7. Heirs Male General
CHAPTER SEVEN
HEIRS MALE GENERAL
It wasn’t difficult for Elizabeth to don a pelisse and sneak away from Longbourn the next morning.
The drive teemed with gigs and chaises, and the drawing room, music room, parlor, and breakfast room were overrun with the masters and their eager pupils.
Kitty had progressed to balancing three books on her head while prancing through a country dance, while Lydia had taken up watercolors, all in red, to capture the dashing redcoats that promenaded through the streets of Meryton and her dreams.
If Hill noticed her leaving, she remained silent, and Elizabeth slipped out through the kitchen door while letting Cleo, their mouser, in from her nightly jaunts.
Elizabeth was not after ribbons or gossip, and so she rushed on past Lucas Lodge, where her dear friend Charlotte was in half-mourning.
She had endured Colonel Fitzwilliam’s charm, Darcy’s brooding, and her mother’s shoving of Jane toward Darcy with all the subtlety of a battering ram.
While her sisters sang, danced, painted, and comported, Elizabeth had one goal in mind.
Could the Bennet entail be broken? Furthermore, what right did a Darcy have to claim a Bennet inheritance?
Uncle Philips’s law office sat on Meryton’s high street, sandwiched between the milliners and a print shop for the local gazette.
He and her Aunt Philips lived in the cottage across the street, and Elizabeth had visited her uncle’s office many times to deliver messages from her mother or to collect papers for her father.
She had never before entered with the purpose that drove her this December morning.
Uncle Philips presided at his desk, surrounded by the familiar disorder of his profession—deeds and leases stacked in tottering columns, a pot of sealing wax warming over a spirit lamp, and half a mutton pie resting on a plate beside the inkwell.
“Lizzy! This is unexpected, and so close to Christmas. Have I been negligent with my nieces and their sweet treats?”
“You and Aunt Philips have been wonderful.” Elizabeth allowed him to kiss her cheek.
“Then what seems to be the trouble? Because nothing but trouble would send a pretty young lass to a law office when there are ribbons and lace to be had next door. I hear your mother has been quite taken by certain young gentlemen, as well as French lessons and Almack’s.”
“No trouble, Uncle. Only curiosity.” Elizabeth settled in the chair opposite his desk—a hard, lawyerly chair designed to discourage lingering—and folded her hands. “I wish to see the entail.”
Uncle Philips set down his pen. His eyebrows performed a slow, considering rise.
“The Longbourn entail? But my dear, that matter is quite settled. Mr. Darcy has established his claim beyond any legal doubt. The documentation from his solicitors in London was remarkably thorough. His direct great-grandfather was made an heir because of a longstanding friendship and the first Thomas Bennet’s desire to add a second son as a spare heir. It is a common practice.”
“I understand, although I am curious to read the original document and understand all the terms,” Elizabeth kept her voice light. “Papa has never shown it to me, and I find I am interested in the legal mechanisms by which my family’s home was placed beyond our reach a century before I was born.”
“It has not changed, Lizzy.” Uncle Philips peered at her over the tops of his half-glasses.
“After Mr. Collins passed, a search was made up the Bennet family tree and an alternate heir was located. Should this heir be displaced, the family trees will be examined again for younger sons who might be further removed. Mr. Darcy’s line being grafted in is a common practice, especially for families who lacked sons. ”
“I find it concerning that my family of five daughters will lose our ancestral home while men search family trees for mysterious male heirs.” Elizabeth’s voice hardened as her true purpose emerged. “What I would like to know is if the entail document has legal holes we can exploit.”
“Ah.” He leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepling beneath his chin. “That is rather a different question, Lizzy. Rather a different question indeed.”
He rummaged in a cabinet and produced a battered document case.
Elizabeth had imagined grand vellum, a wax seal, perhaps ornamental script.
Instead, Uncle Philips unfolded several sheets of heavy paper, brown-edged and foxed, the ink faded to the color of old rust. The handwriting was cramped and formal, a stranger’s decree that had ruled her family for generations.
“The original entail was established by your great-great-grandfather, Thomas Bennet, in the year 1692. He was a prudent man, by all accounts, and wished to ensure that Longbourn would remain in the Bennet family through the male line in perpetuity.”
“Through the male line,” Elizabeth repeated. “How?”
