Chapter Thirty-Two
Elizabeth went upstairs with the intention of going through her room, of deciding what was worth carrying and what could be left behind.
She was thinking it through as she climbed, moving through the contents of drawers and shelves in her mind before she reached them.
Three dresses for the journey. That much was clear.
But beyond that, as she considered it, there was very little.
The things she actually valued were not here.
The books her uncle had chosen, the ribbon her aunt had pressed into her hands in Brinmouth because it matched her eyes, the small carved box from the market.
Almost everything she cared for had come from Gracechurch Street, and the realisation sat with her strangely as she reached the top stair.
She had never thought much about it before.
Now it made a different kind of sense. She wondered, briefly and painfully, whether the Gardiners had known, and then put it aside, because no, they could not have.
Her uncle had been travelling the year she was born and her aunt had been no older than Lydia, still in her father's house, years away from the woman who stood in London parlours pressing kid gloves into Elizabeth's hands as though it were nothing at all.
Before she reached her own room, Jane's door opened.
“Lizzy. I am so glad to catch you.”
Before Elizabeth could answer, Lydia’s door flew back and Lydia herself appeared, plainly having been listening for exactly this moment, her half-eaten breakfast tray visible behind her.
"We all know," she announced. "Mama was not quiet and neither was Papa and the walls in this house are not thick.
You are not our sister." She said it the way she might announce that it would rain, or that the Lucases were coming to dinner.
"I think it is terribly romantic. A mysterious parentage.
Kitty, do you not think it is romantic?"
Kitty, who had followed Elizabeth up the stairs after breakfast, glanced once at Lydia, then at Elizabeth, and looked considerably less entertained by the situation than her younger sister. "I think," she said, "that it is considerably more complicated than romantic."
"Well." Lydia was already moving toward the stair, one hand trailing along the banister. "I am going to Maria's. Kitty, are you coming?"
"Not today," Kitty said.
Lydia shrugged and was gone, the sound of her on the stair fading quickly, already thinking of something else entirely. Jane stepped toward Elizabeth and touched her arm with the gentle certainty of a woman who has decided what is needed and means to provide it.
"Come and sit with me," she said. "We have not properly talked."
They went into Jane's room and sat as they had done a thousand times, Jane in her chair by the window, Elizabeth on the edge of the bed, the morning light falling between them.
“Whatever happens,” Jane said, “you are my sister. You will always be my sister. Nothing that Mama or Papa says will change that.”
“Thank you, Jane.”
“I mean it, Lizzy. And I want to help, if I can. Will you not tell me a little of what you know? Only so that I can understand. I feel so dreadful being kept in the dark when you are suffering.”
“I wish I could learn more about my family,” she said at last. “All I know are their names. Philip and Margaret.”
“Margaret,” Jane said. “That is a beautiful name. Forgive me, but I could not help overhearing last night. How did you come to know it?”
“I...” Elizabeth stopped. She had already said too much. “I saw it once in the family bible,” she said, which was not quite a lie and not quite the truth and sat badly in her mouth regardless. “Before it was locked away. I did not know then what I was looking at.”
“Oh, Lizzy, I wish you could see it again. But papa said the book must stay in the drawer; it is falling apart. Promise me you will not disturb it. It is our family history, after all.”
“I promise,” she said.
Kitty sat with her back against the wall adjoining Jane's room. The walls at Longbourn were thin; one learned that early, whether one wished to or not, and she could hear Elizabeth's voice through the wall and Jane's in reply.
Lizzy was her sister; not merely because they had been raised together, but because Elizabeth had always been the one who stayed.
She had sat with Kitty through childhood illnesses and childish heartbreaks, had read to her for hours simply because Kitty liked the sound of her voice, and had remembered her when the rest of the household so often forgot her altogether.
Her father would be gone for hours, as he had announced at breakfast. Kitty knew about the drawer because she had been there when Lydia opened it some months ago, on one of those idle afternoons when their mother was resting and Lydia wanted pin money and knew exactly where to find it.
Kitty had followed her into the book room and stood beside her while Lydia worked the key, interested only in the strongbox.
Curiosity had led her to lift the ledger aside.
Beneath it she had found the family bible and leafed through it briefly.
It had not looked to be falling apart. She had not thought much of the names at the time.
She rose and went quietly to her father's room. The key was where Lydia had shown her. A few minutes later she was back in the book room, unlocking the drawer and lifting out the strongbox, then the ledger. She opened the inside cover and read the words there once, then again.
Interest from Elizabeth Dower Fund.
She had always assumed it was simply her father’s private ledger; the quiet money for things that never appeared in household accounts, the sort of reserve Lydia only noticed because it occasionally became ribbons. But this was Elizabeth’s name, written in his hand.
Kitty set the ledger aside and drew out the bible. Beneath it lay a packet of papers tied neatly with string. She untied it and looked first at the uppermost sheet, where the title required no interpretation at all.
The Last Will and Testament of Philip Bennet.
It had all been spoken aloud only the night before, yet seeing it there in ink made it feel less like family quarrelling and more like fact.
She lifted the packet, and as she did a loose paper slipped free from beneath it, not part of the bundle but resting against it as though someone had meant to keep it close.
