Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

THE FOLLOWING MORNING , Elizabeth came down to breakfast to find that only Mary was in the breakfast parlor.

“Everyone else is lying in,” said Mary, who was sorting through a stack of papers. “I suppose we’ve become a family of idleness, after all.”

Elizabeth laughed. There was food laid out on the sideboard, and she served herself.

“Have you seen these?” said Mary, gesturing above her head with a stack of paper.

“Well, since I haven’t any idea what ‘these’ are, I can’t rightly answer that question,” said Elizabeth.

“Gossip rags,” said Mary. “We feature in them all. We are the most talked about people in London currently.”

Elizabeth sat down with her plate and reached over to take one from Mary. She read, agog, making tiny noises in her throat. Mortifying. And to think, she hadn’t even known these were circulating. No wonder everyone was saying such horrible things. She groaned.

“Yes, I know,” said Mary, “but I have also been making inquiries about how they work. David, who works in the stables, he is ever so willing to talk while he mucks out stalls, you see. He sometimes does errands for a printer who prints them, and I have an idea of how easy it might be to start one of my own.”

Elizabeth sat up straight. “You what?”

“Well, they are lies,” said Mary. “If I started one, I should only tell the truth.”

“Mary, I don’t think the purpose of gossip is truth.”

“Should be,” Mary said with a shrug.

“Furthermore, you can’t start a gossip sheet.”

“I think I can,” said Mary, “actually. David says he’ll help me.”

“You’re scheming with stable hands?” Elizabeth shook her head at her sister. “If you were discovered doing that, it would destroy us.”

“Yes, but none of these people reveal their true identities. They’re all published by, ‘A Lady,’ or by people with ridiculous pen names like, ‘Mrs. Quilldon.’” Mary took a long drink of chocolate. “The problem is that I think it will be quite difficult to do from the country. I need to stay in London if I wish to make it happen.”

Elizabeth sat back in her chair and regarded her sister. “Oddly, I was thinking that Jane needs to stay in London, and I had an idea about that.”

“Oh?”

“Papa doesn’t want to go to the country,” said Elizabeth. “So, I thought he could stay here, and Jane could stay with him.”

“Is that done?” said Mary. “A wife going one place and a husband another?”

“All the time,” said Elizabeth.

“But to have Jane staying here, without any married woman to serve as a chaperone?”

“Yes, it’s a bit of a problem,” said Elizabeth, sighing. “It would be one thing if we had a governess.”

“Jane’s too old for a governess,” said Mary.

“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “So am I, I suppose.”

“It’s too bad our aunt and uncle Gardiner are still on holiday. Not due back until late August as I understand.”

“Yes, Mrs. Gardiner would have been perfect,” said Elizabeth, fuming. But then, she smiled, as something had just occurred to her. “I shall write to Charlotte!”

“No, then we should have to host Mr. Collins, and I don’t think I could bear that.”

Elizabeth smirked. “Truly? I rather thought you and him got on, what with your shared love of Fordyce.”

Mary gave her a withering look. “Lizzy, you must understand that everything is different now. I had a different role in the world before the inheritance, you see. I was the third daughter with no prospects whatsoever. I had assessed the situation, and I had assessed my own weaknesses and strengths, and I had decided on a path that seemed the most beneficial given all of that.”

Elizabeth was still amused. “What are you on about?”

“See here, I am not nearly as pretty as either you or Jane—”

“Oh, posh, Mary, that’s—”

“It’s true. Now, you and I, we are both about as accomplished as the other. You’re no better at the piano-forte than I—”

“I have never claimed that I was better—”

“And I had little to recommend me. So, I determined my best strategy was to be upright and pure in all ways. I could be the most proper of girls, and if no one could say one thing against my character, it would be my best chance of marrying someone .”

“Oh…” Elizabeth now felt sorry for her sister. She reached over to cover Mary’s hand with her own. “That’s not at all true, Mary. You have a great many wonderful qualities—”

“Spare me that.” Mary snatched her hand away with a sniff.

