Once she’d parted Mr. Darcy after leaving the drawing room, that man, and the house, the heavy oak door of Rosings had slammed behind Darcy, and a cold gust of wind blew through Elizabeth’s dress. She had grabbed her coat from the rack but not put it on. It was evening, but the April season had advanced so far that the sun was still bright, making clouds glow reddish yellow.
She made it to the bottom of the stairs with Mary, who struggled into her own coat as she stepped down with her. “Lizzy, you should—”
Elizabeth’s nerve suddenly broke, and without a word she ran as fast as she could across the park. She wanted to be away. She was scared again. She’d reached halfway across the park before she looked back to see if Lord Rochester followed her.
Just Mary.
She hurried along at a fast walking pace, and seeing Elizabeth stop and look at her, she broke into a short jog. Mary gasped as she took Elizabeth’s arm. “Do wait for me. I do not think he could move nearly so fast with that dragging leg.”
Elizabeth nodded silently.
She wished that she had asked Darcy to accompany her across to the parsonage, though she also felt safer knowing that Darcy was watching him .
Ne, was more than simply him, the man from her nightmares. Not yet though, not yet. She needed to feel safe before she could determine how to feel about how he was also her father, before she could decide how she felt about having a legitimate family, and that it was a very high born one. Before anything, she needed to be safe.
Mary gasped as Elizabeth pulled her along. “You are right to be scared of him, even if he is an earl.”
“I just want to be back under a friendly roof,” Elizabeth said.
They hurried along, not speaking again as they rushed.
What Elizabeth really wanted was the pistol that Mr. Bennet had insisted she take with her before he’d given her permission to leave Longbourn.
Such a joke , she had thought.
Why would I ever want a pistol , she had thought.
Mr. Bennet had been wiser.
They got to the parsonage fence. Mr. Collins’s garden with its rose bushes and pretty shrubberies stood inside. The sun would set in another twenty minutes, but the look of everything was clear enough still.
Elizabeth worked at the latch to the recently built gate, but she fumbled it twice. She shuddered.
Mary opened the door, and said between pants, “Oh Lizzy—you had—no idea.”
“I thought I was illegitimate.” She stepped quickly over the cobblestones up to the door. Where was the key to the door? She could not remember.
“Poor Lizzy.”
Mary simply turned the doorknob and opened it up. Upon seeing her maid coming from the kitchen, evidently surprised to hear the mistress returning so early, Mary sent her to make tea for them both.
Elizabeth sat right by the door for half a minute. She looked dumbly at the slippers she’d worn, they had been soaked in the evening dew, and the soft kid leather was ripped up from the stones along the way.
“Your poor shoes,” Mary said. “They were so pretty.”
Elizabeth started up the stairs to her room. “He beat me. He shouted that I was a bastard. Again, and again. ‘The child is a bastard’. That was all I’d remembered of him before tonight. I thought I was a bastard. I was so scared to tell you. I should have. Oh, I am so scared.”
“Do not worry,” Mary said following Elizabeth up and into her room. “You are not a child anymore—You think you must leave tomorrow?”
“I don’t know!” Elizabeth flung open her trunk. Piles of neatly wrapped clothes. She started shoving them aside. “He beat my mother too—I remember that! Oh, I hope I shall not cause any great trouble with Lady Catherine for you.”
Mary chewed her lip in worry but then shrugged. “‘Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.’ I would be worthy of no one’s favor if I abandoned you in your time of need—what are you looking for, Lizzy?”
Elizabeth did not reply.
“Even if he is so frightening, he is your father. You must wish to know him. And Lord Hartley as well. I said the two of you looked much alike, but I had no notion that it was so similar a relation. Lizzy, what—”
Mary fell silent as Elizabeth triumphantly pulled the pistol from where she’d hidden it, wrapped in a small shawl at the bottom of her trunk. The bullets were next to it.
Elizabeth’s hands stopped trembling. “Thank you, Papa,” she whispered as she pulled it out.
Without any explanation to Mary, Elizabeth grabbed one of the cartridges that were wrapped up separately and proceeded to load the pistol.
“Lizzy,” Mary said when she was done. “I shall not argue that Lord Rochester did not behave horridly to you all those many years ago. He frightened me. He is terribly high handed and demanding. He has no sense of his own wrongdoing... Lizzy, I beg you to tell me that you do not mean to shoot him.”
Elizabeth stared at the now loaded gun in her hand. She looked back at Mary and then back to the gun. Now she felt safe.
