She shook her head, a slight movement only her husband could detect. No, it said. I have not told the truth and I never will.
“What happened then?” Anne asked, shattering the silence and distracting Elizabeth from the private moment she had just shared with Darcy.
“My husband was proven correct, as I have mentioned. Who knows how he knew, but it seems he did. As soon as the doctor confirmed our wonderful news, I heeded his entreaties to rest and not worry about a thing. Of course, within a few months there was little I could do, for I had become so large that even walking across the park was an endeavour! Shortly after that, little Jane was born.”
Jane’s eyes glistened across the table. “And she has been the apple of her father’s eye ever since.”
Elizabeth reached over and took her elder sister’s hand. She knew Jane’s tears were borne out of happiness, but it was an instinctive reaction she could not stop if she wanted to. “Oh, my dear.”
“Stop, Lizzy. I am not sad. Just… grateful.”
They all fell silent then, reflecting on the changes that had taken place in their family in the past year. Anne was privy to the truth, of course—Darcy had not wished to burden her with his sister-in-law without telling her everything that had already come to pass. He felt it would have been unfair to deceive her. She had agreed never to breathe a word of what had happened to Lydia.
“I am grateful too,” Anne said with a smile. “These children have brought such happiness to this great house that I never thought was possible.”
Lydia smiled.
It turned out that Mrs. Bennet’s prediction had not been vain and foolish fancy after all. Several months after Lydia’s arrival, Miss de Bourgh had asked her to move into the main house. There was more room, she had said. And it would be more comfortable for the children.
“So many girls,” Elizabeth said with a smile to her sister.
The others merely nodded and took it as the casual remark it had sounded like. To Jane and Elizabeth, of course, it was something different entirely. For a long time, it had seemed crucial for Jane to have a son. And then the years had passed and the sisters had married one-by-one. The entail on Longbourn seemed unimportant now. After all, it seemed only right that it pass to Mr. Collins now, since Mary was in the most modest circumstances of the sisters. And her life was far from uncomfortable, so it hardly seemed like something worth thinking of.
Jane smiled contentedly. “How far we have all come.”
“How far indeed.”
Darcy’s Second Chance Page 13