"Mama, you will not believe what that horrid man said about me!"

"What did he say, my darling?" Elizabeth Darcy asked her eldest daughter, Caroline, while her husband looked on in amusement, assuming it could not be too terrible, since the boy was apparently still standing somewhere, her fists were unbruised, and her gown lacked any blood.

Caroline complained. "He said I cannot tempt him to dance!"

It was probably less than ideal when that particular bit of intelligence was delivered right while Mr. and Mrs. Darcy were sipping on punch. It produced the unfortunate effect of both members of the party spitting punch all over the other, while breaking into raucous laughter. It would have been terribly embarrassing if it was the first time it had happened, but the Darcys were widely considered to be slightly eccentric by the members of the ton. Even after 25 years of marriage, they were generally judged as entirely too affectionate, and too willing to show their affection. They were also well known to enjoy a good joke from time to time, so nobody would have thought anything of it.

Mrs. Darcy had taken the ton by storm when she entered the first circles, and they had never really looked back. The Darcys had, quite early on, abandoned the gentry's traditional disdains of both trade and intelligent wives. They were currently part of a large business empire that encompassed Pemberley, Rosings, Matlock, railroads, canals, shipping, banking, stores, and another dozen or so businesses in England, the Continent, and the Americas. Everyone knew that if you wanted to know how to operate a business, and you were not talking to a Darcy, a Gardiner, a Baker, or (if desperate), a Fitzwilliam, then you were probably on the wrong track.

Unfortunately, even though, as the eldest, Miss Caroline Darcy had been subjected to entirely too much of her parents' sense of humor, this particular explosion was just too much. She stomped her foot, in a way that Mrs. Darcy always asserted was just like her Aunt Lydia when she was young.

Caroline had a difficult time believing the Countess of Woodbury had ever been anything other than entirely proper. Aunt Lydia was well known as a rigid taskmaster and stickler for decorum. She never let any of her four children out of line, even for a minute – or at least, that was what they always told Caroline when they occasionally got together, once every year or so.

Mrs. Darcy had four sisters, and the Darcys had apparently found husbands for all them, but they were not particularly close. Elizabeth told her daughter they had been like peas in a pod as children, but such bonds do not always survive to adulthood. The Darcy children never questioned it, and the Darcy parents never explained it.

Between the six children of her namesake, Caroline Baker, who lived less than fifteen miles away in Derbyshire; and the three children of her Uncle Richard, the Earl of Matlock, who were only twenty five miles; her best friend Miriam Hervey and her three sisters; and the half-dozen Bingleys they visited at Rosings a few times a year – Caroline had never felt a great need to expand into the rest of the formerly Bennet sisters families. She would have been swamped with friends and family even if she never left Pemberley.

Aunt Lydia and Aunt Mary had remained close, with Mary wed to the rector that held a living in Lydia's home village. On the rare visits, Caroline noticed that Aunt Mary's three children generally mixed and matched with Aunt Lydia's children randomly to the point where she could never actually identify which cousin belonged with which aunt without a seating chart. Miss Darcy had visited both aunts several times, but the two sisters were far closer to each other than any of the others.

Her Aunt Katherine and Aunt Jane had also formed a rather tight bond. The seven children between them swapped back and forth at will since they only lived a few miles apart, all the way down in Cornwall. Jane Poldark's husband owned a prosperous mine that supplied quite a bit of raw material to Darcy industries, and Aunt Katherine's husband ran a prosperous trading company. Mrs. Mason and Mrs. Poldark were closer than the other sisters, but nothing like Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy was with her closest confidant, Mrs. Caroline Baker.

Of course, those thoughts did not help the young lady's current situation.

Caroline, quite put out, stomped her foot again, and whined. "I am serious – this is not funny."

Darcy and Elizabeth managed to quit laughing – eventually – and took to the entirely serious business of calming their somewhat excitable eldest daughter down. Such excitability was generally frowned on by her governesses, all of whom considered her father to be a bad influence, since he found it hilarious, and her mother, even worse.

Darcy said, "I beg to differ, daughter. It is extremely funny, but not for the reason you think."

She somewhat sulkily snapped, "Why is it funny? Are you going to go talk to him?"

Her mother, quite unaccountably, started laughing again, but then eventually said, "If we do, you will have to marry him. It is the done thing."

