Writerly Ambitions

by Timothy Underwood

“Oh, I can well imagine how that thought plays for her.” Darcy laughed. “You seem to have determined to tease all of your family.”

  “Yes, and that is the main point — you love that I am so lighthearted, and have such a sense of humor. And I love yours.”

  Darcy took Elizabeth’s hand, held it above her head to spin her around and then kiss her. Her smell made his chest catch, and he thought he would never have enough of keeping her so close. “You, my dear, are particularly happy today.”

  “I believe I have quite excellent reasons to be happy today — after all I have done my mother proud.”

  “I have some suspicion that you shall not be the only one of her daughters to fulfill your mother’s more mercenary wishes.”

  “Jane and Bingley!” Elizabeth grinned. “The sweetest pets in the south of England, the way they stick their heads together to coo at each other. Almost improper — but both bereaved and finding company in each other.”

  “And Harriet and Lavinia get along quite well,” Darcy added.

  “There are few couples I have ever seen who look so well together.”

  “Poor Bingley.” Darcy said, laughingly, “My friend simply fell in love with your sister to escape the horde.”

  “The horde?”

  “I have been informed by Louisa that he would otherwise be surrounded by a horde of women throwing their bonnets at him — ouch.”

  Elizabeth pinched Darcy as he said that. “Throwing bonnets at gentlemen is one of womankind’s greatest duties.”

  “Oh, you’ve never thrown your bonnet at me.”

  Elizabeth removed that item of clothing from her head, and tossed it in Darcy’s face, as he rather expected her to in response to that statement.

  He laughed and took Elizabeth in his arms and kissed her hair, getting to enjoy the delightful smell again, and then her forehead and her lips.

  After a moment Darcy added, “Bingley told me that he is entranced with Jane — though there is no chance they could marry for at least six months, so we cannot be sure the connection shall last so long, but it is the most promising inclination, on both sides.”

  “For my part, I am satisfied neither is likely to change — Jane smiled serenely and sweetly when Mama mentioned her hope that she might marry Mr. Bingley, when she is no longer mourning Mr. Hawdry. Such a serene sweet smile. That of a calm angel — if you knew Jane closely, you would know that was for her the same as jumping up and down shouting, ‘Lord! Yes! Yes! Yes!’”

  “Your mother is not a woman likely to turn aside any eligible gentleman appearing as a suitor for her daughters — will you be likewise with our daughters?”

  “No — because you will set aside enough for their support whether they marry or not.”

  “In the articles. In the articles of marriage, I promise — I am a responsible man. You know that.”

  Elizabeth grabbed Darcy and kissed him firmly. “The best, most honorable, most diligent, and finest man I know — but I am on such intimate terms with one father who, despite his other excellences, is not so diligent in forwarding the interests of his children. I must specify that I marry you in part because I know I can trust you to take matters of fortune and future with the seriousness they deserve.”

  “You can.”

  Elizabeth grinned brightly. “Mama liked you from the first time you danced with me. Mama could never disapprove of you! Good as a Lord” — her voice excellently mimicked Mr. Darcy’s soon to be mother-in-law — “Ten thousand a year, or so they say, and very likely more. Heavens, Lizzy, he is as good as a Lord!”

  Darcy laughed. “Rather more I would say — most years closer to twelve or thirteen thousand — that depends on a great many factors and business matters.”

  “Oh? — I must confess to you, in my years of low seeking for money from the baying crowds, a habit I will not give up entirely no matter how much pin money you bribe me with to pay attention only to you—”

  “Elizabeth, I would never see you cease to write for any reason but that you had become bored of it.”

  She laughed merrily, the tinkling sound echoing off the cold ground and trees. “Bored with writing? I am no Doctor Johnson. I have found things in life that were not present in London—”

  “You mean the beauties of nature, and the joy of exceedingly long walks?”

  “I mean you.”

