Page 87 of A Prudent Engagement

Elizabeth laughingly replied, “That does sound like a very pretty idea—but Mr. Darcy, are you so eager a lover that you cannot bear a delay of two weeks before our nuptials on this account?”

Darcy made a solemn bow upon Elizabeth directing the question to him. “I am always at your service, and for my part, after so many years of close friendship with Bingley, it would seem right if we were married at the same time since we are to marry sisters. But we must enquire about the views of the other principals.”

Elizabeth grinned at him, her eyes bright. “I shall speak to Jane.”

It was rather amusing to Darcy that Jane and Bingley were surrounded by a larger group of well-wishers. Bingley was cheerful, speaking with his hands, and delighted.

As she always did, Jane looked lovely—smiling, quiet, modest, and hard to understand.

Darcy could never forget how she had approached him to inform him that Elizabeth in fact disliked him. He could not decide whether the act itself was more admirable or condemnable, but the experience was not one which he desired to dwell on more than he must.

That day had been amongst the most intensely unpleasant of Darcy’s life, and while he was happy that the reconciliation with Elizabeth had been achieved, he yet felt deeply the echo of pain from when he thought his case was hopeless.

When he had settled into this pensive mood, Elizabeth took his arm and guided him away from everyone and around into the churchyard.

“You looked as though you had played the role of distinguished and silent gentleman for as long as you wished,” she said, smiling. “And I do not mind the chance to monopolise your company.”

“I am always at your service.”

“And I shall always depend upon you serving me,” Elizabeth replied. “I only must determine—oh. Our family mausoleum.”

They walked across to the little closed temple with the name Bennet engraved in rusted metal above the top. She stepped inside and looked at the nook on the bottom where the body had been placed, with the freshly made sign that gave Mr. Bennet’s name and year of birth followed by 1812.

Below, trite words had been carved into the stone.

Elizabeth read them aloud. “Sacred to the memory of a most beloved father and husband, whose virtues were known to all and whose loss is felt by many—there is nothing of Papa in this. Mary chose the words, and by the time I thought of the matter, they had already been chiselled into the stone. I am not sure what I would have selected if I had been home when Papa died. I think the others would have let me choose. Likely something from the Bard—or maybe Pope’s Iliad.”

“He would not have preferred it in the original?” Darcy asked.

Elizabeth laughed. “He never indulged my nine-year-old fancy to be taught the Greek that he read daily. Papa judged—correctly—that I would not have the application to take on the task and see it to completion, and he did not wish to put forth a great deal of bother to encourage me once my original interest waned. But as I am educated in neither Greek nor Latin, if he had wanted to decorate his final resting place with such a sentence, it was his place to choose the epigraph and make it known to all.”

After saying this, Elizabeth bent down to the stone and put her hands and forehead against it.

She remained there in communion with it for some minutes before rising again and smiling tearily at him. “I only now imagined the argument that I would have had with him to gain his blessing after I accepted you.”

Darcy took her arm, and they stepped back into the sun. Most of the crowd at the church had dispersed, but the rector stood, a small bald head, at the top of the little step up to the great doors. He waved at seeing Elizabeth, who smilingly waved back.

After the clergyman had turned back into the church, Darcy said, “You think that Mr. Bennet would have disapproved of me as a suitor for you.”

Elizabeth tilted her hand back and forth. “Not disapproved—he would have been shocked.”

“That such a great gentleman descended so low as to offer for you?”

“No, no, no.” Elizabeth laughed, shoving him slightly. “That would have surprised Papa not at all. He was more confident in how desirable a marriage partner I am than even Mama—no, his surprise would have been that I accepted you.”

Darcy nodded. He then grimaced, struck by a frighteningly unpleasant thought.

“Do not fret,” Elizabeth said. “I would have argued him round till he gave his blessing.”

“No, not that,” Darcy said. “Only, I fear greatly that you would have refused me if he had not died, and I greatly dislike the notion that our happiness depends on such.”

Elizabeth frowned. “I dare say that I would have. But you are a determined man—I think that you might have brought me round after a while.”

“You cannot know this yet,” Darcy said after a little thought, “but Colonel Fitzwilliam was on the verge of telling you that I had separated Jane and Bingley when Mrs. Collins delivered the news about your father’s death to you.”

Elizabeth’s brow contracted. He suspected that she was casting her mind back to the day and trying to remember.

She was lovely in such a way that Darcy was quite sure that he would never tire of simply watching her move, talk, think, and walk.