Page 30

30. Christmas Cheer

Decorating Elizabeth’s house well for the holidays was an easy enough task, given it boasted ten ladies, one strapping gentleman, and two ogres to share the load.

Elizabeth was slightly surprised to learn that Lydia and Kitty had no memory at all of the great fun of going into the forest to pick branches. She wondered if they were just too young the last time they had put in the effort, or if their early memories had been subsumed by their later, less desirable activities. They had both, in her opinion, responded quite well to the course… but they had a fortnight of good behaviour against several years of bad. While she was optimistic, she would reserve judgement and maintain vigilance.

Since they had to leave London to get to any good forests, Elizabeth was tempted to spend two hours going to Longbourn to get the miserable interview with her father over and done with. She eventually decided she did not want to spoil the trip. They settled for visiting the estate of one of their clients that was less than an hour away.

Lydia and Kitty revelled in the novelty of being out in the forest with nothing to do and no officers to chase. They rushed about to and fro, and before long they were laughing along with the Weatherbys and Maria like a bunch of little children. It was wonderful to see.

She and Darcy had the onerous task of gathering mistletoe for kissing boughs. They were assigned the task for the obvious reason that he was the tallest person in the group, and they were the only ones who could actually test the mistletoe to ensure it worked as advertised. Some clumps may even have required multiple tests—better safe than sorry.

They lunched at a nice little tea house in a nearby market town. Their group was big enough to burst the place at the seams, so Elizabeth and Darcy got stuck in a tiny little private parlour in the back. Neither complained of the discomfort.

At the end of a wonderful day, the house was beautifully decorated, the Yule log was ready to light, and all was right with the world. The colonel and the Gardiners were invited to join for dinner, and a great time was expected by all.

~~~~~

During a lull in the conversation, Lydia asked, “When will you marry, Lizzy?”

Jasmine said, “Oh yes, have you picked a date… and may we attend?”

Elizabeth laughed. “You may assume you are invited to just about everything, Jasmine. We have not picked a date yet.”

Darcy suggested, “You asked for a proposal for Christmas… how about a wedding for your birthday?”

He was not bothered by having what should have been a private discussion around a crowded and noisy dinner table. Everything else in their courtship had been unorthodox, and why fix that which was not broken?

Elizabeth laughed lightly, but before she could say anything Gardiner observed, “It does rather neatly solve the problem of consent, and the timing seems about right.”

Elizabeth thought about it a moment, and finally said, “Very well. I suppose a dozen ladies can plan a wedding breakfast, and I need do nothing at all.”

Darcy said, “Whilst we have solved the problem of consent, I still feel it would be right to go to Longbourn before we announce the engagement publicly to seek your parents’ blessing. I imagine we will wed from London?”

“Yes, I believe so. My connection to Longbourn is paper thin, and aside from Charlotte, I think I have everyone I want in this room right now.”

“Are you certain you wish to exclude Mama and Papa, Lizzy?” Mary asked, then rushed ahead before Mrs Black could bite her head off. “I am not saying you should or should not… just that you should give it some thought. However good or bad they have been as parents… she is our mother, and I believe she was a good one when we were young.”

While Elizabeth was thinking that over, she got a good-sized surprise from Lydia. “Let Kitty and me keep her in line. I think I can convince her to behave properly, and I can escort her out if she gets out of hand.”

The sheer insanity of Lydia Bennet offering to monitor and correct someone else’s manners left Elizabeth entirely flummoxed.

Fortunately, Darcy was slightly less stunned. “I shall not say whether they should be included or not, but I do thank you, Miss Lydia, for your offer. I think that might be a very good idea.”

“I suppose you cannot start now without getting Mrs Black peeved with you, but you may start calling me Lydia at your leisure. I think I can speak for us all when I suggest we will be your sisters soon enough.”

Darcy looked to Elizabeth, who said, “I see no problem with you using Christian names for my sisters in private, though I shall insist on strict propriety in public, or anywhere that we can be overheard. The ton will try their best to break me, and there seems little profit in giving them one more club to beat me with. The other ladies can decide for themselves.”

“It took but a moment for all the ladies to agree to the scheme. Even Mrs Rose, who had never even told Elizabeth her Christian name was Edith, was happy to join the crowd.

Elizabeth continued, “As to inviting my parents or seeking their blessing… I should like to think about that overnight and discuss it tomorrow.”

“That is sensible. I will follow your lead on this,” Darcy replied.

The rest of the meal passed more peacefully with no fraught conversations. Elizabeth suggested that, since she was joining the first circles, all the ladies in the room should have new gowns for the occasion, including Mrs Rose, and the other teachers if they wanted them. That left Darcy wondering exactly how wealthy she was, because it was not a trivial expense, and she barely batted an eye.

When the evening came to a close, and Darcy reluctantly left to return to his cold, empty, dreary house, he took the brief opportunity to give Elizabeth a quick kiss.

As he was turning to go, she said, “You remember my strictures against procrastination. Let us go to Longbourn in the next two days and get it over with.”

Darcy suggested, “Let us meet with Gardiner tomorrow to strategise, and go the next day.”

Elizabeth agreed with a kiss, and he left very reluctantly.

