In December of this year, 2020, I am moving to Arkansas, Oark specifically, to join my parents who are moving there this summer onto 22 acres of land that has been in my family for over 100 years. My daughter will the sixth generation Skaggs (though she is a West, Skaggs is my mother’s family name) to live on the land and I will be fifth-generation. I have held such delight in planning this homestead and rereading this chapter reminds me how very fortunate I am to have both of my parents with me. I had mourned for 2 years now the loss of my marriage, and it’s definitely time to start finding happiness in the blessings still around me!
XOXOXO Elizabeth Ann West
Chapter 12 - A Winter Wonder, a Pride and Prejudice Variation
At the end of Christmas services, the large Pemberley party divided into numerous carriages just as they had arrived. The lead carriage holding Mr. and Mrs. Darcy and Georgiana Darcy began to wheel away as the church bells still pealed to celebrate the birth of the Savior. Instead of turning for the main road back to the house, the Darcy carriage remained true and continued driving past most of the estate. On a far corner of the property lay a bluff overlooking the River Derwent dividing the lands of the Darcy and Cavendish families. The carriage slowed as Elizabeth marveled at the rustic beauty of the area, yet a foot path clearly marked a trail up the hill’s rocky face.
Bouquets of roses in both of the ladies’ arms, Mr. Darcy carefully escorted his wife and sister up the small slippery path to the top of the hill. Elizabeth Darcy looked back briefly and found herself struck by the solemn faces of the driver and footmen, standing with their heads bowed and hats off their heads, despite the bitter, cold weather. Turning her face back into the direction of the crisp wind assaulting their progress, the walk was not too terribly long before a small row of ornate headstones, in various conditions of weathering, greeted them in gray solace.
“Your willingness to brave the cold and join us, Elizabeth, is greatly appreciated. Georgie and I visited our mother with Father every Christmas. After he joined her,” Darcy cleared his throat, his voice becoming slightly softer, “we continued the tradition.”
“What better reason is there to brave any sort of weather than to pay respects to one’s parents?” Elizabeth pushed her personal feelings of wishing her father’s grave were nearer to the back of her mind. She did not need to vocalize her own pain in order to find empathy for her husband and sister. Though time ebbed the sharp pain of mourning, the full ache never left a heart.
Upon reaching the elder Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, Elizabeth followed Georgiana’s lead and placed her bouquet of roses at the headstone of Mrs. Darcy as Georgiana placed hers in front of her father’s headstone. Stepping back, Elizabeth stood slightly behind Fitzwilliam as the two siblings wished their parents a happy Christmas and began to talk of their lives.
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Chapter 12 (cont'd) - A Winter Wonder, a Pride and Prejudice Variation
Georgiana spoke first, detailing how much she looked forward to the day when she would debut in society and complimented her brother’s marriage by wishing to find someone to love of her own.
“Though I did not see much of your marriage, Father, to Mother, Brother has described it to have been a happy one. I wish you could see how happy Fitzwilliam is with Elizabeth, and Pemberley feels alive once more as we have it full of family. I hope—” Georgiana looked off into the distance across the river, defying the wind whipping up in fervor. She began again.
“I hope when my time comes, I shall not settle for any match less than the two marriages I have to serve as an example. And though it will pain me to debut without you, or Father there, I promise to make you proud, Mother, and carry on the responsibilities any true Darcy must face.” Georgiana’s thin gloved fingers traced the name of her father on his headstone.
Elizabeth’s breath caught in her throat as her husband reached forward to hold his sister’s hand. The bright, young woman glanced back to offer a wan smile, then looked at her brother’s wife and smiled as a new thought came to her.
“And if you should happen to have made an acquaintance with Elizabeth’s father and sister, please share our happy tidings with them.” Feeling self-conscious at the end of her speech, Georgiana bowed her head and remained inspecting the brown withered grass beneath them as Fitzwilliam cleared his throat to make his own confessions.
Hearing her sister’s kindness towards her own dearly departed relations, Elizabeth Darcy managed to swallow the lump that formed at the back of her throat and keep her emotions in check. But the pricks of sadness stung the edges of her eyes most fiercely. She did not wish to disassemble into a fit of tears as her husband and his sister enjoyed one of their few yearly visits to their parents.
Fitzwilliam surprised Elizabeth by speaking in a clear, crisp voice addressing his father first with an update on the prosperity of their family’s holdings and confessing to his memory an uneasiness of the changes he saw in the country’s economy. Elizabeth’s ears perked up at his mention of diversifying the estate’s wealth in an attempt to stave off the negative repercussions of political uncertainty. His words made her think of the Fitzwilliams in a new light. Where previously she had felt her husband was correct in holding them responsible for their own financial difficulties, it dawned on her that perhaps some compassion might be shed. For was not the investment in America an attempt to diversify?
