Page 33 of Some Natural Importance (Pride, Prejudice and Romance #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY

Elizabeth’s mind churned as she stormed towards Longbourn. She wished for peace and solitude, for nothing more than a quiet place in which to grieve, but instead she was confronted with bewildering plans and unwanted proposals without time to judge what was true and correct.

She could not reason out why Mr Darcy had taken such interest in her family’s welfare. Was he a mercenary or a saint? Was he simply a good man who had truly enjoyed his friendship with her father and wished to ensure the family’s well-being?

Elizabeth’s head ached as she tried to sort out the confusion Mr Darcy had brought with him to Longbourn.

Is Copperdale truly valuable? If he can afford to purchase the land, perhaps he is wealthy. In any case, he could get other land equally valuable without a marriage to an impoverished girl.

He said there are already settlements, that is easily proven.

Mr Wickham said Mr Darcy marries for money.

I have none. So that takes me back to my first question: Is the land truly that valuable?

Or is buying it just some odd act of-of charity?

But why must my hand be tied to the arrangement he made with my father ?

Two months ago, her greatest worries were whether she could mend the dancing slippers trampled by Henry Long and whether Charlotte would receive a proposal from Mr Goulding’s nephew. Neither worked out as hoped. Ruined slippers and a bruised heart, all because of men.

Men! Their very arrival on a doorstep gave rise to expectations of wit and good company, of partiality and connexion.

A man could come to a town such as Meryton, befriend its people and forge trust with its shops and merchants, draw the attention of the neighbours, stir admiration and jealousy and attraction, and then vanish, like Mr Wickham and Mr Bingley.

Or die, as her father had, and leave behind no well-thought-out plan for his family’s future, nay survival, beyond marrying the stranger he had blessed or the stranger who would inherit his home.

No, the men who came to small towns and villages came with no cares in their mind for the troubles they created.

They came and they left. Except for Mr Collins; he would come and he would stay.

He would take control of Longbourn and wed her or her sister and nothing would ever be gay and lively and happy or easy again.

All except for Mr Darcy. He came, befriended her father, left, and came back again. Weaving a story of plans and promises.

Elizabeth stopped, staring at the house only a few yards away.

If men were the source of all her vexations, Mr Darcy was the source of all her discontent.

Yes, he came, he left, and he returned, only to create more complications.

Proper and prideful, and a faithful friend to her father.

What was she to do about him? How could she believe him, let alone marry him?

When she mentioned Mr Wickham, the barely suppressed rage on Mr Darcy’s face would have frightened her if she did not trust him as a gentleman.

He appeared unable to reply in any way that would not endanger their civility, and instead bowed, and excused himself.

Whatever the truth, she had injured him and he had acted as a gentleman.

Could she say the same of Mr Wickham, who had whispered his slanders to her, an acquaintance of mere days?

Had her father not warned her as well? He had been dismissive but made clear his opinions of both men. Could that not be enough?

No. Papa must have written to me.

After she removed her pelisse and boots, Elizabeth found only Mary at the breakfast table.

She took her seat and was grateful for her sister’s usual morning piety as she read her Bible and thought whatever thoughts Mary was prone to when left alone.

Once her body and spirits were fortified, Elizabeth went to her father’s rooms in search of the missing book.

She paused at the door; if his book room had been an inviolable and fiercely protected sanctuary, his chambers were sacrosanct.

As familiar as her mother’s rooms were—as she and her sisters often were in there with tea, powders, and her salts—Elizabeth had entered her father’s chambers only in the past weeks as he lay ill.

She blinked back tears, turned the knob as silently as she could, and entered the dark room.

It no longer smelled of sick, but the stale air was certainly unwelcoming.

Barely a glimmer of the morning sun could be glimpsed through the drawn curtains, but there was enough light for her to look about the room and under its furniture.

And there it was, in the corner, on the floor behind the bed.

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. She bent down and reached for the book, then sank to the floor to open it.

There, tucked into the first few pages, was a folded and sealed letter with her name on it in her father’s hand.

She paused, realising these were the last words she would have from him, the final thoughts of a man she hardly recognised.

She unfolded it and another letter, addressed ‘ Mrs Bennet ’ fell out.

Elizabeth set aside the missive to her mother and set her eyes to her own.

My Lizzy,

Your mother will not forgive either of us should it be known you received a letter from me and she did not.

She may read her own letter after you have read yours.

She is my wife, but you are my dear daughter and the only one whom I can trust with the knowledge of how I have planned for your future and the future of Longbourn.

Hold onto her letter until after you and Mr Darcy have met, and before she can push you towards my cousin.

I am not sorry to miss her effusions on lace and ten thousand a year.

Elizabeth swallowed an angry sob. Her father was dismissive of his wife to the end.

I once thought that all I ever wanted was a book so good I would spend my life finishing it, but now that my life nears its end, I am ashamed of my mistakes.

I should wish for more time with you and your sisters and your mother, time I should have spent making provisions for my family.

Mr Darcy learned at a young age how to put away books and think of those in his past and future. Trust him, as I have.

Forgive me for not confiding in you about Copperdale.

Forgive me for such late preparations. Your cousin will come quickly to Longbourn to assert possession and to choose you or Jane as his bride.

