, he managed to stay mostly true to Jane, with only an occasional visit to his favourite house in King’s Place. Only a month into their marriage, after the fortieth visit by Mrs. Bennet, the couple decided against the purchase of Netherfield Park. Instead, they purchased a fairly small estate in Derbyshire, just twenty miles from Pemberley. They had three sons and a daughter, and the couple enjoyed a contented marriage with little drama other than the occasional visits to Caroline at York Retreat.
Miss Bingley slowly came to accept reality over delusion. She never chose to leave the retreat, and she certainly never married. Her brother and his wife were sweet as they wrote cheery letters to her and visited her twice a year, but it wasMrs. Hurst who was more forthcoming with reality-based news.
Part of the news was family-oriented and pleasant; after six years of marriage, Louisa Hurst finally birthed an heir, and three years later a daughter. But much of Mrs. Hurst’s news was about larger society, and Miss Bingley came to realise that her reputation among thetonwas irreparable. She quite liked the safety of the retreat, the loveliness of the manor house and its formal gardens, the predictable interactions with the attentive staff, and the almost obsequious attentions of her physician.
Mary Bennet visited Pemberley more than her younger sisters, and she met a Derbyshire gentleman who would eventually be heir to a medium-sized estate near Bakewell. After their wedding, she lived with her husband and his parents on that estate. Her husband did not ascend to being the master until he was nearly fifty years old, but in the meantime they led happy and relatively easy lives and raised three daughters and finally, blessedly, a son.
Kitty Bennet grew into her true name, Catherine, and became the wife of a Hertfordshire curate who soon thereafter was named the vicar of a nearby parish. She struggled to carry a childto term but eventually birthed a daughter. Catherine’s husband was kind but rather oblivious to everything and everyone other than his beloved books. However, Catherine’s bond with her little girl was so strong, she did not repine her husband’s inattention.
Lydia Bennet surprised everyone by remaining single until she was six and twenty. She was not an idle sort, however; she moved to the Gardiner’s house when she was eighteen, and she started making bonnets her uncle could sell to shops even as he sold fine fabrics and a variety of imported accessories. Lydia’s designs were fresh and comely, and they became popular enough that she soon achieved financial independence. She insisted on paying a portion of the Gardiners’ household expenses, which shocked her Aunt Maddie, who still remembered the self-centred and sometimes greedy girl.
Lydia was wooed by several very rich tradesmen and even a few well-to-do gentlemen who did not seem to mind that she was, essentially, quite mired in trade. She eventually agreed to a courtship and proposal from Baron Eberly, and to her mother’s very great excitement, she became Lady Eberly. The couple had two sons, and although the marriage was reported to be very happy, they often lived in different houses—he in his country estate and she in Town—and it was known by many that each of the couple, on occasion, shared their favours with others.
Elizabeth was as enamoured of her William when she was fifty years old as she had been when she was twenty, and she could not conceive of being happy with any of her sisters’ marriages. She occasionally felt mystification about Jane’s ability to ignore her husband’s visits to King’s Place, Lydia’s desire to take a lover, and Kitty’s forbearance with a husband who seemed incapable of remembering her birthday. But such puzzlements did not fester; she was too delighted in her husband’s continued reverence for her charms to worry aboutother people’s husbands. She was too ecstatic watching him scoop up their grandchildren for a “tickle fête,” or teaching their youngest son Joseph about the sawmill located on Pemberley land, to even consider comparing her sisters’ husbands to the paragon that was hers.
Darcy continued to ride, fence, and work hard on his estates and investments. Even in his late fifties, he sometimes laboured physically when such was needed to rescue people or property from storms, fires, or flooding. He remained extremely handsome even when his dark curls became flecked with grey. To compare other men to him would be a disservice to those mere mortals, Elizabeth thought.
As for Darcy, his opinion of Elizabeth started at what he knew to be the maximum level of admiration; no woman could ever be more admirable than his beloved wife. But somehow, day after day, year after year, even decade after decade, he found his admiration for Elizabeth growing. Her personality continued to charm servants and royalty, when they occasioned to rub elbows with the Prince Regent or, later, Queen Victoria. Her loving kindness and intelligence benefitted everyone from the tenants and servants of Pemberley to their own children, from the orphans of Lambton to the women at the Magdalen Hospital. Her singing continued to entertain, and her beauty continued to garner appreciative looks from men—but Darcy was elated that he was the one to enjoy many a private performance of song, and he was the only one who knew the true extent of her physical allurements.
Elizabeth and Darcy also continued to love to read. There were several times when one or the other would be pre-reading a novel one of their children wished to read, and they would stumble across a plot that hinged on blackmail.
“Blackmail!” Elizabeth called out one time to Darcy. “Again! Is there no other plot device available to mankind?”
Another time, he bent to kiss her cheek as he entered the breakfast parlour, and he placed a book by her teacup. “Within, there is a spot of blackmail for your perusal and amusement,” he said.
“A bit of blackmail for my perusement?” she asked, chuckling at her own wit.
“What is blackmail?” asked little Joseph, only five years old at the time.
Darcy’s face turned serious. “It is a horrible thing, a crime. When someone tries to force a person to pay him, or to do what he wishes, by threatening that person, it is called blackmail. I know none of you will ever do such a terrible thing to anyone.”
Looking at the intelligence and the innocence in his sons’ and daughters’ eyes, Darcy felt for the millionth time the urge to protect them from all harm. But he also realised, more and more, that they would be capable of standing up against evil intentions and horrible deeds. He placed his hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders, smiled down into her loving eyes, and knew that blackmail, as horrible as it was, had actually helped them to come together.
And Darcy decided to make yet another contribution to the York Retreat, in honour of the woman whose despicable deeds had been so instrumental to the creation of this wonderful family he called his own.
The End