~~~~~

“Whilst I do not usually condone outright lying, I feel no real compulsion to be entirely comprehensive with the truth,” Gardiner said the next morning as they sat with coffee to discuss the matter.

“Out of curiosity, do you object on moral grounds?” Darcy asked, but whether he was more inclined towards curiosity or procrastination was hard to tell.

“I feel my morals need only match or best whomever I am dealing with. I mostly avoid it for practical reasons. Every time you lie, you have to keep the lie in your head. If you can get by with simply omitting unnecessary details, it makes it easier by reducing the chances to contradict yourself.”

Elizabeth added, “It is also easier to recover from the truth being discovered if you were not outright lying. For example, if my father ever decides he wants to know what I have been doing in London all these years, he can discover it easily enough. I can justify not telling him because he never really wanted to know, but if I had been outright lying to him, that would be much more difficult.”

Darcy said, “It seems that you have thought through a lot of moral dilemmas and conundrums?”

Elizabeth laughed brutally. “That is because of the school. Every conceivable moral question has been asked and answered. The first few years, it was not uncommon to have a question come up that I just could not answer without some thought and research.”

“I am impressed,” Darcy said, while giving her hand a little squeeze. “Everything I was expected to know was handed to me on a plate.”

“True, but your responsibilities are far greater. If I decided to shut down my school upon marriage, my future students would suffer, but the past ones are already fixed. If you did something wrong, hundreds could easily suffer greatly, and there is no possible way for you to escape the responsibility.”

Gardiner said, “I applaud these philosophical discussions, and recommend you keep them up through your life, but for now, perhaps we should deal with the issue at hand.”

Elizabeth nodded. “It matters not what we do for my wedding. I suppose I should even arrange for my parents to attend, but mostly because it would seem odd to have them absent. The critical thing is to obtain consent for my younger sisters.”

“That seems sensible, and I can host them. I feel no need for them to see your house or even be made aware of it,” Gardiner said.

“Perhaps I can do that one better. I could host them at Darcy house.”

Elizabeth thought about that for a time. On the one hand, the grandeur of the house might make her mother expend all her vulgarity before the wedding day, and it would keep her out of their hair as the girls prepared. It would be easy to have her occupied with shopping on Bond Street and having tea with the upper crust. Contrarily, she did not like establishing the precedent of having her mother in her house.

Darcy said gently, “I can understand your reluctance, but they are your parents, and they are far from the worst in the world. Are we to exclude them from our lives forever because of how they raised you? Are our children to never know their grandparents? Will it be up to Gardiner or me to walk your sisters down the aisle, or could they have their father should they so choose?”

“All good points,” Elizabeth said with a sigh. “I am reminded that on many occasions, I have had to council my students that bitterness punishes yourself for someone else’s failings.”

“Are you finding it difficult to take your own medicine, Elizabeth?” Gardiner asked with a laugh.

“Goose and gander, I suppose,” she laughed. “All right, we put them up in Darcy house. I doubt we shall even see my father after he sees the library, and with my mother…”

While she was thinking, Darcy said, “Perhaps Mrs Annesley could assist her?”

“We would have to triple her wage,” Elizabeth replied with a laugh.

