CHAPTER ONE #2
Mrs Bennet broke through the company with Jane and Elizabeth behind her. "Mr Bennet! Oh, Mr Bennet, they had swords. I saw the swords. I knew we should not come. I said from the first that the roads were damp."
She seized his arm with both hands. Her face was colorless beneath her bonnet.
"I am quite well."
"You are not. You have torn your coat."
Elizabeth said nothing. She stood with the abandoned plate still in her hands, staring at him as though he had become a stranger.
The King would not continue until Thomas was brought before him. His Majesty had recovered his color, though the physician hovered at his elbow and Queen Charlotte had not released his arm.
"Mr Bennet," the King said. "Who taught you to do that?"
"A choking stable boy, Your Majesty. Or rather, the man who saved him."
The King's mouth twitched. "Then England is indebted to two stable yards."
A nervous laugh passed through the room.
Thomas bowed. "I am only glad I was near enough to be of service."
"Near enough, and willing enough. There were many nearer."
The words fell heavily. Several noble gentlemen discovered an interest in the floor.
The King studied Thomas's torn coat, his bent spectacles, and perhaps the wife still gripping his sleeve. "We shall speak again before I leave Hertfordshire. A service to the Crown is not forgotten."
Thomas bowed once more. He wanted only to take his family home.
That desire was not granted until evening.
Depositions were taken. The guards apologized with military misery.
Mr Lucas repeated the event so often that in his final account Thomas had crossed the room in a single bound.
The King rested in private chambers and sent two separate messages assuring the company of his recovery.
In the carriage, Mrs Bennet held Thomas's hand.
She did it without speaking, which frightened him more than anything that had occurred.
Jane sat very straight, tears drying upon her cheeks. Mary had fallen asleep against Nurse. Kitty and Lydia, too young to comprehend the danger, whispered about the swords. Elizabeth sat opposite her father.
"You might have died," she said at last.
Mrs Bennet's fingers tightened around his.
Thomas attempted a smile. "The guards were persuaded otherwise."
"Before the King spoke, they might have killed you."
"Yes."
The single word silenced the carriage.
He had made jokes all his adult life because a joke put unpleasant truths at a manageable distance.
He could not find one now. He looked at his daughters: Jane's gentle fear, Elizabeth's angry one, Mary's sleeping trust, Kitty's untidy curls, Lydia's jam-stained sleeve.
He knew almost nothing of the two youngest beyond their noise.
He knew Mary's solemnity better than her pleasures.
He relied upon Jane's goodness and Elizabeth's wit as if those qualities had grown without tending.
He had run toward a dying stranger and spent years withdrawing from his own family one quiet hour at a time.
The realization humiliated him.
Three days later, a royal messenger came to Longbourn.
Within a fortnight, Thomas knelt before the King and rose Sir Thomas Bennet.
The knighthood astonished Hertfordshire.
The greater astonishment followed: by letters patent, His Majesty granted Sir Thomas the house, park, farms, and revenues of Netherfield, a Crown property without a private heir and lately returned to royal possession after years of disputed management.
"Five thousand a year," Lady Bennet whispered when the solicitor finished. "Netherfield is five thousand a year."
Sir Thomas looked across the library at the five daughters who would not inherit Longbourn.
"Perhaps more," the solicitor said. "With attention."
Attention. The word seemed directed at him.
That evening, Thomas closed his book before Elizabeth entered the library.
She stopped just inside the door, surprised.
"Come here, Lizzy."
She approached. He drew a second chair near his own rather than making her stand.
"You asked why we had to see the King," he said. "Do you remember?"
"Yes, Papa."
"I told you it was a story for your grandchildren. I believe we must improve the ending before you tell it."
Her brows gathered. "How?"
Thomas looked at the shelves surrounding him, at the safe and orderly retreat he had mistaken for a life.
"I shall have to begin by leaving this room more often."
Before winter, the Bennets left Longbourn for Netherfield. Jane was twelve, Elizabeth ten, Mary eight, Kitty six, and Lydia five; the move altered their address before it altered any of their habits.
* * *
Ten years later, in September 1809, Sir Thomas Bennet stood in the library at Netherfield with a lease in one hand and his youngest daughter's muddy boot in the other.
"It was not muddy when I put it on," Lydia said.
"An admirable defense. Was the mud lying in wait?"
