Page 6 of The Fee Entail

“Be glad I offer such generous terms, but I am not finished.”

She gave another pregnant pause.

“Secondly, you will send all my sisters to me, in any order I choose, for three months each, and I will attempt to find them husbands. You will send me their pin money for the next year in advance, and you will agree in writing, that you will approve any match I make. In fact, you will delegate the responsibility for settlements to Uncle Gardiner, and any prospective husbands will be approved by him and need not meet you at all.”

That was entirely too much, and I felt the pain in my arm moving to my chest. The interview needed to be concluded soon. I thought to show some strength of position.

“You ask entirely too much!”

She just smirked.

“Very well! Goodbye, Bennet!”

That nearly had me undone, but her face convinced me she would not be worked on. She was so angry I could see her countenance turning white and a vein pulsing on her forehead.

I desperately tried to slow things down.

“Wait! What is your second proposal? You said you would offer a choice.”

There was a significant pause, while I held my breath in anticipation.

When my favourite daughter finally spoke, it was with a resigned tone of sadness, but also the casual air of one making a simple statement of fact. She had become extremely hard-edged within the year.

Her reply caught me completely off guard.

“I could stop caring for Mr Collins, and he would be dead within the week. I only care for him now so I can collect his living, but nobody will question his early demise. You are welcome to hunt down Mr Wickham and kill him or do just as you please. I suggest you take my first offer and begone, for it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility that I may simply decide to cut your throat right here and now and wait for the magistrate. I still carry my knife everywhere I go.”

I gasped at her heartlessness, and oddly enough thought I heard someone else gasp as well, but it was hard to tell. Elizabeth was apparently giving me the message that she was not a woman to be trifled with, and considering I was not at all certain she was not deadly serious, I sighed in defeat and accepted her terms.

“I agree. Which daughter do you want first?”

Having won her point, she became all business.

“Send Jane with the signed documents, her pin money for a year, the money for my first child, and statements from Uncle Gardiner. Based on my current cycles, you have three weeks.”

“It shall be as you say,” I replied in abject resignation.

With that, I turned around and creaked back into the carriage, not at all certain I would even survive the trip back to Longbourn. The die was cast, and I just hoped I could see it through. My daughters were to pay the price for my indolence of the last twenty-odd years, but there was naught to do about that except carry forward and hope for a better outcome than presently seemed likely.

With fifty miles of road between myself and home, I simply had to return and hope Elizabeth would do her duty, and perhaps in another fifty years, she might either forgive me or at least find some happiness with her next husband. A pretty young widow and mother to the heir to Longbourn would be a good catch, and if she managed to produce the heir, I thought things might still work out better than she hoped.

As I settled into the carriage, she was still looking at me as she had from the beginning, either with great sadness or more likely, hatred, contempt, and disappointment.

Surprisingly, she raised her voice just as I left, but she was talking to someone else. I had no idea why she did not wait a minute for me to leave. Perhaps she wanted me to hear, or perhaps she just did not care anymore.

“Mr Darcy, since you apparently cannot restrain yourself from eavesdropping, I presume you will at least refrain from gossip?”

Glancing out the window, I could just see the young man standing near the corner of the parsonage, well-hidden but in a place where he could hear the entire debacle and could have seen me. I assumed he accidentally stumbled on the conversation and could not tear himself away—not that surprising when it was conducted in the lane. He looked as if he was watching every bit of truth and beauty and light in the world being crushed in front of his eyes, which may have been close to the truth.

He quickly answered, “You may depend on my discretion.”

Elizabeth replied in an offhand way, “Thank you,” and turned back to the parsonage, apparently done with the both of us.

I could see a look of pain on his face, the first sign of real emotion I had ever seen from the gentleman. Perhaps it was pain, or perhaps a year after his sojourn in Hertfordshire, he was just sad to reflect that a woman felt a need to thank him for simply agreeing to act in a slightly more gentlemanlike manner.

I hoped the idea kept him up at night. He was not a friend to the Bennets, and I could only hope he would stay away from Elizabeth, not that she would ever again afford me the honour of calling her that.

I began and eventually ended the interminable fifty miles of road with weeping.