Quepilogue
“Mr Hurst, we are saved!”
William Hurst looked at his wife in surprise, wondering what she could possibly mean.
As the master of an estate, his diligence was suspect at best. That might have been less of a problem if his father had not been a wastrel and a gambler, and his brother even worse before his death, or his estate was not mired in debt up to its eyeballs.
Hurst was perfectly suited to the role of idle, frivolous gentleman.
He had in fact been practising that very thing during his sojourn into the wilds of Hertfordshire, and he was quite certain he could shoot, drink, fish, gamble, and sleep with the best of them.
However, upon returning to town and a meeting with his solicitor and his factor, he was astounded to find he was dead broke.
In fact, it would take a considerable improvement in fortunes to be dead broke; as in reality, he had creditors at his heels, and many of them were wont to casually mention the probability of his spending some considerable time in the company of Mr Wickham (what was left of him anyway).
Now, Wickham was a fine enough fellow, although not a very good card player, but since he was in debtors' prison for the foreseeable future, Mr Hurst was unconvinced it was a good place to spend his own time.
Hurst however, had not the slightest idea what to do about his estate, other than the obvious endeavours of naps and port, neither of which seemed likely to be the cause of his wife's giddiness, so he said the first sensible thing he had in a long time.
“How can you say that? You know we are completely destitute! It is impossible!”
Were he a fine judge of countenance, he might have recognised the look of smug satisfaction on Mrs Hurst's face, but alas, he was remarkably obtuse, and just looked on in confusion while his wife endeavoured to enlighten him.
“I have managed to acquire nearly ￡50,000 through a very clever set of wagers. I took the liberty of paying off all our creditors, and ensured our estate is once again generating an income. We are saved!”
Hurst beamed at his lovely wife in pride, admiration, and mostly relief that his idle lifestyle would not be disturbed, and that he would not need to spend any time in a place as disagreeable as debtors' prison, which he was nearly certain would not have any shooting at all to speak of, although in its favour, it was certain to have quite a lot of cards.
Seeing how much better off he was with his wife in charge of things he beamed at her. “My love, you are a genius. How could we afford such wagers?”
“We could not! Your mismanagement of our estate, along with your father's, left us on a certain path to the poorhouse. I wagered big on a bet that could give me very good odds, and then I strove to change the outcome. I was able to achieve the impossible, and my wagering opponents wept at the injustice of my ability to arrange such a thing, although, truth be told, there was a certain amount of respect for the lady who called down lightning on demand.”
Completely out of his depth, Hurst asked, “What extremely unlikely event were you able to facilitate?”
Louisa Hurst beamed in smug satisfaction, and boasted, “I got Caroline married—before summer—at odds between two to one and ten to one, depending on the gullibility of my opponents. Having secured more wagers than we could possibly pay, I got her out of England for good with odds of thirty to one.”
Hurst's expression was no longer ambiguous.
He looked at his wife in awe, and would have bowed and scraped to her if he knew how to do it properly.
Louisa made a mental note to send him off to Hunsford for instruction.
She had actually made that part of her wager with Mrs Collins, and for her part, Charlotte saw nothing but good in the scheme, as having two men sporting such speaking patterns would probably allow her to increase her chess match load, this being necessary as she was getting bored with the dozen she ran presently, and Lizzy, Jane, and Lydia were not as available for diversion as they once had been.
Mr Hurst did make some bowing effusions to the best of his ability, so Mrs Hurst was sanguine that he was at least trainable. Having made the determination, she thought it might be time for lesson one.
“Mr Hurst, there are another set of wagers floating around town that I may participate in which concern us.”
Mr Hurst actually arrested his arm's unconscious movement to the port bottle to ask, “Which are these?”
Louisa looked askance. “The first could have a tremendous payback. I can get fifty to one that you will stop drinking, stop gambling, learn to take proper care of your estate, and do your duty with respect to fathering an heir, and a few siblings.”
Hurst looked at her in open-faced astonishment and alarm! The concepts were so foreign to him, he could not come up with an analogy for their strangeness, so as always he decided to just skip over what he did not understand and move on to the next thing.
“And the other?”
Louisa locked eyes with him, and he could not look away, while she measured his worthiness down to the depths of his soul.
A gentleman would consider this something like a Cobra Stare, but all the ladies called it the Bennet Stare.
Louisa was so happy her best friend and sister Jane had taught it to her while she was at Netherfield.
It was very useful for attaching the undivided attention of their menfolk.
“The other is nowhere near as good a wager. I cannot even get even odds, since it is a truth universally acknowledged that it is nearly inevitable. In fact, I may have to give one to two.”
Her husband sweated and stared. “And this wager of inevitability?”
“It presupposes that you will continue as before, shooting, drinking, napping and gambling; and that I will get fed up and smother you with a pillow in your sleep within the year.”
Hurst turned red, or white, or whichever colour one likes to use to describe abject shock and mortification. It was several moments before he could even listen, let alone speak.
Mrs Hurst asked sweetly, “I really depend on your advice as my loving husband, Mr Hurst. Which wager should I engage in, the sure thing or the long shot?”
~
Quite some time later, Mr Hurst found that his first set of lessons in his duty as a newly minted proper gentleman with the ability to pay proper and particular attention to his wife was going surprisingly well.
Of course, he was about ready to die, and to an outsider would look like one of Mr Darcy's horses all lathered after a hard ride of several hours; but his wife assured him that his stamina would increase.
Of course, there was a slim chance the petit mort would become the grosse mort, but she wisely refrained from telling him she had laid down a few pounds on the off chance.
A month later, a newly vigorous-looking Hurst finally cleared the cobwebs from his head enough to start asking intelligent questions.
The lack of port helped substantially, as he was not at all certain which wager his wife had taken, and he was surprisingly sanguine about the activities which were replacing his vices.
“My dear, can you tell me how you managed the impossible! Not a single person who knows Caroline would have thought such an advantageous match could be arranged by Napoleon himself.”
Louisa smirked and shared her tale, ready to burst with pride at her own cleverness, and ever so happy she finally had her husband back and his evil twin banished.
“Actually, Napoleon was involved, but it was really a minor role. The rest was really quite simple. I merely threatened to have Caroline visit the Darcys for a month! Once that was done, it was only a matter of time until Mrs Darcy took matters into her own hands. At that point, the outcome was inevitable!”
Hurst stared in awe. Such a bold move was astounding and unprecedented, but confusing.
“You can hardly believe Mrs Darcy would take your word for something she could easily sniff out as a wager you are involved in.”
Louisa's look of smug satisfaction increased to the level sufficient to compete with Lady Catherine de Bourgh herself, and in a self-congratulating tone she boasted, “I fooled Elizabeth Darcy!”
Hurst's admiration now knew no bounds, and he shuffled forward in his chair eager for details, “How so? I must know!”, being completely unaware of just how silly that sounded a century before Dr Seuss.
“I wrote her a letter in Charles' hand saying he—Charles—was going to bring Caroline to Pemberley… for a month.”
Hurst could see, as any child would, that there could be only one possible outcome to such a letter. “I can see how that would lead inevitably to this outcome; but how did you simulate one of Charles' letters?”
“That part was easy. I simply wrote a letter normally and then allowed a few of the hounds to mark it as their territory.”