Chapter 45
After seeing Charlotte returned safely to Lucas Lodge, Elizabeth braced herself for Longbourn—in particular, her mother.
“Well?” Mama asked before they had even stripped off their coats. “Are you engaged?”
Elizabeth took a deep breath and smiled. “Not as yet, Mama.” She set down her gloves.
There was no gentle way to say it, and she had given up somewhere on the road home trying to find one.
“There is something you must all hear, and you had as well hear it from me.” She waited until she had them—her mother; Mary in the doorway with her book; Kitty and Lydia hanging over the banister.
“The gentleman you have known these weeks as Mr. Robinson, Papa’s secretary…
is actually Fitzwilliam Darcy. He is the man I have been promised to since I was a girl.
He came to Longbourn under a borrowed name, and I did not know it any better than you did until the will was read. ”
For a moment, no one spoke at all.
“The secretary,” Lydia said from the stairs. “Our Mr. Robinson is Mr. Darcy of Pemberley?”
“He is.”
Mary set down her book. Mama, who had scolded her husband’s secretary for leaving damp footprints on her clean floors and once sent him to the village in the rain, had gone quite white. “I offered that man cold mutton,” she said faintly.
It was then that Jane came down. She had heard enough from the landing to arrive with her composure already slipping, and she stopped on the last stair with one hand on the rail. “You cannot mean it. Mr. Robinson. You are certain?”
“Quite certain.”
Jane said nothing more. But Elizabeth watched the whole of the last weeks rearrange itself behind her sister’s haunted eyes—every warning pressed upon her, every reminder that a secretary was beneath her, every assurance that the Darcy name would be their salvation.
The man Jane had forbidden her to love and the man Jane had insisted she must marry were, and had always been, one and the same.
Color climbed into Jane’s cheeks and down her neck.
She did not apologize; she was not yet a woman who could apologize for a pride she had believed was prudence.
But she came down the last stair and stood beside her sister, which, for Jane, was a great deal.
The silence that followed was like the calm before the storm.
And then it broke. Whatever wonder the news had struck into her mother lasted precisely as long as Mama’s wonder ever lasted, and gave way to the older, louder grievance beneath it.
“Not as yet,” she mother repeated with dramatic emphasis. “You went all the way to Pemberley…”
“Mama—”
“… after all these years we have waited and lived for this arrangement, and you are not engaged.” She flung a hand toward the door, toward the whole of Hertfordshire, toward the absent man himself.
“The master of Pemberley beneath this very roof, mending your father’s ledgers and chopping our wood and making sheep’s eyes at you in a manner every girl dreams of, and you left without a promise?
Have you taken leave of your senses entirely? ”
“The situation is more complicated than we anticipated. I need time to consider.”
Mama turned to her husband with a fierce expression that made him wilt. “This,” she said, “is your doing.”
Papa, who had been attempting to achieve invisibility in the general vicinity of his study door, paused.
Sighing in resignation, he turned away from his room and faced his wife with an admirable display of determination.
“Lizzy possesses a strong will and an intelligent mind. She will make the best choice for her future without my intervention.”
“Without your intervention, you say? When, Thomas Bennet, have you ever intervened on behalf of your family? Tell me that! Any education our girls have received has been my doing, and that only with the help of Lizzy and Mr. Darcy, may he rest in peace. What have you done but sit in your beloved room and read books?”
He stiffened, brows bunched in displeasure. “I taught her estate management, and I did a fine job of it, if the success of Longbourn is an indication.”
“You speak of the success of Longbourn when we have a shell of a house, empty fields with no money to plant or laborers to work?”
“Before the debt, of course! Be sensible, Mrs. Bennet! Lizzy has increased the estate’s profit considerably from year to year, and I have no doubt that, with her help, Longbourn will prosper again.”
“And how does that help us now, Mr. Bennet? You have a room full of books, but your daughters will not get new gowns this year, nor do they have money for ribbons.”
