The happiest moment in Mrs. Bennet's life saw her eldest two daughters married by special license in the parlor of Netherfield Park. Jane became Mrs. Charles Bingley, and directly after her, Elizabeth vowed to love, honor, and obey Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. The wedding breakfast alone kept the neighbors talking for weeks into the festive season, and all the village merchants sang the praises of the Bennets, Bingleys, and Mr. Darcy.
The second happiest moment came the morning, three days after Christmas, when the Darcys became fixed on quitting the county. For few could admire the good fortune of Mrs. Bingley when Mrs. Darcy remained in residence. Or so Mrs. Bennet complained.
The affable Mr. Bingley accepted his new neighbors and their foibles in stride. His friend, Mr. Darcy, found personal questions about his homes and holdings not only intrusive, but unsettling. Such discourse plagued nearly every family dinner or local gathering both before and since their marriage.
After more than a month in the married state, Mr. Darcy enjoyed his wife's blushes when he was the cause of such a display and not a bombastically rude squire too deep into his cups. Those blushes were precisely on Mr. Darcy's mind the morning of their departure as he gently brushed a lock of hair behind her ear.
“Mrs. Darcy . . . Mrs. Darcy,” the mellow tones of her husband's voice taunted Elizabeth's dreaming state. With a flash of teeth, Mr. Darcy nipped her ear lobe playfully as she let out a moan. “It is time to rise and see to our travels.”
Elizabeth groaned.
“No,” she protested, not opening her eyes. She reached up to lift the pillow that had found its way against the headboard sometime in the night. Unceremoniously, she flipped the billowy bed linen squarely across her face. “Not yet, it's too early.”
Mr. Darcy laughed. “Where is my wife who told me so many times she rises early to walk and greet the sun?”
Elizabeth lifted the corner of the pillow to speak intelligibly. “She did not have such a tiresome bedfellow interrupting her sleep.”
‘“Oh ho, I am tiresome, am I?” he asked, pressing his form against his wife's side to demonstrate his ardor for her did not merely exist in the nocturnal hours.
“Delightfully tiresome,” she expressed, reaching down to caress an area that brought him much joy, jerking her hand away as she felt cloth.
“You have played unfairly, sir, you're already dressed! But you could easily become undressed?” Mrs. Darcy proposed, lifting the pillow fully and offering him a flirtatious wink. She batted her eyes to adjust to the light as her husband chuckled.
“Indeed, Mrs. Darcy, I could, but then the water for your bath shall turn cold.”
Elizabeth accepted his assistance to sit up in the bed they shared since taking their vows. The suite offered them a temporary home, as they trespassed upon the kindness and hospitality of the Bingleys. Instead of a wedding trip, the two newly married Bennet sisters agreed to hold a house party.
Six weeks in, living as a perpetual guest wore on Mrs. Darcy’s nerves. Mr. Darcy enjoyed it even less: he had spent scarcely a few months in any of his homes over the past year. This did not mean the two couples were unhappy or disagreeable to one another. Far from it.
In fact, both Bennet sisters could easily argue who stood as the happiest wife in the kingdom. And Elizabeth did not miss her home as her husband did, because the arrangement had thus far kept the Darcys in Hertfordshire. But Jane ruled Netherfield Park as mistress. Elizabeth’s position worsened the longer the Darcys delayed going to London and then on to their country estate, Pemberley. Each passing day increased in number her worries and tasks awaiting at her new homes, thus feeding her fears of inadequacy.
Elizabeth stretched and yawned, enjoying that her husband watched her movement. “I suppose we should wait until we arrive at your town home in London,” she compromised, a slight pout to her lower lip.
“Our town home,” he corrected. Mr. Darcy cleared his throat and adjusted his placement in the bed before rising entirely. He nodded to his wife, then suddenly bent down, planting both of his hands on either side of her, causing her to retreat back to a reclined position. His body weight trapped her beneath him, and she gasped. She bit her lip and desperately hoped he would ravish her; immediately!
Instead, he merely kissed her upon the cheek, yet whispering in her ear: "Don't forget, Madam, the carriage is ours as well."
Like clockwork, Elizabeth's new maid, Miss Gwyn, knocked to enter the room. Mr. Darcy bade her to enter as he took leave of his wife. Elizabeth smiled as she watched her husband's backside from the vantage point in bed. Then she allowed her maid to assist with her toilette.
Left to her thoughts, she suffered the turmoil between the two halves of her heart. One half remained fixed in dedication to Jane and her Bennet family. The other grew stronger in devotion to her husband each passing moment. Distracted by the divide, she sunk lower into the warm tub and closed her eyes while Gwyn cascaded pitchers of water through her hair. She recalled the final bedroom chat with her favorite sister from the night before.
“Jane?” Elizabeth had said, after nudging the door left ajar. Her sister lay in her robe, snuggled under the quilt and patted the empty mattress beside her. A rush of nostalgia flooded her senses as Elizabeth flopped childishly up onto the formidable four-post bed centered in the room.
