Chapter Four The Pragmatism of Hunsford
IF ONE WERE TO CATALOGUE the various emotional states Elizabeth Bennet had anticipated experiencing during her stay in Kent, the list would have been comprehensive. She had expected to feel bored by Mr Collins, patronised by Lady Catherine, and irritated by Mr Darcy.
She had not expected to feel as though she were standing on the deck of a ship during a storm, holding a piece of paper that proved the universe possessed a deeply twisted sense of humour.
Elizabeth paced the length of her guest chamber in a state of agitation. The catastrophic paper rested innocently upon her neat white bedspread.
She paused in her pacing to glare at it. It looked back at her.
She oscillated between breathless, hysterical laughter at his desperation and genuine distress over his raw honesty.
Every time she remembered his haughty, rigid posture in the grove that morning—the dignity with which he had handed her a letter containing the phrase “I confess a desperate, starving longing”—she had to press a hand over her mouth to suppress a shriek of manic amusement.
He had no idea, she realised, a fresh wave of embarrassment on his behalf washing over her. The most formidable, prideful man in England has just handed me a written account of his complete emotional collapse, and he believes he handed me a legal brief.
But the laughter evaporated as quickly as it came, leaving behind a complicated knot in her chest.
She had read the letter three times, deciphering the aggressively scored-out words. She had absorbed the revelations regarding Mr Wickham, omitting the delicate secret involving Mr Darcy’s younger sister from her general assessment, storing it away in a vault of sympathy.
She had fully accepted his innocence regarding Mr Wickham.
The charming, amiable militia officer who had so effortlessly won the favour of Meryton was a scoundrel of the highest order.
Mr Darcy had not ruined him; he had merely refused to be bled dry by a profligate rogue.
Elizabeth felt a flush of shame at her own blindness.
She, who prided herself on her penetration, had been duped by a handsome face and a tragic story.
But then, there was Jane.
The injury done to Jane remained a burning ember in her heart, refusing to be extinguished by Darcy’s confessions of love.
He loved her, yes. He was apparently dismantled by his affection for her, but he had still separated her sister from the man she loved, acting as judge and jury over Jane’s gentle heart.
He had meddled. He had been arrogant enough to believe he knew best.
“How can a man be so intelligent, so deeply feeling, and so utterly stupid all at once?” Elizabeth asked the empty chamber, throwing her hands into the air.
A knock came upon the door.
“Lizzy?” The sensible voice of Charlotte Collins drifted through the door. “Are you well? You have been pacing a trench into the floorboards for an hour. We can hear you from the parlour downstairs. Mr Collins is beginning to worry that your slipper will appear through the ceiling.”
“Come in, Charlotte,” Elizabeth called out, rapidly smoothing her hair and moving to unlock the door.
Charlotte entered the room. She wore her usual expression of calm competence, being a woman who could successfully manage a vicar, a poultry yard, and a formidable patroness. She took one look at Elizabeth, whose eyes were wild and whose cheeks were flushed, and assessed the situation instantly.
“You look as though you have been struck by lightning,” she observed. “Has Lady Catherine demanded you recite a sermon from memory? Or did the chimney sweep drop soot on your best pelisse?”
“Neither.” Elizabeth pointed a trembling finger at the bed. “It is far worse.”
Charlotte eyed the crumpled paper on the bed. “A letter? From Jane? Is someone ill?”
“No. Not from Jane.” Elizabeth took a deep breath as though she were about to confess a murder. “From Mr Darcy.”
Charlotte stopped in her tracks, her eyebrows climbing to her hairline. “Mr Darcy wrote to you? Hand-delivered to the parsonage?”
“Hand-delivered in the grove. With a bow. And silence.” Elizabeth walked over to the bed and picked up the paper as if it were poisonous. “Charlotte... he proposed to me last night.”
Charlotte Collins, a woman with an imperturbable calm nature, swayed on her feet. She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. “He proposed? Fitzwilliam Darcy, master of Pemberley, nephew to an earl, proposed to you?”
“Yes. And I refused him. Loudly. And angrily.”
Charlotte closed her eyes, looking as though she were internally calculating the exact financial loss to the penny. “Lizzy. Ten thousand a year.”
