8. A Matter of a Name #2
“You absurd creature.” He hung his coat over a bare branch and rolled up his shirtsleeves to the elbows.
The elm was the kind of tree designed for climbing, if one’s legs were long enough.
Cleo must have missed a jump, clumsy cat, when she wedged herself in a narrow fork.
The branches she was stuck between were too thin to bear his weight, and so he had to ease himself up the main trunk enough to reach over.
He knew Elizabeth Bennet’s voice anywhere, and sure enough, two figures emerged on the pathway below—her father chuckling with an amusement that exasperated his daughter.
A gentleman would call out and alert them to his presence.
But he was perched precariously in a tree some twenty feet up, swaying in the bare branches while reaching for a stuck cat.
He was in his shirtsleeves, and the bottom of his shirt was untucked from his trousers.
Cleo had stopped scratching and yowling, as if she, too, were intent to hear what they were saying.
“I simply wish to understand your position, Papa.” Elizabeth’s voice was sharp. “If Mr. Darcy could be persuaded to alter the entail—to add females to the line of succession—would you agree to it?”
Darcy froze and held his breath. In what world did she believe he would alter the entail?
“What father of five daughters would not?” Mr. Bennet’s voice carried that dry amusement he wielded like a shield. “Though I confess I am curious what leads you to believe Mr. Darcy might be persuaded to such a sacrifice.”
“Why, his monstrous pride and sense of legacy,” Elizabeth declared as if Darcy himself had spelled it out to her.
“Uncle Philips explained the terms quite clearly. If Mr. Darcy inherits, he must assume the Bennet name. Fitzwilliam Bennet, Master of Pemberley and Longbourn.” She paused, and Darcy could hear the satisfaction beneath her words.
“I cannot imagine Mr. Darcy submitting to such a transformation. His entire identity is bound up in the great and mighty Darcy name.”
She was not wrong. He had been Darcy his entire life—introduced as Darcy, addressed as Darcy, defined by a name that carried centuries of weight and expectation. The thought of becoming a Bennet was not quite as abominable as Elizabeth believed… if it came with certain feminine benefits.
“And so you believe he will sign away his inheritance rather than sully his precious name?” Mr. Bennet sounded unconvinced.
“Why, as a matter of fact, yes. Imagine the proud man who looked down on our family answering to such a surname that he considers beneath his notice.”
“You are overestimating his pride, dear Lizzy. Mr. Darcy has come to Longbourn, spent hours in the library with me, is intent on repairing the estate, perhaps even adding a ballroom to Mrs. Bennet and your sisters’ delight.
He is spending a considerable fortune ensuring that we Bennets can curtsy, sketch, and conjugate French verbs. He has even—”
“Papa, stop. We are his project, a lowly, amusing project, but he has not considered the alternate. You are healthy now.”
“I should hope I am not eminently in danger of dying.” Mr. Bennet chuckled dryly.
“Exactly, and so Mr. Darcy has time to consider the disaster that would happen to him should he exchange the respectable, honored Darcy name for one that would sully his every connection in London.”
“I take issue with your charge, my dear Lizzy.” Mr. Bennet’s huff disguised another chuckle. “Then what is your proposal, if I may ask?”
“I do not propose anything I cannot reasonably attain.” And here, Elizabeth puffed up her diminutive figure quite as proudly as a peacock Darcy had chased as a boy at his Aunt Catherine’s estate.
“No one outside of me, you, and Mr. Philips, and perhaps Darcy himself, knows that he would lose his name if he were to claim Longbourn. Imagine the gossip and the speculation of a Darcy becoming a Bennet!”
“Imagine that. The calamity!” The older man wheezed, barely able to control his bowels.
“Yes, so we present Mr. Darcy an alternative. He agrees to add females to the entail, Jane becomes heir, and he returns to Pemberley with his identity intact.”
“A tidy scheme.” Mr. Bennet’s voice sharpened slightly. “But you are assuming Mr. Darcy wishes to leave, Lizzy. From what I have observed, the man seems rather determined to stay, and I believe I know the reason.”
Darcy could not see Elizabeth’s face as it was hidden beneath that garish brown bonnet she had begun to favor lately, but he could feel her fury.
“He will not get what he came for—which is the opportunity to gloat over we Bennets, to bestow his charity on us poor beknighted rustics, and to perhaps toy with the affections of its most vulnerable daughters.”
“By the latter, you are obviously not referring to yourself.”
