Chapter Two
“You did what?” Fitzwilliam Darcy gaped at his young friend, Charles Bingley.
“I purchased an estate. Did you not say I should pursue land ownership?” Bingley grinned happily. “It is a lovely place, just half a day’s ride from London. It will please my sisters—of that I am certain.”
Darcy pinched the bridge of his nose. “Bingley, I advised you to lease an estate. You have no experience in managing an estate. Leasing would provide you with the opportunity to learn—”
“And I shall still have the opportunity to learn. What difference does it make? Netherfield Park is mine now. Darcy, I have always leapt into my future feet first—this is no different. It will be wonderful. Caroline is already planning to redo several rooms. I intend to take possession at the end of the month. Please say you will join me there until after the festive season. You promised you would help me learn.”
Bingley’s pleading eyes looked rather like one of Darcy’s favorite dogs.
He sighed heavily. “I suppose I can stay for some months.” He had nothing better to do.
Georgiana was with Lord and Lady Matlock.
Her spirits after the summer were very low, and nothing Darcy had done (or, ‘could do’) had resulted in any improvement.
His dear sister had been taken in by a libertine while she summered by the sea.
The blackguard, long connected to the Darcy family, convinced the young heiress to elope.
Darcy arrived just in time to prevent his childhood friend from running off with his then fifteen-year-old sister, prompting George Wickham to flee the leased house.
Before Darcy and his cousin, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, could track him down, they had learned that Wickham had been killed in a duel.
The news had pushed Georgiana further into despondency. Lady Matlock had finally stepped in, instructing Darcy to absent himself until his sister recovered her spirits.
Darcy exhaled slowly, staring at the fire as if it might reveal how he was meant to manage another crisis. Bingley purchasing an estate—without consultation, without due diligence—was madness. Despite everything, the man looked so hopeful, so proud of himself, that Darcy found reprimand difficult.
Bingley had the heart of a golden retriever and the business instincts of one as well.
“Tell me of the area,” he said.
Leaning back in his chair, Bingley regaled him with tales of the neighborhood.
“The closest village is called Meryton. It is quaint, and the people are friendly. Netherfield is the principal estate in the area. The manor itself seems sound, and the tenant farms generate some three thousand a year in income. Mr. Morris—that is the land manager—says the estate has always been profitable.”
Darcy’s jaw tightened. Tenant farms claimed to generate income in exactly that fashion—smoothly, confidently, as though the land would tend itself.
But reality was altogether less obliging.
Roofs leaked. Fences rotted. Tenants fell into arrears.
Fields required drainage, roads resurfacing, orchards pruning, woodlands thinning, cottages repairing. And all of it cost money.
“Did you review the old account books to ascertain the accuracy of that statement?” Darcy raised an eyebrow.
Bingley began to shift uneasily. “He seemed forthright and honest.”
Darcy shook his head. “I hope for your sake that it is so.”
But even as he spoke, Darcy’s mind raced ahead to the inevitable reality.
Bingley had not reviewed the accounts. He had almost certainly overpaid—Darcy did not yet dare ask what the price of the estate had been.
Netherfield Park’s ‘three thousand a year’ would shrink rapidly once repairs were required.
If Bingley had indeed paid upward of fifty or sixty thousand pounds—and Darcy suspected he had—then the young man would have less than half his fortune left.
From that portion, he must now support the estate’s expenses, staff wages, tenant defaults, property improvements, his sisters’ expensive tastes, and any unforeseen emergencies.
Even a well-run estate might return fourteen hundred to eighteen hundred pounds a year after costs.
For a gentleman accustomed to interest income of around four or five thousand pounds annually, such a reduction was drastic.
Bingley would need to be thrifty for the first time in his life—and Darcy knew his friend possessed no such skill.
His stomach sank. This could ruin him. This could ruin everything.
Bingley’s enthusiasm was genuine, but dangerously na?ve.
Darcy could already picture the consequences.
Bingley stretching his purse to meet estate debts, Miss Bingley insisting on expensive redecorations, Mrs. Hurst demanding improvements to the grounds, tenants requesting repairs, unexpected expenses draining what remained of Bingley’s liquidity…
And Bingley, panicked and ashamed, trying to mask his error with bravado.
