Page 232 of What Change Entails

“High praise,” Elizabeth murmured.

“It is,” Lydia said. “He does not bore her, and he does not frighten her. That is a very fine beginning.”

Lord Meriden had a younger brother, Mr. Nathaniel Grey, independently wealthy through a godfather’s estate and possessed of humor enough to survive Lydia Bennet. He first met her when she was arranging flowers badly in Pemberley’s morning room and informed him that all men who claimed indifference to marriage were either lying or had never met women worth marrying.

He proposed within six months.

Lydia accepted after making him wait three days because, as she told Georgiana, “A gentleman should value suspense if he means to marry me.”

Darcy called it justice.

Elizabeth called it Lydia.

Years unfolded.

Elizabeth and Darcy had five children, three boys and two girls, all of whom inherited some portion of their mother’s wit and their father’s determination, a combination that left Pemberley lively beyond anything old Mr. Darcy could have imagined. Jane and Bingley had four children and a house filled with music, cousins, dogs, and perpetual hospitality. Mary, Kitty, and Lydia each had three children and wrote letters of such different character that Elizabeth could identify the author before breaking the seal.

Georgiana had two children. Her second birth was dangerous, and after it the physicians advised that there must be no more. For a time, grief sat with her, not loudly, for Georgiana’s deepest sorrows rarely announced themselves. Lydia came to stay after the birth and carried the baby through Pemberley for hours while Georgiana slept. Darcy hovered uselessly until Elizabeth sent him to walk. Lord Meriden remained beside his wife with such devotion that even Mrs. Bennet, upon hearing of it, declared him a man of feeling.

Georgiana recovered.

Not to what she had been before, for no woman passed through fear unchanged, but to happiness all the same. She loved her two children fiercely, loved her husband with a settled confidence that still made Darcy emotional if he witnessed it unprepared, and loved her brother’s house as the place where she had first learned to speak for herself.

One autumn, many years after Elizabeth had first come to Pemberley as a guest, the tenant harvest party filled the lower meadow again.

Children ran between tables. Darcy’s eldest son attempted to organize a race and failed because Lydia’s second boy changed the rules halfway through. Jane’s daughters gathered flowers for Georgiana’s little girl. Mr. Bennet sat beneath a tree with a book open in his lap and three grandchildren leaning against him. Mrs. Bennet cried twice from pride, once from confusion, and once because Pemberley’s housekeeper remembered exactly how she preferred her tea.

Bingley and Jane walked near the river, heads bent together, still as pleased with one another as they had been in the first days after forgiveness became trust.

Lydia stood with Georgiana near the games, both laughing over some chaos involving a sack race and a hat that had not survived. Lydia had matured, certainly. She was kinder, steadier in affection, more thoughtful when it mattered. When her youngest child tipped a basket of apples into the grass and declared it an improvement, Lydia applauded.

“She is still Lydia,” Darcy observed.

Elizabeth slipped her arm through his. “Thank heaven.”

He peered down at her. Silver touched his hair now, though she insisted it gave him consequence and he insisted five children had earned it. The lines at the corners of his eyes deepened when he smiled, which he did far more often than anyone who had known him in Hertfordshire would have believed.

Across the meadow, Mr. Bennet closed his book and watched Lydia helping Georgiana rescue apples from beneath a bench.

“I believe,” he said when Elizabeth passed near him later, “that sending Lydia north may have been my finest act as a parent.”

Elizabeth stopped. “You sent her because you were tired of arguing with Mama.”

“Many great decisions begin in fatigue.”

“She might have been ruined by that carelessness.”

His face sobered. “Yes.”

For a rare moment, Mr. Bennet had no jest ready.

Then he turned toward Lydia, who had just scolded her own son for attempting to ride a very offended goat.

“But she was not,” he said. “And I am grateful for the mercy.”

Elizabeth touched his shoulder.

“So am I.”