31. The Bennet Bourn
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE BENNET BOURN
How does one inform a family that the foundations they believed secure was founded on a lie?
Elizabeth took her toast and tea in the small parlor while sitting across from Jane.
The door was shut, because the discussion would be more difficult with Mrs. Bennet’s exclamations, except Mamma had stood still in the corridor, her silence so complete and unlike herself that Elizabeth heard Lydia ask her if she was well.
There was no audible answer. Jane quietly dabbed her eyes, sensing the turmoil, without any explanation, waiting patiently, which was patently Jane, who could remain serene despite the earth cracking underneath them.
The strange silence persisted until the carriage from Netherfield arrived. The wheels had barely stopped rattling when Mr. Bennet emerged from his study. Jane rose from the settee, where she had sat facing the window, and together, they watched Darcy hand his sister down from the step.
Georgiana’s face was pale, her dark eyes wide, searching for answers, and her steps unsteady. She held Darcy’s arm tightly as they crossed the yard, and Mrs. Bennet stirred finally, asking Hill to bring tea, cakes, and sugared almonds.
“Tea would be welcome, Mamma. Thank you.”
Mrs. Bennet nodded. “I shall see to it. And the fire should be built up. It is cold today. Miss Darcy will want warmth.”
She bustled away, and Elizabeth caught a glimpse of Mary, Kitty, and Lydia clustered at the top of the stairs, their faces pale and curious.
They knew something was wrong. The entire house knew.
But they had not been told, and they would not be—not yet, not until the people most affected had been informed.
“Elizabeth,” Mr. Bennet said softly. “I believe I should be present for this conversation.”
“Yes, Papa. I think you should.”
He studied her face for a long moment, his sharp eyes reading what she could not say aloud. Then he nodded and selected a small armchair in the corner.
Elizabeth went to the door and welcomed Georgiana with an embrace. She held the girl’s thin shoulders while beholding Darcy’s pained visage. She would do most of the talking, and she would show him the small comfort of not having to cushion the blow for his sister.
The tea tray was brought in, and Darcy stoked the fire, then took his position beside Georgiana on the small sofa. Jane remained in the window seat, and Elizabeth moved the chair to face them.
“Sisters,” she addressed both Jane and Georgiana. “There is no better way to say this, but that I have discovered that our families are rooted in the same place. Here at Longbourn.”
Confusion and consternation were etched on Georgiana’s brow as she looked toward Darcy for guidance. He gently patted her hand and whispered to her, and she nodded, returning her attention to Elizabeth.
“It started with George Darcy, a boy who was sent to Longbourn to be the second heir after our great-grandfather, Thomas Bennet, and Alice Bennet, one of Thomas’s sisters who lived until 1775.
” Elizabeth withdrew the letters from the oilskin packet.
“What I thought was an unrequited love story took an unexpected turn. I found this yesterday hidden in the steward’s cottage, a packet Alice left behind. ”
Georgiana’s eyes went to the packet, then to Elizabeth’s face, then to her brother’s rigid back. “What is it?”
“Letters, and a confession.” Elizabeth’s voice was steady, though her hands trembled slightly. “Alice discovered that George Darcy was born George Bennet. Her mother told her after she fell in love with him. And George was sent away.”
Jane gasped, eyes wide and stricken, and Georgiana’s face colored. “Brother, is this true? Did you not say George, our great-grandfather, was sent here to Longbourn to learn estate management? To prepare him in case the Bennet heir died?”
“Yes, it is what we believed.” Darcy’s voice was choked. “But Alice has proof. There is a page torn from the family Bible, and a miniature of the baby.”
“The one Elizabeth showed me? The baby with the eyebrows that connected in the middle?” Georgiana exclaimed. “I knew it was not one of ours, for it had no date, and no artist’s signature.”
Elizabeth produced the miniature and set it on the table between them. No one picked it up, staring at it as if it were a live serpent.
“There is more,” Elizabeth said. “Years later, George’s wife had died, and he wrote a letter to Alice. He still loved her, and he wished… if there was any hope…”
“But, if this is true,” Georgiana picked up the torn page from the Bible, reading the name, George Bennet, “she cannot marry him because he is her brother.”
“He did not know.” Elizabeth unfolded George’s letter. “And Alice could not answer him, because she could not take him away from the home he knew, his heritage, his name, the Darcy name, and Pemberley. He died believing Alice did not love him.”