WHAT A DEAL!
A kiss at the Netherfield Ball . . .
Three Dates with Mr. Darcy is a bundle of: An exclusive story, Much to Conceal, a novella that imagines what if Elizabeth confessed to Jane in London that Mr. Darcy proposed in Kent?
A Winter Wrong, the first novella in the Seasons of Serendipity series that imagines what if Mr. Bennet died at the very beginning of Pride and Prejudice?
By Consequence of Marriage, the first novel in the Moralities of Marriage series that wonders what if Mr. Darcy never saved his sister Georgiana from Wickham’s clutches?
Elizabeth Ann West’s Pride and Prejudice variations have enthralled more than 100,000 readers in over 90 countries! A proud member of the Jane Austen Fan Fiction community since the mid-2000s, she hopes you will join her in being happily Darcy addicted!
Chapter 12 (cont'd) - A Winter Wonder, a Pride and Prejudice Variation
Her thoughts were interrupted when she felt Fitzwilliam’s arm nudge her forward and his other hand rested protectively around her growing midsection. As he spoke of his dreams for fatherhood and prayed that his parents would watch over her during the labor and delivery, fat, hot crocodile tears cascaded down Elizabeth’s cheeks. Her husband’s tenderness never ceased to seize her heart and when his prayers were finished, she involuntarily tugged on his lapels to bring his head closer so that she might bestow a kiss upon his lips. The kiss felt sweeter than ever as her heart cataloged the gathering of three generations: one in the past, one of the present, and the future growing in her womb.
Unexpectedly, the Darcy siblings looked to Elizabeth for anything she might want to say to the graves of two people she had never met. But the situation did not feel uncomfortable. Pouring out her heart, Elizabeth thanked Fitzwilliam’s parents for such a loving and noble son and promised to take care of both of them for as long as she might be permitted.
“The legacy you have left in both of them make me privileged to say my name as Darcy, and I wish you had both been with us longer to have seen the amazing stewards of Pemberley you raised. God’s grace is great.”
Feeling relieved, and not overwhelmed with melancholy, the trio carefully tracked back down the hill to the waiting carriage. Georgiana skipped ahead as her natural height granted her long legs to make short work of the winding path. Mrs. Darcy gripped her husband’s arm with a tightness he had not often witnessed in his wife’s daring life. The truth of the matter was that the path felt much steeper on the way down than it had on the way up. Elizabeth found herself terrified of a fall and lacking somewhat in her balance.
“Easy, easy. There’s no rush, my darling” Fitzwilliam coaxed his wife as he felt her arm tremble.
His Lizzie laughed. “My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me. My balance, however, cannot say to perform similarly. I shall indeed take all the time I need to climb off this mountain.”
“I heartily agree with your sentiments, but take exception to this paltry bluff being called a mountain. If it is mountains you should like to climb, Mrs. Darcy, I am happy to oblige once the babe is born.”
“I find perfect satisfaction in my distinction as a great walker. There is no need to add the accolade of a great climber.” The Darcys snuggled closer in their side-by-side ramble down the last of the hill, so very near to the carriage that the incline no longer provided a burden to Mrs. Darcy.
Before accepting her husband’s assistance up and into the carriage, Elizabeth paused and looked at her husband very thoughtfully.
“I know you wish to help your aunt and uncle in your own time, but could the Earl’s mistake be partly the result of his own attempts to diversify and protect his future generations?” Elizabeth pecked her husband’s cheek, and used the door and his sturdy arm to pull and lift herself into the carriage.
Darcy’s cheek tingled as always from his wife’s affections, but the startling question needled his brain and his heart to at least consider a new perspective on the Fitzwilliam family ruin. But there was history his wife did not know of, and unless certain habits of his relatives changed, it would be quite some time before Darcy opened up his own purse for yet another bailout.
You’ve been reading A Winter Wonder
Confronting her first trials at Pemberley, Elizabeth takes on the tenant Christmas party, sidestepping her mother’s meddling, and finding a way to support the needs of all of her family members. But finding time alone with her husband, Mr. Darcy, in a house full of people is a challenge, even at an estate as large as Pemberley! As old secrets bear fruit, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth stand united and find support in each other. With a babe on the way, and surprise visitors, there may just be more than one winter wonder to behold.
The fifth season in the Seasons of Serendipity, a historical family saga that imagines how the story of Pride and Prejudice might have changed had Mr. Bennet died of illness before Mr. Collins arrived.
A Winter Wonder, Seasons of Serendipity a Pride and Prejudice novella variation series
Release Date: July 3, 2015
232 pages in print.
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A Jane-of-all-trades, mistress to none! Elizabeth Ann West is the author of 8 novels and 11 novellas, 18 of which are story variations of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice.