Page 57

Mr Simms snapped his head up so fast that he nearly lost his glasses. His face blanched as white as milk. Elizabeth reached for him across the desk, immediately concerned. “Whatever is the matter, Mr Simms? You look quite ill.”

He stood and went to his sideboard without a word and retrieved a newspaper from a stack near the window.

“I am very sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, Mrs Darcy. But —” He took a shaky breath.

“The Galbraith Trading Company declared bankruptcy after they lost every one of their ships to a typhoon.” He came around the desk and leaned on it as though the shock had left him unable to stand on his own.

“I am afraid the vast fortune your uncle wished to give you is now worthless.”

Elizabeth blinked slowly, then turned to Darcy, and back again to Mr Simms. Slowly, a smile crept across her lips. A laugh escaped, startling Mr Simms to the extreme. “My dear Madame, are you quite well?” he asked.

Elizabeth continued to laugh for a moment, then got control of herself. “Oh, Mr Simms, do not trouble yourself on my account. I only think this is quite funny!” She laughed again, then took Darcy’s hand. He squeezed it, smiling down at her.

“I do not see what is funny about losing a fortune,” Mr Simms said, straightening his jacket in disgust at her apparent flippancy over the whole ordeal.

She supposed his reaction was only to be expected.

Surely, anyone else would have been livid when they found out their promised fortune was nothing but a mirage.

Mr Simms went back around his desk and sat down, putting his glasses back on the top of his nose to finish reading. “Well, the only other holding in this bequest is an estate…” He let us words trail off as he read. “A small fishing cottage near the sea, valued at two thousand pounds.”

Elizabeth could not help but laugh again at the absurdity of it all.

She was stunned, of course, but as she had never put her hopes too much in the inheritance, they could not be too badly dashed.

Elizabeth had never felt that she ought to be an heiress, and now it transpired that she never really had been.

She stood and thanked the barrister, who still seemed to regard her as a madwoman of sorts.

Mr Darcy shook his hand and stowed their copies of the bequest with their marriage license.

Soon, they were back in the carriage, rolling leisurely toward home. Darcy smiled as they settled in for the short drive. “I do not think Mr Simms has ever been greeted with quite so surprising a reaction to a bequest.”

“I know, poor man. But I could not help seeing the humour in it,” Elizabeth laughed. “To think of all of those men who were after me for my grand fortune and ‘fine estate’. How very shocked Mr Wickham would have been if he had convinced me to run away with him!”

“Hmm, if it were any other woman, that might be an amusing prospect to think about. But I am so glad he failed to use you for his own gains. Or lack of gains, I suppose.”

“As am I,” Elizabeth replied fervently. “As am I.”He took her hand and kissed it, holding it close to his heart.

Viewed in another light, the matter was not quite so amusing.

Had things turned out differently, the lost inheritance might have meant disaster.

If Elizabeth had needed it to save her family from penury, she could not have viewed the matter so lightheartedly, but with herself and Jane so well married, she was afforded the luxury of never worrying for her mother and sisters again — and thus, the luxury of laughing at the irony of losing what she did not truly need.

Elizabeth thought again of all the gentlemen who had veritably come out of the woodwork when they had heard about the inheritance.

She bore Colonel Fitzwilliam no ill will for wanting to marry a rich woman who might keep him in the style an earl’s son would expect, but he would have been sorely disappointed.

And the perfidious Mr Wickham—well, he did not even bear mentioning.

And the myriad others who would have been surprised to find that she was not rich at all!

She shook her head and gave a low chuckle.

“What has tickled you now?” Darcy asked, a smile touching the corner of his mouth.

She snuggled closer to him and he leaned forward the retrieve the heavy wool blanket from the opposite seat.

He spread it over their legs and made sure she was warm and comfortable.

She took his hands and sighed. “They would have all been very disappointed, the men who were courting me for my supposed fortune,” Elizabeth said, shaking her head.

“It is just as well that you married for love, for I am afraid I have little else to give you.”

He wrapped his arm around her and held her close. “They would have all been fools. In marrying you, my angel, I have gained the greatest riches of all.” He kissed her then, with all the passion and love she had ever dreamed of.

Darcy truly was the perfect man for her — even in his imperfections, he was a man of nobility, character, and a capacity for love that she never would have imagined. In him, she had truly found the greatest treasure.