Confused as she could be, Caroline asked, "What do you mean, Mama?"

"Did I ever tell you the first words your father ever spoke about me – not to me, mind you – but about me?"

"No."

Darcy laughed. "You do it. I am not certain I can without more punch."

Mrs. Darcy lowered her voice to where she sounded more or less like a bad impersonation of her husband, and intoned. "She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me; I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me."

Young Caroline vacillated between disbelief and the idea that her parents were playing a joke on her, (which would not have been the first one), and mortification, while both her parents just laughed a bit.

Seeing her consternation, Mrs. Darcy grew more serious, took her daughter's hand, and said gently. "We never told you about our difficult beginning, Caroline because you did not need to know – but it was quite difficult – horrendous, in fact. Neither of us were the slightest bit interested in each other. We eventually married and then fell in love, but that is a story for another time and place."

Caroline said, "That sounds backwards."

"Yes, by English standards it is, but it is quite common in India. I will not say it is better or worse than our usual, but do not fall into the trap of thinking a wedding is the end of a romantic story. A wedding is hardly even the beginning."

Caroline, noticing the truth of her parents' affection, felt like that might actually be quite wise.

Darcy added gently. "This whole business of falling in love before marriage sounds good in theory, but it is devilishly difficult in practice if you try to follow the rules of propriety."

Caroline scoffed. "You think?"

Elizabeth smiled. "Enough of that! Shall we go give your young man a piece of our minds? Which shall it be – stern father or shrill mother?"

Caroline snapped, "He is not my young man!" which unfortunately sent her parents into another fit of giggles.

"Pardon me!"

The three had been speaking to each other so much, they had not noticed a handsome young man approaching. In looks, he was everything a young man ought to be, handsome and elegant, although with an odd haircut, and slightly oddly dressed. That was not the only thing strange about him. He walked oddly, he bowed oddly and when he spoke –

Darcy's eyes lit up, and he enthused. "Aha! You are American?"

The boy looked embarrassed, and a bit nervous, but resolute when he responded.

"Yes, sir. I must apologize that I can't quite get the hang of introductions 'round here. Am I being what you-all call 'proper' introducing myself, or should ah go fetch me some tar and feathers?"

Darcy and Elizabeth found themselves laughing at the odd young man, with his odd accent they could just barely understand.

Darcy took pity on him saying, "You are doing fine, young man. The key to behavior with Americans is low expectations. We all think you are practically savages – which I assume you think of us as well, so it all evens out."

The young man laughed, while Caroline, feeling sorry for him, snapped, "Papa! Be nice!" then she turned to the man and said, "My father is only teasing."

Elizabeth laughed. "I shall introduce us. This is my husband, Fitzwilliam Darcy. I am Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy. You should call me Mrs. Darcy or Lunkhead."

"No, no – you always get that backwards. I am the lunkhead," her husband teased.

She smiled. "And of course, this is our eldest daughter, Caroline."

Not entirely certain what to say, but vacillating between anger and amusement, Caroline said, "I am named after Mama's oldest friend, Caroline Baker."

The young man perked up. "Baker! What a coincidence! I am in England to meet a distant cousin, a Mr. Noah Baker. I am to understand he is an expert in railroads, and my father wants me to learn from him. He is also to introduce me to society – hopefully more smoothly than tonight's debacle, which, as you surely noticed, has not been going well."

Caroline looked confused by that declaration, but she had no idea what to say.

Darcy laughed. "We know Noah well. He is our business partner, and we go back many years. His wife, Caroline is my daughter's namesake. I expect them both with their children in a week or two. Perhaps, you can stay with us. We have plenty of room."

The young man did not really acknowledge the offer, but instead, looked at Caroline, and spoke quite carefully.

"I must apologize Miss Darcy. I believe you overheard part of a conversation, and based on what I could see of your subsequent discussion with them there lunkheads …"

Darcy and Elizabeth laughed heartily, already quite enamored with the young man. Any man who could tease better than Charles Bingley on first introduction was to be treasured, and his accent was to die for. They had no idea if that was an American affectation, or the man was just amiable, but either way, they were quite pleased.

Caroline was not sure what to say, but he did at least manage a smile.

He continued, "… so you see, Miss Darcy, you may have missed the part where I admitted I do not have the vaguest idea how to do this kind of dance, and was certainly not tempted to start off with such a beautiful lady by stomping on her toes or tearing her dress. I offer you my sincere apologies for any offense."