Elizabeth was amused again. She strove to hide her smile, looking down at her breakfast plate.

“At any rate, I have much better prospects now.”

“By writing a gossip sheet! I think not.”

“Our family’s reputation must be repaired,” said Mary. “That is the obstacle.”

“Well, I have just said the same thing. We are quite in agreement,” said Elizabeth with a sigh. “I shall write to Charlotte, and I am quite positive that her husband cannot be spared from the pulpit for weeks on end. He must stay at the rectory, mustn’t he?”

Mary nodded slowly. “Yes, perhaps he must.”

“Lady Catherine may prove problematic,” said Elizabeth. “I’m afraid she thinks poorly of us, and it’s my own fault. My skill at the piano-forte, or lack thereof, was a deciding factor.”

Mary laughed.

“So, I must think on that, for she may not wish to have Mr. Collins’s wife so closely associated with us,” said Elizabeth. “But as a chaperone, she would be entirely perfect. So, then, I must only convince Papa, and he shouldn’t take much convincing at all, I don’t think. So, Mama and Kitty and Lydia may go off to the country and have a grand time of it, and we shall stay here and scheme.”

“Well, is that wise? What will they get up to on their own with no one to curb their behavior?” said Mary.

“Colonel Fitzwilliam must curb their behavior,” said Elizabeth.

“But if you’re staying here, he won’t go,” said Mary.

“He cannot know that I’m staying here,” said Elizabeth. “No one can. I shall arrange it all, and then change my mind at the last moment.”

Mary considered. “All right. Perhaps it might work.”

“You must promise me you will not start writing gossip.”

“I shall make no such promises,” said Mary.

“It is an idiotic idea,” said Elizabeth.

“It is not,” said Mary firmly.

MR. BENNET TOOK very little convincing, in fact. He said to his daughter that it seemed a capital idea, citing the fact that the house would be much less shrill with only Jane and Mary in attendance, and that he might get a good bit of reading done.

What Elizabeth did not understand was that Mr. Bennet was playing a very shrewd game. He was not unaware of the rumors that were going about himself and his wife, and that he was painted as a grand cuckold.

He thought them amusing, however.

Well, truth be told, there was something perverse in him, because he rather enjoyed it. He could not say why this was, but his wife was more stunning and more beautiful and more attractive to him than she had been in years.

He would never have admitted it—perhaps he was incapable of admitting it, indeed—but the truth was that when Mrs. Bennet was the object of desire of others, of other men, she seemed to be materially worth more in his estimation.

At any rate, a man who was a grand cuckold would never let a woman like Mrs. Bennet out of his sight. He would be ever so concerned about her behavior and would attempt to curtail all her activities. If he let Mrs. Bennet go and was sanguine about the entire matter, however, it told an entirely different tale.

The truth was, he had no concern that Mrs. Bennet would be anything other than faithful, either. His wife could be silly or overwrought, but she was his , and he knew that with a certainty that went all the way to the core of his being.

Letting her go free, it was the best thing to quell the rumors.

But Elizabeth was unaware of any of these thoughts, and if her father had spoken to her of them, she would have been incredibly embarrassed. She was ashamed to say that she had spent far too long studying his features and her own and the features of all of her sisters.

But she was assured.

There was a certain set of her father’s lips, his chin, and it was mirrored, in various ways, amongst all the girls. There was no doubt that he was their true father.

For Benlolk to have had such a close association with her mother, after all, would have been quite a feat. Her mother would have had to have been away for long periods of time on her own to conduct an affair with an earl. Her mother had always been at Longbourn.

Elizabeth wondered about such a defense. It would not only be her word, she thought. An affair between an earl and another woman would have left other evidence. There would have needed to have been someplace for the two of them to meet, which would have meant they must have stayed in inns, or that Benlolk himself would have procured some house for her mother. There would have been expensive gifts and the like, none of which existed.