  “Because I do spend a great deal of time in London. So I am not a disproof of Doctor Johnson’s dictum that all there is in life is in the great capital.”

  “In any case, he also said that no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”

  “Which is why I could never write, being possessed of ample fortune already, but I suspect you will continue the habit, as you are not a man.”

  Elizabeth giggled. “Yes. That is why I shall keep it up — and for your sister’s sake, as I know she would be quite disappointed in me if I entirely gave up the practice. I had intended to suggest that the great compiler on occasion erred.”

  “My wish,” Darcy said smiling at her dimpled smile, “is simply that you spare a little time from your devoted readership, longing for the following book, to shower rays of sunlight from your gleaming face and eyes upon your poor husband.”

  Elizabeth grinned and elbowed him. “Extravagant flatterer.”

  “I try.”

  “And what is more, you succeed — enough of that. Now that I can ask freely, since it is a matter of my own concern, I am quite curious about the details of how you dispose of your great fortune, and how it is founded. There is nothing so interesting, once you have become used to the practice, as the making and spending of money.”

  Darcy laughed. “My mercenary little Elizabeth — to hear you speak now a man would never believe that you have refused two highly eligible gentlemen.”

  “I have discouraged several others.” Elizabeth grinned. “Fortunately one of my lovers was not so easily put off.”

  She smiled sunnily up at him, her upturned nose and dimpled cheek challenging Darcy, begging him to kiss her. It was a task he had not the strength to refuse.

  “Mmmmm.” Elizabeth’s color was flushed and high. “You become better at that — practice. One must always practice.”

  “I think we shall have many opportunities for such.” He grinned at her. “I hope you do not mind that I intend to become one of the chiefest experts in the art.”

  “We shall develop in the art together. There is nothing truly worth doing that is not worth the effort required to become proficient.”

  Elizabeth bit her lower lip and she looked at him in a quite seductive manner.

  Darcy took that as invitation for another kiss, being quite pleased that the thick trees in the Bennets’ little park hid them from whoever could watch them from the windows of the manor house.

  He loved to hold her tight in his arms, and feel her sweet body against his, and to know that she was happy and safe with him. Every time she looked up at him with that trust in her eyes, something in Darcy’s heart that had always been missing swelled and grew happy.

  “That is the real lesson,” he said after they kissed once more. “The point is not to find the perfect wife — or husband — not someone who meets a list, but to marry someone with whom you are happy when they are happy, and who you wish to spend your whole life making happier.”

  “Yes!” Elizabeth smiled at him, a wide brilliant and glowing smile that promised a happy future for them both.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The weeks during which they waited for the banns to be read were frequently a fevered torture for both Darcy and Elizabeth. Mr. Darcy remained committed, as he always had, to act with chastity and probity, and to never engage in any behavior that would be unworthy of him as a gentleman before their marriage had been solemnized by the church. And he resolutely stuck to this resolution, though the desperate flames of passion burned bright and hot between him and Elizabeth.

  For her part… Elizabeth would have much preferred they marr
ied by special license, and then, as Shakespeare once had a character exclaim, in far less pleasant context: “To bed, to bed! Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. To bed, to bed, to bed!”

  They delayed so long because the banns were quite respectable of a thing to do, and Mrs. Bennet wished to throw a grand wedding, and to bring all her daughters to Meryton again.

  Whilst often a wedding was celebrated chiefly by those distant members of a family through letters rather than through visits, all Elizabeth’s closest did come to Meryton to be there with her on Mrs. Bennet’s great day when her daughter married ten thousand a year (and very likely more), and when the happy couple was breakfasted at Longbourn in such grand style that Mrs. Bennet would receive praise upon on occasion from those less lucky matrons of the neighborhood who could only look upon Mrs. Bennet with green faced envy for several years more.

  Mary and her husband came earliest to Hertfordshire, as the earl to whom he was employed had been drawn early to London for matters of business he wished to settle before the little season started in full swing. This earl was an acquaintance of Darcy’s and he sent a letter along with Dr. Smith.

