Chapter Fourteen #2
“Fifteen thousand pounds—an exceptional price. I could purchase it using the funds for your dowries, but I dare not. I could not leave my girls destitute.” His voice was flat, tinged with a rare gravity.
“I considered asking your uncle for a loan. He would give me a fair rate. But, I do not need the Lodge—Longbourn has a dower house. The tenant farms will be enough.”
She saw the hesitation in his eyes, the weight behind his words that he tried to mask with casual pragmatism.
Her heart ached with understanding. Her father was not a man to speak often of emotion, but here it was—quiet, dignified concern.
He was making plans, contingencies, safeguarding them as best he could, though they all lived upon a lie.
The edges of his reserve had worn thin, and in that glimpse, she recognised the toll their secret had taken.
“How long would it take to pay off the loan?” she asked hesitantly.
He exhaled slowly. “We have lived frugally. After all expenses, we have around a thousand pounds a year left over. Your dowries are earning interest—I have not added much in the last year or so. Instead, I have used the funds to better the estate. I would prefer not to spend the entirety of our disposable income each year. So, conservatively, it would take me fifteen years to repay your uncle if I were to make the purchase.”
He hesitated, then picked up a folded letter from the corner of the desk. “There is another option. I received a rather unexpected letter this morning. Here, read it and tell me what you think.”
Elizabeth unfolded the letter and read in silence, her brow furrowed as she progressed through Mr Collins’ loquacious prose. When she finished, she looked up slowly.
“I am afraid I do not understand,” she said, lowering the paper.
“Mr William Collins is the rightful heir to the estate,” her father explained quietly.
“His father was a miserly, illiterate man with a temper. Our falling out was… Well, let us not discuss it. Suffice it to say, I never set eyes on his son and only received a letter from his father’s solicitor when he was born.
My living cousin is, as of yet, unmarried.
If he were an agreeable sort of gentleman. ..”
He trailed off, watching her with expectant eyes.
Elizabeth stared at him, her mouth slightly open. “You wish for one of us to marry him?” Her voice held disbelief.
Mr Bennet smiled faintly. “It is rather brilliant, is it not? If our ruse is discovered—and it might be, someday—then having the heir to the estate married to one of my daughters is the perfect solution.”
“You sound like Mama,” Elizabeth said bluntly. The words slipped from her lips before she could temper them, and she instantly regretted it.
To her surprise, her father’s mouth opened in a rare expression of astonishment. “Do I? Well, imagine that.” He regarded her over the rim of his spectacles. “He sounds like a sensible man, if a little long-winded. It would not hurt to entertain the idea.”
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. “Be warned, dear Father, I shall not marry him if we do not suit. I shall not be persuaded to give up my freedom. Have I not sacrificed enough?”
Her voice cracked at the end, and she looked away, blinking against the sudden sting in her eyes.
It was not only the weight of expectation that pressed down on her, but the quiet desperation of having been forced to uphold a fiction for so long.
Her shoulders stiffened, though her heart longed for reassurance.
“Then we shall see if he and Mary are compatible,” Mr Bennet replied, more gently now. “I could demand it of you as your father.”
Elizabeth froze. Her pulse pounded in her ears. “You would not,” she whispered. She could not tell if he teased or not.
He leaned forwards, his expression one of amusement.
“No, I do not think I would take the trouble.” He grew serious.
“But I could. Elizabeth, I am a weak man and a negligent father—surely, you see it. I have always cared more for my comfort than for the well-being of my children. And though I have tried diligently to change, it has not come easily. If marriage to my cousin can ensure my…actions…do not come back to torment me, then I shall do everything in my power to see it done.”
The words struck her like a blow. For all his usual levity, this was Mr Bennet in earnest. His voice was weary, his shoulders bowed under the weight of guilt and regret.
He was trying to protect them in the only way he knew how.
There was pain in his confession, a father burdened by past mistakes, struggling now to be the steward his family deserved.
Elizabeth stood and nodded, her voice faint. “When do you mean to reply?”
“Immediately. I shall suggest a date in November. Hopefully, by that time, Mr Bingley will have proposed to your sister. A wealthy son-in-law is yet another safeguard.”
He paused, looking stricken. “Good heavens, I really do sound like your mother!”
That coaxed a reluctant chuckle from Elizabeth. “You do.”
She turned and left the study, her thoughts anything but settled.
Her father’s words lingered with her—not as comfort, but as disquiet.