“Oh Lizzy, I know you two must leave, but it feels all too sudden,” Jane said, offering to lift the quilt to allow Elizabeth to snuggle down with her. But Mrs. Darcy declined with a shake of her head. Instead, she laid upon the top of the covering, signalling a distinctive change in how they spent time with each other. For over a decade they had slept together as sisters at Longbourn. Now married, their respective beds became too private to share.
“You cannot convince Mr. Darcy to stay another week? To Twelfth Night?” Jane asked, and Elizabeth shook her head.
“Caroline has returned,” Elizabeth pointed out.
Jane frowned at the suggestion of such a poor substitute, making her sister laugh.
“Come now, even I can say she has improved. Slightly,” Elizabeth teased, offering grace to her former adversary.
Both couples acknowledged Caroline Bingley had directly obstructed Jane's happiness with her brother, Mr. Bingley. However, Mr. Darcy, and Mr. Bingley’s other sister, Mrs. Hurst, had also supported separating the couple for Charles’ benefit nearly a year ago. Neither Bennet sister identified which agent was chief for blame, but as Elizabeth fell in love with Mr. Darcy, less responsibility affixed to him. This left Miss Caroline Bingley and Mrs. Hurst esteemed as much as one does offer a sister by marriage, and little else. There could be no increase in sisterly affection with such injurious behavior in the past.
“Charles very sternly warned her that if she returned to his household, she had to respect that I was now mistress.”
Elizabeth sighed.
“You are unhappy?” Jane asked, confused by her sister's response.
“No, I am . . .” Elizabeth paused, unaccustomed to describing her tumult of emotions. “I am weary. You've had this last month to get settled,” she added.
Jane sat up higher in the bed and fretted over matters that were not her sister's complaint. “But we have held dinners, and danced, and played cards,” Jane enumerated. “We even learned new dances!”
Elizabeth giggled, remembering how they set Miss Bingley on the pianoforte most nights when they wished to dance. Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy alternated performing as Master of Dance, instructing new reels and steps for their wives to follow. The Bennet sisters learned there existed a long history of dances they had never seen in the Meryton Assembly room nor local balls.
One particular ‘renaissance’ dance was by far the most comedic and exhilarating. After one set, Elizabeth graciously took over playing piano from Miss Bingley. The court music required little more than a few major chords in arpeggio up and down the keys, played brightly and uptempo. This allowed Miss Bingley to dance with her brother, and Jane danced with Mr. Darcy. The leaps and pantomimes of the dance, shared in good company, would be something Elizabeth would miss.
“You must share the dance with the Collinses when they come to visit. Can you imagine Sir William Lucas declaring he learned the dance himself at St. James' and the shock on poor Lady Lucas' face? Because you know, he knows everything there is to know about fashionable dancing!” Elizabeth imitated the imagined expression. Then she laughed with her sister.
A new image ceased Jane’s laughter first. “But you won't be here anymore,” she lamented.
Gently, Elizabeth consoled her elder sister. “We could not stay forever. His home is in Derbyshire.”
They shared a sigh. In unison, each remarked how the lease for Netherfield Park would expire again in nine months, and then they fell into another fit of giggles. When a knock at the door forced them to catch their breaths, Mr. Bingley poked his head in. Then promptly apologized for disturbing them.
“No, no, I was just leaving,” Elizabeth said, embracing Jane before leaving the bed.
Jane reached out to grasp Elizabeth’s hand. “Promise we will visit each other, Lizzy.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth answered, shooting a look over her shoulder at Mr. Bingley. “I don't believe either of our husbands would be senseless enough to try to prevent them,” she added, with a smile.
Mr. Bingley stammered in response. “Quite right! Quite right! I mean, no, of course we should never, that is, anytime you wish to visit our home, you are welcome, Sister. And Jane, my sweet wife, I should never dream to keep you from your family,” Mr. Bingley finished his statement as Elizabeth glanced towards the door frame to spy Mr. Darcy waiting in the hall.
“Let that put an end to it. Someone very wise once expressed to me how little an inconvenience there is in fifty miles of good road,” she said, no longer looking at her sister. Her words made her husband freeze in his pacing, and Elizabeth accepted the best wishes for her sleep from Mr. Bingley before departing. Missing Jane would hurt acutely, but gaining nights in Fitzwilliam’s arms proved a more than sufficient balm.
Now that Elizabeth sat in her bath in preparation to leave, one of her last acts as a guest at Netherfield Park, a disquieting sense of finality clenched in her chest. A monumental season in her life was at an end. Given that the property was a lease, it was unlikely she would stay in the house so consequential to both of their matches ever again. Elizabeth laughed to think of a new absurdity entirely: mayhap the next family to lease the property would have sons for Kitty and Mary.
“What was that, Ma'am?” Her maid's question interrupted Elizabeth from her melancholic thoughts.
“Nothing, Gwyn. An errant thought,” Elizabeth said, realizing she had been muttering to herself. Her maid hurried to accept more hot water for a fresh rinse.