Believe me, Lizzy, he will . On his prior visit, whilst you and Jane were in London, your mother did all she could to foster his expectations.

Mr Collins is not the husband I would choose for you; he is not a man I can respect, but it is to him that Longbourn is entailed.

Your mother has hopes for Jane and Mr Bingley; I too think that would be a fine match, but it is you I wish to save from a life as Mrs Collins.

I know your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable unless you truly esteemed your husband; unless you looked up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage. Mr Darcy will provide you an equal one.

Trust Mr Darcy as I have and agree to marry him. Your uncle Gardiner also gives his blessing of your ‘secret engagement’. Mr Philips holds the papers.

It was as dire as she feared, and her choice, nay her fate, was decided by four men. Four sides of a box, boxing her in.

Elizabeth could not think what to do—but fortunately, she had one relation whose sense and good advice she could trust—who must already have an understanding of her situation—and thus began a letter to Aunt Gardiner directly.

She related to her how few words Mr Darcy had spoken when at Longbourn, imparting little more than brief greetings at church or in Meryton, and his silences even on the walks they had occasionally shared.

And yet he could speak enough to utter an insult that still grated when she remembered it!

Aunt, how could a man so closed to conversation and sociability, who was so openly dismissive only a few weeks ago, be so ready to leap into hasty wedlock now?

He had a sister, a house in town, and some great estate or two, according to Miss Bingley, but had already run through two fortunes, gaining only a reputation for poor luck at the card tables, according to Lieutenant Wickham.

She brought no great financial advantage to him, yet all he had spoken of was the advantage to her and… and water rights!

Oh, please, dear Aunt, if you have wisdom to share, let me hear it! I do not understand him at all. I hear such different accounts of him as puzzle me exceedingly ? —

“Lizzy, Mr Collins is to come tomorrow!”

Elizabeth peered up at Jane from her letter. “He has written to Mama?”

“No, to Uncle Philips. He will remain at Longbourn for a se’nnight before?—”

“Here?” Elizabeth looked around the book room. “In our house, the only man?”

Jane’s expression shifted to one of discomfort. “Mr Hill is within the house, and you realise the importance to the Hills and the other servants in making a good impression on the new master of Longbourn.”

“Of course,” Elizabeth said bleakly before bestirring herself into a happier frame of mind.

“We must clean up Papa’s papers and shelve his books and prepare for Mr Collins to arrive and decide our fates.

” She stood and walked over to the bookshelf with her father’s well-thumbed university books.

“Jane, would the Lord think me terribly sinful if I tucked away some volumes, those which our cousin would be unlikely to approve?”

“Lizzy, my hearing has gone bad, but I believe you asked for a basket to hold some of your books?” Jane smiled at her, her eyes, for once, less full of melancholy than mirth.

“Indeed I did.” Elizabeth smirked. “Would that be the same basket Mama needed for her best silver pitcher?”

“Oh no, a much larger one!”

Laughing, the sisters fell into an embrace.

“Papa would like that we can laugh,” Jane murmured.

“I believe we have no choice.”

Jane nodded before unease overtook her again. “Can Mr Collins be so very bad as Lydia says?”

Elizabeth thought a moment on Lydia’s exclamations. Her youngest sister had an eye for men in red coats; a vicar who even Mrs Bennet admitted was tall and heavy and plain and spoke far more than he listened would not appeal to her. His collar and his calling would suit her even less.

“I shall have an open mind,” she replied at last, “and close my eyes if he is not so handsome as Mr Bingley.”

Jane’s laughter was softer than before. Elizabeth squeezed her hand and wondered again whether to confess to her beloved sister about her father’s plan with Mr Darcy.

She feared Jane’s reaction. She would be shocked and curious, and then, Elizabeth knew, she would be pleased for her sister.

But for Jane to think Elizabeth was promised to Darcy meant that Jane also would think herself beholden to preserve Longbourn for the Bennets and wed Mr Collins.

Where is Mr Bingley?

Few persons could irritate Darcy more than Caroline Bingley.

Twice he had asked her for any news from Bingley—how had the man not scrawled a letter to him or to his sister?

He had even requested the direction of her aunt in Scarborough.

Now he penned a communication to his cousin in London, asking him to track down the whereabouts of the farm in Chelmsford where Bingley had gone to claim his horse.

Darcy threw down his pen. What was he doing here?

Arranging the estate of a man he’d known six weeks in order to marry a woman who wanted nothing to do with him and who was gullible enough to believe the words of a menace like Wickham.

Here, again , he could fault Mr Bennet’s indolence!

Darcy had gone to him and told him of Wickham’s character, and he had done nothing!

He had told his daughters not to spend time with the man but had not conveyed Wickham’s danger to them, at least not enough for Elizabeth to disbelieve his lies and slanders.

Darcy pushed himself from his chair and stalked to the window, staring out at the brown and grey fields beyond Netherfield’s borders.

I am pursuing a lady who neither likes nor trusts me. She pushes me away, insults my attentions and my character, and in doing so—as no other woman in England would do—I only want her more. What is wrong with me?

He would have to tell her about Wickham and the truth about his marriage to Anne. If she remained opposed to his suit, to her father’s hopes, he would leave. He would fetch his sister and go home to Pemberley.