One Love - Two Hearts - Three Stories
Page 26
Lady Catherine put her hand on the colonel’s outstretched arm and allowed herself to be escorted back to her waiting carriage. Pemberley was lost to her. She watched her dreams crumbling in front of her into powder that would soon blow away in the wind. Anne would not be Mrs. Darcy. This impudent chit would take her daughter’s place as Mistress of Pemberley. The shades of that great estate would forever be polluted with that woman as Darcy’s wife.
Colonel Fitzwilliam sauntered back into the drawing room, clearing his throat loudly as he entered. He cleared his throat again and the couple finally separated. Feeling rather proud of the way he had handled their aunt, he puffed his chest out and waited for Darcy’s thanks. The colonel was doomed to disappointment. They had not noticed that both Lady Catherine and Colonel Fitzwilliam had left the room. Nor did they notice when he returned.
“Marry me?” Darcy whispered. He could not believe Elizabeth was in his arms. He never wanted to let her go. Ever.
“Yes, William, I will marry you.”
Elizabeth squealed when Darcy wrapped his arms around her waist, lifting her off the floor, and spun her around and around. Never had his cousin seen such a sight. Dour Fitzwilliam Darcy was no longer dour. A miracle had occurred in Ramsgate.
By the end of their stay in the coastal town, it would not be the only miracle that would take place in Ramsgate.
EPILOGUE
Pemberley – one year later
Plans had been made the prior year for the whole party to meet again in Ramsgate. However, Elizabeth’s confinement prevented the Darcys from leaving Derbyshire. The arrival of two healthy children was a much more welcome event than a family holiday as most of those who had been in Ramsgate were with the Darcys for the birth. Darcy wavered between the need to spend time with his beloved wife and the twins, Master Nicholas William Darcy and Miss Jocelyn Anne Darcy. He had never imagined such happiness and laughter in the halls of his family home.
Shortly after Ramsgate, Lord Sternhaven arranged for Lady Olivia to marry a peer of the realm whose family name preceded the Darcy’s. Not realizing that his daughter’s maid was passing secret messages to Lady Olivia from Charles Bingley, he was completely taken by surprise to find a note from his missing daughter declaring they had eloped to Gretna Green. Finding out soon after that the peer he had engaged his daughter to was just as lacking in funds as he was, helped Lord Sternhaven to become resolved to welcome Bingley into his home. Bingley’s sister, Caroline, would remain uninvited.
The former Colonel Fitzwilliam sold his commission soon after Ramsgate and took on the management of one of Darcy’s smaller estates in Derbyshire. This allowed him to pursue Jane Bennet with every tactic known to him with a single-mindedness that would have ended the Napoleonic war sooner had his general only had this same devotion. They were wed just six months after the Darcys on February 15, 1812.
As for Georgiana Darcy, the one who started it all, she did not return to Ramsgate until after her first season two years later. While she had attracted many suitors, she was interested in none. Coincidentally, while Georgiana and her companion walked on the boardwalk of that coastal town, she realized she had been careless with the ribbons on her bonnet. When her bonnet blew away, it landed at the feet of a lovely young woman whose handsome brother was escorting her on the promenade. And, as everyone knows, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, and a young lady’s bonnet, must be in want of a wife.
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joy Dawn King started telling stories from an early age. However, she did not write any of them down until she was 57 years old. While living high in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador with her husband and family, she read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for the first time. It was love at first page. After she was done, she longed for more.
When searching for another copy of Jane Austen’s writings, she happened upon several books that offered alternative paths to happily ever after for Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. She purchased and read as many as she could find. Finally, in early 2014, she had an idea for a story about the couple that would not go away. Thus, her first book, A Father’s Sins: A Pride and Prejudice Variation, was born.
Since then, Joy and her husband moved back to the U.S. and plot bunnies kept hopping in and out of her imagination. Now, it’s all she can do to keep up with them. But she tries.