Waiting for servants remained a new skill for Elizabeth. Thankfully, her thoughts often allowed her to keep her patience. She realized she never voiced her most important prediction to Jane.
Unlike her father's jabs at the Bingleys’ good-natures being their gravest risk to ruin, both of the Darcys strongly expected that by summer, their friend and sister would trespass on their generosity at Pemberley. A visit, they hoped, would be in search of an estate to own outright. At least, that was Elizabeth's greatest and most selfish hope. And she knew that Mr. Bingley had already raised such a possibility with his friend in their private times away from the ladies. She wished she had remembered to speak on the subject with Jane.
“Look up please, Ma'am,” Gwyn requested, as her hands worked a rich lather through Elizabeth's locks. Mrs. Darcy inhaled the sweet scent of lavender and sighed. As her maid finished washing her hair and rinsing out the suds, Elizabeth tucked her knees up to her chest.
The worst part of bathing was that it washed her husband's scent clean away. His musk of sandalwood and lemongrass had become her favorite smell in the world. And though he promised marital bliss in the half day's carriage ride to London, her logic reasoned the practicalities of such relations would not satisfy her desire to feel marked by their union. There would simply be too much clothing in the way.
Elizabeth's preoccupation with her new marital status caused Gwyn to repeat her requests of her new lady a few times to complete her dressing for travel. Adorned in a deep plum velvet traveling gown with a silver trimmed Turkish wrap lined in mink, Elizabeth spun in front of the mirror for the full effect. The gown represented not only a major break from her family, but the first sign of how different her married life would be from her sister’s.
In planning the double wedding, Mrs. Bennet had insisted on preserving a rigid definition for Jane’s precedence as not only eldest, but also engaged before Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. Her efforts in that regard directly led to a trousseau from London for Elizabeth.
According to Mrs. Bennet, Jane not only needed a new gown for the ceremony and full wedding trousseau. The mother of the bride needed a new gown, as well. Then, all of the Bennet daughters, Elizabeth included, were to have a new frock made for the wedding. Such demands on the lone mantua-maker in Meryton caused a lack of capacity for Elizabeth’s trousseau, once she became engaged less than a week later, even if the matter had not also been a cost-savings for the Bennets. The poor modiste and her two assistants stitched tirelessly for a fortnight to fill the order.
Elizabeth never complained she would receive nothing but a gown from her parents. And her father made amends by presenting her with a new travel toilette set, complete with two tortoise-shell combs. But when Mr. Darcy inadvertently learned of the disparity between the sisters from a conversation with Kitty Bennet, he arranged for an entire wardrobe to be sent from London for his new wife based solely on her measurements. The Meryton shop was happy to offer him this information, for a small consideration.
The velvet frock Elizabeth swished and swayed in before the mirror had been part of that shipment. A few of the new gowns were slightly off in the hem length, but Gwyn had made quick work of any necessary adjustments. When it all arrived the evening before the wedding, it caused an uproar at Longbourn.
First, Mrs. Bennet was incensed so many parcels were a gift for Elizabeth, not Jane. Then, she predicted the fashions would be entirely unsuitable and without taste. She did not know that Mr. Darcy, the primary custodian of his fifteen-year-old sister, Georgiana, held years of prodigious knowledge in what a lady’s closet needed. Colors and trims were easily selected by the modiste herself with a description of a lady’s complexion.
Jane and Elizabeth were incapable of feeling jealousy for one another, and Kitty and Mary hid any struggle with envy by helping to open each carefully packed box and trunk. Unable to be left out, their mother finally fawned over the superior fabrics and cuts of each garment, despite frustrations such a trousseau was not meant for Jane. As the Bennet girls had imagined balls and teas for each outfit, Mrs. Bennet grumbled how poor Jane would be excluded from London’s social scene by remaining in Hertfordshire. Elizabeth discovered she could distract her mother from begrudging her good fortune by mentioning Mr. Bingley’s lack of a London home. This set Mrs. Bennet on a rant against Mr. Bingley, making her forget her negativity towards Mr. Darcy and his generosity beyond her control.
Yet what Mr. Darcy intended as a gift sowed seeds of uncertainty in his bride’s mind. The trousseau contained twice the number of gowns than Elizabeth had ever owned in her life. Such a wardrobe represented the first break from her Bennet beginnings. Received prior to her wedding, with it came a clear message: becoming Mrs. Darcy required a radical transformation.
“Ma’am, would you like to wear any jewels?” Gwyn asked, holding out the meager display of necklaces and earrings Elizabeth had brought into the marriage.
Pausing one last time to gaze at herself in the mirror, Elizabeth tilted her chin down to cement a countenance of determination.
“No, I believe I’m ready,” Mrs. Darcy declared.
Watching a train of footmen gather her luggage, she tried hard not to laugh at an absurd thought she could share with no one. If she had understood all of the joys that came with being Mr. Darcy’s wife, she might have accepted him at his first proposal!