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ado that only their singular household could generate. The Bingley children stayed with the Darcys much of this time. Despite their cherubic aspects, the Bingley children were two parts hellion—with a penchant for making signs of derision at each other behind the notice of adults. When at last they were returned to their own beds, everyone toasted the move.
    Darcy pronounced, “Five miles of good road is a perfect distance to make the Bingleys excellent neighbours.”
    Aflutter with excitement, Jane told Elizabeth, “Mr. Darcy told Charles that it is not Howgrave Manor at all. It was called that only of late. When it was built it was known as Deering Lodge.”
    Although Jane was wholly unaware of it, Mr. Darcy was very-nearly as pleased to have learnt that information as had she. He liked the Howgrave name no better than the man—and he despised the man. Speaking Howgrave’s name regularly would have been a test. Elizabeth shared in her sister’s pleasure, for she disliked Howgrave as well. This was in part because Darcy did, but also because Howgrave had contrived to court Georgiana without Darcy’s approval.
    “I do hope returning the manor to its historical appellation does in no way offend Sir Howgrave,” Jane worried.
    Elizabeth reminded her sister, “I am most certain that if he does not care for the alteration, he is quite free to call Kirkland Hall any name he chooses.”
    As everyone else was satisfied with the move, Mrs. Bennet was much in want of someone to scold for it. She decided to find it unfitting to go about renaming ancient homes (and did not care for her opinion to be controverted by the facts involved). In fortune, Mrs. Bennet was unable to deliver her reprimands to Jane in person. She penned missives whilst in repose beneath a stately tree in the park next to Longbourn as the illustrious painter Sir Robert Morland took her likeness. (Indeed, Mr. Darcy’s particular instructions to that man had included the proviso that should Morland find himself unable to hurry the portrait; he would be well-rewarded.) Mrs. Bennet had complained of the painter and his habits unceasingly whilst he was ensconced at Pemberley at work on the Darcy commission. However, she minded her tongue when her likeness was at stake.
    As he disliked the general lack of elegance of Longbourn and its cramped rooms, Morland took that as good an excuse as any to take lodgings elsewhere. No one, from Hertfordshire to Derbyshire, was heard to blame him.
    With that one obstacle to family felicity settled, the Darcys were happy to take each new modification to their number as they came.
    The most astonishing came from a most unlikely source.
    To the surprise of all, Georgiana had returned from her unexpected confinement at Rosings Park bearing two newborns rather than the one. They were cousins born but days apart. One baby girl was born to the Colonel Fitzwilliams; the other was the child of the late Lady Anne. (In fortune, Beecher had not kept his threat to name his motherless daughter after Elizabeth—that had been another ludicrous ploy.)
    As often bechanced, the baby had been called after her grandmother. Her name was Catherine, but they called her Cathy. Both girls would become lovely little toddlers and good playmates for Janie.
    Georgiana’s rescue of Anne’s baby from the cold halls of Rosings seemed to be an equitable ending to that sad event. To those who knew her as a woman demanding to supervise the lives of all those about her (exempting neither kith nor kin), obtaining Lady Catherine’s approval of such a scheme had seemed unfathomable.
    When told that her ladyship had, indeed, acquiesced to her granddaughter’s relocation, no one was more astonished than Elizabeth. (Darcy may have been astonished, but it pleased him to believe that all was well.) She was not so certain. There had never been a detail too small for Lady Catherine’s supervision. She gave irrefutable judgements on the clothes others wore, the