Elizabeth was shaken awake in an unfamiliar bed.
She screamed, with an echo of a nightmare still before her eyes.
The maid stepped back. “Apologies, Miss Elizabeth. The master was most insistent that you were to be awoken very early. You must be terribly tired. What is creating such a rush? You’ll head back to Longbourn without even waiting a day in London. I don’t know that you've ever been in the city before, while I’d been here some five times, even before Mrs. Bingley made me her lady’s maid when she married.”
Elizabeth rubbed her eyes and blinked at the very familiar face of Sarah Brown, who had served at Longbourn since she was thirteen.
“I’d like to be home,” Elizabeth said simply.
“Did you have an argument with Miss Mary? Mrs. Collins, I mean? I’d have not expected that. You both were always thick.”
“Nothing of that sort.” Elizabeth yawned and stretched her arms. She smiled at the guesses, wondering if Sarah would ever hit on the actual cause, even if given months to guess. Fleeing an earl, who was her father, in the company of his son, who was her brother, after she’d tried to shoot that earl, who was her father. At least by law and blood. This was not the sort of thing that even Elizabeth would guess.
“Be very mysterious. You shall if you enjoy it. But I think it is not fair to an old friend.”
“You will hear in good time. But the story is so remarkable that I very much doubt that you would believe me before I spent an hour explaining every aspect and offering proofs for the more remarkable points. I want a bite of breakfast; I had no dinner last night.”
As Elizabeth stepped out into the hallway, she ran into Mr. Darcy. Bouncing back from his chest she brightly smiled up at him.
His face had a rough covering of stubble that she’d never seen on it, and he looked tired. He still wore the clothes he’d been in the previous day. They stared at each other. She could smell his spicy and pleasant odor.
Darcy swallowed. “Lady Elizabeth, I apologize for my appearance.”
“No, no. Not you —I feel too strange about that . Do not call me that . We are too dear friends for me to become ‘her Ladyship’.”
He smiled at her. “Then what should I call you?”
“You managed a simple Elizabeth very well last night,” she said. “But I imagine eyebrows would be forcibly lifted if you continued that...simply Miss Elizabeth. But no ‘Lady’ from you.”
“As my Lady commands.”
She giggled, and he gave her his arm. He then frowned and looked away.
“What is on your mind?”
He shook her head, and did not reply.
That was something that she could not stop hoping with regard to him: Perhaps the change in her situation, at least once the legal aspects were proven and she gained a claim to some dowry, would make it so that maybe Mr. Darcy would think of marrying her.
Bingley and Jane were both also present in the dining room, yawning.
Colonel Fitzwilliam sat looking trim, shaved, and quite as though he were ready to step onto a battlefield.
Bingley said when he saw Elizabeth, “Deuced early. But the coachmen are all up. Only waiting for Hartley, I dare say his servants will just ignore whatever orders he gave to be woken up, and we’ll need to bang his door down if you want him to come with us.”
“Not a difficulty,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “I’ll do the pounding. Always a cheerful task, battering a door down. Gives a man an appetite.”
Elizabeth could not stop herself from glancing again and again at Mr. Darcy as she drank her coffee. She fingered a roll and a lemon tart, but she found that it was still hard to eat. There was so much warm gratitude towards him. He had protected her. He stood with her. He had carried her away from danger to safety in his carriage.
He was so very handsome.
Darcy must have some feeling for her beyond simple friendship. Even if he only thought of her with friendship, she would always think of him with unlimited gratitude and affection. She would always know that he was the dearest person in all the world.
Despite these bits of romantic nonsense, as Mr. Bennet—Papa—would call them going through her head, Mr. Darcy did not look towards her often, and there seemed to be a sort of awkwardness in him, as though he wished to look at her but did not.
Lord Hartley arrived ten minutes after they’d sat down to breakfast: Trimly dressed, shaved, clearly fully prepared for the day. Robert, she should think of him as Robert. He stepped up to Elizabeth and kissed her on the head saying, “Good morning, sister.”
Elizabeth blushed, and replied, “Good morning, brother . It is fortunate, is it not, that I do not have another brother, and you lack another sister. Else ambiguity might intrude.”
