Elizabeth Bennet and the Scottish Laird (Pride and Prejudice Variation)

Chapter 1

The morning room smelled of burnt candle wax and old lavender.

Elizabeth sat at her father's desk and watched the grey September light inch across the floorboards.

Three days since the apoplexy had taken him.

Three days of Mrs Hill's red-rimmed eyes and her mother's shrieks echoing through passages grown narrower, meaner.

She had not cried. At least not properly. There had been no time for it.

The household books lay open before her, their columns marching down the pages in her father's untidy hand.

Some entries were clear enough: butcher, chandler, dressmaker.

Others trailed off into abbreviations she could not decipher, or worse, into blank spaces where sums ought to have been recorded.

She traced her finger down one such gap.

Something cold stirred beneath her breastbone.

A shriek from upstairs made her flinch. Her mother, whose capacity for lamentation appeared boundless.

Mary's voice followed, low and droning. Doubtless another verse about death's inevitability.

From the parlour came Kitty and Lydia's voices, too bright, debating whether their mourning gowns might be trimmed with black ribbon or whether that would be thought too elaborate.

She closed her eyes, then opened them again. The accounts remained.

A few minutes later, Mrs Hill appeared in the doorway, her cap askew, flour dusting her apron. “Mr Philips is here, miss. Shall I show him in?”

Elizabeth felt a tightening in her stomach. She had known this summons would come, but she had not anticipated it so soon. She smoothed her black mourning gown, hastily altered from an old dress, for there had been no time to order proper attire for them all.

“Yes, Hill,” she replied. “Show him in, if you please.”

The housekeeper hesitated. “Miss Elizabeth.” Her voice dropped. “There is scarce any tea left. I have stretched it as far as I may. We need to purchase more.”

Elizabeth managed what she hoped resembled a smile. “Thank you, Hill. Yes, please purchase more.”

The housekeeper’s face clouded. “But funds are running scarce and…”

“I am sure we shall manage, Hill,” Elizabeth interrupted tersely. “Thank you.”

Hill withdrew, only to return moments later with her uncle, Mr Philips.

He was a solid, practical attorney, much given to snuff and plain speaking, but today his manner seemed curiously subdued.

He bowed and murmured his condolences, which Elizabeth acknowledged with a nod, for she could not trust herself to speak just yet, then settled heavily into the chair opposite the desk.

“I shall not tax your patience with preamble, Lizzy.” He withdrew a folded document from his coat. “The matter of Longbourn's entailment must be addressed.”

“I had assumed as much.” Her voice came out steadier than she felt. “My father once mentioned the estate was entailed upon the male line.”

“Indeed. Your father attempted, more than once, to have the entail broken. The sum required exceeded his means. I regret to say the entail remains in full force.” Philips unfolded the paper with care, smoothing its creases. His fingers drummed against the desk. “There is an heir.”

She had expected this news. “Mr Collins, I suppose.”

“No, Lizzy. Not Mr Collins.” Philips drew forth another bundle of papers, bound with twine. “I have received correspondence from a solicitor in Inverness. It appears there is a prior claimant, one whose existence was unknown to your late father and, I confess, to myself until very recently.”

Cold spread outward from beneath her ribs as she cast a quick glance at Hill who was standing by the door. “I do not understand.”

“Your great-grandfather had three sons.” Philips spoke slowly, as though reciting a lesson imperfectly learnt.

“The eldest inherited Longbourn. The third founded the line that produced Mr Collins. We believed there were only two sons, but as it stands, there was a third. A middle son who quarrelled with his father in the year 1720 and emigrated to Scotland. He established himself on the Isle of Skye, at a place called Strathaird, and took a Scottish bride. Over time, the connexion to the family was lost.”

Philips paused, pressing his lips together.

“I must confess the legal situation is exceedingly complex. By law, this second son and his descendants outrank Mr Collins’ line.

I have sent to London for a second opinion, though I cannot say when the reply will arrive.

Three generations removed, an emigrant line, no correspondence preserved — there are challenges enough to give any counsel pause. ”

Elizabeth stared at him. “You are telling me there is a Scottish heir?”

