Chapter One
A Penny for the Ferryman
“I have not done well by you all, my Lizzy, leaving you to suffer the consequences of my neglect.”
The instant she heard her father’s voice, Elizabeth Bennet turned to him.
She had thought him asleep. He slept a great deal now, soothed by the mixtures the local apothecary created, but at that moment, he looked remarkably wide awake.
His eyes, often milky with the drowsy confusion from his wandering in opiate dreams, were bright and clear. He held out one hand to her.
She grasped it in both of hers. “Do not think about such things, Papa. Put all your strength into getting well. You should sleep.”
“I sleep too much.” He turned his face towards the window. “It must be dawn. I love seeing the sun rise.”
She jumped up at once to pull back the heavy linen curtains. “A red dawn. Bad weather is coming.”
She returned to her seat and took his hand again.
The smile he gave her was a weak copy of the one she loved, and he turned his gaze to the window to watch the gradual lightening of the eastern sky.
His eyelids were blue-veined, deep set in the creases left by pain and sickness.
His cheekbones stood out sharply, over cheeks so sunken his teeth pressed up against the skin.
How odd that his face was falling in and jutting out at the same time.
For a while they sat in silence; he relishing the dawn of another day of life, perhaps, and Elizabeth trying not to dwell on the distress to come.
Mamma had taken to her bed three weeks earlier, insensible with nervous fits.
She was a broken reed when it came to steering the family through a crisis, despite the presence of her brother, Uncle Gardiner, who had arrived the day before from London to lend his support.
With Elizabeth’s next younger sister Mary trying to act as mistress of the house in their mother’s stead—the two youngest girls, still heedless children, could do little to help—it was left to her older sister, Jane, and Elizabeth herself both to nurse Papa and to navigate the coming foul weather, both metaphorical and real.
The previous evening, Mr Hill, the butler/valet, had returned from Meryton, the market town a mile beyond the edge of Longbourn’s lands, with more of Mr Jones’s concoctions and ill news threatening more than a bout of winter rain beating on the windows.
Papa broke the silence with, “Hill tells me my heir has taken up rooms at the White Hart, he and his son.”
“Yes.”
“Collins will likely appear today, the old vulture. He is not to be granted entry until this house is his.” Papa turned his gaze to her; eyes still clear, still focused. “I am yet master here.”
“I will tell Mr Hill and my uncle.”
“Good. Collins would not hesitate to bully his way past you and Jane, but Gardiner will send him away.”
She nodded. Papa tightened his fingers on hers, his dry and papery, thin with weakness and debility, their old strength lost. Once the hand held out to her had been young and smooth, his invitation to join his daily walks; he matching his long strides to her shorter, child’s legs, she scampering along beside him as he talked to her about architecture or Herodotus or Chaucer.
Only eighteen months earlier, he had claimed the first set at her come-out, those strong hands taking hers as they danced and laughed.
Now they were an old man’s hands, withered and frail. A dying man’s hands.
“Had I been a better man, Collins would not be so much of a threat. I failed to secure your futures, and I am truly sorry, Lizzy. I was a fool to depend on siring a son who would join me in cutting off the entail as soon as he was of age and hence provide for your Mamma and you girls. By the time I despaired of a son, it was late to begin saving. I should have done better. Your mother has her jointure, of course, and I invested a little more with your Uncle Gardiner to help support you all. He will sell my books, too, to add to the total. He already has a buyer for all my architectural portfolios, and the rare editions on the Greek and Latin shelves.”
“Oh, your books, Papa.”
“I have no more need of them, and I must think of you and your sisters. All told, you should have around four hundred a year.”
“Papa. Please. Do not trouble yourself. We will manage.”
Although an income of only four hundred pounds did not bear thinking about.
He shook his head, turning it side to side on his pillow.
“I have not done well enough, child. Jane not nineteen until after the turn of the year, you only sixteen… and your mother… well. You and Jane must take on her role, and manage the family somehow, while Gardiner will be guardian to you all. Collins is a coarse, unlettered beast, foul-mouthed and foul-tempered, and cannot be trusted near you girls. But your uncles Gardiner and Phillips will be on hand to keep him out of Longbourn long enough for you to collect everything together to leave with dignity, my dear. That will vex him almost as much as my living this long has vexed him.”
With Uncle Phillips’s help, Jane and Mary between them were already dividing the inalienable property of the Longbourn estate which must be left to the heir, from those possessions they might take to a new home—although none of them had any notion of what new home or where.
It made her head hurt to think about it.
“Where are we to go, Papa? I quite understand the dower house will be impossible, with the Collinses so close.”
“He would torment you. You would not be safe.”
“Have you and my uncles decided on a course, then?”
“Reach under my pillow, Lizzy. A letter came by special messenger last night. Hill brought it up.”
“I heard nothing of a messenger.”
Papa smiled. “You were asleep, and I told Hill to let you and Jane rest. You sleep too little.”
The concoctions and tinctures ensured Papa slept. The rest of them had no such aid.
She drew out a letter written in a familiar hand on the best quality laid writing paper, the sloping script fine and beautiful. The broken seal was an elaborate letter D, the wax crimson against the creamy paper. “Oh! From Aunt Darcy!”