“Papa, you know how gullible Jane and Kitty are, and even Mary is susceptible to his brand of praise. And then there is that redcoat cousin of his, all eyes on Jane when he is but a second son.”
“Perish the plight of a second son,” Mr. Bennet said. “Oh, that I had even a first son.”
“Papa, that is not the point. You are to persuade Mr. Darcy to sign over the entail to our Jane, so she becomes the next heir. She is the eldest, sensible, capable, and she loves Longbourn as much as any of us, and Mr. Darcy would have done a good deed and lose nothing he values.”
Darcy caught his breath as her words landed.
She was utterly and magnificently wrong.
He valued Longbourn, its orchards and boggy field, its tenants and disused icehouse, its commotion and the lively family of Bennets.
He valued his friendship with Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Bennet’s effusive nerves, Kitty’s improving posture, and even Lydia’s antics.
But most of all, he valued Elizabeth and ached to make her his bride.
“Ah, so you wish me to persuade Mr. Darcy to relinquish all of this.” Mr. Bennet waved his hand expansively but stopped with his finger pointed at Elizabeth, “while you stand back and deny your hand.”
“I deny nothing.” Elizabeth crossed her arms and stamped her feet.
“And what, precisely,” said Mr. Bennet, with the air of a man who had been waiting for this moment the way a fisherman waits for the line to go taut, “can you offer Mr. Darcy to compel him to agree to this change when he could very willingly, as I see it, become Fitzwilliam Bennet and be quite content to dwell under our leaky roof with a wife and her sisters, and even a very nervous mother-in-law and that missing kitchen cat who cannot seem to find her way home since he arrived.”
Darcy put his finger to his lips, gesturing to Cleo who had resumed hissing, although not loud enough to carry over a pair of Bennets in determined conversation.
“I need not offer a thing other than kind consideration for a man in Darcy’s position.
His reputation and his standing are at stake.
Don’t you see, Papa?” Elizabeth’s words tumbled out now, faster than she could contain them.
“You joke about his name, about his pride, about the absurdity of Fitzwilliam Bennet. But have you considered what it would mean? To be laughed at by his own circles? To have Lady Catherine de Bourgh—his own aunt—cut him for the presumption of claiming a minor country estate? To be whispered about at every ball and dinner party from here to London?”
“You speak as though you were concerned for him, my dear.”
“Not in the least, although I point out,” Elizabeth continued, her voice dropping but losing none of its intensity.
“The ton is not kind to men who step outside their prescribed roles. They will say he abandoned his heritage for a patch of mud in Hertfordshire. They will say he was bewitched, or desperate, or mad. And while you might think it amusing for a man of his station to exchange the name Darcy for Bennet, I assure you, those whose opinions he values will not find it amusing at all.”
“Then perhaps he should cut them and retire to this peaceful country hamlet here in Hertfordshire.” Mr. Bennet tapped his walking stick and glanced toward the hedge where Darcy’s coat hung alongside his discarded stick.
“He will not do it.” Elizabeth was practically jumping up and down with frustration.
“Papa, you do not understand him. He is arrogant, presumptuous, and utterly insufferable, but he does not deserve to be humiliated. If his pride is to be his weakness, then I would rather find a way to use it that does not destroy him in the process.”
Darcy’s heart thumped at the contradiction while Cleo resumed her struggling. Elizabeth was concerned about his standing, wanted to rid him from Longbourn, but did not wish to destroy him? He crept further out on the limb, and the branch emitted a disturbing crack.
“You have not answered my question,” Mr. Bennet said, glancing about him now, alerted to the possibility they were not alone. “What will you offer him to consider your proposal?
“Why, I do not…”
“Lizzy.” Her father took her hand. “Have I not taught you well? You must offer him what he wants in exchange for getting what you want.”
“But, Papa, you hold the entail.”
“And it is you who wishes to change it. Now, Lizzy, tell me, what is it you want exactly? You seem remarkably concerned,” Mr. Bennet said gently, “with Mr. Darcy’s dignity, for a woman who wishes him gone.”
Darcy saw her shoulders tighten, saw her chin lift—the posture of a woman who had been seen through and resented it with every fiber of her being.
“I do not wish him—” She stopped. Started again, more carefully, her voice steadier but no less fierce.
“I wish him to have a choice, Papa. The same choice I am asking for myself. Not to be trapped by a document written by a man who died a century before any of us drew breath. Is that so unreasonable? That both of us, Mr. Darcy and I, should be permitted to determine our own fates, rather than having them arranged for us by a dead man’s handwriting? ”