Page 101 of The Longbourn Bloodline

Darcy looked up. Water slicked his dark hair to his brow; his shirt, now transparent, displayed a tadpole making determined progress across his shoulder. His eyes, once so carefully guarded, now shone with the helpless laughter of a man entirely undone.

“Assistance,” he requested.

“I think not. You look very comfortable.”

“Elizabeth.”

“The children are clearly enjoying themselves. Cara has joined you. Russet appears to be attempting to befriend the lily pads. Really, I see no reason to intervene.”

“Elizabeth, I am begging you.”

Sighing, she reached down and offered her hand.

He clasped it. “Thank you, dear,” and then he pulled… hard.

Elizabeth hit the water with a shriek that startled the duck off the roof, sent Caractacus into paroxysms of protective barking, and caused Mrs. Bennet to clutch her chest and declare that she was having palpitations and would someone please fetch the smelling salts.

“You! You are…” Elizabeth spluttered, wiping mud from her face.

“Incorrigible?” Darcy suggested, grinning.

“I was leaning towards wretch, but incorrigible suffices.”

Around them, the children’s laughter rang out—Griffins and Spaniels alike, dark-haired and golden, indistinguishable beneath a coating of mud and pond weed. Thomas had William in a headlock. Charles Junior was industriously attempting to build a dam. Rose and Catherine had discovered a frog and were engaged in a heated debate over its nomenclature. George was earnestly trying to convince Caractacus to retrieve a stick, which the wolfhound was ignoring with monumental dignity.

“I believe,” Richard called from the bank, where he stood with his arm around Charlotte, his face alight with amusement, “that the Great Longbourn Tug-of-War has been postponed due to… unforeseen aquatic circumstances.”

“Postponed?” Mrs. Bennet’s voice achieved hitherto unknown registers. “It cannot be postponed! The sashes! The medals! The strawberries!”

“The strawberries,” Lydia said, holding up a thoroughly empty jam pot and a thoroughly sticky Henry, “have been consumed. By persons unknown.”

“Lydia!”

“It was not me! It was the baby! Babies cannot be held responsible for their actions; everyone knows this.”

Mr. Bennet rose from his chair and made his way, slowly and with evident enjoyment, to the edge of the pond. He surveyed his daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, all of them mud-covered, laughing, and utterly, gloriously undignified.

“I declare,” he said, “a draw. The Griffins and the Spaniels have tied. The prize shall be split equally among all competitors.” He paused. “The prize, in this case, being a bath and a very stern lecture from Mrs. Hill about the proper treatment of ornamental ponds.”

“A draw!” Mrs. Bennet looked simultaneously relieved and disappointed. “But the medals⁠—”

“Give them each a medal, Mrs. Bennet. They have all demonstrated the essential Bennet quality.”

“And that would be?”

Mr. Bennet smiled—that slow, knowing smile that Elizabeth had inherited and that drove her mother to distraction.

“The ability,” he said, “to turn any occasion into a memorable disaster.”

Much later, after baths had been administered, children fed, Mrs. Bennet soothed with tea, dogs dried, and the duck finally coaxed from its garden-shed refuge—Elizabeth and Darcy stood alone on the terrace, watching the sun set over the Hertfordshire hills.

Elizabeth’s hair was still damp. Darcy’s shirt had been declared a loss. Somewhere inside the house, Thomas was arguing with William about whether the tie was actually a Griffin victory in disguise, and Mrs. Bennet was telling anyone who would listen about the time Mr. Darcy had fallen in a very icy and muddy pond ten years ago and how she had known then that he would be trouble.

“We built this,” Elizabeth said. “All of it. The children, the glorious mayhem, this family that stretches across two estates, three bloodlines, and more names than any sensible person can keep track of.”

“We built it,” Darcy agreed. “Though I confess I did not anticipate the pond.”

“It is not the pond, but the falling. You are very good at falling.”