  It felt decidedly strange to Darcy, after so long dancing with the simpering daughters of the greatest families in the land to be now married to a woman who had a connection to the employed secretary of an acquaintance of his.

  But Darcy decided, after a momentary feeling of discomfort that not only did it not matter, but he liked the connection to such a fine scholarly mind.

  For Elizabeth’s part she had the most pleasure in seeing Lydia, who she had not seen for the longest time. Lydia had turned out better than Elizabeth could have expected when she was wildly young, as opposed to simply young. She happily embraced Elizabeth, and cried with Jane, and she had added maturity to her enthusiastic bouncy lust for life that she retained possession of.

  Lydia had a son barely old enough to travel safely, and who soon adored all of his doting aunts. The young man Lydia had married was to Mr. Bennet’s complete shock making a good go of his business in the north, and Lydia spoke as the young wife of a tradesman, full of the details of machines, and leases, and the difficulties of finding good hands. Also the ways that the children and wives of the workers could also be put to work in the mill, allowing the whole family to earn productive wages, which was a notion that Elizabeth thought rather unpleasant, to think of children laboring for hours a day inside an enclosed building, instead of being free to run about, but she also could understand the difficulty of finding the best way to turn one’s hand towards making enough money to survive in an often difficult world.

  By the time Lydia arrived, Darcy had come to see his earlier expectation of splendid connections and dowry as laughable. So when Elizabeth teased him about having a tradeswoman for a sister after they had listened to Lydia explain with great enthusiasm the particulars of how to find the best supplies of cotton and the best markets for the sale of woven cloth from her husband’s mill, he laughed at himself and Elizabeth, and proclaimed himself entirely happy and satisfied.

  “I have a new list, you must understand, my dear, of what I wish for in a wife.”

  “You do, Mr. Darcy? A list — what a responsible way to treat such a serious issue. Now I imagine a great gentleman such as yourself must have many items of importance on it — after all, you have the choice of the finest women in England.”

  “I confess I do have a long set of vital points upon this list. I want a woman who is intelligent, charming, clever, and who has the finest eyes. Those eyes must pierce my heart like beams of golden sunlight, and her lips ought to be red as coral, and her nose shaped like… uh…”

  “Keep going.” Elizabeth grinned at him encouragingly, and enthralled.

  “A hawk’s… or a carriage dog’s… no. Not that. Or hmmmm…”

  “It seems, Mr. Darcy, though you may be tall as the columns of a great building, and handsome as a famed statue made by Michelangelo, and noble and brave as a Hercules from legend, and as wealthy as a monarch—”

  “Of a tiny principality.”

  “And as good as a saint with halo and wings, it shall fall to me to be the writer, the master of metaphor in this family.”

  “Drat.” Darcy grinned at her. “I had so hoped to be the best at everything.”

  “But your list, what else is on your new list of traits for a wife?”

  “There is in truth only one essential item.”

  “And what,” Elizabeth asked when Darcy paused, “is this essential item?”

  “That she be you.”

  And though it was trite, and really not an excessively clever thing to say at all, Elizabeth swooned, and kissed him, and she was so delightedly happy. The gooey feelings in her heart made her melt like hot butter, and kept her happy as a bubbly boiling pudding on Christmas day. The feeling of love filled Elizabeth from the tips of her fingernails to the tips of her toenails to the tip of her, apparently, hawklike carriage dog’s nose.

  Kitty and her husband also came from Lyme.

  Darcy had no influence in the Navy, so he could not help that gentleman to gain the employment that was made so difficult to find by the reduction in the service following the end of the war, but he did like Captain Caron quite well and heartily encouraged the man to visit Pemberley with his wife whenever he wished.