“Perhaps they would not be so destitute had you not taken it as your mission to spend every penny of your pin money each month!”
A collective gasp. Followed by silence. Elizabeth could not recall ever hearing her parents quarrel like this.
Mother was up to the challenge. “How dare you!” She drew herself up, several inches shorter than Papa but taller in every other respect.
“I have managed this household and kept our five daughters presentable on a budget that would make Lady Lucas weep, and I have done it with a husband who considers a quiet afternoon more important than his family's future.” She pointed at him—a single, decisive finger.
“You will not speak to me about spending.” So still was their audience, not even Lydia fidgeted.
Papa opened his mouth, and then, wisely, closed it again.
“Furthermore,” Mama said, apparently recognizing the advantage of her momentum and resolving not to waste it, “everything we have of any value in this house is thanks to Elizabeth. Not to you, Mr. Bennet. To your daughter! And you are content to allow her to squander her future without any guidance from you so long as she fixes the mess you have made here at Longbourn.”
To his credit, Papa did not argue, but the heightened color of his skin made it plain to see his indignation. To Elizabeth’s surprise, he spun about, flung his door open, and marched inside his study. “Maddening woman! Always must have the last word. How can a man have any peace—”
Mama chased after him, finger extended. “Do not say that odious word in this house!” At that, she lifted a book from his desk and hurled it at him.
Her aim was not sound. Pages ruffling, it smacked against the bookshelf behind him, landing with an unceremonious thud on the floor. She reached for another.
He grabbed the cushion on his chair, holding it up like a shield in front of his head just as the second book went flying.
But just as the book would have hit the cushion, Papa dropped it, still half turned, his gaze fixed on his favorite chair, to take the brunt of the impact on his ear.
The book fell to the ground, and Papa did not react.
He stood still, a grin spreading over his mouth.
Mama paused mid-reach for a third book.
Elizabeth slipped behind her to see what had happened to distract her father from the next projectile. He picked something from the chair, laughing as he unfolded a thick document and held it up. “This is it! I have found it!”
Everyone stared. Clearing the top of his desk with a mad swipe of his arm, he spread the document over the surface, smoothing it flat with shaking hands. Elizabeth leaned in. Her mother leaned in. Mary appeared at her elbow. Kitty and Lydia ran behind them, craning their necks to see.
It was a contract from Imperial Spirits & Fine Goods. A partner signature at the bottom, in ink a shade darker than the rest of the document. And there, in the signature line, in careful copper-plate letters: Thomas Bennett.
Bennett. Two t’s. Elizabeth looked at her father, mouth agape.
The gray afternoon in her father's study came back to her all at once—Robinson's steady voice: a signed counterpart, found here, among his papers.
“This is what he said they would do,” Elizabeth breathed.
“They sent it to be found—by the King's men, not by us. They wagered you would never open it.”
“Bennett,” Mama read, and then looked at her husband. “They spelled it wrong.”
“They did.”
“They spelled it wrong!” she repeated, more excitedly.
“That is what I just said.”
“Mr. Bennet, they spelled your name wrong! They forged your name and they spelled it wrong!”
Papa smiled. “Yes, Mrs. Bennet. I have been spelling Bennet correctly for fifty-three years. Apparently, one must be a criminal to misspell it.”
“We must go to London immediately.”
“I thought we might, yes.”
“Today!”
“It is nearly dark.”
“Tomorrow, then. First thing.” She folded the document carefully, reverently and placed it in the center of the desk.
“Do not let anyone touch that. Mr. Bennet, you will take this to London on the morrow, and you will not return home until you have a letter from Sir Bradley himself saying that we owe the king nothing. Do I make myself clear?”
“Admirably,” Papa said.
Mama did not reach for another book. She stood with her hand pressed flat upon the folded contract, and Elizabeth watched her mother’s expression shift. The pinched, hunted look she had worn for weeks yielded to a pensive calm.
“Do you know what this means, Lizzy?” There was, for once, no melodrama in it.
