A Wife for Mr. Darcy

away, Darcy poured himself a brandy and took a chair in front of the fire, and with the first taste of liquor, he felt every muscle in his body relax. It was over. It was finally over. The peril had passed, and he was a free man. Now nothing stood between Elizabeth and him.

    Ordinarily, Georgiana would have come downstairs to find out what had happened, but she was nowhere to be seen. But there was no mystery there, and her brother rang the bell for Rogers.
    “Ask my sister to join me. Immediately.”
    From the way Will was sitting in front of the fireplace, with all of his attention being directed toward the fire, Georgiana could not tell how things had gone with Sir John, but she suspected that her meddling in the Montford affair had been revealed.
    Darcy let her stew for a few more minutes before beginning. “You have been busy, Georgiana.”
    Georgie shook her head, pretending that she did not know what he was talking about. She was not prepared to admit to anything as she might make an unnecessary confession.
    “Do not shake your head at me. The friend you visited yesterday was Letitia Montford. How very clever of you to arrange for a tea and share the guest list with Mrs. Redford. Of course, all of those invited to this imaginary get-together were ladies with whom Miss Montford would not associate. As a result, Sir John wants me to keep as far away from his daughter as possible, lest I contaminate her by insisting she mingle with people not of her class.”
    “Oh, Will!” Georgiana ran to her brother and kissed him, and then she did a bit of a dance to show him how happy she was. “It worked. I did not know if it would, but once I realized I had an ally in Mrs. Redford, I thought it might. And it did. It did work.”
    “You interfered in my personal affairs. Again.”
    “But you cannot complain of something that turned out so well.”
    “I most certainly can. What you did, young lady, was very wrong, beginning with your part in arranging to have Elizabeth go to Pemberley.”
    “But if it had not been for our conspiracy, you would have gone to Kent to visit Anne and not Pemberley, where you waltzed with Elizabeth. It turned out perfectly. Better than any of us had reason to hope.”
    “Lucky for you that it did. However, I insist you stay out of my affairs. I believe you have benefited from beginner’s luck, but you could end up doing more harm than good. Sir John has a temper, and this might have turned out quite differently.”
    “I thought about that. But Sir John would not risk alienating you with a display of temper, and our concern that this whole affair might damage your reputation or cause you to lose friends was never a real threat. You do have a reputation, and it is spotless. Besides, you have more and better friends than Sir John could ever hope to, including people such as the Bingleys and the Gardiners.”
    “Well, apparently Letitia was very much in favor of ending our unorthodox courtship. Richard informed me that he has learned from gossip at his club that she prefers Jasper Wiggins to me in any event.”
    “Jasper Wiggins? Really? I know his sister, Adele.”
    “Georgie, leave it alone. The young Wiggins will hear of Miss Montford’s freedom soon enough from Sir John.” Looking at her with a stern eye, he repeated, “Leave it alone.”
    But Darcy could see the wheels spinning and suspected there was little he could do to stop his sister from plotting and planning. She should be a novelist. But then he smiled, and Georgie knew exactly what he was going to say: “Tomorrow, we go to Hertfordshire.”

Knowing that Mr. Bennet and Lydia would soon arrive at Longbourn, there was a tension at the breakfast table that was palpable. Each of the sisters had their own reasons for being upset. Mary thought that to sneak off with a man in the dead of night was immoral. Kitty was upset because she knew she would have behaved better than Lydia if she had been allowed to go to Brighton, while Jane thought of the unhappiness Lydia had caused her parents. But because of Mr. Darcy, it was Lizzy who had something to lose, and for that reason, she was unsympathetic to anything her mother had to say on her youngest sister’s behalf.
    Because Lydia was Mrs. Bennet’s favorite, her mother was prepared to forgive and forget and to chalk up all her actions to youthful indiscretion. However, there was still an underlying anger because she had been made to suffer unnecessarily, and Lizzy, not Lydia,