She did not know an avenue to provide such a defense, however.

She thought of Mary’s gossip sheet, but dismissed the idea.

She did not have much time to puzzle over it. There were other things she must think of and see to. She sent the letter to Charlotte, wondering if Lady Catherine would prevent Charlotte from coming to visit.

Since she could not have it in writing that she planned to stay in London herself, she had to present it to Charlotte as being primarily Jane’s companion. She was not sure if Charlotte would be interested in such a thing, since she was a closer friend of Elizabeth’s than Jane’s.

But the letter came back in the affirmative, and Charlotte indicated that if she had been invited to the country house with Mrs. Bennet, Lady Catherine would have voiced some objections, for this excursion had already gained some notoriety, but since no one was in London, Lady Catherine seemed to be of the opinion that no one would even notice that Charlotte was there.

Indeed, they were receiving callers and letters from various well-connected members of society, hinting broadly that they should like to be invited to their estate in Staffordshire, which was called Collswood Hall. Colonel Fitzwilliam was the architect of such interest. He had told them who to invite, and he had picked people who were quite eager and willing to talk of their invitations to anyone who would listen.

The interest was not entirely positive, Elizabeth understood. People in town wanted to go and gawk, truly. They wanted to be near to Mrs. Bennet and try to determine why she had gotten this inheritance. They were intrigued by the whiff of scandal and wanted to interrogate it.

But within a fortnight, all was arranged.

That morning, as Elizabeth was inventing a malady that would prevent her travel and manufacturing evidence for it (feigning a fever by holding hot towels to her forehead and presenting herself as a coughing and sniffling mess with hair pasted wetly to her forehead) she suddenly got the idea of how she could prove Benlolk had never visited her mother.

The answer was not to account for her mother’s whereabouts, but rather for Benlolk’s!

If someone could verify that Benlolk had never seen Mrs. Bennet for all the years after their brief youthful association, this would nip the entire thing in the bud.

It was perfect.

She would find the evidence and then she would present it.

Unfortunately, she had to admit that the best place to present such evidence might indeed be in one of those horrid gossip rags. Could Mary really conceal her identity well enough that it would never be discovered?

Elizabeth might have to stake her family’s reputation on it.

Once their reputation was assured, then everything would go better. Jane and Mr. Bingley could marry and be happy, without any concern of his connection to her. Elizabeth could cut Caroline Bingley entirely from her association without any consequence. And she might be permitted to call out the fortune hunters on their obviousness.

As for her own marriage…

Well, Colonel Fitzwilliam had already left for the country, and he would not be pleased when she did not arrive. She thought he’d be offended by the fact she had gotten out of it and leave off his pursuit of her entirely.

If he were truly after money, perhaps he’d simply pick a different sister to pursue. Kitty had said she didn’t mind his nose. He could have Kitty.

Some part of her hoped he might look past that, and that he truly wanted her.

But she didn’t understand that part, for she wasn’t overly attached to the colonel. She was much more attached to Mr. Darcy, who might still be interested in her, she supposed, given their conversation on the steps, waiting for their carriages.

However, she’d heard nothing from him in all these weeks.

And he did infuriate her. What would a marriage be like with a man who made her reliably angry?

Furthermore, he had found her lack of connections so odious that he could only find her mother’s questionable reputation even more odious.

No, she would raise her family, make them entirely upright in the view of society, and then she would see how it was between her and Mr. Darcy. Perhaps if she were his equal, he would stop looking down on her the way he did.

“OH, LIZZY, I thought you were to be in the country!” Charlotte was standing in the doorway of the sitting room, still in her traveling clothes.

Elizabeth looked up from where she was sitting. She was making lists of how it was she could possibly discover and prove Benlolk’s whereabouts over twenty years. It was perhaps a more daunting task than she had first imagined. “Charlotte!” She set down her pen and went over to greet her friend. She took both of her hands in hers. “No one told me you had arrived. We would have been out to greet you!”