Worst of all, Darcy knew Bingley would refuse to admit he had erred. The young man had too much pride in his good intentions and too little experience to understand their limitations.
Darcy’s voice softened despite himself. “Bingley,” he said gently, “purchasing an estate is no small undertaking. You must be prudent now. Very prudent.”
Bingley only smiled, bright and hopeful as ever. “When have I ever led us astray, Darcy? This is a beginning—my beginning. And I am glad of it.”
Darcy pressed his lips together. He feared it was the beginning of trouble.
Ever worried for his friend and the choices he had made, Darcy rode to Hertfordshire two days following his conversation with Bingley.
He had directions to the estate and wished to view it for himself.
With nothing else to occupy his time, he packed his saddlebags and set off before the sun had fully risen above the trees.
It was not a visit he anticipated with pleasure.
His horse’s hooves struck rhythmically against the cobblestones of Mayfair until he reached the northern road, where the city thinned, cottages gave way to open country, and the damp scent of the fields replaced the closeness of London air.
Darcy urged his mount to a brisk pace, the rhythm of the ride soothing his mind even as it turned relentlessly toward the same troubling thought:
Bingley had bought an estate. Not leased, not trialed, not inspected with due diligence—bought it outright for a sum no rational man would have paid.
Darcy clenched his jaw as he rode. Bingley was good-hearted, generous, uncommonly amiable…
but he possessed no training, no instinct for business, and no tolerance for confrontation.
If a seller told him an estate’s roof was solid, he believed it; if a land agent praised the yield of tenant farms, he accepted it without question.
And Bingley, eager to cement his place among the landed gentry, had been precisely the kind of buyer unscrupulous sellers prayed for.
The countryside rolled past in a patchwork of browns and greens, freshly harvested fields lying bare beneath the September sun.
Darcy rode on, pushing his horse harder than usual, as though the increasing speed could ease the tightness forming under his ribs.
The air was brisk, and the cold stung his cheeks.
His mood was moderately tolerable, despite constant worry for his sister, and now the growing anxiety over Bingley’s possibly ruinous decision.
Yesterday, Bingley had presented the signed bill of sale. He had indeed overpaid for the estate. The amount, a staggering sixty thousand pounds, told Darcy all he needed to know about his friend’s readiness to handle a decision of this magnitude.
One can only hope this does not ruin him completely. Darcy shook his head at the thought. If Bingley was careful—if he stood his ground and prevented lavish spending for the next several years, he could regain a measure of security.
Never one to admit his errors, Bingley would refuse to sell. Even if he did, no sane buyer would give him sixty thousand pounds. It was an astronomical amount!
Determined to think on other things, Darcy pondered what action he should take concerning Georgiana.
Lady Matlock had encouraged him to continue corresponding, even if his sister offered no reply.
And Hertfordshire was not so far from London.
If Georgie needed him, he could be on his way in an instant and by her side before the day’s end.
Yes, the arrangement would be perfect in that regard.
On the other hand, staying with Bingley meant constant attention from his unmarried sister.
Miss Caroline Bingley was four-and-twenty, two years older than her brother.
She had a forceful personality and the ability to bend her brother to her will.
A wicked thought came to him: had Miss Bingley managed to convince her brother to precipitously purchase an estate in hopes that it would make her more attractive to suitors?
The Bingley fortune came from trade. Ownership of the estate would lessen the distaste associated with new money, but not eliminate it entirely. If she thought it would make her more attractive to him, she was sadly mistaken.
It did not escape Darcy’s notice that Miss Bingley wished to be the next mistress of Pemberley.
She was not the first to attempt to attract his attention, nor would she be the last. He was fairly certain the lady had no affection for him beyond the desire to be the mistress of a grand estate and move in the first circles.
Darcy had no interest in a marriage of convenience.
His position meant most expected him to marry an heiress of considerable fortune or the daughter of a peer.
Unless there was also genuine affection, such a match was not to be.