It proved to be a certificate of baptism; Elizabeth Bennet, written there in a hand Kitty did not recognise, from a place she had never seen.
She crossed to the shelves, found a dusty volume no one had opened in years, and slid it into the drawer where the packet had been.
The bible went on top of it, then the ledger, then the strongbox.
She locked the drawer, returned the key to her father's room, tucked the will and the baptism certificate safely inside her dress, and went directly upstairs to Elizabeth's door.
Elizabeth opened the door with caution, expecting Mr. Bennet or, worse still, Mr. Collins.
Instead she found Kitty standing there, still and silent, looking at her with something so earnest in her face that surprise gave way almost immediately to concern.
Kitty said nothing, only held her sister’s gaze as though hoping Elizabeth might understand what she had not yet found words to say, and after a moment’s hesitation Elizabeth stepped aside and let her in.
The room looked as though Elizabeth had been trying to put it in order and had abandoned the effort halfway through.
A drawer stood open, ribbons lay beside the washstand, and her travelling bag had been brought down from the top shelf of the wardrobe.
Kitty said nothing of it. She reached inside her dress, drew out the papers, and held them toward her.
Elizabeth took them. She read the title of the first and sat down on the edge of the bed as though her legs had decided the matter without consulting her. The Last Will and Testament of Philip Bennet. She looked up at Kitty. "How. What."
"It was in the locked drawer of your father's desk. Lydia showed me where the key was kept, months ago, when she wanted pin money. I went with her and I saw the bible while she counted coins. I did not understand any of it then." Kitty paused. "I understand it now."
Elizabeth turned to the second paper. A certificate of baptism.
Her name. Her father's name. Her mother's name.
Margaret Trevelyan Bennet. She read on to the godparents' names and her breath stopped entirely.
She knew those names but was not sure how they were connected to her father and mother.
She could not make it mean anything coherent, not now, not with Kitty sitting across from her and the will in her lap and ten o'clock still hours away, and she set the papers aside and pulled Kitty into a tight embrace. “Thank you. Thank you, dear girl.”
"I love you, Lizzy." Kitty's voice was muffled against her shoulder. "I know I do not say it. I do not think any of us say it to anyone in this house, not properly." She drew back. "I am going to miss you when you are gone."
"Gone. What do you mean?"
"Oh, Lizzy." Kitty looked at her with the patience of someone who has understood rather more than she has been given credit for. "You heard him last night. You have to go. I know you do. And Mr. Darcy will help you, will he not."
Elizabeth did not answer immediately. She had been so long accustomed to thinking of Kitty as merely Lydia's companion in noise and nonsense, in ribbons and officers and whatever foolishness the day produced, that she had scarcely considered what Kitty might think of her in return.
She told her everything; the courtship at Brinmouth, the engagement, the plan that had seemed so clear at dawn and now felt with every hour both more necessary and more alarming.
She spoke, too, of the foolish hope she had once allowed herself; that returning with a gentleman of fortune and consequence might alter something fundamental at Longbourn, that this family might at last receive her with warmth instead of obligation, and now the knowledge that she had never belonged to them in the way she had believed.
The words came without much order, and she did not attempt to force them into one. By the time she reached the end, she had stopped trying not to cry, and Kitty was crying too.
When at last there seemed nothing more to say, Kitty moved nearer and put an arm around her, and they sat together without speaking until the worst of it had passed.
"I am glad you came home," Kitty said at last. "If only so I could say goodbye properly. Had you gone straight from Brinmouth we would never have had this."
"Until this morning I wished with everything I had that I had done exactly that," Elizabeth said. "But now I am glad too." She squeezed her hand. "I will find a way to stay in contact. I promise. You will always be my sister. Cousin by blood, and sister by everything that followed."
Their tears were at length dismissed, their appearance restored as well as circumstances allowed, and they went downstairs to tea.
The rest of the family was already in the parlour. They had barely settled when the knock came at the front door. Mrs. Bennet, who had been nearest the window, rose half out of her chair.
"Good heavens. Four horses. And a coat of arms I have never seen in my life. It is grander even than Mr. Darcy's and I did not think that possible."
Mrs. Hill appeared in the doorway. "The Earl of Ashcombe. Lord Ambrose Montclair, to call on the family."
The gentleman who entered was neither handsome nor plain.
He was dressed with the kind of elaborate precision that communicates rank rather than taste, every article chosen to leave no observer in any doubt of his consequence.
He surveyed the room with the unhurried thoroughness of a man who expects to find most things beneath him and is rarely surprised.
His gaze moved across the assembled company, paused on Jane, moved on, and settled on Elizabeth with the air of a man completing a calculation.
"Which of you is Miss Elizabeth Bennet?"
"I am," said Elizabeth.
He inclined his head by the smallest degree that could reasonably be called an inclination.
“I am here to fulfil your guardian’s obligation.
I hold a betrothal contract, duly signed, naming yourself and me, and I trust the matter may be concluded with as little inconvenience and unnecessary sentiment as possible.
Such arrangements are best handled with propriety, and I have never found delay to improve them. ”