Georgiana made a small sound—not quite a gasp, not quite a sob, but in between. She reached for George’s letter and blinked as she took in his sorrow.
“But Alice! How utterly sad,” Jane said softly, taking Alice’s confession and unfolding it. “Papa, no wonder you said she was the most unfortunate Bennet.”
“I had no idea,” Mr. Bennet said. “I came across her writings when she was but a girl. Joyous, fun, and playful. Every book or unfinished story ended in the summer of 1711. My mother said she suffered from a shattered heart. A boy who left without looking back.”
“Except he did look back.” Georgiana had finished George’s letter and refolded it. “He mentions his sister Mathilda, and he must have grown old waiting for a reply that never came.”
“How could Philippa have done this?” Mr. Bennet set his pipe down. “Her own son, sold like a horse.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Elizabeth didn’t know why she felt the need to defend Philippa, except perhaps that she felt her pain and saw in her commonplace book the tinctures and balms she used to treat illnesses and save other infants.
“Longbourn’s crops failed several years in a row, and the Darcys had money.
They wished to borrow a son, but their own George died, an infant, and they took him one fine morning.
Perhaps it was meant to be temporary, or for a few years; we don’t know.
But they did return him every summer when he was older to learn how to manage Longbourn.
She describes her heartbreak with these words.
He did not cry. He was too young to understand.
He went with them smiling, because they gave him a wooden horse to hold.
I pray God forgives me. I do not think I shall ever forgive myself. ”
“Oh!” Georgiana was weeping now, tears streaming down her face, and Darcy’s arm was around her shaking shoulders. “Poor George. He never knew his mother’s love. He died believing Alice did not love him.”
Darcy’s face was ravaged, his eyes hollow, but he was looking at his sister with an expression of such desperate love that Elizabeth felt her own eyes sting.
“Georgiana,” he said. His voice was rough, barely audible. “I am sorry. I am so sorry.”
“Alice.” Jane had finished reading her letter. “Alice could not tell him, because he was her brother by blood.”
“But she could have at least replied by way of Mathilda!” Georgiana’s protest was too hot. “She didn’t have to let him suffer.”
“Except she suffered with the knowledge,” Mr. Bennet said.
“Heavier and weightier. I knew Alice. She died when I was sixteen. A small, fierce woman who walked faster than any person I have met, save one.” His gaze moved to Elizabeth, and the bend in his brow made her chest ache.
“She told stories to the tenant children and kept bees. She never married, and my mother said it was because she had been disappointed in love. My mother was correct, although the nature of the disappointment was rather more profound than any of us imagined.”
“Georgie.” Darcy’s voice was soft, consoling. “Alice held the secret to protect our George. She was his sister. She could not have married him.”
“But she could have… oh, she could have recognized him as her brother. She could have--”
Mr. Bennet had finished the letter. “She could not have. She writes here that she sees no path forward that did not end in ruin, and she is correct. Both families would have fallen. Not because of the inheritance—though that would have been ruinous enough—but because of the love. A sister in love with her brother. A brother who wrote to his sister after his wife passed, asking for her hand. The world would have seen scandal, the taint of an unnatural sin, and the gossip would have destroyed all of us: Alice’s younger sisters, and my grandfather, Thomas, the natural heir.
And it wouldn’t have changed a thing. She still could not marry George.
She could not write through Mathilda, because neither Mathilda nor George knew George was a Bennet, so she did the only wise thing.
She let sleeping dogs lie, and she hoped for a better future, for another Bennet girl who would… ”
And here, he stopped, turning to Elizabeth, his gaze shining with emotion.
“Papa…” Elizabeth said to the sound of sniffling around the room. “I am not as brave as her.”
“Nor do you need to be, dear. Your Darcy is a third cousin. Hers was a full brother. I say we thank Alice, for she loved her Darcy enough to let him believe she did not.”
Georgiana looked up at her brother. “I believe Alice and George are together now, brother and sister, and George knows the love of both families. He belongs to both of us.”
“And so does Alice,” Elizabeth finished.
The room was quiet. The fire shifted, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. Outside, a horse whickered in the yard, and then they heard the sounds of Bingley greeting Hill.
Jane wiped her eyes and opened the small parlor door, and Bingley came in, his face flushed from the cold, cravat slightly askew.
“Say, Darcy, the workmen told me you’d left word. Darcy, what on earth?” He looked at the room—at the papers spread on the table and Georgiana’s tear-streaked face, but mostly at Jane’s wringing hands. “What has happened?”
