Chapter 3 #2
“Do you really think I would never learn about you spending hours and hours with your elder sister preparing to sell off my treasures before I was cold in the ground?”
I was stunned that he could object to that, but since we had decided to not tell him any more about our previous acquaintance than necessary, she simply shrugged. “You will be dead! Why should you care if I arranged to keep your family from starving in the hedgerows?”
“Why not simply ask?”
“Because I asked!” she hissed angrily. “I asked and I asked and I asked. I asked about the entail. I asked about crop rotation. I asked about inventories. I asked about allowing us to marry tradesmen. I asked about a season in town. I asked about you writing old school chums. I asked about this and I asked about that and I asked about the other. I never got anywhere! You left me no choice!”
She said the last with the sort of iron-edged voice that in a man would presage violence.
Her father showed he was not quite as stupid as he seemed—he was just lazy. “Have you been involved in these clandestine arrangements, Mr Darcy?”
I was having trouble reading the man, and could not tell if he was angry, or just winding us up for his own amusement. To this day, I seldom know what he is thinking, though it is no longer much of an issue since I rarely see him and even more rarely care.
“I have,” I said, seeing no point in denying it. I still had no idea how much I would reveal, but it seemed the idea of revealing nothing was off the table, and there was no harm in at least some of what I had helped Elizabeth with.
“Have you done anything… untoward?”
At that point, I thought I had taken his measure and surmised he was just trying to goad me into either revealing more than I wanted to or losing my temper. He was welcome to try all he wanted. I was not to be worked by the likes of a man who never left his library.
“No sir, nothing the slightest bit untoward. Miss Elizabeth has occasionally given me some advice, since I am a bachelor raising a young sister, and I have returned the favour, but none of that could be considered the least bit untoward. Until last night, we had never been closer to each other than a few feet.”
“So, when did you propose?”
“This morning,” Elizabeth said.
“In the middle of some sort of assignation?”
He was skating close to the edge there because our meeting on Oakham Mount was entirely improper by the usual standards, though hardly notable given that we had been meeting clandestinely for five years.
That particular nugget was one that I was not willing to give him.
I decided to give him something he could sink his teeth into, but not enough to unravel the whole story.
“Miss Elizabeth gave me some advice in the summer that saved one of my family members considerable grief. I wished to thank her, but it was not the sort of thing to be done publicly.”
“Why not in the privacy of Longbourn?”
Elizabeth snorted, and said emphatically, “I repeat. Just go to the drawing room and observe poor Mr Bingley, then try to imagine us having a discreet conversation without being eavesdropped on. It would be absurd.”
“Why not in this room?”
“Because it is no more your business than anyone else’!” she snapped, showing just a touch of the spitfire from five years earlier. “I advised him in confidence, and he wanted to return the favour. This is not all that complicated, nor is it especially improper!”
“I must say it sounds untoward, and it will certainly appear that way if your engagement is abruptly announced.”
I did not have a good answer to that objection, since he was right in essentials, and it would look better if we slowed things down; but Elizabeth was both made of stronger stuff and less willing to endure a trial.
“Whatever we do will be mortifying! You know it will be, and you also know I will have to endure the bulk of the mortification while you sit in this room and ignore us as you always do. Fitzwilliam can escape to Netherfield, or town, or anywhere he wants when it gets to be too much, while I must sit through it. I repeat—I want no part of such torture. All we need do to quell any gossip is tell the truth, namely that the bulk of our courtship occurred in London, over the last few years. If I simply tell Mrs Bennet and Lady Lucas that, everyone in town will know within the day.”
He started to look recalcitrant, and Elizabeth well and truly lost her temper.
“You want to know what I have been doing… fine! For five years, I have been trying to make up for my parents’ deficiencies.
Mr Darcy has helped me in that endeavour.
The books were only part of it, but I will not be explicit about the rest. You had your chance to correct your wife, or mitigate the entail, or save some money, or control your younger daughters, or do what I have been doing, or do anything to leave us ready for your inevitable demise, and you missed it. You owe me this!”
“I owe you nothing,” he said, but I could not tell if he was digging in or giving up.
Elizabeth leaned ahead in her chair until she was staring at him menacingly from a few feet away.
“I know you, sir. Right here, right now, you must decide whether to do this the easy way or the hard. Which will you choose?”
He put on his own stubborn face. “Tell me more about each.”
“The easy way is you give Fitzwilliam your consent and blessing right here, right now, without any more pointless posturing. He will negotiate a very advantageous marriage contract with Uncle Gardiner, have it approved by Uncle Philips, and you will sign it without question. We will marry in a week by license, or three after the banns, but under no conditions will it be later than one month from today. You need do nothing at all aside from signing your name a few times, enforcing a strict budget in the wedding preparations and breakfast, and stopping my mother from dragging me around the neighbourhood like a prize heifer more than once or twice.”
“And the hard way.”
“I will tell Mama you declined a proposal from a man of double Mr Bingley’s consequence and five times yours! Then I will remind her of it every morning at breakfast, and every night before bed, every day like clockwork, until I turn one and twenty, at which time I will marry Fitzwilliam anyway.”
The man turned pale as if she had threatened to beat him with a cricket bat (an idea with merit).
She twisted the knife. “That presumes we do not lose patience and just elope, which is neither out of the question nor particularly difficult.”
He looked at me and asked, “Is this the kind of obstinate headstrong girl you wish for a wife.”
“It is precisely the type of woman I need in my life. The more obstinate and headstrong the better. Elizabeth need not apologise for who she is. Do you honestly think a man of my consequence would have any trouble finding a meek and obedient wife after surviving a decade as one of the most eligible bachelors in the first circles?”
I could taste victory, and to this day I have no idea if he was seriously considering denying consent or just making sport of us, as I later learned he did with everyone when he thought he could get away with it; so my overall ambition was to disabuse him of the notion that I was one of his hapless victims..
“All right, Lizzy. You win. Now, if you do not mind, I shall be glad to have the library to myself as soon as may be.”
“Can you at least announce it?” she asked angrily.
He looked at her like she had just asked him to walk to London with a sheep on his back, but he finally sighed resignedly and started to creakily get up.
“Let us get it over with.”
I already knew I could not respect the man, and after that, I doubted I would ever like him either; but since I planned to take Elizabeth a hundred fifty miles from Longbourn, I supposed it mattered little.
It was not as if any other potential father-in-law was likely to be any more agreeable.
I expected even worse with Mrs Bennet, but the answer was the same.
I knew I would have to do something about the three youngest sisters, but how hard could that be? They all seemed like problems that could readily be solved with money, and not even all that much of it.
With a great sigh, Mr Bennet stood up and escorted us to the parlour.