I sat at the dressing table next to my lifelong best friend, nervous and anxious and filled with trepidations such that I was near to fainting, or worse yet acting like Kitty described her mother's previous behavior in detail when I got in a mood like this. I could well remember her mother at the Netherfield ball ten years past, and we loved to joke about it, but when I met Mrs. Bennet five years ago, free of her husband and living her dotage under the watchful eye of her daughters, she had calmed down considerably and I actually quite liked her now. I could never ever in my wildest imaginings have predicted it back during that ball, nor during the dark days of the few years that followed it.

I can well remember when Charles came for me in Scarborough with Jane. It nearly kills me to think of the things I said to him, to her, to everyone I knew. Charles came back to my aunt's house with a new wife, and frankly a new set of what the Spanish like to call 'cojones', although Kitty either chastises me or giggles with me when I use such a word, or some even worse ones I picked up from Charles' friend Mr. Stockton. His alteration is so painfully obvious to me now, but I had no idea of what he was about then except he seemed to want to ruin my life, and he went about it with an implacable stubbornness that bordered on insanity. It would be a very very very long and painful set of years before he was willing to trust me with the story of how he grew them.

I cannot even pretend to think of what I said to Elizabeth back then, when I found she had snatched my so-called prize from right under my nose, and I am still somewhat shocked that she repaid hate with love, gave back acceptance when I gave censure, and somehow taught me what it means to be a true lady. Where she got her strength back then I have no idea, and why she kept inviting me back to Pemberley time and time again was a mystery I was completely unable to unravel.

It had taken a lot of time, and a lot of patience from my new extended family, but finally at long last, I was broken down to nothing and brought back from the dead. Nobody else knows what I tried to do the night Kitty stumbled on me and brought me back from the very edge of the abyss, and neither of us plan to enlighten anybody anytime soon, but it was the breaking point. From that night, we have been nearly inseparable, and I for the longest time had no idea if she was not ready to be married, or if she was just not ready to throw me out on my own.

Kitty was the last of the Bennet sisters still unmarried, but it was certainly not for lack of suitors. They swarmed to her like bees to new spring flowers, and she just deflected them with the greatest of ease. She was much like a good batsman, deflecting one man off in one direction, and another off in another. Kind hearted and sincere men got the gentlest of releases from her attention, and eight times out of ten an introduction to one or two ladies much more suited to them. Rogues or cads she was perfectly well capable of taking care of herself, but she usually let Lydia deal with them, just because Lydia enjoyed it so much. I can say that Lydia and I had more than one screaming match back in the early days, and I always suspected Kitty would send Lydia deliberately to wind me up, and then she would come along and calm me back down. I have no idea why Kitty took me on as a project, but it was some years before her considerable efforts were rewarded by first my grudging respect, and then my friendship and then my love.

We were standing one day at a ball, nearly five years after I met her and possibly my tenth season; in the same grand ballroom in Rosings where all the Bennet girls had been married (the Bennets are either traditionalists or superstitious, but they all adopted the same ceremony). With my thirtieth year behind me, I was actually distractedly listening to Kitty while wondering at the relative merits of one spinster's cap versus another, when both of our worlds were turned upside down in less than a minute.

The two gentlemen were that rarest of commodities, and by that, I do not mean amiable and well‑mannered gentlemen, because it turns out that the world is full of them if you know where to look and you do not scare them off by acting like a badger. No, I mean they were identical twins, and it was nearly impossible to tell them apart. They both asked us to dance, and I have to say both of our hearts were probably lost before the music even started, and we were completely hopelessly besotted before the set was over. A second set was requested, and that naturally required the gentlemen to call the next day, and the next and the next. Our courtships were slow and steady, both of us I think afraid of committing the last bit of ourselves to another. Our beaus were not alike in temperament, but both had by some good fortune picked the one of us who best suited him, and they gradually turned our initial infatuation into true respect, and then into love.

Now, here we were sitting next to each other, getting ready to go and join our intendeds in that same ballroom at Rosings. How Lady Catherine (I never could quite mange to call her Aunt) managed to handle my ill manners during those first few years is even more of a mystery than Lizzy, but I have learned to accept such things. Whether she did it for her Bennet nieces, for me, or for her own reasons I could probably find out by asking, but I had not the courage and she did not press.

Our intelligence indicated that our intendeds planned to make a bit of a show of the wedding, being of a humorous bent, but we were much cleverer than they and we had our own surprise worked up. Kitty and I had identical dresses. Same color dress, same style, same cut, same ribbons, same lace (long sleeves of course), same stockings right down to the same color for the ribbon holding them up, same shoes. In honor of the fun, our maids had even dressed identically this morning, and did up our hair with the exact same style, the exact same number of small pearls, and the exact same combs. It was to be the grandest affair, and we even thought we might just walk up to the wrong groom just as one last joke on the world.

As we came down to go into the same ballroom we had met our beaus in, Lady Catherine was being helped in by Anne's husband, Thomas with their boy and their girl trailing happily behind. The two were quiet and studious most of the time… at least when Lady Catherine did not put them up to mischief, and I liked them immensely. Lady Catherine stopped by and gave us both a small kiss on the cheeks, clearly in her element and as happy as it was possible to be. With Betsy Clymer's wedding just a year before, we were the last of her nieces that she hoped to see well settled before she had her own reckoning. She walked quite poorly now, favoring her hip more and more each year, but we all hoped she would grace us for some more years.