“Nothing I hate more than ambiguity,” Robert agreed. “No, no. Thank you kindly, Mrs. Bingley, but I never drink coffee in the morning, I do not like how it feels. And thank you very kindly for the pastry, but I have already eaten enough. Are we ready to leave?”
“Quite,” Bingley rubbed his own eyes. “We were only waiting for the battering ram.”
“With which to break my door down?” Robert inquired.
“No....” Bingley replied.
“It’s a stout oak piece. Bars on the inside too. Iron wrapped. I hope you laid out for a proper tree trunk.”
In another minute or two the servants announced that the carriages were prepared and waiting for them in front of the house, and they left.
Now Elizabeth suffered a proper disappointment. There were so many persons that it had been decided that both Bingley’s and Darcy’s carriage would be used to convey them. And by some awful quirk of fate, it was Elizabeth in Bingley’s carriage with Jane and Bingley, while the two other gentlemen travelled together.
This would have been a lesser evil if she had known how long Darcy intended to remain at Netherfield with his friend—he might even decide to go back to Rosings Park to complete the course of his planned visit with his aunt.
And it would make sense for them to learn directly what plans Lord Rochester might have made, and if he intended to use lawsuit or private force to seize her. Despite the confidence of everyone else, Elizabeth was by no means wholly sanguine.
Jane and Bingley were full of questions for the first half of the journey—how did they learn? How did she feel? Did she know what would happen—had she really tried to shoot the earl?
All the questions natural on such an occasion.
Elizabeth strove to answer these questions, but so often she did not know.
How did she feel?
She had not had liberty enough to settle upon an answer to that question.
From a certain point of view, she was a fool to run from Lord Rochester. He was an earl, and he was acknowledging her. Likely if she actually lived as his daughter he would provide her with a dowry, a position, and possibilities. If she obeyed him and made an effort to become a proper daughter for a nobleman, it was unlikely that he would ever hurt her again. Probably.
The memory of a child’s fear should not overwhelm every prudential consideration.
Except...she could not.
The landscape rushed past her. Fields with growing wheat. Trees heavy with leaves. Churches and villages. Cows and grasses. Birds in the air. She could recognize barely anything, returning the opposite direction from what she had taken on the one previous trip along this road. When she was of age and thus would not need to fear any legal authority of the earl, she hoped she could travel more.
Maybe if Lord Rochester had shown kindness and repentance instead of towering arrogance and demand for his rights.
She only wanted to see her Papa and have him embrace her and tell her that all would be all right.
That perhaps was the chief point. She did not need a father so that she could have a place where she belonged.
She already had a father, and she already belonged.
Oakham mount rose high to the side of the turnpike, and with seeing it, they had reached Elizabeth’s home country. She knew the streams and steeples, the roads and the rills, the manors and the men.
When at long last the carriage rolled over the gravel carriageway up to Longbourn’s lovely red doors, Elizabeth hurriedly jumped out, barely waiting for the conveyance to stop moving, and she did not wait at all for a footman or Bingley.
What part of the family that still lived at Longbourn had gathered to greet the two unexpected carriages, one of them belonging to Jane and her husband. Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Bennet stood there with deep concerned frowns.
As soon as Elizabeth hit the ground she ran to Mr. Bennet and embraced him and started sobbing.
There were confused questions from both Mr. and Mrs. Bennet about Mary’s health, and then Jane’s health, and then when Bingley’s reply to those queries did not enlighten them about what disaster had led to their unexpected arrival with a sobbing Elizabeth, Mrs. Bennet imagined that the disaster must have befallen her brother, Mr. Gardiner.
“Nothing is...no one is ill,” Elizabeth managed to say. “But Papa, we must talk—you do not mind if I call you that? I wish to call you Papa.”
Mr. Bennet smiled at her with some surprise, but he then said, “My child, I would like it very much indeed if you did.”
Papa’s eye then was caught by Mr. Darcy and Lord Hartley—Robert—exiting Darcy’s carriage.
