Chapter Fifteen Letters and Judgements
ON THE DAY SHE WAS to marry a man who had been immortal for more than three centuries, Elizabeth awoke to the discovery that matrimony still required stockings.
Six pairs lay on the foot of her bed, selected by her mother according to principles which had altered three times since breakfast. Two more had been rejected because their embroidery was insufficiently bridal, although Elizabeth could not imagine how anyone at the ceremony might inspect her ankles without creating a scandal more memorable than the wedding.
Jane sat on the floor beside the travelling trunk, folding a chemise with absolute serenity, having survived her mother’s instructions by ceasing to hear them. A small sapphire ring gleamed on her left hand whenever she smoothed the linen.
“You are putting that in the wrong trunk,” Elizabeth said.
Jane blinked. “This is the trunk marked for Pemberley.”
“That one is intended to remain at Longbourn.”
“But the label says Derbyshire.”
“Mamma changed her mind after Hill packed it. She believes a married woman requires separate trunks for the north and south of England.”
Jane removed the chemise and held it in her hands. “Then I am grateful Mr Darcy does not own another estate in the west. We should require another room for the trunks alone.”
Elizabeth abandoned the stockings and joined her sister on the carpet. Jane’s ring caught the morning light again, and Elizabeth touched it with one finger.
“Have you grown accustomed to it?”
“To the ring?”
“To being engaged to a vampire.”
Jane’s hands smoothed the linen. During the three weeks since Netherfield’s ball, she had spoken of Mr Bingley’s revelation only in fragments, never concealing her decision but protecting the private difficulty of reaching it.
Her happiness had returned, quiet and unmistakable, yet it now carried knowledge which had not existed when she first smiled at him at the Meryton assembly.
“I have grown accustomed to being engaged to Mr Bingley.” Jane resumed folding the chemise, although she took greater care than the garment required. “The other part remains less familiar.”
“Does it frighten you?”
“Yes.”
The simple admission unsettled Elizabeth. Jane rarely denied fear, but she had always softened it to spare others.
“The first night after he told me, I could not sleep.” Jane placed the folded linen inside the correct trunk and sat back. “I remembered every hour at Netherfield. He worried for me while I was ill. I slept while he was in the same house, and all that time he knew the scent of my blood.”
Elizabeth closed her hand over Jane’s. “He would rather have destroyed himself than harmed you.”
“I know that now. He told me precisely what he had felt, though I do not think Mr Darcy wished him to be so precise.” Jane’s mouth softened.
“Mr Bingley considered accuracy essential to my consent. He described his hunger, his control, and the number of times he left to chase venison in the park because remaining near me had become difficult. Then he offered to leave Hertfordshire before I could respond.”
“That sounds like him. His principal solution to causing distress is to remove himself and suffer alone elsewhere.”
“He had already instructed his servants to begin packing.”
“Of course he had,” Elizabeth said, smiling affectionately.
“I persuaded him to unpack before accepting his proposal. It seemed unreasonable to become engaged while his shirts were ready to travel.”
Elizabeth rested her shoulder against the bed. “And the question of conversion?”
Jane turned the sapphire ring around her finger. “He will never raise it. That was his promise.”
“But you may?”
“If I choose to do so. I must express the wish twice, at least one month apart, and you and Papa must witness both occasions.”
“That sounds more like Papa than Mr Bingley.”
“Mr Bingley proposed three declarations, two written statements, and a waiting period of six months. Papa informed him that Jane Bennet wished to marry a gentleman, not establish a government department.”
Elizabeth laughed, then lowered her voice as footsteps passed outside the room. “Have you decided what you will do?”
“No. I shall marry him in the spring while I am still human. I may remain human for many years, or for the whole of my life. He understands that.”
“And if you grow old while he does not?”
Jane’s fingers closed around hers. “Then we shall face it when age makes the question real. I will not choose immortality because I am afraid of losing him, nor refuse it because I am afraid of becoming different. Both fears are too loud at present.”
Elizabeth studied the familiar sweetness of her sister’s face and found no weakness in it. Mr Bingley had fallen in love with Jane’s gentleness before learning how much resolution it concealed. Immortality, should she ever accept it, would discover that Jane Bennet could not be hurried.
“You are very sensible,” Elizabeth murmured. “I begin to suspect that I should have consulted you before agreeing to bleed into a bowl.”