“Charlotte, please. He told me he was proposing against his better judgment, his family’s expectations, and his own common sense. He essentially told me that loving me was a severe character flaw that he could no longer suppress.”
“A little rude, perhaps, but still. Ten. Thousand. A. Year.”
“I told him he was the last man in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry. I accused him of ruining Jane’s happiness and destroying Mr Wickham.” Elizabeth held up the letter. “And this morning, I am certain he intended to hand me a formal rebuttal. Instead, he handed me... this.”
Elizabeth read the contents of the letter to her friend, carefully omitting everything involving Mr Darcy’s younger sister at Ramsgate. She started with the first line.
Charlotte blinked.
“He wrote ‘You have ruined my peace’?” Charlotte asked, her voice hushed with awe.
“There is more.”
Elizabeth kept reading. As her eyes tracked down the page, Charlotte’s expression transitioned rapidly. It began with growing shock, gave way to disbelief, and then, as Elizabeth reached the bottom of the page, Charlotte’s face settled into calculating pragmatism.
Elizabeth lowered the letter.
“Well,” Charlotte said mildly. “He certainly uses a great deal of ink.”
“Charlotte! He is a lunatic! He has lost his mind!”
“He is not a lunatic, Lizzy. He is a man in the throes of a passion.” Charlotte tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I must say, I am impressed. I always thought him a bit stiff, but there is a poet hidden beneath that sombre waistcoat. ‘Warden of my prison’? That is very good. Very dramatic.”
“It is mortifying!”
“It is an advantage,” Charlotte corrected, her tone shifting to the businesslike register she used when negotiating the price of turnips with the local farmers.
She stood up and gently urged Elizabeth to sit in the armchair, adopting the tone of a very sensible general addressing a panicking foot soldier.
“Lizzy, you must reconsider the formidable master of Pemberley,” she stated plainly. “You have read this. You know the truth of Mr Wickham now and you know Mr Darcy is exonerated in the affair.”
“Yes, but Jane—”
“Forget Jane for a moment,” Charlotte interrupted, waving a hand. “Look at the man himself. He is handsome, he is intelligent, and he possesses an obvious, almost frightening devotion to you. And, I cannot stress this enough, the undeniable comfort of ten thousand pounds a year.”
Elizabeth reeled from this practical advice.
She stared at Charlotte, a cold shiver tracing its way down her spine.
The sensible, grounded woman standing before her was using excellent vocabulary, but the underlying arithmetic was identical to the hysteria that routinely echoed through the halls of Longbourn.
“Charlotte,” she whispered, aghast. “You sound exactly like my mother. You are merely substituting ‘pin money’ with the word ‘advantage’.”
“Your mother lacks tact, Lizzy, but her mathematics are sound,” Charlotte replied without an ounce of shame.
“I am a practical woman. I married Mr Collins because he offered me a comfortable home and security from becoming an impoverished spinster. You have been offered an estate that dwarfs the county of Hertfordshire, a man of consequence, and a love that has driven him to the brink of literary madness.”
“I cannot marry a man whose actions I condemn! He separated Jane and Mr Bingley! He broke her heart!”
“Yes,” Charlotte conceded calmly. “He did. And that is unfortunate, but let us look at this logically.”
She began to pace the room, taking over Elizabeth’s abandoned trench in the floorboards, transitioning fully into a master tactician.
“Mr Darcy holds influence over Mr Bingley, does he not?” Charlotte mused.
“Yes. He admitted as much.”
“Then the solution is simple.” She stopped pacing and looked at Elizabeth with the bright eyes of a puppet master. “You marry him.”
“Charlotte—”
“Listen to me. You accept him and you become Mrs Darcy of Pemberley. You secure your future, your family’s future, and your own comfort.
” Charlotte smiled with a calculating expression.
“And once you are his wife, holding this degree of power over his heart, you could effortlessly steer Mr Bingley back to Hertfordshire and Jane.”
The silence in the room was absolute.
Elizabeth stared at her friend, the ruthlessness taking her breath away. It was brilliant. It was logical. It was Machiavellian.
“You are suggesting,” Elizabeth said, her voice dangerously low, “that I use Mr Darcy’s affection for me to manipulate him into forcing his friend to marry my sister.”
“I am suggesting you use the tools available to you,” Charlotte corrected smoothly.
