Page 128 of The Matchmaker’s Mistake

“For you.”

“For both of us.”

Uncle Gardiner raised his glass. “Then it is settled. A double wedding at Longbourn. That is, provided the brides agree, the bridegrooms survive, and my sister does not attempt to invite everyone in Hertfordshire, for the church will not hold so many.”

“To the brides,” said Aunt Gardiner.

“To the bridegrooms,” Lady Anne added.

Jane lifted her glass. “To Easter.”

Mr. Aldridge touched his glass to hers.

Around the table, the planning was beginning. Uncle Gardiner was calculating the journey with four small children. Lady Anne was offering advice on the wedding, thrilled to be included and her talents put to use. Mamma, once informed, would doubtless be ecstatic about Lady Anne’s help and then claim the whole affair as her own triumph.

Mr. Darcy’s knee rested against Elizabeth’s beneath the table.

Between her mother and his, they had been presented as marriage prospects for a great many people, but never one another.

He had chosen her anyway.

Elizabeth raised her glass to his and said, very quietly. “To the match no one arranged.”

CHAPTER 31

Epilogue

14 January 1813

The knocker was on the door.

For six months, the door at Mount Street had shown nothing but an empty plate and four screw holes. Tonight there was a great brass lion’s head knocker upon it, polished to gleaming.

Fitzwilliam handed Elizabeth down from the carriage and offered her his arm. When they reached the front door, a card had been wedged into the frame. In Lady Anne’s handwriting, it said, Do not use the knocker. It is only just repaired.

“Your mother,” she said, amused, “has put up the knocker but is not allowing anyone to use it.”

“Do you know,” he said, nodding to the footmen stationed outside instead, “that she made my uncle write to Lord Grosvenor’s surveyor for leave to restore the garden windows only after she had already restored them?”

The door was opened for them. “Whatever for?” Elizabeth inquired.

Fitzwilliam shook his head. “I imagine so she could say that she had applied. The letter of the law is not something with which my mother is much concerned.”

Elizabeth loved Lady Anne. She was clever and witty and somehow also kind. But what Elizabeth liked best about her husband’s mother was how she brought out the boy in him.

He gave up his hat and greatcoat, then offered his arm to her. She leaned into his shoulder. “You seem displeased to be here.”

“I am not.”

“You are wearing the same expression you did last season when your mother invited eighty people to the house after she had promised there would be only twenty.”

He shook his head. “She told me that tonight there would be one hundred at most, which was already too high a number, but when I inquired, her secretary informed me that two hundred six were invited.”

“It is a rout, dearest. They will not all be in the house at the same time.”

“A fortunate thing, for it is not large enough to hold them all.” He looked up, where a candle was burning in every window. “When may we go home?”

“Fitzwilliam,” she said with a small laugh, shaking her head, “we cannot absent ourselves. Your mother opening her house is the very first event of the season.” This had been intentional, no doubt, which was why the party had been planned for the middle of January even when it was clear not all the repairs would be completed.