“All this time I have told you that you must marry, that we were ruined else, that everything—everything—depended upon you.” She smoothed the paper flat once more, reverently.
“And it was a forger’s lie. We are not ruined. We never needed the marriage at all.”
For a moment she was quiet, which was itself a remarkable thing.
“Good.” She straightened, and with a decisive air, she turned to the room at large. “I have been thinking—”
“A dangerous activity—” Papa bit his tongue at Mama’s sharp look.
“I have come to some conclusions.”
Elizabeth waited, at a loss to guess what was on her mother’s mind.
“This household has been running on the efforts of one person for far too long.” She did not look at Elizabeth, but she did not need to.
“That is going to change. Beginning now.” Kitty and Lydia exchanged a look.
“I intend to speak with my brothers about what needs to be done to put Longbourn right again. I will not spend money we do not have.” This comment, she directed at Papa, who had the good sense to look chagrined.
“I will not entertain until our reputation has recovered. There will be no new gowns or slippers—” she winced as she continued—”until we are on firm ground.
I will seek recommendations for a new governess to continue teaching our girls. ”
“Mama!” Lydia wailed. “Are you saying we cannot—”
“I am saying that if Elizabeth could learn to manage this estate, then so can we. So can all of us.”
Elizabeth’s heart swelled with pride. This was a surprising side to her mother she delighted in seeing. Jane appeared in the doorway, just in time to hear their mother pronounce, “Longbourn belongs to all of us. It is high time we all acted like it.”
Mary said, with barely concealed delight, “I think that is an excellent idea.”
Kitty looked uncertain. Lydia looked defiant. Jane said nothing. Elizabeth hoped that, in time and with the positive influence of their mother on a mission, Jane’s haughty pride might soften.
“Furthermore,” Mrs. Bennet said, turning to her husband, who looked at her as though he were seeing her for the first time, “you will accompany me to every meeting with my brothers. Every conversation with Elizabeth about the estate. Every invitation we are fortunate enough to receive. There will still be time for your books, Mr. Bennet. But you will take time for your family.” She looked at him steadily. “This is not a suggestion.”
Papa considered his wife for a long moment, a mixture of bewilderment and admiration crossing his features. “As you wish, Mrs. Bennet.” As quickly as their spat had arisen, it had settled with a truce.
Papa went to London with the contract, accompanied by Mama, who had decided that her presence would ensure the business was concluded with appropriate swiftness and was entirely correct.
She had the official letter from Sir Bradley as proof.
Uncle Philips had been alerted. Uncle Gardiner had been applied to, and his offer to lend the seed money arrived by express before the week was out, accompanied by a letter from Aunt Gardiner that was warm and practical in equal measure and made Elizabeth cry twice.
The days that followed were full of work and noise and the productive chaos of a household learning new habits. A good deal of work was getting done at Longbourn. Elizabeth threw herself into the activity, filling every hour from early morning until the light failed.
She was glad for it. Work was honest and immediate, and it did not require her to sit with the questions she was not yet ready to answer.
But the work could only fill the daylight hours.
In the evenings, when the house quieted and her sisters were occupied and her mother was writing letters and her father was sitting with the family rather than behind his study door, Elizabeth found herself listening.
For wheels on the drive. For a particular knock.
A week passed. She had asked for time, and he had offered her more of it than she had asked for, and she understood that.
She did. She turned it over in her mind with the patient, rational part of herself that had been balancing ledgers since she had first learned sums. She also found, on the eve of that seventh night, that she had perhaps underestimated how much she had hoped he would not take her entirely at her word.
She thought of his father's letter, still carried in her pocket, though she had read it so many times she could have reproduced it from memory.
She thought of the way he had stood in the library with his hands at his sides and said, without preparation or performance: You.
She pressed her forehead against the cool glass. For you, I would wait longer.
The road outside was empty and dark and showed no signs of changing. Elizabeth straightened, told herself to be sensible, and went to bed.