At fifteen, Lydia had grown tall enough to look him nearly level in the chin and remained young enough to believe that dignity was principally a matter of volume.
"Dancer shied at a pheasant. I stepped into the ditch only because Kitty pushed me."
"I did not push you," Kitty protested from the window. "I caught your sleeve. That is the opposite of pushing."
Miss Harwood sat beside the fire with her hands folded over a closed book. She had been governess to the Bennet girls for eight years and could express entire moral treatises through the position of one eyebrow.
Sir Thomas set the boot upon a folded newspaper. "You left the path after being told the lower meadow was wet. You took Dancer without asking Mr Glover. And you have interrupted my meeting with Mr Morris because you hoped to reach me before Miss Harwood did."
Lydia's confidence diminished by degrees.
"Yes, Papa."
"You will clean the boot yourself, apologize to Mr Glover, and remain out of the saddle for three days."
"Three!"
Miss Harwood's eyebrow moved.
"Four," Lydia amended hurriedly. "I mean—yes, Papa. Three."
She took the boot. Kitty followed, pausing to kiss her father's cheek and murmur, "I truly caught her," before the door closed behind them.
Mr Morris, the Netherfield steward, concealed a smile by examining the lease again.
"You were saying that Mr Bingley's references are excellent," Sir Thomas said.
"Very. His London man of business answered every inquiry. The income is sound, and he has authorized his solicitor to pay a year in advance if you prefer it."
Sir Thomas moved behind his desk. The room was larger than the library at Longbourn and possessed a handsome prospect over the east lawn, but he had resisted filling it with unnecessary furniture.
The old desk from Longbourn stood beneath the windows.
His familiar books lined the nearest shelves.
The remainder contained estate ledgers, agricultural reports, maps, and the records of ten years' determined attention.
The first two years at Netherfield had exposed how little he knew.
Roofs had leaked. Tenants had been charged fees never authorized by the Crown.
Fields had been exhausted by the same crops.
Sir Thomas, who had once congratulated himself on understanding mankind because he could detect foolishness at twenty paces, discovered that understanding a drainage account required humility of another sort.
He had learned.
Longbourn had changed with him. Its cottages were repaired, hedges laid, tenant agreements made fair, and the house renovated without destroying its character.
When the Bingley inquiry arrived, Sir Thomas had felt the peculiar pain of offering another man the home in which all his daughters had been born.
Lady Bennet had felt no such pain.
"A single gentleman of four or five thousand a year may sleep in my old dressing room as often as he likes," she had announced. "Especially if he dances."
Sir Thomas read the final page. "Give Mr Bingley the lease. Three years, with the option to renew. The west tenant farms are excluded as agreed, and he is to consult us before cutting mature timber."
"Yes, sir."
"And Morris—do not tell Lady Bennet he dances."
The steward's composure broke. "No, sir."
News travelled more quickly than leases.
Before the ink had dried, Meryton knew that a wealthy young gentleman from the north had taken Longbourn, that he owned a carriage, that he intended to bring a large party, and that he might possess anything from three to twelve thousand pounds a year depending upon the listener's distance from the original source.
Lady Bennet received the certainty of his arrival over breakfast.
"There, Mr Bennet. You see? We must call at once."
"He is my tenant. I have already exchanged six letters with his solicitor."
"A solicitor cannot introduce Jane."
Jane's cup paused halfway to her lips. At twenty-two she had the same delicate beauty that had caused Queen Charlotte to remark upon her during her presentation four years earlier, but serenity no longer meant she could not be embarrassed.
"Mama, Mr Bingley has not yet spent one night at Longbourn."
"Which is why we must not descend upon him today. Tomorrow will do."
Elizabeth looked at Mary across the table. Mary lowered her eyes, but a smile appeared.
"Sir Thomas will call first," Lady Bennet continued. "Then he may invite Mr Bingley to dine. Jane shall wear the ivory silk. Lizzy, you may wear the green, though as you are not yet presented—"
"I shall be invisible?"
"Do not tease. Of course you may dine with us at home. It is only in London that people make everything difficult. Mary, sit straight, my love. You need not look alarmed. No one will present you to Mr Bingley."
This assurance made Mary look more alarmed.
Elizabeth reached beneath the table and pressed her sister's hand. Mary returned the pressure quickly.