“Oh, I’m early,” said Charlotte. “Your footman who met me at the door said my room is not quite ready, but they have taken up my trunk. I was supposed to come later on the post coach, but then it turned out that a deacon from our assembly was on his way to London today, and there was space for me in his carriage, so it only seemed right I come with him.”

“Of course, how convenient,” said Elizabeth, squeezing her friend’s hands. “I’m so happy you’re here. It’s so good to see a familiar and friendly face. I shall go and speak to someone about your room!”

“No, no, it’s quite all right,” said Charlotte, laughing. “This place is so grand, Lizzy.” She looked about the sitting room, all astonishment. “And you are in here alone? I understood that your father and Mary and Jane were here, but not in this room with you.”

“There are three sitting rooms,” said Elizabeth, laughing. “And, now that you mention it, were you simply set loose to wander about the house on your own? Why did a servant not assist you?”

“Stop worrying about the servants! You have not explained to me how you come to be here.”

Elizabeth nodded, letting go of Charlotte’s hands to walk back into the room. “Yes, a bit of subterfuge on my part. I considered simply writing to you of it in my letter. But I well know about letters, how they are read aloud at dinner and the like, and I thought it might be possible that if I did that, it would get back to Colonel Fitzwilliam that I had no intention of going to the country, and I couldn’t have that. I rely on him to be there and to make sure my mother and sisters do not make themselves laughingstocks.” She gestured for Charlotte to sit down opposite her as she settled on a tufted chair.

Charlotte sat down.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” said Elizabeth.

“What look?” Charlotte protested, laughing.

“I see it, the look that says that my mother and sisters shall make themselves laughingstocks no matter what anyone does.”

“Those are your words, not mine.” Charlotte’s laughter increased.

“Yes, apologies,” said Elizabeth. “Oh, I’m ever so happy you are here. This will make everything much easier, I hope.”

“Your letter said that Jane and Mary might be in need of a married woman to accompany them socially for the sake of propriety, but Lady Catherine said there was no social calendar to speak of in August in London.”

“Well, true,” said Elizabeth. “Primarily, we are hoping that Mr. Bingley will court Jane. But we haven’t set any of that in motion, I suppose. It likely won’t be much other than carriage rides or the promenade. I do hear there is an opera still running, however. It has terrible reviews, though, and no one is attending, so I also hear it’s likely to shutter before the end of its run.”

“Mr. Bingley,” said Charlotte. “So, you are scheming?”

“I suppose I am,” said Elizabeth. “I have ever so many schemes going now that I can hardly keep track of them.”

“Whatever do you need to scheme for? You have, in one fell swoop, everything you could have wished for.”

Elizabeth was stunned. “What? How could you say that?”

“Everyone knows the size of your dowry, Lizzy. The news reached us in Kent.”

“Well, of course it reached you. You know us,” said Elizabeth.

“No, everyone knows,” said Charlotte. “That much money…” Her eyes widened. “You can do anything you like. Marry anyone you like. Have everything you ever dreamed of—”

“No, Charlotte, that is not the way of it,” said Elizabeth, shaking her head firmly. “That is not the way of it at all.”

Charlotte simply eyed her, blinking.

“You must have heard the rumors about my mother and Benlolk, then.”

Charlotte threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, that’s nothing. It doesn’t matter. The money is legal, and I know your mother couldn’t have done something so scandalous. She appears to be a bold woman, but in the end, she is actually timid and given to fits of worry. She could never engage in something so risky as that sort of an affair. Pay that no mind.”

“No mind?” said Elizabeth. “ That is what is in our way.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, because we are thrust into this new society, but we are not accepted. And now, with this much wealth, we are prevented from fully associating with our previous society. We are separate. We have nowhere to belong, you see.”

“I think you are making too much of that,” said Charlotte. “You could have stayed in Longbourn. You would have had a number of invitations, you would have dined with everyone there, and they all would have toasted your good fortune.”