He spoke of prudence now, of arrangements and foresight, as though order had always governed his decisions.
Yet Elizabeth could not forget how long matters had been left to drift, how easily responsibility had been deferred until circumstance forced his hand.
He was not sacrificing so much as belatedly managing, and the distinction troubled her more than she wished to admit.
What unsettled her most was not what he had said, but what remained unspoken.
Thomas. The truth hovered at the edges of every plan her father so carefully described—inheritance secured, alliances assumed, futures neatly aligned.
All of it rested upon a silence that could not endure forever.
If the truth were known, it would unravel more than one comfortable assumption: Thomas’s place in the family, her father’s authority, even the security he believed he had restored.
And if she spoke—if she chose honesty over protection—there would be no retreat from the consequences.
The hallway beyond the study felt colder than before.
Elizabeth let her fingers trail along the wall as she passed, anchoring herself to something solid while her thoughts raced ahead.
Autumn light slanted through the windows, warm in colour but offering no reassurance.
She paused on the stairs, breath unsteady, knowing with sudden clarity that the choice before her was not distant or theoretical.
It was coming. Silence or truth. Protection or upheaval.
Outside, the air was sharp with the scent of earth and wood smoke. Elizabeth stepped into it without direction, needing motion more than answers. For now, she would not decide. But she could no longer pretend that the decision was not hers to make.
The garden paths were scattered with fallen leaves, crisp and brittle beneath her shoes.
The once-lush roses had faded to dry brown stalks, the last blooms drooping as if mourning the summer’s end.
She let her hand trail over a hedge as she passed, grounding herself with the texture of something real—something that could not lie.
Her thoughts, however, were far less steady.
A cousin. An unknown cousin who, by rights, would inherit everything were the truth to come out.
Mr. Collins—his name sat oddly in her mind, like a stone in her shoe.
His letter had been courteous, even kind, though unmistakably marked by an affection for his own voice.
Still, his request to visit had not been presumptuous.
It had been humbly phrased. Civil. Curious, but not demanding.
And what if he were willing? Willing to marry into the very family that had unknowingly displaced him from his inheritance—if he came without resentment or pride, content with what he believed his due.
The thought followed her as she slowed near the orchard fence, her hands tightening on the top rail as its dreadful clarity took shape. Perhaps I ought to marry him.
The notion sent a cold flush through her—not because it was new, but because it made a terrible kind of sense.
If Mr. Collins proved a decent man—unmarried, established, and satisfied with the life set before him—then Thomas might be spared the cruellest consequences of the truth.
The entail would pass as expected. Longbourn would remain in familiar hands.
Thomas would not be erased or cast aside, but quietly allowed to remain as he was: loved, protected, unquestioned.
He would lose a title he had never known, but not his name, nor his place, nor the care owed to him.
The cost, however, would be hers alone. She would bind herself to a life she did not want in order to shield a child who had no choice in the matter—and in doing so, she would make the lie permanent.
It would secure Thomas’s future, yes, but at the price of her own.
Elizabeth released the fence at last, her chest tight beneath the weight of it.
This was not sacrifice dressed in romance.
It was endurance, plain and unadorned. And she did not yet know whether she was strong enough to choose it.
A fitting reckoning, she thought bitterly. For every half-truth spoken, every careful evasion, every smile offered while pretending there was nothing strange about her brother’s birth.
A crow called overhead, breaking the hush. Elizabeth lifted her head and watched the dark bird sweep across the field. Her fingers curled once more around the fence rail. Oh, what a tangled web we weave…
How quickly the web tangled. How swiftly it had become something they could not unweave. And now her father—clever, detached Mr Bennet—spoke of this stranger as a solution, a way to restore balance should the truth ever rise. Would it truly be so terrible to tie herself to such a man?
But even as the thought settled, her stomach turned. How could she make such a vow to a man she had never met? How could she sacrifice herself, her future, simply to keep the past buried?
No—she was not ready to answer. Not now.
She wandered back slowly, her feet tracing familiar routes as if they might return her to the girl she was before the carriage accident. The sky had dulled to a pewter grey, and the wind was picking up again, rattling the trees in their autumn undress.
By the time she reached the back door of the house, her fingers were stiff with cold, and her skirts damp at the hem.
She paused before entering, looking up at the windows above.
This was still her home—for now. She would fight for it.
But the cost of that fight was no longer hypothetical.
It had a name. A face she had yet to see. A future she had yet to decide.
Still unsettled, but quieter inside, she stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind her.