Chapter 42
Darcy pulled his gaze away from Elizabeth with considerable effort and settled in the master’s chair. “Pray proceed, Mr. Wrayburn.”
Not a breath was heard as Wrayburn broke the seal.
The formal language of the opening passages required patience.
Darcy listened to the recitation of his father’s name and place, the date of the composition, the declarations of sound mind and disposing memory, all the while watching the room.
Lord Matlock’s hands rested on his knees with studied composure.
Lady Matlock had produced her handkerchief.
Lady Catherine sat with her cane planted before her like a pike.
Richard caught Darcy’s eye briefly and looked away, his face carefully neutral.
Wickham had gone very still, his eyes alert.
Elizabeth's hands were folded in her lap, her attention fixed on Wrayburn.
Finally, the solicitor reached the section addressing the assembled parties, and the temperature of the room changed.
“To my son, Fitzwilliam Darcy”—a brief, unnecessary pause that Darcy suspected Wrayburn had rehearsed—”I bequeath the whole of the Pemberley estate, comprising all lands, tenements, the personal estate, monies, securities, livestock, household goods, furnishings, plate, linen, books, and all other effects whatsoever and wheresoever… ”
The list went on at length. Darcy kept his eyes on Elizabeth.
“…provided upon this express condition.” Wrayburn set down the page with great deliberation.
Another unwelcome pause. Content that he had everyone’s rapt attention, Wrayburn continued, “That within two years from the date of my decease, the said Fitzwilliam Darcy shall lawfully marry Elizabeth Bennet, she proving to be a young lady of exemplary character and understanding whom I have observed to possess the virtues most conducive to the happiness of my son and the prosperity of this estate.”
Darcy watched her receive it. The slight lift of her chin. The press of her lips. He could not read her expression with any certainty. His father had been correct in his assessment of her character. Elizabeth was everything he claimed in his will and more. So much more.
He had hoped that his father might have softened the terms, that some amendment might have been added—a clause allowing Elizabeth to refuse without forfeiting the arrangement that the original will had not contained. He had hoped this for her sake. He wanted her choice to be a choice, freely made.
“I do hereby declare that if Fitzwilliam Darcy does not marry Elizabeth Bennet within two years of my departure from this mortal plane, or if Elizabeth Bennet refuses the marriage, then the aforesaid inheritance shall become wholly void…” Darcy bowed his head briefly.
Stubborn to the last. He had known it, had known his father would not relent, and yet something in him had held the hope regardless.
“…in lieu thereof, I give unto my son Fitzwilliam Darcy only the terrestrial globe in my study as a reminder of the vast world beyond these walls which he will have forfeited by his own choice or his failure to secure said Elizabeth Bennet's compliance.”
Richard produced a sound that was half laugh, half cough, quickly suppressed.
Before anyone could speak, Wrayburn's clerk moved to the object behind the solicitor's table—a shape that had sat covered in dark cloth since before the room had filled, unassuming and unremarked upon—and drew the cloth away.
The globe stood on its mahogany cradle exactly as Darcy remembered it.
How he had loved that globe! The brass meridian ring, the ivory degree markings, the painted oceans faded at the poles where his small hands had rested most often.
He had stood before it as a child and traced the coastlines with one finger, memorizing countries and planning expeditions while his father read at the desk behind him.
At the ripe age of eight, he had decided, in the solemn way of an eight-year-old boy, that he would one day put his feet on every shore he could name.
He had named them all, eventually. He had stood on many of them.
His father had remembered. The globe was not an expression of his father’s displeasure. It was an olive branch, proof that he had noticed and had cared. The burn behind his eyes was immediate and unwelcome and entirely beyond his ability to prevent.
“The globe?” Richard said through a chuckle. “That old thing?”
“George Darcy always did have an inappropriate sense of humor,” Lady Catherine announced, with a disapproving glance at Richard that suggested she held him personally responsible.
Darcy did not trust himself to speak. He looked at the globe and thought of a boy who had wanted nothing more than to see the world and a father who had noticed and never said so, and he thought that this was perhaps the most his father had ever managed to say about love.
He blinked. He breathed. He kept his eyes closed until it was safe to open them.