He looked at Robert with a puzzled frown, as though he almost recognized him. Mr. Darcy made the introduction. Papa started at the name. “The son of the Earl of Rochester? Rochester’s son.” The only thing which kept the look from frank unfriendliness was the confusion in it. He looked between Elizabeth and Lord Hartley. “Lizzy, do you know—of course you know.” Elizabeth smiled to see the quick way that Papa was making guesses and suppositions that were likely not far from the truth. “To the library. We really must talk.”
And thus ignoring Mrs. Bennet’s attempt to fawn over the son of an earl whose presence her house was now honored with, he quickly walked inside, followed by everyone.
When they reached the point where the corridor allowed them to either go upstairs to the drawing room, or to the library, Papa said to Robert and Darcy, “I’ll be speaking with Elizabeth in private .”
As soon as the door was closed Papa exclaimed, “Jove. By Jove. Lord Rochester’s son! And Lord Rochester himself. Did you meet Lord Rochester? And—you know?”
A sort of relaxation filled her now. Perhaps it was because she was in her favorite room in the world. The warm sent of musty books, pine wood, a hint of tobacco and brandy from the rare occasions that Papa indulged.
Elizabeth stepped to her own writing desk, and ran her hand over the lovely wood grain, and the tilted writing surface.
Papa would explain everything, and he would know what to do. Even though he was merely human and fully capable of making mistakes.
“Do I know what, Papa?” With some effort Elizabeth managed to repress her smile as she replied to the question. He stood near his own big solid desk. She had shared it when a child sitting on a boosted chair, or often enough Papa’s lap. When she’d turned fifteen, he’d said that it was about time for her to have her own place to keep her papers and things. He then bought her desk and rearranged the space for it to fit.
“Lizzy!” A slow smile spread across his face. “I like that title. You know what I am referring to.”
“I know a great many things—”
“This shall shock you enormously, if you do not in fact know , but Lord Rochester is your father by law and blood.”
“Oh, that!” Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, I knew that . But why did you not simply ask?”
Papa embraced her again. “I see that you are still full anxious. And tired—what happened? Tell me everything.”
“Lady Catherine recognized me. To confirm she invited me to dine when Lord Rochester would be there. And then I entered the drawing room and saw him, and I remembered him. And then...”
“You knew he was your father?” Papa prompted when Elizabeth stopped talking.
“Oh, I knew he was the man who beat me and Mama! I had this ringing in my head for years , him beating me and shouting that I was a bastard.”
Papa swallowed. He studied her closely, as though looking for bruises or signs of injury on her face. “Did he try to hurt you again? How did you escape.”
“No, no. Worse,” Elizabeth replied, tears falling again. “He told me that he was my father, and that I must obey him in everything because it was his right to command me. I do not know, I think he was rattled last night, but I fear greatly that he will attempt to pursue me somehow. To file a lawsuit against you on some basis. He demanded I live in his house. I do not know what he shall do now. I did not respect his rights .”
“Ah.” Papa sat back after Elizabeth said this. He embraced her once more. Then he smiled. “Ah, but did he say that he was sure you were his daughter in front of respectable persons who would be likely to swear to that in your favor? That shall make a matter which I worried on a little easier.”
“Mr. Darcy, Mr. Collins, Lord Hartley. Mary and Lady Catherine also.”
“And how did you find yourself in here, the next morning, in the company of Lord Hartley, his son?” Mr. Bennet smiled. “What is the story there?”
“Robert asked to come. And I was not averse to gaining a brother.”
“It was only another father who you wished to avoid?”
“I already have one.” Elizabeth smiled tearily at Papa.
He did not reply quickly. Papa took off his spectacles and wiped at the side of his eyes. “Yes, well. Yes. But you have been. You have been my daughter for these many years—” He wiped at the eyes again, sniffled. He then took a decanter of cognac from the side table and poured Elizabeth a slender finger along with one for himself. “To my brave daughter.” They clinked, and then he swallowed it back, and with a smile, Elizabeth sipped her own.
Papa refilled his glass and looked at it as though he wished to drink the whole back again. “Jove, I received a shock when you introduced me to young Lord Hartley. I think I am only now recovering.”
“I did not think until we leapt from the carriages how arriving so suddenly would appear. Were you all very anxious?”