Mrs. Bennet came in and sat down quietly, almost as if she feared her presence would be noted, and Elizabeth saw her sisters creep down the staircase, and so she told everyone.
Briefly, she presented the salient facts, the documents, and George Darcy’s identity.
Her mother’s composure held, even with the revelation that Darcy was a Bennet, but Bingley’s face fell with bewilderment and distress.
“Good God,” Bingley said to Darcy. “Darcy, how is this sitting with you?” He crossed the room and gripped Darcy’s shoulder with a force that rocked them both. “Is this real? Could it be the imagination of Miss Alice Bennet? I do not believe it. She must be mistaken.”
Darcy’s face did something Elizabeth would remember for the rest of her life. The composure held—it always held—but beneath it, the emotions moved, agonized and profoundly humbled. He put his hand over Bingley’s on his shoulder and pressed it once before letting go.
“We will, of course, contact our solicitors, Bingley, but we thought you should know because you have an interest in this.”
“I… doubt that very much. An old love story thwarted because a brother loved a sister unknowingly? What does this?”
“Mathilda Darcy.”
Elizabeth watched as comprehension grew on Bingley’s face, the shock, but moreover, the overwhelming loyalty. “She is but a disowned daughter. A family story. I never meant—”
“Your great-grandmother was a Darcy,” Darcy continued. “If she is a Darcy by blood, she is—”
“She is female, and no heir, if that is what you are suggesting,” Bingley’s response was genuine and stalwart.
“Except the Darcy entail has always included females,” Darcy said. “We are a family of few females, and Georgiana is my heir. Pemberley goes to her, if my line is legitimate.”
“Only if Brother does not marry and Elizabeth does not give him many sons and daughters.” Georgiana had regained some of her spirit.
“But… I don’t want it,” Bingley said. “I don’t want Pemberley, I never wanted Pemberley, I want—” He looked at Jane, and his face was so nakedly adoring that Elizabeth had to look away. “I want Jane, and a decent harvest, perhaps a pointer pup. Darcy, for God’s sake, if you think I would—”
“It is not a matter of what you want, Bingley.” Darcy’s voice was low and strained. “It is a matter of what the law may require. The settlement, the entail—I do not know the precise language. Blythewood will know. But the question of heirs general versus heirs of the body—”
“Hang the entail.” Bingley’s chin came up with a stubbornness his amiable demeanor usually concealed. “Hang the solicitors. You are my friend, and I am telling you now, as a gentleman, that I will not press any claim against you or Georgiana or Pemberley, not now, not ever.”
“Your sisters may feel differently.”
The atmosphere changed immediately, freighted by the unspoken name of Caroline Bingley and the polished malice of Louisa Hurst.
“My sisters,” Bingley said carefully, “will be informed when the time is right and in terms that leave no room for misunderstanding. But that is my affair, Darcy, not yours.”
“It will become everyone’s affair soon enough,” Darcy said grimly.
“Elizabeth and I decided not to keep this secret another minute longer. We are sorry if it has altered your life, Charles, and yours, Jane, and anyone else’s.
But this is the truth as we know it, and how we manage it…
well, I do not yet know. My relations will have to be notified, and believe me, it will be in the gossip sheets before sundown. ”
“None of us will speak,” Mrs. Bennet said, glaring at Lydia and Kitty. “You hear that, girls?”
“It will not matter,” Mr. Bennet said. “The scandal will be bright, but the principals are all dead. My daughters are still engaged to marry, my approval still stands, and well, I for one, am happy to welcome another Bennet into the family.”
He reached toward Darcy and shook his hand.
“Then we shall manage it together.” Bingley looked around the room—at each of them in turn, with the uncomplicated conviction of a man who believed that loyalty and decency could weather anything, and whose belief, Elizabeth thought, was either the most admirable or the most na?ve thing she had ever witnessed.
Perhaps both. Perhaps there was no difference.
“But Brother, what will we do?” Georgiana shivered violently, looking toward her brother as if he were the only beacon on a stormy shore. “We do not have a home.”
Mrs. Bennet made a small choking sound, and then fluttered to Georgiana’s side. “You are cold, child. Hill, a blanket please, for Miss Darcy.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Bennet. That is very kind.”
“You are a Bennet, and you will always have a home here with us.” Mrs. Bennet took the blanket from Hill and placed it gently over Georgiana’s shoulders. “And family takes care of each other. Whatever happens.”