Caroline gave him an enormous smile, her sense of embarrassment over her incorrect but nearly immutable first impression, (a defect she shared with her mother), being thoroughly stomped by her pleasure at the compliment from a handsome man. She had to admit that a man calling her a 'beautiful woman' was not, in fact, the worst thing he could have said.

She was watching him so intently, she did not hear her father whisper to her mother, 'What if I had done that at the Meryton Assembly?', or her equally quiet answer, 'Where would have been the fun in that?'

Instead of listening to her parents, who, to be honest, were done paying any attention to her anyway, she said, "No apology is necessary, Mr. Baker. If you have no objections, I would be happy to teach you. The steps of this dance are fairly simple, and we can go over into the corner for an impromptu lesson."

"It would be my greatest pleasure, Miss Darcy."

With a happy heart, Mr. Fitzwilliam, and Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy watched their most precious daughter, (aside from the other two or their three sons), start a journey that could well end up with a second Caroline Baker existing in the world – or not, there was no point in trying to predict the future before the first dance.

As Mr. Darcy gave Mrs. Darcy a kiss that was just a little bit on the far side of propriety, they watched the show and quite liked what they saw. There was no hurry to learn if they would like the young man or not. They had all the time in the world. Marriage was a serious business and not to be rushed!

After all, it was til death us do part.

~~ Finis ~~


A/N: Well gang, this one is finally finished. A quarter of a million words in the can over an astounding 6½ months, which is definitely a record for me. As you can tell, it didn't go quite to plan. I originally thought around 70k words and ended up with 4 times that. On the other hand, it is 2 different stories. I come from the software world where the average project is 50% over schedule and 100% over budget (and lots of them are far worse), so it's not all that unusual for me, but I do think this one is my biggest bit of both scope and feature creep to date.

There are a few things to say about the reviews and reactions to the story, which were both far more intense than usual.

The first is that I read every single review and take as many of them into account as I can. In fact, I got one or two plot bunnies I used directly from them. They are a great feedback mechanism and feed my insatiable ego enough to make me an insufferable, insufferable man. Lots of readers also have fun trying to guess what's happening, and I enjoy the game tremendously, so keep it up.

My fans know I occasionally indulge in shameless bragging, so let me say that this is the most reviewed story in this fandom. Yeah! I'm as surprised as you are. It's nearly 5,000 reviews at the time of completion and will probably go over soon. That's over 1,000 more than the second most reviewed story. (Update: Crossed over 5,000 about a month after publication)

Now, before my head gets too awfully big, I should point out that the number of reviews is strongly correlated to the number of chapters, and at 75 chapters, this is a very long story. X reviews per chapter times X chapters makes for a big number. In fact, I have 2 of the top 10, with Longbourn Math (55 chapters) clocking in at #9 in the review count.

That brings me to the second thing about the replies. First, there are a lot of them. I averaged 66 reviews per chapters, where 30 is generally considered quite a lot for my stories. I have a theory that the number of reviews might be higher than usual because of COVID, but not all. Maybe I'm just getting more popular, but most likely, the angst of the story touched a nerve or two.

Next, the reviews are intense – more so than any of my other stories. During the rollout, they were practically catching my screen on fire. People really-really-really hated Darcy in the first part of the story. I have never had so many strong reactions to a story.

There was quite a bit of what the data guys call 'herding', which was a lot of people saying kind of the same thing. I never worked out if that was because people had the same reaction, or if people read other reviews and expressed the same sentiment. It's not good or bad – just interesting.

I was also kind of thrown off kilter by how violently some people reacted to fairly minor, almost NGP level characters. (In gaming, an NGP is a Non-Game Player - think the bartender when the action is with the gunfighters). Lots of people just hated the steward, Mr. Knight, even though his whole offense was being a bit mean and following direction. I only added him because I wanted to make Lizzy's six months miserable enough to make her bolt. Lots of people also seemed to hate my nurses, even though they were there only to humanize Red Darcy, who was really in the toilet by that time. I was caught off guard by both of them, and while tempted to follow the reviews and punish Knight severely, I didn't think it would make sense.

