Chapter 4 #2
With a resigned sigh, he broke the wax and flipped the two pages over. Elizabeth strained her eyes to read, but he shuffled the paper too fast for her to see more than stamps and signatures. That they looked legal concerned her.
“They look like the last ones, and the ones before them.” He folded the letter and shoved them under a ledger on his desk.
“Is it regarding the partnership you inherited from your uncle? If you are no longer a partner in the firm, then why do they continue to correspond?” She had welcomed the quarterly payments, but as it had been over a year since receiving any monies from the silent partnership, she had not considered the shipping company to be the source of the correspondence.
Papa waved off her concern. “It cannot be anything of import. The partnership was set up in a way to involve nothing of me, and when it ended, I did not renew it, just as your uncle Gardiner encouraged and your uncle Philips advised.”
“And you have not received any payment since?” As informed as she was, she could not even inquire into their accounts at his bank or conduct any business without her father’s signature.
“Not a penny,” he assured her.
Consoled enough to continue, she took her place at the writing desk by the window and waited for him to see what Mr. Wrayburn had to say. In the meantime, she checked her math from the previous day to discern they had enough seed to plant.
“Oh dear,” Papa mumbled, shoving his spectacles up his nose and pulling the letter in his hand closer for another read. “This is sad news indeed.”
Mr. Darcy had decided to call off the stupid arrangement? Elizabeth held her breath and prayed it might be so. Her father’s eyes met her own, and her breath caught. Could it be? Had she willed her dream into reality?
“Mr. George Darcy has died.”
Elizabeth went still. Dead? The very man who had bound her to his son with the stroke of a pen—gone? She gripped the edge of the desk, waiting for her father to continue.
He looked at a calendar, then again at the letter. “His funeral is today. This same afternoon.”
Elizabeth glanced at the clock. “If you leave soon, you could at least pay your respects to the family.”
Her father tapped the letter in his hand and squinted his eyes thoughtfully. “This must have been delayed in the post. If they expected me to attend, they would have sent it by messenger.”
Elizabeth bit her tongue. Papa hated going to town, but surely he would make an attempt to attend the funeral. Would Fitzwilliam Darcy be there? Surely, someone in the family or Mr. Wrayburn would know if he intended to claim his inheritance.
“What does this mean for the arrangement?” The words escaped before she could stop them. She twisted her hands together, dreading the reply.
Papa looked up, surprised by her directness. “I… well, I suppose we shall learn more at the reading of the will. You will have to be present for that, of course.”
She knew that to be true, but she held onto the prospect that Mr. Darcy might have amended her role. “When will that be?”
“The letter does not say. I expect we will receive further instructions from Mr. Wrayburn.”
More waiting. Why not? She had spent twelve years preparing for a future she dreaded. What were a few more days?
“They have yet to locate the son, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, but Mr. Wrayburn assures me he has made every effort to do so and anticipates a favorable reply. He writes kindly about the young man.” He looked over the page and resumed tapping.
Elizabeth’s heart hammered. Would the son honor his father’s arrangement? Did she want to marry a man who would marry her only to receive his inheritance? Would Papa stand behind her if she refused? Could any happiness be found in such an arranged union? “What if they cannot locate him?”
“They will find him. Men of Mr. Darcy’s station do not simply vanish forever.”
But he had vanished. What if he never returned? Would she be expected to wait for him until she was an old maid? What if she fell in love? Would her family insist she wait still? She sighed heavily. “Mama will insist we don mourning clothes.”
Papa shook his head. “Nonsense. There is no reason to inform Mrs. Bennet or your sisters of this sad news immediately. It can wait until after the assembly. By then, we will receive further instructions from Mr. Wrayburn.”
Elizabeth stared at him. “Papa, a man has died—the man who holds my future in his hands.”
“George Darcy is beyond holding anything now, my dear.”
“But his son—”
“May not even be found in time for the funeral. I doubt Mr. Darcy intended for us to mourn his death at all when he was so insistent that you marry his son. Mourning would only delay the wedding.”
“How can we dance and make merry when we ought to show an appropriate degree of respect? What if someone else at the assembly knows of his death? They will rightly wonder why we show no proper grief.”
He arched an eyebrow. “As though Meryton society moves in the first circles? News does not travel so fast in the countryside.”
“We learned of it today.”
“You worry overmuch, Lizzy.”
“I worry because no one else does!” She bit her tongue and bowed her head.
Papa’s face softened. “Think of your sisters’ happiness, Lizzy.”
That was all she ever did. She whispered, “It is unjust, Papa.”
“I know it, my dear, and you have borne it admirably.”
Weighty praise, indeed. Elizabeth could not stay in the stifling study a moment longer.
Fetching her borrowed copy of Annals of Agriculture and her warmest shawl, she slipped out of doors.
She would walk until she could think clearly…
or until her steps led her to Lucas Lodge, where she might give vent to her woes to her best friend Charlotte.
One thing was for certain: once she finally met Fitzwilliam Darcy, she would tell him precisely what she thought of him and his father’s wretched arrangement.