Mr. Darcy's Diary

‘Oh, if the attics are poor I should not contemplate it,’ said Mrs Bennet. ‘You had much better stay at Netherfield.’

Monday 22nd December

It was a wet day today. After dinner, Lady Catherine retired early. Kitty and Lydia were engaged in trimming bonnets, and Mrs Bennet was telling Kitty that when she was married she must make sure she had a house as fine as Pemberley. Mr Gardiner and Mr Bennet were playing chess, whilst Mrs Gardiner was looking through a book of engravings.

‘Would anyone care for a game of billiards?’ asked Colonel Fitzwilliam.

‘Darcy will play with you, and I will watch,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Anne, will you join us?’

Anne agreed, and the four of us went to the billiard room. We had hardly entered it, however, when Elizabeth excused herself on account of a headache, and asked me to help her back to the drawing-room.

As the door of the billiard room closed behind us, her headache seemed to disappear.

‘I think Fitzwilliam and Anne will do better without us,’ she said.

I looked at her in surprise.

‘He needs only a little encouragement to realize that he is in love with her.’

‘Fitzwilliam and Anne?’

‘I think they would suit well. Her eyes follow him whenever he is in the room, and she can scarcely talk about another subject without somehow mentioning him. For his part, he has always been fond of her, and it would be a suitable match as well as a love match. He needs to marry an heiress, and Anne is to inherit Rosings and a considerable fortune besides.’

I was even more surprised.

‘How do you know he needs to marry an heiress?’

‘He told me so.’

‘When did he do that?’

‘At Rosings, when we were all there together last Easter. I suspect it was to put me on my guard, and warn me that I must not expect an offer from him.’

‘What arrogant men we are! Both of us thinking you wanted an offer from us!’

‘Perhaps I did want one from the Colonel,’ she teased me.

‘My love, I warn you that I am a jealous husband. I will ban my cousin from Pemberley unless you tell me this minute that you did not want an offer from him,’ I returned.

‘Very well, I did not. But Anne, I think, does.’

‘It might not be a bad thing,’ I said. ‘In fact, the more I think of it, the more I am pleased with it.’

‘Lady Catherine, too, will be pleased.’

‘So you are encouraging it to please Lady Catherine?’

I asked her innocently.

‘Mr Darcy, you are becoming as impertinent as your wife!’ she teased me.

‘But I am not so sure Lady Catherine will approve,’ I said thoughtfully.

‘She cannot complain about his birth.’

‘Perhaps not, but he is a younger son, and impoverished,’ I reminded her.

‘But Anne’s fortune is big enough for two.’

‘My cousin has no house.’

‘He will live at Rosings,’ she said.

‘Sending Lady Catherine to the dower house.’

‘Whereas, if you had married Anne, she would have been the mistress of Pemberley, and Lady Catherine would have continued to be the mistress of Rosings.’

We both of us imagined how Lady Catherine would react when she learnt that she would have to move to the dower house.

‘Do you think Anne will find the courage to stand up to her mother?’ I asked.

‘It will be interesting to see.’

Thursday 25th December

Little did I think, when I celebrated Christmas with Georgiana in London last year, that the next time I celebrated it I would be married. Pemberley is looking very festive. Greenery is twined round the banisters, whilst holly, thick with red berries, adorns the pictures and mistletoe hangs from the chandeliers.

We awoke to a smell of baking, and after breakfast we attended church. The weather was so fine that Elizabeth, Jane, Bingley and I decided to walk to the church whilst the rest of our guests were conveyed there by carriage.

‘This reminds me of the walks we took when Jane and I were newly engaged,’ said Bingley, as we crunched the frost beneath our feet, ‘although then it was not so cold.’

‘You and Jane were in the happy position of being acknowledged lovers. You could spend your time talking to each other and ignoring everyone else, whilst Elizabeth and I could not even sit together.’

‘But you managed to become lost in the country lanes whenever we were out of doors,’ said Bingley with a smile.

‘The lanes were very useful,’ said Elizabeth.

‘And our mother helped you a great deal, by insisting you occupied that man,’ said Jane.

‘I have never been so mortified in my life,’ said Elizabeth, but she was laughing as she said it.

We came to the church and went in. Our guests were already assembled, and no sooner did we enter than the service began. It was lively and interesting, full of the good cheer of the occasion. Lady Catherine complained about the hymns, the sermon, the candles and the prayer books, but I am persuaded that everyone else was uplifted by the service.