“Not until you exited sobbing. But that Bingley and Jane were wholly calm, and also that you brought Mr. Darcy and that other young fellow helped quickly to put my emotions in a proper state. But, while I am touched—deeply and truly—for you to prefer me to Lord Rochester—”
“I hope that it does not very sadly lessen the honor of your triumph if I mention that I do not believe that he would be a very good father.”
Papa choked on his cognac sputtering and laughing. Elizabeth provided him with the cloth that the decanter had been set on to allow him to laughingly wipe his face. “I cannot imagine he would be.” Papa coughed several more times. “But that alone is not reason for you to come home instantly.”
“He meant to force me to come to his house. I would not do that, and—Lord!” Elizabeth’s hands started trembling. She remembered suddenly again the fear, the writhing in her guts. The way she’d held the gun. The way he’d approached her, confident that she would not shoot him.
That moment of pulling the trigger, planning to do it.
The shock as Colonel Fitzwilliam forced her hands down as the small recoil of the muff pistol travelled up her arms. Elizabeth grabbed the cognac that Mr. Bennet had poured for her and swallowed it all back. “Oh, heavens, heavens, heavens. I tried to shoot him.”
“That is a serious matter.” Papa’s mood instantly sobered. “What precisely happened?”
“I think it was a mistaken policy for you to ensure I had it. I do not even know if he let me enter Mr. Darcy’s carriage because he’d been shocked by my shooting at him, or if he was simply intimidated by Colonel Fitzwilliam.”
“And who is Colonel Fitzwilliam?”
“Darcy’s cousin. He is the one who pushed my arms down, so the bullet missed. Then he shouted that he would not see any bloodshed right next to his aunt’s house. A very battlefield voice. And he cursed at all of Lady Catherine’s footmen who had come with Lord Rochester. I am quite confident that his words were not supposed to be used around either a man of the cloth, or a tender maiden.”
Elizabeth smiled at her attempt at a joke, but the memory of shooting a loaded gun directly into the chest of that man left her hands still trembling.
Mr. Bennet poured more brandy. He pushed it towards her. “No more than this. You do not need to be drunk, but a little more to take the edge off cannot go amiss. So, so, so. You nearly shot him. I do not know...I did not think...I sent it with you so that you could protect yourself. But I did not think...I suppose I did not think what that might involve. What it might mean. I am glad that you need not fear any consequences from having shot him, but I also cannot be happy that he lives to bother us.”
Elizabeth did not know what to think of that. She realized that she was no longer frightened of Lord Rochester. She was now more frightened of that thing in herself which would respond with murderous violence to a strong emotion. She had wanted to kill him.
“I shall also make sure that everyone in the village, all of the tenants know to tell us if anyone asks after you, or if there are any strangers hanging about at all. And I do not think you should be allowed for any long walks without at least two armed footmen.”
“I do not know—I both wish to have my own gun and fear it. But otherwise, I wholly agree with the precautions. At least until I am of age.”
“You can at least guess now why I always delayed telling you these facts.”
“I do not know if that was the right decision. But I would never want to be under his authority. I asked Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam if they thought I should flee the country, but neither of them believed that to be necessary.”
“And what brought Mr. Darcy into this whole business?” Papa smiled at her as he put emphasis on the name.
Elizabeth flushed. She suspected the red extended well down her throat.
Papa raised his eyebrows. “I see.”
“He has merely acted as a friend!”
The skeptical expression did not waver.
“Do I,” Elizabeth asked hunting about for a different subject of conversation, “Should I abandon the country? In your view.”
“For southern Scotland, perchance?”
It turned out that it was possible for Elizabeth to feel yet more embarrassed. “I truly mean what I have said. I have no expectations.”
“Jane, Jane, is that you inside of Lizzy? How did you achieve this feat?”
Elizabeth giggled.
“I do not think you shall need to flee.” Papa frowned. “My lawyer from London shall be called by express as soon as I have spoken a little with young Lord Hartley. We shall need him to begin the process for you to claim your mother’s fortune. The terms of the settlement are such that your possession of the income from that fortune will not depend on his goodwill. Though Lord Rochester can prevent you from receiving any funds before you have come of age.”
“Is it…” Elizabeth’s voice cracked. “Is it substantial?”