“Mr Darcy manipulated Mr Bingley away from Jane. A future Mrs Darcy could easily manipulate him back. It is poetic justice. And everyone gets what they want. Jane gets Mr Bingley. You get ten thousand a year. And Mr Darcy gets the warden of his prison. Truly, Lizzy, it is a flawless strategy.”
“It is abhorrent,” Elizabeth huffed, vehemently rejecting the idea while springing from the armchair.
“It is sensible.”
“It is hypocritical!” Elizabeth shouted, refusing to play with Mr Bingley’s affections in the exact same manner she had just so fiercely condemned Mr Darcy for doing.
“How can you even suggest it? I spent yesterday evening excoriating him for playing God with their lives! I told him he was wrong to interfere! And now you wish me to marry him, solely to put the strings on my own fingers and dance the puppets myself?”
“You would be doing it for love,” Charlotte argued. “He did it out of pride. There is a difference in the motive.”
“There is no difference in the act! If I marry him to use his influence, I am no better than he is. I am worse! I would be selling myself to secure a husband for my sister. That is not marriage, Charlotte, that is a transaction. A cold transaction.”
“All marriages are transactions, Lizzy.” There was a hint of steel in Charlotte’s tone. “Some of us trade our youth for a vicarage. Some trade their silence for a carriage. You are being offered the opportunity to trade your stubbornness for a kingdom. I urge you not to be foolish.”
Tears of frustration pricked Elizabeth’s eyes. “I am not foolish for wishing to maintain my own integrity. I cannot love a man I do not respect. And I cannot respect a man I intend to use as a political instrument.”
“But do you respect him?” Charlotte pressed, pointing to the letter. “A man who loves you enough to write that?”
Elizabeth looked at the letter, the heat flaring in her chest again. I respect that he is capable of great feeling, she thought. I respect that he is innocent of Wickham’s slander. But...
“I do not know,” Elizabeth whispered, running a hand over her tired face. “I truly do not know. My understanding of the world has been upended in the span of twelve hours. I need time. I need to think.”
“You do not have time,” Charlotte warned gently. “He is leaving Kent soon. If you do not give him some indication—”
The intense debate was abruptly shattered.
The bedroom door burst open with the force of a battering ram. It rebounded off the wall with a loud crack, startling both women so badly Elizabeth nearly knocked over the washstand.
Maria Lucas bounded into the room, bringing with her a flood of silly energy.
“Lizzy! Charlotte! You must come down at once!” she shrieked, bouncing on the balls of her feet as if the floorboards were made of hot coals.
The heavy atmosphere of moral dilemmas and ten thousand pounds a year evaporated, replaced by the absurdity of Maria’s giggling.
“Maria, please,” Charlotte sighed, seamlessly shifting from puppet master back to tired older sister. “What is the matter? Is the kitchen on fire?”
“No! It is Papa and Mr Collins!” Maria gasped for air, overexcited with the news she brought. “They are demanding your presence downstairs! Both of you! This very instant!”
Elizabeth shoved the letter behind her back, her heart hammering. “Why? Has something happened?”
“There is a new carriage heading to Rosings!” Maria squealed, clapping her hands. “It has just passed by the window! Mr Collins says we must all assemble in the front parlour to witness the sweep of the turn! He says it is a marvel of modern coachmanship and we are missing history being made!”
Elizabeth stared at the young girl.
“The sweep of the turn,” she repeated flatly.
“Yes! Mr Collins is positively frantic! He is holding a knotted cord!” Maria grabbed Elizabeth’s arm and began dragging her to the door. “Hurry, Lizzy, or he says the dust will settle and we shall miss the effect!”
Elizabeth was forced to suppress her emotional turmoil. She took a steadying breath, pushing the image of Mr Darcy’s sprawling handwriting out of her mind, and the sensible arithmetic of Charlotte Collins into a corner of her brain.
She arranged her features into a mask of vacuous enthusiasm.
“Coming, Maria.” Elizabeth prepared to descend the stairs and face the mundane reality of her Hunsford hosts.
Charlotte caught her eye, offering a knowing, unsympathetic smirk.
Ten thousand a year, Charlotte mouthed.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and marched downstairs to admire the unknown horses.