Kitty Bennet's Diary (Pride and Prejudice Chronicles) (30 page)

BOOK: Kitty Bennet's Diary (Pride and Prejudice Chronicles)

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To start, my mother’s most cherished dream has come to pass—all five of her daughters are now married. Lance and I were married in the old parish church I grew up attending in Meryton. As well as my parents, of course, my Aunt and Uncle Gardiner, Lizzy and Mr. Darcy, and Mary were all there. Georgiana and Edward could not be with us, since they were already departed for France. But Georgiana sent her love. And yesterday, in fact, I received another letter from Georgiana. She is safely delivered of the baby—a healthy baby girl—whom they have named Catherine Anne.

Georgiana included a sketch of her—she looks exactly like her mother, with wispy dark curls and big, dark eyes—and wrote that she and Edward will come and visit directly their year in Paris is ended, so that I may meet my small namesake.

I confess that when I read that, I did have doubts as to whether I am entirely qualified to have a child named after me. But those sorts of thoughts belong to the old Kitty, the one who did not love—or even especially like—herself. It is still hard, sometimes, to trample down those doubts and force new and kinder thoughts of myself into their place. But Lance has kept the promise he made that day in the children’s ward; of course he has, he always keeps the promises he makes. And if I still do not believe myself quite so thoroughly delightful as he seems to find me, I
am
persuaded that I have my good points after all.

I wrote back to Georgiana that I could not wait to see her and baby Catherine both—and that I was delighted she and Edward had shown such excellent taste in selecting a name.

But I seem to have wandered rather far away from my account of our wedding. Though there is not really so very much more to tell. Jane was there, as well, with Amelia and both her Charleses, elder and younger. Jane is perfectly recovered from small Charles’s early arrival, and the baby is growing apace. In fact, he howled loudly through most of the wedding ceremony, but I scarcely heard, and certainly did not mind.

I think I said ‘I do’ before the minister had even finished speaking, I was so terrified that the whole thing—the church, the flowers, and Lance standing at the altar and looking at me with his whole heart in his blue eyes—would turn out to be only a dream.

But that was three months ago—and I now sign my letters
Catherine Dalton
—so I am beginning to be convinced that it was real. Somehow Mary was right, and the whole tangled story has against all odds turned out happily—more than happily—in the end. Or rather, in the beginning. That is another discovery I have made: weddings and marriage cannot properly be termed an
ending,
not
at all.

As for Mary—

It was actually the day before my own wedding that I came downstairs and overheard Mary in the drawing room with Rhys Williams. He had concluded his business for my Uncle Phillips in town a few weeks before and returned to Meryton. I knew he and Mary had continued to see each other since Mary had returned home, as well.

But I did not realise quite how far matters had progressed until that day—when I skidded to a halt outside the drawing room door and heard Mary, sounding more flustered than I had ever heard her, say: “I … I must warn you, I have been informed that I am not at all good at—”

She broke off with a wordless squeak, and I imagined Rhys covering her mouth with his own. There was a pause—quite a lengthy pause—and then I heard Rhys’s voice, sounding not at all hesitant or shy: “Your informant was quite wrong; I should say you are perfect.”

And Mary, her voice both dreamy and breathless at once, said, “Not
perfect
—for that, I believe I shall need more practice. A great deal more.”

She and Rhys were married last month, and are settled in their own home in Meryton.

Between my wedding and Mary’s and setting up Lance’s and my new home, I have been so busy, I have scarcely had a moment or a spare thought for diary-writing.

No, that is not entirely true. I
have
been busy. But I think that it is more … more that all the time I was writing in this book before, I was struggling to find a place for the memories—of John, of Waterloo, of everything else—where I could bear to keep them, carry them with me as a part of who I am, as Lance once said.

And now, somewhere along the way, I have.

I touched on it before—but it is not only my own opinion of myself that is changed.

The nightmares still come, sometimes. But when they do, Lance’s strong arms are there to wrap around me in the dark and chase them away. Just as Will and I do our best to chase the bleak, haunted look from Lance’s eyes when he returns from a visit with his mother—who is sadly still no less lost in her grief for her dead son.

But yes, Will is living with us. I ought really to have written that before. The week after Lance and I were married, we collected Will from the Children’s Hospital and brought him to live in our downstairs bedroom. Downstairs so that we could easily shift him into a push-chair and wheel him outside on fine spring days.

Lizzy, with typical energy, has written to tell me that there is a parish near Pemberley which stands in need of a rector, and that the position is Lance’s if he should want it, since it lies within Mr. Darcy’s gift. I think Lance will accept it, too, eventually. And I shall love to be settled so near to Lizzy and Jane. But we have agreed to stay in London for as long as Will needs us.

