Chapter 9
Nine
In Which Lizzie and Charlotte Find Themselves in a Precarious Position
When Lizzie, Darcy, and Charlotte returned to Netherfield Park, they found the family parlor in chaos.
The party was not quite ready to set foot in the drawing room once more, despite its thorough cleaning. Jane and Mrs. Bennet
were arguing about menus, and Caroline sat close to them in an overstuffed chair, looking put out as she made the occasional
interjection. Lydia and Kitty were shouting about dresses and decorations with Guy in between them, and Mary was hiding in
the corner, book in hand. Bingley stood in the middle of the room, trying to intercede between Caroline and his wife.
Mr. Bennet, Lizzie was unsurprised to see, was nowhere to be found. “What’s going on?”
“Lizzie!” came at least three shouts, and then Mrs. Bennet pulled her into the fray. “Come, Lizzie, tell your sister that
she needs to invite the Hamiltons and Gardiners to her ball.”
“Mama, it’s next week! They can’t possibly come in time. And besides, we have nowhere to put them up!”
“In a house this size? Nonsense!”
“Not all the rooms are ready for guests!”
“I think it’s a terrible idea,” Caroline said. “A ball in a week’s time? It can’t be done.”
“It is an awfully tight timeline, Jane—are you sure you can’t put it off until later in the month?” Mrs. Bennet asked. “That
way the Gardiners at least could join.”
Jane gave Lizzie a look that clearly said, This is all your fault. Lizzie smiled weakly and mouthed, Sorry. Although, announcing the ball in front of all those snobby women had felt good in the moment. “It’ll happen in a week because
that’s what we told Mrs. Fitzgerald.”
“Jane, are there to be any young, eligible gentlemen at this ball?” Lydia demanded.
“Why? You’re too young to court,” Mary said.
“Am not! Mama, tell her—”
“Now, Mary, I would be happy to see any of my girls settled! Although it would be nice if proper birth order could be considered.”
Mrs. Bennet said this with a significant glance to Darcy, who made a great show of studying the wallpaper.
“I intend on being next, before even Lizzie. And then I shall be addressed as Mrs. and Lizzie will have to follow after me
into every room,” Lydia said, flouncing over to Lizzie.
Lizzie scowled and picked up Guy. “Being married doesn’t make you more important than anyone else.”
“It would make me more important than you,” Lydia said. “Socially, anyway.”
“Oh, stop it, you two!”
Lydia and Lizzie turned to look at Jane, Lizzie’s mouth dropping open in shock. Jane never raised her voice at her, but now
she stared at them with a cross expression. “Lydia, enough taunting. There shall be a few gentlemen and—”
“A few?” Lydia screeched. “Jane! Surely you know more than a few—”
“I said enough!”
Lizzie sat down, cowed by her older sister’s firm tone. Even Lydia stayed quiet, shocked as well.
“I’ve decided not to invite the Gardiners or Hamiltons, Mama. This shall be a small, intimate affair for our closest neighbors.
No overnight guests.”
Across the room, Lizzie, Charlotte, and Darcy exchanged glances, and she knew they were all thinking the same thing: if most
people believed in the curse, they’d likely not stay anyway.
“It’ll hardly be a ball, then,” Caroline said. “Why bother?”
“Because we have a duty to cultivate a genial relationship with our new neighbors, especially given the tragedy that we’ve
uncovered here,” Bingley said, coming to stand by Jane. “We ought to show them that Netherfield Park is turning over a new
leaf.”
A fresh start in the country was exactly what Lizzie wanted for her sister. “I think that’s an excellent idea,” she said. “Jane, I know you’ll be able to pull off the most splendid ball—party? Ball.”
“We’ll open the ballroom,” Jane said with a sigh, and Lydia and Kitty squealed. “But it shall be a small affair!”
“If you say so, dear,” Mrs. Bennet said doubtfully.
“Did you discover anything of interest in the village?” Bingley asked Lizzie, Darcy, and Charlotte in a clear ploy to change
the subject.
Lizzie looked back at Darcy, unsure of where to start. What they had learned was very interesting indeed, but she wasn’t sure
quite how to break it to Bingley. Luckily for her, Darcy stepped up. “How much do you know about Honoria Bingley?” he asked
his friend.
This was not what Bingley had been expecting. “Not much, admittedly. My great-uncle married her abroad and brought her back
here, and then he died shortly after. My father never even met her.”
“Right, well, word in the village is that she is the reason Netherfield is cursed.”
Lizzie winced. She might have delivered that news a bit more gently.
Bingley looked puzzled. “Please explain.”
Lizzie and Darcy did so quickly, with a clarifying point here and there from Charlotte. When they were done, the entire room
was blessedly silent before Caroline crossed her arms and said, “Of course this place is cursed.”