“Do you have a possible suitor who you hope to impress with your dowry?” Papa asked.
“Please cease to tease me. I do...I am not Jane, I confess to hoping and to considering it possible , but by no means certain . Until yesterday he only saw me as a penniless girl, the unwanted relation of a minor gentleman.”
“Do not understate your merits. You were always wanted,” Papa said. “And any gentleman who must be bribed to have you is not worth the gaining. Note, I do not think that is the case with your Mr. Darcy. But your mother’s fortune was substantial by our standards, and the whole of the income has been reinvested into the funds these fifteen years, which will have doubled its size.”
“That is what you meant by likely gaining a provision suitable to my birth.” Elizabeth could not help but laugh. It was quite odd still to realize that she had never been illegitimate.
“I said that. Oh, yes. To you and Mary when she suggested that her marriage would be of benefit to you. I forgot to ask, due to the more dramatic revelations. How are she and Mr. Collins, is she yet bored of him?”
“They have a sort of happiness which would not do for me , but the more I see of them together, the better matched they seem to be—but I confess that nothing I can say will yet remove your anxieties on that front. I was there for merely a week, and they are still in that newlywed glow.”
“They have a glow from being newlyweds?” Papa chuckled. “I am happy to hear that much.”
“She was delighted by his present of a piano, and he is delighted to listen to her play while he writes his sermons, before presenting them to both her and Lady Catherine for approval.”
Papa laughed. “A good practice for both of them. And I am glad that she will keep to her music, at least until such time as a child drives it from her mind.”
The two of them sat quiet for several minutes. Elizabeth sipped the cognac.
“What,” Papa asked, “had you thought I meant by a provision suitable to your birth?”
“I had no notion. You see I always thought I was illegitimate. You even once confirmed that you had particular worries about me because of my mother’s sins.”
“Lizzy, I wish, I dearly wish I could have told you more. And I could have. Yet I feared, and the case has proven that those fears were not unfounded—it is hard to know as a parent. An attempt to avoid one sort of problem, one type of failure, will lead you to the opposite problem. It is easy to observe your failures and think that you were a fool. Yet the question is not whether there were bad things which resulted from your decisions, but whether there was a decision that you could have made which would have led to a better outcome. And that is the question which will leave you wracking your brains and unhappy at night. I think not only of you, but of Mary and the younger girls. And I can claim no credit that Jane turned out well. It is her nature.”
Elizabeth stood and embraced her loving father. “Thank you.”
“And for what now?”
“For wracking your brains and losing your hair for my sake. For all of us.”
“No, no. My father was always a cheerful fellow, and he had a far large bald spot by my age.”
Elizabeth laughed.
“Come, come.” Papa rose. “There are many other questions that we both have, but I must talk to those two young of gentlemen of yours.”
Smiling, Elizabeth stood with him, but as her hand touched the brass doorknob, she turned back to him. “I must ask. It cannot change my affection for you , but it will materially affect how I must treat him . Was he the cause of my mother’s death?”
Papa looked grave. “Her fever was caused by an inflammation from her broken ribs. I consider it murder. The barrister who I consulted assured me that if charges were brought, it would be argued that the illness would not have progressed to such a state without the long stagecoach in the midst of winter. Even if were proven that Lord Rochester’s beating was the principal cause, he would be judged by the House of Lords, and they might hesitate to punish one of their fellow peers for the sake of a woman who had cuckolded one of them. My chief aim was to prevent Lord Rochester from harming you, so I did not pursue the case.”
Elizabeth gripped her silver locket with her mother’s picture. She snapped it open to look at her image. Then she closed it. “Did you love her—Darcy told me, before we knew that I had a personal interest in the matter, that she had wished to marry a minor country gentleman, and I now wonder...”
“We had meant to marry.” Mr. Bennet smiled a little, his eyes lost. “But her family always considered me to be less than she deserved, and when Amelia caught the eye of an earl her family opposed the match so strenuously that she was prevailed upon to drop me. I loved her very much. I think anger towards her governed my actions over the next years.” Papa shrugged. “Yet, when she begged for help, I went without hesitation. And I have never regretted it.”