3. An Inconvenient Woman #2
“Jane, who in the neighborhood do you suppose described me to Lady Sophia? Someone has been watching us and reporting to this distant relation of Papa’s.”
“You are determined to find fault with this gracious gift,” Jane chided gently, “rather than take pleasure in the fact that a lady of the highest circles has decided to make you her sole beneficiary.”
“I shall not order carriages and crimson silks before I know all the details.”
“I agree, and yet she invites all of us to come to her in London,” said Jane. “Wouldn’t your investigations proceed better from there?”
“And I intend to go. You too, if you will,” Elizabeth said. “Surely, a lady of her quality would not jest about something this serious, and even if it were all to be for naught, at least we would have had a grand adventure.”
“What about Darcy’s role in all of this?” Jane asked. “Being her trustee, would you be required to…”
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened on Jane’s forearm.
She shook her head with a vehemence that made her loose curls lash her cheeks.
“I will not have that man making financial decisions on my behalf as though I were a child who cannot be trusted with her pin money. I shall learn from Uncle Gardiner, if he is willing. And I will meet Lady Sophia and understand why she chose me on the basis of being the cleverest person in Hertfordshire.”
“I see, you are insulted that she did not call you the cleverest in all of fair England!” Jane chortled as she opened the door to share the good news.
The news had indeed been received and rejoiced upon.
Three trunks stood open in the hallway, and Mrs. Bennet, pink with triumph and perspiration, presided over the serious business of packing.
Lydia loudly listed all the accessories she would require as a proper lady in London, and Kitty ran back and forth, showing her fashion plates and dreamily twirling imagined silks and feathers.
Mary accompanied the bustle with a misfingered Haydn, her two hands not quite cooperating.
Nettle propped herself on one of the trunk lids before extracting a length of Mamma’s best lace.
The library door was firmly closed, and Elizabeth wondered how Papa could study Lady Sophia’s documents over the Bennet bustle, louder than its usual background noise.
“Mamma,” Elizabeth said, her voice steadier than her stomach. “What are you doing?”
“Packing, Lizzy! We leave as soon as the carriages can be arranged. Hill, mind the lace—that is Belgian, and I will not have it crushed.”
“No one has decided?—”
“Lady Sophia has invited the entire family, and I will not hear a single word of argument from anyone, least of all your father, who has been hiding in his library drinking port while his daughters’ futures hang in the balance. Oh my, Hill! Hill! The dog has gotten my lace!”
Elizabeth slid to the library door while her mother chased Nettle for the purloined prize. She knocked with the distinct pattern of their private signal, and her father opened it just wide enough for her and Jane to slip through before closing it firmly against the tumult outside.
“Ah, Lizzy, Jane, my dear daughters.” Mr. Bennet removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. The documents were spread across the desk, and the port was in evidence. “Your mother commenced packing eight minutes after you went upstairs. I timed it from the first thump.”
“Papa—”
“Sit down.” He gestured to the chair reserved for serious conversations. It had been last occupied when she confessed to refusing Mr. Collins. “I have been reading these documents with some care, and I have questions I suspect you share.”
“Lady Sophia Mottistone,” Mr. Bennet said, turning a page.
“Daughter of the Duke of Lennox. Never married. No children. A connection to this family so tenuous that I was entirely unaware of it until this afternoon. And a fortune of fifteen thousand per annum, settled irrevocably upon a young woman she has never met.” He looked at Elizabeth over his spectacles.
“Nobody gives something for nothing, Lizzy. Particularly not people with titles. What does she want?”
“I do not know.”
“That is the correct answer. Also, the troubling one.” He set the documents down.
“You are about to become one of the wealthiest unmarried women in England. People will want things from you, and you must learn to distinguish the generous from the calculating.” He paused. “Her letter is warm, I take it?”
“Intelligent.” Elizabeth hesitated. “Rather like a letter written by someone who expects to be liked and has decided not to trouble herself being modest about it.”
“Then I shall like her on your behalf until you have formed your own opinion.” Mr. Bennet picked up his port. “You wish to go to London.”
“Yes, but only with Jane and Mary.” She glanced at the door, through which Mrs. Bennet could be heard directing Hill on the correct folding method for a Norwich shawl.