“A laird. Malcolm MacKinnon of Strathaird.” Philips's mouth thinned. “The documentation is unusual. Yet it appears to be in order.”

“Unusual?”

He untied the bundle and spread its contents across the desk.

Elizabeth leant forwards. There were several sheets of dense script, interspersed with older, more fragile documents.

One bore a faded seal she did not recognise.

Another appeared to be written in a mixture of English and Latin, the words crammed close together.

“Extracts from the parish register at Strathaird.” Philips tapped the topmost page.

“A minister's affidavit, attesting to the MacKinnon lineage.

And here, the faded leaves of a family Bible, with births and deaths recorded in several hands over the last century.

It is irregular, yet sufficient in law to establish Mr MacKinnon as heir-at-law.

He is the last surviving male of that previously unknown son's line.”

Elizabeth picked up the Bible pages with care.

The ink had browned and the paper gone soft as cloth.

She could just make out a sequence of names: Bennet, MacKinnon, Bennet-MacKinnon.

Marriages, births, deaths stretching back into shadow.

Her great-uncle's name appeared near the top, stark against the yellowed vellum: Robert Bennet, departed this life in the year of Our Lord 1745, at Strathaird, Isle of Skye.

“How did this come to light?” she asked quietly.

“Mr MacKinnon's solicitor asserts that his client became aware of the connexion whilst settling his late father's affairs. The father, it seems, had preserved certain family papers and made mention of English relations, though without pursuing the matter. Upon discovering the entailment, and, I suspect, the value of the estate, Mr MacKinnon engaged legal counsel to verify his claim. The solicitor, a Mr Dunbar of Inverness, had been monitoring the matter for some months. He wrote to me a full week before your father was taken, so the claim was already lying upon my desk when the apoplexy came. That is why Mr MacKinnon was prepared to travel almost before we had buried him.”

“And you believe it is genuine?”

Philips hesitated. It was the hesitation that unnerved her the most. “The law recognises it as genuine. Whether the documents themselves are beyond question...” He gestured vaguely at the scattered papers.

“I am no expert in Scottish parish records, Lizzy.

The proofs are from a considerable distance.

The minister's hand is unfamiliar to me. Yet I have examined what evidence exists, and I cannot fault it on any legal ground.”

“What are you saying, Uncle Philips?”

“I am saying...” Philips folded his hands.

“I am saying that the claim appears valid — though I confess that a deed of this age presents complications I have not encountered before.

The entail dates to 1720, and the Scots law intertwined with it gives me pause.

My colleague in London has advised caution before any conclusion is drawn.

Still, as matters presently stand, the estate passes to the nearest male heir in blood, regardless of where he resides.

If Mr MacKinnon is indeed descended from Robert Bennet's line, then Longbourn is his — unless further examination of the original deed reveals an impediment.”

Elizabeth gripped the edge of the desk. The floor seemed to tilt. “When?”

“Mr MacKinnon writes that he intends to travel south within the month. He proposes to arrive by the end of October, weather and roads permitting.”

The end of October. They had four weeks, perhaps five.

“Lizzy?” Philips's voice seemed to come from a great distance. “Shall I leave these papers with you? You may wish to examine them at your leisure.”

Elizabeth willed herself to nod. “Thank you, Uncle Philips.”

He gathered the documents back into a bundle and placed them on the desk. Then, with a bow, this one more deferential, as though he pitied her, he withdrew.

“Shall I get you anything, Miss Elizabeth?” Hill asked, her countenance furrowed in concern.

“No, thank you, Hill. I wish to be alone.”

“Very well, Miss.”

Elizabeth sat alone in the silence.

Upstairs, her mother's wails had subsided into hiccupping sobs.

Mary's voice drifted down, measured and flat.

“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” As though their father's death were a sermon to be parsed or perhaps some moral lesson to be extracted and catalogued.

From the parlour came Kitty's anxious murmur followed by Lydia's careless laugh.

They did not understand yet. Perhaps they never would.