We are not sure how long that may be. Perhaps not very long. Will is no worse—but no better, either. We have had very nearly every physician in London to see him, but none can offer any miracles in the shape of a cure. I could be angry. Well, if I am honest, sometimes I am. But for the most part, I try my best not to be.

That is how Lance’s mother has lost her way, it seems to me—wasting her life and her strength by being angry with what cannot be changed.

Life is hard; terrible tragedies occur every day, and I still cannot pretend to know why. Why one child is born with a twisted spine and another thrives, why one man—or one brother—lives, and another dies on the battlefield. But I
have
learned how love can bloom, even in the midst of misery and pain; I have learned what a gift each day can be, if only we are brave enough to reach out our hands and take what life offers.

Just last week, I was able to call on Mrs. Ayres and see her shed tears that were part sad, but part happy, as well—because I had promised her that if the baby due to arrive in about seven months’ time is a boy, we are to name him John.

And for me—for now—all those are miracles enough indeed.

Author’s Note

I began writing the
Pride and Prejudice Chronicles
chiefly because I loved
Pride and Prejudice
and so very much wanted to know what happened to the wonderful cast of characters after the story’s close. Kitty Bennet’s story has been especially interesting and fun to write, because unlike other characters in
Pride and Prejudice
such as Georgiana Darcy, we actually know what Jane Austen imagined for Kitty after the conclusion of the book. According to family legend, Jane Austen told her brother James that after the final chapters of
Pride and Prejudice
, Kitty eventually “was satisfactorily married to a clergyman near Pemberley.”

That statement made me wonder about Kitty a great deal; becoming a clergyman’s wife is quite a change from the “weak-spirited” and “irritable” girl Jane Austen describes in the original book. I began trying to imagine why and how Kitty’s character might have deepened and matured. What could have finally made her grow up?

My version of Kitty Bennet’s story began in Volume 2 of Georgiana Darcy’s Diary,
Pemberley to Waterloo
, in which Kitty accompanies Georgiana to Brussels during the Battle of Waterloo.
Kitty Bennet’s Diary
concludes Kitty’s story, and—I hope—gives a satisfactory possible answer to those questions.

We in fact know, too, what Jane imagined for Mary Bennet after the conclusion of
Pride and Prejudice
; also according to James Austen, Mary Bennet married one of her uncle Phillips’s clerks. As phrased by James Austen, this was not an especially advantageous marriage (a mere clerk rather than an aristocratic man of wealth and property) and a bit of a punishment for the pompous and bookish Mary. But since I have a soft spot for her character, I’ve taken the liberty of making the match a happy one.

It was an absolute privilege for me to be able to write this book, bringing Kitty and Mary to the story endings Jane Austen imagined for them. I hope with all my heart that Jane Austen would approve of the road I’ve had the Bennet sisters travel to get there.

In conclusion, I want to thank Laura Masselos for the absolutely brilliant job she did of illustrating
Kitty Bennet’s Diary
. We agreed in talking about Kitty’s character than her drawing style would be something along the lines of the comical cartoons popular in newspapers during the Regency era—but the final illustrations were even funnier and more perfect for Kitty’s character than I could have hoped. Thank you so much, Laura, for bringing both Georgiana and Kitty to life through your drawings. I can’t imagine the books without your magic touch.

AnnaElliottBooks.com

Dear Reader—

Thank you for reading
Kitty Bennet’s Diary
.
If you have enjoyed this book and would like to see more like it, please consider reviewing it
on your favorite sites and telling your literary friends about it. Plans for future projects
will be based in part on reader feedback and the success of previous projects. It would give me
great joy to write what you want to read.

If you have not yet read the first two volumes
in the
Pride and Prejudice Chronicles
, you may wish to view them at your
favorite retailer
.
Fans of historical fiction may also enjoy
The Good Knight
, a medieval mystery from my writing partner
Sarah Woodbury
.

A current list of Anna Elliott titles can be found at
AnnaElliottBooks.com
.

To stay informed of new releases, you may sign up for an infrequent
newsletter
.

AnnaElliottBooks.com

Family Trees

There are three families involved in the
Pride and Prejudice Chronicles
:
   -
Bennet / Gardiner / Phillips
   -
Darcy / Fitzwilliam / de Bourgh
   -
Bingley / Hurst

Please note that in some cases,
Jane Austen did not specify characters’ first names.
Uncanonical first names (e.g. Colonel [Edward] Fitzwilliam) and
invented characters are
shown in square brackets, as are births and marriages
that occurred after the conclusion of
Pride and Prejudice
.
Jane Austen used both Phillips and Philips to refer to the
Bennet sisters’ aunt and uncle. Because the Project Gutenberg
edition of
Pride and Prejudice
primarily uses Phillips,
I have adopted the same spelling.
A comprehensive genealogical summary of the original
Pride and Prejudice
characters is available at
pemberley.com
.