I admit I left a few loose ends, including the steward and the nurses, and Colonel Fitzwilliam's rescue – mainly because the story wasn't about them, and it was just too long. For Green Fitzwilliam, just assume the Bakers did something clever. For the nurses, assume one of them may have ended up with Fitzwilliam (which was a plot point I considered), or they somehow found some happiness. Having both the Darcys and the Fitzwilliams rooting for you should make things happen fairly easily.

So, all in all, quite a collection of strong opinions in the reviews. They were kind of militant, which segues to the next part – the weird split.

I added the "Sliding Doors" style parallel split story as kind of an experiment, and I'm reasonably happy with the results – although, as usual, they were not even close to what I originally envisioned.

I split the story right after the wedding because the original story (Red) had already been through the angst of the engagement, followed by six months of angst at Pemberley, and then a very long separation (I always planned that). My readers were ready to bail entirely by the day of the wedding because I set out to crank the a**hole/angst knob up to 12, but I got it to 15 or 20 instead. I had set out to make some angst, but kinda went overboard. I could have hung Darcy from a yardarm on his way to France, or sent him down with the Manilla, and lots of my readers would have said 'Good riddance'. I made the Green story mostly to show an HEA was possible and reduce anxiety a bit.

I ran the two in parallel for a couple of reasons (aside from my general tendency to do weird things). The first was that I don't think either story really works all by itself. Several readers asked me to do that, but I think Red was too angsty, and Green was too fluffy. Green probably would have survived standalone; but without Green for some angst relief, I think most would have abandoned Red. I split them to give some balance. Now maybe it would work as a completed story when readers aren't anxiously awaiting the next chapter – I can't say, but at the time I didn't think I could finish either.

I also wanted a bit of disorientation when you switched threads. That was a feature, not a bug. It was something to show you what could have happened with just a little change. I intended Green to be a short, fluffy thread, but in the end, Red and Green were both about the same length because I feature-creeped Green. Both threads after the split were about 100,000 words. By comparison, Canon is 120,000 words, so the whole thing is pretty long.

So, that was my thinking. I wanted it to be balanced, and a little unsettling. Did I succeed? You tell me.

Most everybody loved the Caroline/Baker pairing in both stories. Baker started as a very minor character whose role expanded off the charts, and the idea of making Caroline friendly didn't happen until 3 months into it. I had one planned chapter for the Fitzwilliam rescue that involved a meeting with the Little General himself all blocked out in my head, but by the time I figured it out, I was too much in the groove with the Darcy/Lizzy story and didn't want to break it up, and then when I was done, it was too late.

I'm going to be doing some editing. As several reviewers pointed out, I start way too many sentences with "Well," and it drives me batty when I reread, so it must do the same to you. Not sure where I picked up the habit, but I just purged several hundred of them from Longbourn Math, and I'll go back and do the same here (there are 212 instances if you're curious).

I also think I need to make the mechanics of the split a little clearer. I'll introduce a boy that slows Green Darcy down by 30 seconds. I'll also probably purge the Author's Notes before I mark it complete.

I've been playing around with how to do dialogue. I've been experimenting with … vs – to show longer pauses, and I eventually read a book on the proper way to do it (at least a proper way, as opinions vary widely), and came to a good system I think. In cases where I say something like 'She sighed and said'. "' I have been just killing the ', and said', so that it becomes 'She sighed. "You are an idiot, Mr. Darcy"'. I also use … as something that might continue, and – as a longer comma.

Not sure what's next. This one has been a long slog. COVID and the political situation in the US had an effect, but mostly it was just a long hard story to write.

On a personal note, I was scheduled to retire tomorrow (2/15/21), but in a burst of probably ill-advised ambition, I will probably do one more last big tech project through the end of the year. I'm basically going to write a tool that takes all the code my company wrote in the last 25 years and converts it to something new. It's called a machine translation. It's pretty exciting, and difficult, and horrendously complicated – but I've been working my way up to it for quite some time. Wish me luck.

Until next time,

Wade

P.S. For my last bit of geeky fun, several readers mentioned that Red + Green = Brown. That's true with paint, but with additive colors like us software geeks use (e.g. the color on monitors), you get yellow.

[Update: Sept 2021 – Well gang, I finally retired. I'm done-done with work, although I will caution you about the 'never say never' syndrome. This story took me 6 months to write, and I've been on hiatus since then. Another? Who knows?]