Lydia had cried for half an hour, then asked whether they might still attend the assembly in a fortnight if they wore black.

Kitty had only wrung her hands and asked what would become of them, over and over, until Elizabeth could bear it no longer and had sent her away.

Jane alone had grasped the extent of it. Jane, who had gone pale and silent, who had taken charge of the black armbands and the mourning stationery. It was Jane who had answered the condolence calls with perfect composure whilst their mother shrieked and their younger sisters fidgeted.

Elizabeth looked down at the papers Philips had left. Names written in fading ink. A minister's careful script. A solicitor's precise accounting of births and deaths. A lineage resurrected from obscurity, reaching across a century to claim what her father's recklessness had already half-forfeited.

Malcolm MacKinnon. Laird of Strathaird.

What manner of man was he? Highland or Lowland? Wealthy or desperate? The Isle of Skye seemed impossibly remote, a place of mist and mountains and customs she could not begin to imagine. What if he turned them out immediately? What if he refused even the small mercy of time to settle their affairs?

The desk drawer stuck when she pulled it open. Inside, beneath a scatter of broken quills and dried-up ink bottles, she found a slim leather portfolio she did not recognise. Her father's initials were stamped on the cover, half-rubbed away by handling.

Her fingers shook as she opened the portfolio.

Papers spilled across the desk. Not household accounts this time, but something far worse: promissory notes, scrawled in her father's hand.

A hundred pounds to Sir William Lucas. Fifty to a Mr Doughty of Meryton.

Thirty to a man whose name she could not decipher.

At the bottom, crumpled and stained, an IOU for two hundred pounds, signed and dated barely a fortnight before his death.

She set the notes down carefully, the sums blurring before her.

Six hundred pounds. Perhaps more. Coins they did not have. Indeed, their mother's jointure would never cover this sum. And no amount of economising could conjure from nothing.

Right then, Elizabeth’s thoughts turned to Mr Darcy.

His ten thousand a year, his great house in Derbyshire.

She had refused him. She had refused him and felt righteous in doing so, and now her father was dead, and a Scottish stranger was coming to take their home, and there was no remedy or reprieve. Only the slow crush of consequence.

The thought served no purpose. She pushed it away.

Her father must have known these last weeks that ruin was upon them. Yet he had smiled over his port, retreated to his library, made dry jokes about his foolish wife and sillier daughters. He had left them nothing. Not even honesty.

She gathered her father’s notes and carried them to the fireplace. The gesture was futile, she knew — the creditors would have their own copies, their own records. Destroying these originals changed nothing in law.

The paper caught easily, curling and blackening.

She fed the notes in one after another, watching her father’s debts reduced to ash.

When the last had crumbled away, she straightened and brushed her hands clean.

But it felt like something — a small act of order amid disorder, a way of closing her hands around the last remnant of her father’s private shame before the world came to collect what it was owed.

The house settled around her. Upstairs, her mother's voice rose again, querulous and shrill. Mary's footsteps crossed the landing, measured, deliberate, utterly unmoved. Kitty and Lydia's chatter floated from the parlour, punctuated by giggles they tried to muffle and could not.

Elizabeth returned to the desk and stared at the documents Uncle Philips had left. Proof of a lineage that had lain dormant for a hundred years and now rose up to swallow them whole.

They now had letters to write and creditors to manage. They would also need to pack away the household, piece by piece. And they only had a few weeks to dismantle their lives before a stranger took possession of everything they had ever known.

Outside, the afternoon was fading. Mist crept up from the fields, blurring the edges of the garden.

Mrs Hill was speaking to one of the labourers by the kitchen door.

Elizabeth thought she heard something about whether to cut the barley now or wait for better weather.

These ordinary concerns struck her as strange now.

After all, these would soon be the rhythms of a life that would go on without them.

She folded the attorney’s papers with care and placed them in the desk drawer. Then she rose and went to face her mother's lamentations, her sisters' bewilderment, and the wreckage of a future she had never imagined.

The last roses in the garden were fading, their petals browning at the edges. Soon winter would come. And with it, a reckoning.