Page 7 of Pride and Penniless

For the first time in two decades of dramatic collapses, Mrs. Bennet’s body met the floor with a thud that reverberated through the room. No one moved to catch her; her fainting fits had always been positioned to coincide with the nearest sofa.

“Mamma!” Jane dropped to her knees beside their mother, her hands flying to feel for a pulse. “She’s… she’s actually… Charlotte, help me!”

“Burnt feathers,” Charlotte said, already moving. “Vinegar. Where does Hill keep⁠—”

“By the sideboard,” Mr. Bennet said, but his voice had grown strange, and he did not look at his wife on the floor. He was looking at Darcy, who had frozen in the doorway, his face unreadable.

“Is she?” Lydia peered over Jane’s shoulder. “Is she dead?”

“She is not dead,” Jane said. “She is breathing. But her head—there is blood—she struck the chair⁠—”

Blood. Elizabeth saw it now, a thin trickle spreading across the floorboards, dark against the wood.

“I will send for Mr. Jones,” Darcy’s said. “He is at Netherfield this morning, attending Mrs. Hurst.”

“That will not be—” Mr. Bennet began.

“It will be faster than sending to Meryton. I will go now.”

And so he vanished, leaving Elizabeth with three weeks until Lady Day and no answer she could offer.

CHAPTER THREE

IN WANT OF BRANDY

Darcy did not expect the drawing room at Netherfield to be arrayed like a congregation of theatergoers awaiting a Greek tragedy. Bingley, his two sisters, and Mr. Hurst appeared perched, their opera glasses trained on him as if he were the lead actor stepping onto a stage.

That he had been the subject of their conversation was as plain as the arrangement of chairs. His arrival that morning—dispatching his carriage ahead while he detoured to Longbourn before so much as offering his hosts a civil word—had set the household abuzz. Then there was the enigmatic express from London, which spoke only of a will to be read at Longbourn, Miss Elizabeth Bennet as beneficiary, and the necessity of his attendance. Such a missive was designed to provoke the most extravagant conjectures in anyone whose imagination outpaced their scruples.

Caroline, arrayed in her best green silk and an ostrich feather crowning her head, displayed what she believed was her most flattering profile—the silhouette of her patrician nose. Darcy would have preferred the back of her neck, but he had never had the heart to tell her.

Instead of his usual jovial air of nonchalance, Bingley stood stiffly at the window, his brow uncharacteristically furrowed. And Hurst, to no one’s surprise, stationed himself at the brandy decanter with the possessiveness of a dragon who suspects his hoard is under threat.

Mrs. Hurst, whose indisposition had confined her to her chamber mere hours before, had experienced a recovery so sudden as to defy medical explanation. She now occupied the chair nearest the fire, swathed in shawls and clutching a flannel-wrapped warming stone to her middle, but all the laudanum in England could not have persuaded her to miss such a spectacle.

“Ah, Darcy.” Caroline’s smile was warm in the precise way a cat’s attention is when it spots movement in the hedgerow. “We are all in deep speculation that you have been named in the will alongside our dear Miss Eliza. Do come and be congratulated.”

“I see Mrs. Hurst has risen. Hopefully, Mr. Jones’s draughts have facilitated her complete healing.” He sidestepped toward Mr. Hurst, who held the decanter by the neck as if it were the last flask of water on board a sinking ship.

“Louisa would not miss your engagement announcement for the world. None of us would.” She clasped her hands together with unseemly delight.

“Your imagination, Miss Bingley, is very rapid, jumping from codicils and inheritances to matrimony in a moment,” Darcy observed, his voice dry enough to scorch. “Now, Hurst, the brandy, if you please.”

“Heard it in town,” Hurst muttered, sloshing the decanter but making no move to pour him a glass. “The girl must marry a gentleman of property, and here you are.”

“Darcy.” Bingley turned from the window, his brow clearing. “It is peculiar, certainly, but what have you to do with the Bennets?”

Darcy rubbed the back of his neck. “Nothing that I know of, except her uncle left eighty thousand pounds with a stipulation that she marry⁠—”

“Eighty thousand pounds and Miss Eliza Bennet!” Caroline practically leaped from her seat, her feather almost taking flight. “I confess I had not thought you the marrying kind, but with such inducement, even you must see the advantage. Tell me, have you set a date?”

Darcy extended two fingers toward the decanter in the universal gesture of a man in desperate need of fortification. Hurst, absorbed in examining the crystal as though it contained the secrets of the universe, appeared not to notice.

“We should have toasts!” Caroline declared. “So, Darcy, have the banns been posted? Engagement party planned? Will my brother stand at your side while you wed the illustrious Miss Eliza?”

“Any talk of weddings is premature.” Darcy abandoned subtlety and reached directly for the decanter, but Hurst pivoted with surprising agility for a man of his proportions. “The Bennets are in mourning, and Mr. Jones is currently attending Mrs. Bennet. She suffered a fall.”

“A fall?” Bingley alerted like a spaniel flushing a pheasant. “Good God, is she badly hurt?”