“You did consult me.”
“After agreeing.”
“That is your usual order, Lizzy!”
The bedchamber door opened without warning, admitting Mrs Bennet, Hill, and enough folded fabric to furnish a haberdashery. Hill carried Elizabeth’s wedding gown over both arms, while Mrs Bennet held an opened letter in one hand and the archbishop’s special licence in the other.
“Lizzy, why are you sitting on the floor? You will crease your morning dress, and although you are to change before the ceremony, anyone who sees you before then may think we have no chairs.”
“No one is expected in my bedchamber, Mamma.”
“Charlotte will arrive, your aunt Philips has threatened to arrive, and Lady Lucas has already sent twice to enquire whether we require assistance. On a wedding day, every woman in Hertfordshire considers every room public.”
Hill laid the gown on the bed. It was a soft cream silk, elegant without the excessive trimming Mrs Bennet had originally demanded. Jane rose to help arrange it, while Elizabeth indicated the broken seal on the letter.
“Has Lady Catherine written to you?”
“She wrote to you, but you were asleep when the letter arrived,” Mrs Bennet explained without a sign of remorse for opening someone else’s correspondence. “You know I had to read it, do you not?”
“Yes, Mamma. I know. Well?” she urged.
Mrs Bennet settled into a chair and spread the pages in her lap. “Six pages, Lizzy. Six. A woman does not expend so much paper unless she is deeply impressed.”
“Lady Catherine is not impressed. She is furious.”
Mrs Bennet adjusted the first page and began reading selected passages aloud. “‘The intelligence of my nephew’s inexplicable and degrading engagement has reached Rosings through a source whose reliability I cannot question’.”
“That must be Mr Collins’s reports.”
“Now listen to this. ‘I am also informed that the ceremony is to be officiated by Mr Collins, whose recent conduct demonstrates either a collapse of judgement or an ambition incompatible with his station.’ Poor Mr Collins. She is displeased with him as well.”
Mrs Bennet passed over two pages condemning the engagement, one accusing Charlotte of encouraging Mr Collins’s independence and half a page devoted to the improper hour of the ceremony.
“Here she becomes unreasonable. ‘A wedding conducted after the canonical hours, in an obscure private chapel, and under a special licence obtained without reference to the senior members of either family, possesses an air of concealment which no quantity of candles can render respectable.’ There is no concealment. The banns were read for three Sundays.”
Jane lifted Elizabeth’s gown away from the open letter. “The special licence makes the banns unnecessary.”
“That is not the point. Everyone heard them, particularly Mrs Long, who attended the second Sunday in a new bonnet and could not claim afterwards that she had missed Lizzy’s name.”
The idea of the late ceremony had entered Longbourn through Charlotte, who had remarked one afternoon that the little stone chapel would appear beautiful in candlelight.
She had delivered the observation while Mrs Bennet was choosing between hothouse flowers and greenery and had not mentioned vampires, sunsets, or the risk of five wedding guests catching fire before the vows.
Within an hour, Mrs Bennet had adopted the candlelit chapel as her own invention.
By evening she had informed half Meryton that the wedding would occur at four o’clock.
Mr Darcy, confronted by an ecstatic future mother-in-law and laws restricting marriages after noon, had sent Fletcher to London.
Money, influence, and the archbishop’s signature had accomplished the rest.
Mrs Bennet raised the special licence which Mr Darcy had entrusted to her care, and regarded its seal fondly.
“No one else in the neighbourhood has required the direct intervention of an archbishop to be married. Lady Lucas may have an engaged daughter, but she does not have a document of this quality.”
“Charlotte did not require one,” Elizabeth reminded her.
“Charlotte is marrying at Hunsford in January. Lady Catherine may prevent candles entirely.”
Mrs Bennet returned to the letter. “‘My daughter Anne has received this intelligence with a degree of composure which I must attribute to shock.’ Naturally. Everyone knows Mr Darcy was intended for her.”
“Mr Darcy did not know.”
“That was unfortunate, but it can no longer be helped. Lady Catherine concludes by warning that you will find Pemberley impossible to manage, Derbyshire too cold, and her nephew’s character resistant to correction.”
“The last point may contain some truth.”
A smaller sheet slipped from the pages and fell into Mrs Bennet’s lap. Elizabeth recognised a different hand and took it before her mother could begin another public reading.
Miss Elizabeth Bennet,