“If Mamma comes with Lydia and Kitty, I will spend my entire Season defending my sisters’ reputations instead of learning to manage my affairs.
Every fortune hunter in London will have five Bennet girls to target and will begin with the most obliging ones. ”
“You wish me to keep your mother at home.”
“I wish you to be a father.”
The words landed in the cluttered study with the weight of years of Mr. Bennet hiding in the library and allowing half of his family to run amok.
Sighing, her father stood and ambled to the library door, opening it.
“Mrs. Bennet, a word?”
“Oh, Mr. Bennet, why are you hiding in the library? You must order the carriage. Oh, but we require two carriages. How can we show up in Lizzy’s townhouse without all our trunks?
There is no space for Mary. She might as well stay here, for what use is London to her?
She will be plain here and plain there, and no amount of?—”
“Mary goes.” Mr. Bennet’s voice was stern with a quality Elizabeth had not heard before—the iron that must have existed beneath the irony before two decades of domestic warfare had worn it smooth.
“Mary goes because she deserves the chance to discover what she might become when someone bothers to ask her what she wants. And you, madam, will remain at Longbourn with Lydia and Kitty, because I have tolerated a great deal of noise in this house, but I will not tolerate cruelty toward the child who has done nothing to deserve it.”
“Not going?” Mamma’s shriek likely shattered the clay tiles on the roof. Her fan clattered to the floorboards, and she took a deep breath before letting out a howl. “Mr. Bennet! How dare you command me to stay when I have daughters requiring my guidance!”
“Our three older daughters possess enough of your wisdom, and do not require your attentions to thwart their composure.” Mr. Bennet’s tone was, for once, stern and not sardonic. “Jane is two and twenty, of age, and?—”
“Jane cannot discern a man’s attention from his indifference.
If I had her beauty, and I did, I would have been married at eighteen, at the latest, which I did.
” Mamma placed her hand on Jane’s shoulder.
“Jane will require her mother to guide her, to present her properly in society. How else will she secure a suitable match?”
But Papa held firm, looking at Mamma over his spectacles.
“My dear, it is precisely your enthusiastic manner of presenting our daughters that has kept Jane unmarried thus far. Your lack of decorum and constant chatter about her beauty and marriageability have driven away more suitors than they have attracted.”
Mamma gasped, her hand flying to her chest. “Mr. Bennet! How dare you suggest?—”
“I dare because it is the truth,” Papa interrupted. “Jane’s beauty and sweet nature speak for themselves. She needs no loud proclamations or unseemly boasting from her mother.”
Elizabeth winced as Mamma’s face turned an alarming shade of red. “This is unconscionable! I have only ever had my daughters’ best interests at heart! To accuse me of?—”
“It is not an accusation, Mrs. Bennet, but a fact,” Papa said wearily. “Jane, Lizzy, and Mary will go to London. You will remain here with Lydia and Kitty.”
Mrs. Bennet’s chest heaved, her lace cap slipping precariously over one ear.
“And Lydia! My poor, darling Lydia! To be left here in the mud with only Kitty and her coughing for company? She will die of boredom, Mr. Bennet! Her spirit will be crushed! She is a creature of the sun, of the dance, of the officers’ attentions.
You cannot cage a lark in a farmhouse and expect it to sing! ”
Lydia, upon hearing her name, stormed into the library with her shadow, Kitty, hovering at the doorway.
“Papa, you are being abominable!” she wailed. “Why should they get to go to London and not me? I hate you!” She directed this last part at Papa before fleeing the room in tears.
“I shall take that as confirmation,” Mr. Bennet said, returning to his port.
Mamma latched onto Jane. “Jane, tell him. Tell your father you cannot go without your mother. You are so tender, you require my steady hand. Lizzy might not concern herself, but you…”
“I think, Mamma,” Jane said, her voice trembling but unbroken, “that I should like to go with Elizabeth and Mary. Mamma, London would be too tiresome for you.”
It was the closest thing to a rebellion Jane had ever staged, and Elizabeth felt a surge of fierce, protective heat on her behalf.
The siege of Longbourn was over. The battle for London was about to begin.