  Georgiana and her husband, and Darcy’s cousin General Fitzwilliam came and ensured that there was an ample supply of Darcy’s blood present. Georgiana soon was set entirely at her ease by Elizabeth, and the two spent hours in conversation whose principal subjects were Elizabeth’s books — Georgiana had many ideas for what Elizabeth ought write next — and stories about Darcy which Elizabeth begged to hear so she could to tease Darcy about them.

  Lady Anne de Bourgh came with her clergyman Mr. Collins and the friend of all of them, Charlotte Collins. Darcy’s aunt had desperately wanted him to marry Anne, but Anne was still unmarried, and she seemed to have happily blossomed in the years since her mother’s death.

  Anne de Bourgh would always be a small, rather sickly looking woman, but she was no longer cowed and quiet. Rather she laughed and smiled, and became almost immediately the dearest of friends with Elizabeth, exclaiming, “Charlotte has told me so much about you!”

  To which Elizabeth replied, “She has told me a great deal about you!”

  General Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth also chattered and laughed with each other quite happily. Darcy loved to see those of his family who he loved most love Elizabeth. He was quite sure she would in general be loved or admired by all who met her from amongst his staff, tenants, acquaintances and family.

  Two days prior to the wedding, Bingley hosted another large ball at Netherfield in honor of Elizabeth and Darcy, and during that ball he forgot again all his other guests, danced thrice with Jane, and talked with her half the night.

  There was little doubt in the mind of any of those who watched that another marriage was in the offing, soon as an appropriate passage of time had occurred.

  However Bingley during the supper remembered himself long enough to toast Mr. Darcy, and good naturedly tease him, saying that he had often doubted that his friend would ever settle upon a woman as being good enough, and then he met Elizabeth who was quite clearly too good for him. But that Bingley’s wits and skills as a matchmaker had prevailed, and she accepted him in the end.

  The day that Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy embarked together upon that great voyage which is the wedded state, and became proclaimed before God, the community, their family, and each other as the companions of their future life, dedicated to worshipping each other with their bodies, had the most perfect weather possible in December.

  In Elizabeth’s view it was as though the sky and the ground wished to celebrate her happiness with her — cold but sunny, with a dusting of beautiful snow upon everything. The air was as clear as a crystal glass, and the briskness brought a rosy color to everyone’s cheeks.

  The ceremony was
simple, but well attended, with another crowd waiting in the cold to praise the happy couple after their nuptials, the happy result of cupid’s arrows had been solemnized.

  The two made the poetic oaths from the Book of Common Prayer to each other, smiling brilliantly with each word said, and meaning each and every promise with their hearts entire. And then the ring was placed upon Elizabeth’s finger, and she felt entirely delighted, for some part of her had never truly believed until now that she would ever marry, and ever have a man upon whom she could happily depend as a helpmeet and a support in all the stresses, struggles and anxieties of life, a man who in turn could depend upon her.

  She was proclaimed by the rector who she had known since she was a girl as Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy, the wife of the best man she had ever known.

  They were herded from the church by the cheering crowd, all laughing and delightedly happy, and when they were put into the fine wedding carriage, purchased by Darcy’s amused desire to fulfill Mrs. Bennet’s wishes, fresh for the occasion, the two kissed each other passionately as they were driven off and away into the future.

  Mrs. Bennet standing there, waved her handkerchief, as tears fell from her eyes. She turned to Mr. Bennet and said, “God has been very good to us!”

  “That he has, Mrs. Bennet. That he has.”

  Afterword

  This book had a major change in structure and tone from the first draft to the second. I’d initially planned the story to have a rather bitter Elizabeth who was quite angry at her father for refusing to save any money, and she would develop a belief that she needed to somehow provide dowries for Jane’s daughters, and this would become an all-consuming worry.

  Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet argued quite fiercely, and rather horribly — I wrote several excellent scenes where they say mean things to each other that I removed in the end. A few lines I liked exceedingly are lost forever to the depths of my deleted scenes bin.

  Oh well.

  Such is the life of an author removing things he likes in isolation to make the whole better.