“Perhaps,” said Elizabeth. “But they would have treated us differently.”

“Oh, obviously. What is the point of wealth if not to be treated differently?”

Elizabeth found she had no answer for this. She twisted her hands together in her lap.

“Lizzy, why can you not simply be grateful? Why can you not enjoy this?”

“I am,” said Elizabeth. “I do.” But she was protesting rather a bit too much, and she knew it.

“Oh, fine,” said Charlotte, with another chuckle. “Tell me your other schemes, then. Though I must say, if Mr. Bingley is interested in courting Jane, there should be nothing preventing it.”

“That is true,” said Elizabeth softly. “He has not called upon us. He has not made any overtures of any kind. But we do know he cut short a trip in the country to come to London, and why else, if not for Jane?”

“Who understands men?” said Charlotte.

“Oh, indeed,” said Elizabeth ruefully.

“Other schemes?”

“I am attempting to silence the rumors about my mother and Benlolk by proving no affair could have existed.”

Charlotte opened her mouth to speak and then closed it, shaking her head.

“What?” said Elizabeth.

“Nothing,” said Charlotte. “I fear I am only censuring everything you say, and I would not have our first conversation to be that way at all. If you wish it, you may try, I suppose.”

“Well, it is proving difficult,” said Elizabeth. “If there were an affair, it would be easy to prove. All I’d need was a bank note given at some establishment where they stayed the night together or dined together, even. But all I have is the absence of such things, which really doesn’t prove anything. I must account for his whereabouts, but for over twenty years, and I don’t see how I can do that, exactly.”

“Even if you could, that wouldn’t prove anything,” said Charlotte.

“Certainly it would.”

“People would say he and your mother were quite sneaky and avoided detection.”

“But she never left Longbourn, Charlotte.”

“Never?”

“Well, certainly not often enough for Benlolk to have gotten five daughters on her.”

“Oh, Lord, they’re saying that?” Charlotte cringed. “I had not realized. Well, that’s foolish. No one who ever knew your family could think it true.”

“I know,” said Elizabeth. “But they do not know us.”

“You cannot allow yourself to worry over that. People will say what they will say. It is out of your control.”

Elizabeth drew in a breath.

“Lizzy, let this go. You will drive yourself mad trying to control the gossip in society.”

“I know I can’t control it,” Elizabeth allowed. “Not entirely, at any rate. But I can influence it somewhat, and I think I must try.”

Charlotte hesitated, and then she nodded. “Yes, perhaps I simply can’t entirely understand it. I imagine how I would react if this happened to me, but I don’t know if I really would react that way. So, what are your schemes in this direction?”

“I haven’t any notion,” said Elizabeth. “I suppose I need to talk to someone who associated with him closely. They can verify his whereabouts. It’s only that I’m not sure who that person should be.”

“Well, his wife, obviously,” said Charlotte. “Your mother was always at Longbourn, and if Benlolk was always with his wife, that might do it.”

Elizabeth considered that. “Perhaps, but I cannot go to that woman. She must hate us. Think, if your husband gave half of his estate away to some woman he loved that wasn’t you.”

“She might be plagued by the rumors as well,” said Charlotte. “If she did, indeed, have a loving and close relationship with her husband, these rumors stain her good name as well. She may wish to change the narrative for her own sake.”

Elizabeth nodded slowly. “You know, you’re quite right, Charlotte. That’s very astute.”

Charlotte beamed.

“But how to get in touch with her?” said Elizabeth. “We have never been introduced. I can’t simply call upon her.”

“You must know someone in common who could facilitate the introduction,” said Charlotte.

Well, Elizabeth owned that she had been introduced to a number of people at the ball in town. She’d danced with quite a lot of men, in fact. Perhaps she could find someone who would know Lady Benlolk. “Yes, I must,” she said. “I shall think that over and plan my next move.”