When he looked up, Elizabeth was watching him. Not with pity, not with the careful neutrality she had worn through the reading, but with the expression of a woman who understood this moment and was deciding what to do with it. He held her gaze.
Wrayburn continued. “And upon such failure or refusal, I bequeath all my said possessions to my nephew Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, he being a man of honor whom I trust to manage this inheritance in a manner befitting my selection.” Richard closed his eyes briefly and sighed deeply. He did not look at his father.
Lord Matlock's shoulders slumped ever so slightly.
He would assume, Darcy suspected, that Darcy and Elizabeth would marry to preserve the estate—it was what any sensible person would do, he would reason, and Lord Matlock prided himself on being sensible.
He did not know Elizabeth. He had not been paying attention.
Wickham sat very still, his eyes wide with befuddlement. His name had not been spoken.
Wrayburn proceeded with the specific bequests, and the room began, fractionally, to breathe again.
He moved through the family first. There were bequests to Lord Matlock—his brother-in-law of thirty years—and to the countess, to Lord Lisle and his lady: a matched pair of hunters, a brace of fowling pieces, a string of pearls, a sum set aside toward the schooling of their sons.
Small legacies, and gracious ones, that the Fitzwilliams received with the stiff composure of people who had come expecting a great deal more and were ashamed to be caught wanting it.
To Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam he left five thousand pounds, free of every condition—“that a man of honor need never again be beholden to another for the plain cost of an honest life.”
Only Darcy understood the whole of it. He thought of the lowered rent, the saddle that had cost precisely what Richard could pay, the small kindnesses his cousin had received and to which he credited his uncle.
Here was that same hand a final time, drawn out of the shadows and set down in ink for the whole room to witness.
Father had been settling this account for years, and now he meant, in the end, to close it in a manner that granted Richard dignity and freedom.
Beside him, Richard’s jaw worked; he did not trust himself to look up.
“And notwithstanding the disposition of the residue,” Wrayburn read, “for the avoidance of any wrong to the lady herself, I do direct that should this marriage fail to be solemnized through any cause but Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s own refusal, there shall be settled upon her, as a first charge upon my estate, the sum of six thousand pounds, to be hers absolutely and beyond the reach of any other hand—that she may never be made the poorer for having been chosen by a son too proud to keep faith with his father’s word.
” He set the page atop the others. “That is the whole of the provision respecting the marriage arrangement.”
The whole of it, then. And with it the shape of his father’s purpose came clear.
The man had spent his final strength shielding the two people Darcy loved—the cousin who had asked for nothing, and the woman he had never dared to claim.
Whatever Darcy did now, however badly he failed her, Elizabeth would not be made to pay for it.
His father had trusted the worth of the lady more than the constancy of his own son, and the rebuke was deserved.
Darcy’s relief softened the sting. Elizabeth was free and provided for.
The one mercy he had wanted for her was granted by the very hand Darcy had believed incapable of it.
“Whereas my beloved late wife’s sister, Lady Catherine Mildred de Bourgh of Rosings Park in the County of Kent, has expressed particular admiration for the Sèvres porcelain service gracing Pemberley’s morning room, I hereby bequeath the complete china service of forty-seven pieces—”
“I had expected no less,” sniffed Lady Catherine, sitting taller in her seat. Wrayburn paused, allowing her ladyship a moment to bask in her triumph before he continued reading, “including its matching chamber pot and bourdaloue of the same pattern to the said Lady Catherine Mildred de Bourgh.”
Darcy bit his tongue and held his breath.
The entire room went quiet. Only Lady Catherine’s huffs could be heard.
It was too much for Lord Matlock. An outburst of laughter escaped from him, growing in volume until he was reduced to a coughing fit.
Even Mr. Schweitzer and Anne hid their humor behind their hands.
“He left you a chamber pot, Cathy!” Lord Matlock exclaimed.
Lady Catherine’s face had turned a purplish shade. “How dare he!”
Wrayburn continued reading smoothly, “Being articles of the finest French manufacture, which I trust she will display with the care and appreciation befitting their quality and the affection in which I hold her.” The dig was unmistakable.