Chapter 23 #3
Elizabeth dressed quickly and quietly, choosing a sturdy gown and her old pelisse, then slipped from the house before anyone could stop her.
The air struck cold against her cheeks, sharp enough to wake her fully.
Frost silvered the edges of the grass, and the eastern sky held only the faintest suggestion of light.
Longbourn lay behind her, still and unsuspecting, as she crossed the lawn and found the path toward Oakham Mount.
It had been her path for years.
When Longbourn grew too loud, she walked there.
When accounts troubled her, she walked there.
When her father disappointed her, her mother overwhelmed her, her sisters vexed her, or the future pressed too heavily upon her chest, she climbed toward the mount and let the wind take what words could not.
The path was worn in places by her own feet as much as any neighbor’s.
She knew where the ground dipped, where roots caught at hems, where the hedge opened to a view of fields that belonged, for now, to her father and would one day belong to Mr. Collins if nothing intervened.
Or would have, she reminded herself.
That was no longer the whole truth.
Netherfield was hers.
The thought still felt strange, even after two years.
Hers, yet not hers in any way visible enough to comfort her mother.
Hers, though she could not walk through its halls as mistress while Mr. Bingley sat at its table, falling in love with Jane beneath a roof he did not know belonged to Jane’s sister.
Hers, because mud, grief, courage, and a Roman coin had changed the direction of her life.
Should she have told Mama sooner?
The question troubled her more now than it had when secrecy first seemed only sensible.
At seventeen, overwhelmed by loss and legal language, she had accepted the protections placed around her with gratitude.
Her uncle had agreed. Lord Matlock had insisted.
Mr. Philips had warned that too much knowledge would bring danger, vanity, schemes, and perhaps even claimants. Elizabeth had believed them all.
She still believed them.
But belief did not entirely silence guilt.
Her mother had lived for years beneath the shadow of the entail.
Every illness of Mr. Bennet’s, every unpaid bill, every suitor who looked twice at one of her daughters had been colored by that fear.
Elizabeth had called it vulgar, tiresome, mortifying.
It was all those things. Yet it was also fear.
A fear her father mocked and left unmanaged.
A fear Elizabeth could have eased, if not removed.
She reached the lower slope of Oakham Mount and paused to draw breath.
What could she safely say?
Mama, I must tell you something, but you must be calm.
No. That would ensure she was not calm.
Mama, there is less reason to fear the entail than you believe.
Too vague. Mrs. Bennet would immediately imagine Jane engaged, Elizabeth promised to Mr. Collins, or Mr. Bennet secretly immortal.
Mama, through circumstances I cannot fully explain—
That would be disastrous.
Elizabeth pressed her gloved fingers to her temples and resumed walking.
Perhaps she should simply heed just a portion Mr. Phillip’s advice and give only the plainest truth.
That after the Gardiners’ deaths, some provision had been made for the children and for Elizabeth.
To say more was to risk it all. God willing, when the time came that the entailment must be fulfilled, she would be of age, and no longer in need of the protection of secrecy.
There was Mr. Bingley to consider too. Jane’s happiness might be touched by this secret.
If Mrs. Bennet learned that Mr. Bingley leased Netherfield from Elizabeth, would she be able to keep from revealing it?
Would she think it an advantage and boast?
Would Mr. Bingley feel deceived? Would Jane be embarrassed?
Would Miss Bingley discover it and turn her sharp tongue upon them all?
And Darcy—
Elizabeth stopped herself.
No. Darcy had no place in this decision.
He had a place in the secret, certainly.
He knew enough. Perhaps too much. But he had chosen distance, and she must not shape her life around whether he approved.
Let him go to Rosings. Let him marry Anne de Bourgh, if that was his family’s wish.
Let him forget every conversation, every glance, every moment that had meant too much to her and apparently not enough to him.
The thought hurt less this morning.
No, that was not true.
It hurt differently.
She continued up the path, faster now, as if speed might carry her beyond both sorrow and indecision.
The summit was close, the turn in the path just ahead where the ground rose between two old oaks before opening toward the view.
She would stand there, breathe, and decide the words she must say.
Then she would return to Longbourn before breakfast and find some way to speak with her mother before Mr. Collins attached himself to her side and called it providence.
She rounded the bend.
Darcy stood at the top of the path.
“Oh!”