Bingley reached into his pocket and withdrew something. Lizzie recognized it as the silver coin they’d recovered from the dead man’s pocket, now polished. “This silver—it could be from Honoria’s fortune?”
Darcy reached out a hand for the coin, and Bingley gave it to him. “It could be.”
Lizzie leaned in to look at it. Now that untold years’ worth of grime—and other things Lizzie did not want to think about—had
been cleaned away, Lizzie could see that one side boasted a shield topped with a crown, and a year: 1731. On the opposite
side was a cross surrounded by filigree, and HISPANIARVM was etched above it. Charlotte leaned in to examine the coin alongside
Lizzie and then gasped.
“What is it?” Lizzie asked her.
“I’ve done some reading,” Charlotte said slowly. “About the history of the West Indies.”
A flush crept across her cheeks, as if she were embarrassed to admit that she was curious about her mother’s homeland. Charlotte
didn’t talk about her mother very often. Lizzie knew that her parents’ marriage had been rather scandalous at the time. Her
mother was from the West Indies and her father had been a British merchant. They’d spent their time mostly outside of England,
away from wagging tongues, but when their untimely deaths had left Charlotte orphaned as an infant, she was sent to London,
where she grew up under the guardianship of her father’s business partner.
“What have you learned?” Darcy asked.
“The Spanish conquered much of the Americas,” she said.
“And they stole gold and silver and whatever else was valuable. They made coins, like this one, stamped for the Spanish king. And they sent them back to Spain in great fleets. But . . . one fleet was almost entirely lost. It was caught in a hurricane, and most of the ships sank. Thousands and thousands of coins were lost to the ocean. This was in 1733, but the coins that were lost were the 1731 mint.”
Lizzie did the mental math—that was roughly eighty years ago. But Honoria would have come to Netherfield Park only fifty years
earlier. “Were the coins ever recovered?”
“Many were,” Charlotte said. “But there were many that weren’t. Treasure hunters and pirates have been searching the waters
for them for years.”
“So, which was Honoria?” Bingley wondered. “Heiress or scavenger?”
“Both,” Charlotte said, earning her a look of surprise from those gathered. “The silver was stolen from rightful citizens
of the land by the Spanish.”
“No wonder everyone thinks it’s cursed,” muttered Darcy.
“What a bunch of nonsense,” Caroline said, crossing her arms. “Rumors from a backward village don’t mean anything! They’re
jealous of the Bingley family wealth.”
“It looks so small,” Lydia said. “Are you sure it’s worth much?”
“Honestly, Lydia,” Mary said, voice dripping with condescension. “It’s solid silver in an age of silver shortages! If Bingley has a mountain of them somewhere in this house, then he has . . . well, not a small fortune. A very, very large fortune.”
“If your great-aunt had that much silver, then why didn’t she use any of it to fix the roof or decorate the rooms?” Lydia
demanded.
“Lydia!” Mary and Lizzie both reprimanded.
“What?”
“I’m sure she had her reasons,” Lizzie said doubtfully. But she couldn’t help but wonder whether that reason was connected
to the dead man in the flue. It would be impossible to open the house to builders, servants, and guests while concealing a
body.
“We should look for it!” Lydia said.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Lizzie began to say.
“Why not?” Bingley asked, looking to Jane. “We know this old house has more than a few secrets.”
“It might be an interesting diversion,” Jane said, surprising Lizzie. But then, her eyes kept straying to the stack of invitations
she was penning, and Lizzie imagined her sister was desperate for a bit of peace.
Lydia clapped her hands in delight. “I already know how I shall spend my share! Kitty, come on—let’s start in the ballroom!”
“What?” Bingley said. “Girls, come back here! We ought to lay down a few ground rules!” He turned and said, “The rest of you,
pair up. And the east wing is still out of bounds!”
Bingley disappeared after the younger girls, followed by Mrs. Bennet, who was calling, “Girls, don’t break anything!”
“Darcy, be a darling and accompany me to the portrait gallery?” Caroline asked. “After all, if dear old Aunt Honoria was going to hide something valuable, why not hide it among the valuables?”
Darcy glanced stiffly at Lizzie, and she knew he was hoping she’d rescue him. However, she simply smiled and said, “What a
clever idea, Caroline.”
Caroline harrumphed and dragged a reluctant Darcy after her. Lizzie turned to Charlotte. “Partners?” she asked.
“Of course,” said her friend.
They left Mary with Jane, as neither of them showed much interest in searching, and headed upstairs, Guy trotting after them.
There, they were presented with a series of options. To the left was the west wing, a long hallway of guest rooms that eventually