Fitzwilliam and Lizzy came in right behind Lady Catherine, and went in to try to settle their two girls and two boys down, before Fitzwilliam came back to give Kitty away. Lizzy was working on bringing their brood up to five, and would be entering confinement in a month or two. The two girls were spitting images of Lizzy and Kitty, and I would say the two boys most resembled Charles and Richard. For obvious reasons, the practice of naming the firstborn male after the mother's surname had been consigned to the rubbish, and Fitzwilliam certainly did not regret its passing. His heir Samuel was a studious boy just like his father, and nobody had the slightest doubt he would do well. The girls were delightful, and I planned to 'borrow' them from time to time if I could, although like most women, I hoped to one day have one of my own.

Charlotte and Richard were already sitting down with their own three. Their oldest daughter Emma was the oldest of that generation, and everything delightful it was possible for a girl to be. Kitty and I amused ourselves trying to come up with better descriptions for her. The two boys I did not know quite as well, but thought well of them. The eldest was to be the heir to Longbourn, and he seemed a boy that was up to the task. It was kind of funny how easy the heir situation in Longbourn had been to solve once Lady Catherine thought about it for five minutes. When Mr. Bennet passed, it was split evenly between his daughters and wife, and Fitzwilliam simply bought all the pieces, put it back together and gave it to Richard and Charlotte. I had never truly understood what happened in the year thirteen to make him do that. I could have asked, but Kitty told me I probably did not want to know, and I was content to take her at her word.

Mary sat there with her three daughters wearing the spectacles that had appeared on her head about five years before, next to her husband, Professor Smithson who had nearly identical spectacles and the same studious air, but let me tell you… if you wanted to have an argument with either of them on any subject whatsoever, you had better have your head on straight. They were like two peas in a pod, and their girls were probably going to change the world someday. I just hoped I would be around to see it.

Georgiana was chatting with her sitting next to Anne. Georgiana's boys were probably somewhere teasing Lizzy's girls, or they might be hunting for pirates or highwaymen. They were the most adventurous boys I knew, and Fitzwilliam had an astounding amount of diversion winding them up before sending them back home to her.

Lydia was not attending, as she was in Paris with her husband and two girls and I understood one more on the way. Her husband was a diplomat, and I suspect he either started or stopped wars every week by threatening other ambassadors with Lydia.

And so it was, with my big family that had managed to save me either from the ghost of my father or from myself depending on how you looked at it. They all looked at Kitty and I standing there resplendent in our identical dresses, and I knew for a certain fact that they all loved me and their love was the only thing between me and an endless black hole of despair. When my life had come so close to being over and done with, they had saved me, just because I was family, and just because they could.

We approached our beaus who were standing with the same besotted looks they had when they approached us at the dance, almost certainly matching our own expressions. Charles handed me off to Thomas, and Fitzwilliam handed Kitty off to James.

Archbishop Brown had come out of retirement just for this ceremony… you understand, superstition and all that. With nearly eighty years he was not as spry as he once was, but he still kept a proprietary eye on Mrs. McCarthy and if there were not scones at the wedding breakfast, I would not want to be in the same house.

Nervous and excited, I looked over at Kitty and saw the same expression. She borrowed one of my hands from my intended to give it a squeeze, and then left me to the love of my life while she devoted her attention to her own.

The archbishop was also a traditionalist, so he had the same Book of Common Prayer he had used to marry all of the Bennets including Betsy. It had been his fathers before him, and he had to borrow it from his grandson for the ceremony.

He gave us all a good look, and a little mischievous wink for the identical brides, opened the book and along with it, the next chapter of our lives.

"Dearly Beloved…"

~~~ Finis ~~~

A/N: Well my friends, we come to the end of another story. I hope you enjoyed it. If you laughed a little, cried a little or any or all of the above then I am well satisfied. If it made you think just a little bit about what goes on in the world, it would be much more than I could hope for.

Every bad thing I mention in this book happens here in our world, right here, right now every day. You can see the attention going in waves, and there are always villains, always heroes and always those caught between the two.

In much of the world, women and children's status is the same or worse than that described here. In the western world it is better than it has ever been in history, mostly because a lot of brave women and men have fought for it for a long time, but there is still a long way to go before we have a truly just society. There will always be those who wish to prey on the weak, and use politics, power, money, status, wealth to make a good supply of the weak to prey upon.

You see it in the papers every day, powerful men who have gotten away with it with impunity for decades. Those who think power and wealth and privilege earn them rights to hurt people. You see it among more ordinary people with domestic abuse calls that are deprioritized or not reported in the first place, victims that make excuses for their abusers or people trapped in abusive relationships by threats, poverty, money, habit or pressure. You also see a lot of blaming the victim, even in our modern world.

We also see many people trying to change things for the better by acting better in word and deed, or by exposing predators or helping victims or trying to change the conversation or even just changing societal bias. It is a slow process. I would hope that we are all doing our best to help the world along towards that better and more just place, even if it is only through moderation of our own speech and conduct.

I of course do not have enough conceit to think I materially changed the world, but perhaps, just perhaps, I may have given a few people a little something to think about. Words Matter, so maybe a few people will be less likely to use denigrating words, or toss around phrases that belittle other people and call it 'locker room talk' or 'guy talk' or any of the other euphemisms. Perhaps one person somewhere might be less likely to use harsh measures with their children, including words.

I'll get off my soapbox now, and bid you adieu.

If you found the story to a good use of your time, then I am well satisfied.

Thank you for reading, and I have much more coming so stay tuned. If you have any thoughts on it, I love reviews and if you wish to do it privately via PM I am happy to get those as well. I write to be read, and hopefully to have some small impact on my readers.

Wade