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"You said insufferable man three times one night. I counted." Jane squeezes my hand. "I always knew."

***

We are married on the last day of July, Jane and I, together, in the church at Longbourn.

It is very hot. The church is very full. Mama has wept so much since breakfast that she has gone through four handkerchiefs and borrowed a fifth from Mrs. Philips. Kitty and Anne are our bridesmaids, in matching white muslin, and Anne has a wreath of white roses on her fair hair, and walks up the aisle with her chin up and her cheeks pink and not a single shawl on her shoulders.

Mrs. Jenkinson, in the third pew, holds three of them in her lap, just in case.

Lady Catherine does not come.

She sends a letter instead. It arrives the evening before, by express, at very great cost, in a hand so violent that it has torn the paper in two places. It is addressed to Fitzwilliam. He looks at it for a long moment, turning it over in his fingers. Then he hands it, unopened, to Papa.

"I think, sir," he says, "that this belongs in your library."

Papa takes it. He looks at the direction. He weighs it in his hand.

"It is very heavy," he observes. "I should say at least four sheets. Crossed."

"Very likely."

"I shall put it on the mantel," says Papa. "Unopened. It will be an excellent thing to look at on a winter evening, when I wish to feel grateful for my blessings."

And he does. It is there still.

***

Mr. Pettigrew comes up from Kent for the wedding.

He arrives in the same hired chaise, rather dustier, and quite as anxious. He sits at the back of the church in his best coat and his most terrified neckcloth, and when the service is over, and we come out into the sunshine with the bells going and the village children cheering at the gate, he edges through the crowd to the church gate, and seizes Fitzwilliam's hand, and shakes it for a long time.

"I wish you joy, sir," he says. "I wish you every joy. Only—" He lowers his voice and looks round, as though Lady Catherine might be hiding behind a gravestone. "Only I must beg you, sir, as your medical man, to avoid strong emotions. For the next few days, at least. The head is quite healed, I am sure. But one cannot be too careful."

Fitzwilliam looks at him. Then at me. Then back at Mr. Pettigrew.

"Pettigrew," he says gravely, "I have just been married."

"Yes, sir."

"To her."

Mr. Pettigrew looks at me, too. He goes slowly pink, from his neckcloth to his hairline.

"Ah," he says. "Yes. I see the difficulty, sir."

"I shall do my best," says Fitzwilliam. "But I make no promises."

And Mr. Pettigrew, who has not laughed once in my hearing in all the time I have known him, puts his hand over his mouth and laughs until his spectacles fall off.

***

At the wedding breakfast, Anne de Bourgh dances.

The furniture has been pushed back in the drawing room, and Mary is at the pianoforte, playing a country dance with grim and splendid determination, and Kitty has been dancing every set since noon. And the Colonel walks across the room to where Anne is sitting by the window, and bows, and holds out his hand.

I see her hesitate. I see Mrs. Jenkinson half rise from her chair with a shawl in each hand.

Then Anne puts her hand in his, and stands, and lets him lead her out.