Known to all the Longbourn girls as “Aunt”, Sarah Oliver had arrived at Longbourn as an orphaned babe-in-arms when Papa was just a lad, and she and Papa had been as brother and sister all their lives.
She was now the second wife of a rich man who owned Pemberley, one of the finest estates in Derbyshire.
Stepmother to Uncle Darcy’s eldest son and heir, Sarah had two children of her own, with Hugh and Georgiana claimed as cousins by all the Longbourn family.
Despite the distance, both geographical and that of substance (Uncle Darcy, Papa said, was a very warm man indeed, and his first wife’s father had been an earl), Papa and Aunt Darcy remained close.
Other than the eldest son, who was either with the earl’s family or, later, abroad on business for the War and Colonial Office, the Darcys visited Longbourn every year en route to and from Town for the Season.
Short though the visits were, they were as much a part of Longbourn’s calendar as the Christmas feast or Easter or the Harvest Home: looked for with eagerness, the simple revelry and amusements enjoyed and cherished by all, and ending in loving regret when the Darcy coaches rolled down the drive, Hugh usually hanging out of the coach window waving his hat and hallooing his farewells.
Between visits, Papa and Sarah maintained a constant correspondence, the only one her father met with any enthusiasm.
“I wrote to her, while I still could.” Her father’s mouth twitched. “Read the letter, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth obeyed, reading through Aunt Darcy’s letter twice, catching her breath the first time. The second time she read more slowly, weighing every word, dwelling on the most important part of it.
…I cannot forget, Tommy, the love your mother showed when my parents died, and she brought me to Longbourn, not merely as her niece, but to be as her own daughter.
I loved her in place of the mother I cannot remember, and honour her memory now.
I can do no less than she. Robert agrees, and joins me in offering your wife and girls a home here at Pemberley.
Arthur Collins cannot be trusted, and his son will be no better.
Your family will be safe in Derbyshire, far beyond their reach.
Frith House is but three miles from Pemberley itself, and while not over-large, is sufficient to provide refuge for your ladies.
Smaller than Longbourn, of course, but well-built and commodious, and they will be close to us.
Hugh and Georgiana are delighted at the prospect.
Georgiana can talk of nothing but Kitty and Lydia being nearby.
My people are readying the house and gardens, and we will provide a maid or two until Mrs Bennet can be settled. Do you think she might bring the Hills with her? This would be a boon, as we would otherwise need to seek as far afield as Derby or Sheffield for senior staff.
Knowing Collins as we do, Robert sent an express to Pemberley’s steward and land agent, who is at our London house on business.
He has been instructed to travel to Longbourn at once with two or three footmen, and will stay as long as necessary.
You and your ladies can depend upon George Wickham.
He and his father descend from Robert’s uncle, who married into a Cheshire family and took his wife’s family name in order to inherit—hence they are Darcys in all but name, and have our trust and confidence.
George will make all the arrangements for Mrs Bennet and the girls, and escort them to Pemberley.
It grieves me, Tommy, to acquiesce to the inevitability you accept with such grace and patience. It grieves me, too, that I cannot be with you and your family. I think of you often, and, as always, you are in my prayers…
“A house! She has offered us a house!” Elizabeth looked up, her grip on the letter tightening, to its detriment. She smoothed it out hurriedly. “Oh, Papa.”
“You would find it intolerable to be a supplicant at Arthur Collins’s gate. You are better starting afresh.”
“Afresh? It is more than merely ‘afresh’, Papa. Derbyshire is more than a hundred miles distant!”
“Far enough to keep you safe from Collins. As Sarah says, it is beyond his reach. Do not forget your Aunt Gardiner is from the county and has family near Pemberley. They travel there every other year, so you will see the Gardiners on occasion.”
“But Derbyshire is such a distance! We must pay a rent, of course.”
Pride would not allow them to accept charity, even from family. They would be in reduced circumstances, but they were yet gentlewomen. They could not do otherwise than pay for their refuge, though Elizabeth could only pray it would not take too much.
“Let your uncle Gardiner deal with Darcy’s man of business and agree terms. Send for him and Jane now, Lizzy, and send into Meryton for Phillips. We should discuss the matter fully before Hill makes me take another of those vile mixtures and I am too sleepy to take notice.”
Elizabeth obeyed, ordering a maid to rouse Mr Gardiner, dispatch a groom and the dogcart to Meryton for Mr Phillips, and only then wake Jane.
“Do not grieve, but look for the advantages, Lizzy. How many times have you longed to see Derbyshire? Chatsworth, and Haddon, and Hardwick… I wish I could have seen Hardwick for myself! And Pemberley itself, of course.”
“Dovedale and the Peaks for me, Papa, rather than grand houses. And though I would very much like to see Pemberley, I am not the thwarted architect in the family.”
“I did my best to make you one! So, my girl, go and look on Hardwick, as if through my eyes if you can manage it, and remember your old Papa.” His voice was already fainter. He had talked too much, exerted himself too much.
She swallowed against the hot lump in her throat. “The price I must pay to visit is too high, Papa.”
His smile was uncharacteristically sweet, lacking his usual sarcastic humour. “We all must pay the price, child, and hold in our dead hands the penny for the ferryman.”
Elizabeth nodded, grasped her father’s hand, the one that would soon hold Charon’s penny, and waited for the arrival of Jane and her uncles.