“They would hang you! And they should if you shot him . Lizzy, put it away. Papa gave you that gun?”
“And he ensured that I knew how to use it.”
Mary stared at the weapon in the dying sunlight as Elizabeth grinned maniacally at it. “Heavens, Papa is as eccentric as Mama always said. Lizzy, I insist that you not shoot any peers of the realm while you are a guest in my house. I am a very lenient host, but I think that is a place to draw a line.”
Elizabeth started laughing. She felt hysterical. She put the gun on the dressing table and started crying.
Mary hugged her. “Dear Lizzy. Dear Lizzy.”
“I am scared of him.”
“Of course you are. He is terrifying. Even with the weakness from his apoplexy, I would run shrieking. And I do not remember having been beaten by him.”
“Lady Elizabeth,” Mr. Collins entered the room. “You must return to Rosings and—aaaah.”
He shrieked at seeing the gun on the table and backed away. “Where did you get that! No, no, no. Lady Catherine would be most seriously displeased with me if you killed her friend. You must put it away. Do you not know that the words of the Lord are ‘let he who has been struck turn the other cheek.’ You must not shoot your own father.”
Elizabeth laughed again. “I promise. Mr. Bennet is really my father, far more than he is.”
“Ah, Lizzy, you now begin to sound more like yourself,” Mary said approvingly.
The sound of a hard knock on the door downstairs reverberated. The gun was instantly in Elizabeth’s hands. She pointed it towards the open door to her room, far out in her hands, standing with the shooting stance that Mr. Bennet had taught her to maximize accuracy.
A small part of her mind, that was not terrified out of its wits, noticed that Mr. Collins and Mary were not comforted by her readiness to defend herself. She supposed she would not be if she were in their situation.
“Put that away, Lady Elizabeth. A young lady, especially of your high birth, should not be wielding such a weapon.”
“I’d prefer if you did not use such a title. Call me Lizzy, like your wife does.” Elizabeth pointed the gun towards the floor. Part of her found it delightfully amusing how the way that Mr. Collins described her had instantly changed, and without any apparent hesitation. What was deeply comforting was how little Mary’s manner to her had changed.
“It is Mr. Darcy with his cousin and Lord Hartley. Someone else is with him.” Mary had gone to the window. “There is a large group led by Lord Rochester and Lady Catherine coming up the avenue.”
Elizabeth heard Lord Rochester shouting from the distance, “Darcy, what are you about!”
That was enough for Elizabeth, she hurried down the stairs, still carrying the gun.
If she thought about anything she would curl up in a ball in her room. But what she instead focused in her heart on was what Mr. Darcy had said to her this afternoon, about her integrity, and she thought about Mr. Bennet’s affection for her, and the care he had always shown for her. And she remembered her mother telling her that Mr. Bennet was a kind man, and that he would care for her, before the raving and convulsions began.
A memory came to Elizabeth. The doctor had told Mr. Bennet how Mama’s ribs had been broken. Mr. Bennet asking him seriously if this would make her death count as murder.
Lord Rochester had in fact killed her mother.
Another hard knock on the front door to the parsonage. Darcy’s shouted, “Elizabeth, my carriage will be here in a few minutes, and I shall convey you to Mr. Bennet’s house.”
She pointed the pistol at the ground. She took several deep breaths and opened the door and strode out.
It was dusk, and the sun was almost gone. But thankfully there was still enough light that she could easily see Lord Rochester and the Rosings footmen with him. If he rushed at her or tried to grab her, she would shoot him, even if they hung her afterwards.
Lord Rochester strode closer, and he shouted, “Damn you, Darcy. I have had enough of this. Meet me tomorrow, if you are not a coward.”
“No!” Elizabeth’s voice rang out. “I’ll meet you. You murderer. I remember enough to know you killed my mother. Your beatings gave her the fever that killed her.”
Lord Rochester confidently stepped towards her. Elizabeth raised and pointed the pistol at him. “Another step and I shall shoot you.”
Lord Rochester sneered. “I did not hit her with enough force to have killed her. You have been raised to despise me, and—”
“I was raised to know nothing about you.”
“You will not shoot me.” Lord Rochester strode forward.
Arms out. Steady yourself. Don’t shift the point you are aiming at when you pull the trigger.
Just as Papa taught her. Her aim was right on Lord Rochester’s chest.
“Elizabeth,” Lord Rochester firmly said as he stepped forward reaching to take the gun, “put that toy down, and obey me—”
Bang.