Uncle Philips settled his spectacles more firmly on his nose and leaned forward.
“The key phrase is here—heirs male general. It means any male descendant of the Bennet line may inherit. This is how Mr. Collins came to be heir, through a younger branch. And it is how Mr. Darcy holds the position now, through the second-son graft Thomas Bennet arranged.”
“Uncle.” Elizabeth kept her voice steady, though the question had been building in her for days. “Could the entail include female heirs?”
Philips shook his head before she had finished the sentence.
“Exceedingly rare, my dear. The original entailer would have needed to establish a fee tail general—one including females—from the very beginning. Thomas Bennet, writing over a hundred years ago, would never have considered it. Most women of that era could scarcely read or write, let alone manage property. The law does not permit a current holder to add females to an existing male entail.”
“May I read the words?” Elizabeth leaned forward, squinting to make out the cramped writing.
“Certainly.” Her uncle traced the lines with his finger. “To the heirs male general of the said Thomas Bennet, and the heirs male general of such heirs male, in tail male general forever.”
“Male, male, male,” Elizabeth repeated. “What does the general mean? It cannot be a position in the military, can it?”
“Indeed not.” Uncle Philips looked pleased that she had noticed.
“Some entails include the words, ‘of the body,’ instead of ‘general.’ Had the document specified ‘of the body,’ we would be in rather a quandary now that Mr. Collins has departed this mortal coil. The line from the elder son would be entirely extinguished. But ‘general’ means any male ‘Bennet’ qualifies—including those grafted into the line through arrangements like the one old Thomas made with the Darcy family.”
Elizabeth tucked this information away, uncertain what it meant but sensing it might matter later. “The Darcy arrangement. How did that come about?”
“Prudence, my dear. Simple prudence.” Uncle Philips settled back into his chair with the satisfied air of a man about to explain something he understood thoroughly.
“Thomas Bennet had only one surviving son—your great-grandfather. One son, and no spares. A dangerous position for any landed family. So he found himself an available second son—a younger boy from the Darcy family, with whom the Bennets had some connection—and wrote him into the entail as insurance against the line dying out. And in this case, it worked out exactly.”
“So, let me clarify.” Elizabeth pressed her palms to the desk. “Mr. Darcy was grafted in as insurance, and he holds precedence over we five Bennet daughters who are heirs of the body.”
“Yes, it would seem so.”
“And what did the original Thomas Bennet receive by this… this system of insurance?”
“Why, he ensured Longbourn would exist for the Bennet family, because he made a provision that the current holder has to bear the Bennet name or assume it upon inheritance.”
“Bear the Bennet name or assume it,” Elizabeth said slowly. “Then Mr. Collins, had he lived, would have been required to become Mr. Bennet?”
“Indeed. His father changed the family name after some quarrel with his own father—the details are lost to time—but had Mr. Collins inherited, he would have been legally obligated to reclaim the Bennet surname.” Uncle Philips looked up from the document with a thoughtful expression.
“Which raises an interesting question regarding Mr. Darcy.”
Elizabeth leaned forward. “What question?”
“Mr. Darcy is master of Pemberley. The Darcy estate has been in his family for generations—centuries, I believe. His identity, his position in society, his very name are bound up with that inheritance.” Uncle Philips tapped the parchment.
“And yet, should he inherit Longbourn, the strict terms of this entail would require him to assume the Bennet name. Fitzwilliam Bennet, Master of Pemberley and Longbourn.” He paused.
“I confess I find it difficult to imagine Mr. Darcy agreeing to such a transformation.”
“On that point, we are entirely agreed.” A new idea sparked in Elizabeth’s mind.
“And if he refuses to take on the Bennet surname? After all, a man as proud as Darcy, with his name dating back to the Norman conquerors, is hardly likely to surrender it for a relatively impoverished estate when he has the glories of Pemberley.”
“If Mr. Darcy refuses to become a Bennet, then the entail dissolves if no male heir can be found, a process that will take years, maybe even generations, and the land will go back to the Crown.”
“But surely that is absurd, when five Bennet women are very much alive. If Darcy declines to become a Bennet, can he not be removed?”
Uncle Philips removed his spectacles, polished them on his cravat, and replaced them—a sequence Elizabeth recognized as his method of stalling while he assembled a careful answer.