Once the general outlines were laid out, they decided to get on with it. Elizabeth had sent a note the previous day asking to meet before noon, so they got up in the morning and all three headed to Longbourn.

~~~~~

The meeting at Longbourn turned out to be both anticlimactic and disappointing.

Trying her best to be conciliatory but only just, she said, “Mama, Papa, Mr Darcy and I are engaged and will be wed on my birthday. We are here to ask for your blessings.”

Mrs Bennet’s effusions about Elizabeth’s engagement were exactly as predicted, and to be honest, she would have been somewhat disappointed with anything else. There was a great deal to be said about carriages, jewels, connexions, and pin money, which gave her the opening she had been waiting for.

“Yes, yes, that is all well and good, Mrs Bennet, but I have not offered my consent yet.”

Darcy said, “You need not trouble yourself, sir. I have no need of any dowry or other support from you, and Elizabeth will reach her majority on her wedding day, so the point is moot.”

They had discussed whether to just say it outright and see what happened or beat around the bush and eventually decided to just get on with it. After five years, Elizabeth was tired of tiptoeing around her father, and while she had some fears that he might deny her sisters, she had no doubt her mother could make his life miserable if he did.

“I suppose so,” he said. “It is not as if you have been around much anyway,” he added dismissively.

Darcy squeezed her hand twice which was their prearranged signal to follow Napoleon’s maxim, never interrupt an enemy when they are making a mistake.

Instead of taking her father’s bait, Elizabeth turned her attention.

“Mama, your suggestion of connexions brings up a subject we should like to discuss. You know that eligible men in this town are practically nonexistent. Fitzwilliam and I would like our sisters to live with us, at least during the season—and all the time if they like.”

She felt slightly guilty about that particular prevarication, but not very. For all she knew, the girls might want to winter or summer in Longbourn.

Darcy said, “I have a younger sister due to come out next season. She is more than a dozen years my junior and has been raised more like an only child than not. She would like company when she comes into society, and you know they will have far more suitors under the Darcy name than in a small town like this… no offence.”

“ No offence!” Mrs Bennet squeaked. “How could I take offence?”

While she was not the most sensible woman in the world, she had never been deficient in sniffing out advantage. Whether she could use it profitably was another story entirely, but she could certainly recognise it when she saw it.

Mr Bennet said, “What exactly are you proposing, Mr Darcy?”

Darcy hated the smirk on the man’s face, and the way it was clear he was enjoying having the whip hand.

“My wife shall be responsible for deciding who stays in our homes, and she has invited her sisters. I should like to have your consent for them to live under my sponsorship and protection until they wed.”

“That sounds expensive,” Bennet said, and Elizabeth hated that she could not decide if her father was trying to act responsibly for once, or if he was just dragging out the discussion for his own amusement.

“Not to a man of my wealth. I can assure you that they would not be a burden. I understand you spend around ￡150 per annum for each on their upkeep now. If you would send me that, I would be quite satisfied.”

They did not care if Mr Bennet contributed or not, since Elizabeth could have sponsored the girls even without Darcy’s wealth, but they had decided offering the man a sop to his pride would not be amiss. At the very least, it left them one negotiating point they could give up on with great reluctance if the patriarch became recalcitrant.

“You do know, I assume, they do not have dowries sufficient for your circle,” Bennet said.

There was no way he would tell the father that Elizabeth alone had enough to give reasonable dowries to all her sisters, even if he did not contribute a farthing. There was no need to either rub the Bennets nose in it, get the patriarch’s back up, or make Mrs Bennet even greedier than she might otherwise be.

Elizabeth said, “Fitzwilliam is being quite generous. I can also say that I have been saving some money the last five years, and I have sufficient to ensure Mama lives in comfort after your demise.”

Bennet looked like he was about to drag things in a direction she did not want, so Elizabeth helpfully added, “Or not!”

Mrs Bennet looked like she was about to give her husband a piece of her mind, and Elizabeth was surprised to see her father capitulate immediately—though later, she would wonder why she was at all surprised he took the path of least resistance.

“I suppose I shall have access to your libraries, then?” he asked hopefully, apparently ready to reluctantly accept a deal that was entirely to his benefit.

“Of course,” Darcy said gently. It was easy to be magnanimous in victory when it cost nothing.

“I suppose you have papers to sign?”

“I do,” Darcy said, and as per their original plan, they implemented divide and conquer. Elizabeth hated not taking part in something important, but she recognised the need to coddle her father’s pride. The gentlemen retired to the library, she presumed to beat their chests and revel in their manliness, while she spoke to her mother about the wedding.

In the end, she just held her nose and spoke the white lie that her daughters had been so well trained they could manage the decorations and wedding breakfast without her assistance, and at her time of life, it would be much better to enjoy herself.

Another half hour of describing in detail all the wonderful things she could do during her (hopefully) short visit to Darcy house, and the deed was done.

They left right after lunch and were back on Gower Street before dark.