Chapter 6

Elizabeth leaned back in the carriage enjoying the pleasant warmth of the late summer sun. So much had happened over the last two years and it seemed like there had been nothing but one surprise after another, an endless procession of them. And it was one of those surprises that led to Elizabeth sitting in the carriage returning to Longbourn. Her uncle had remarried.

Agatha Mallory was a childless widow, the wife of an officer on a merchantman. When the ship was lost during a storm she had been forced to move in with her married sister. She had known Mr. Gardiner for several years and had started to call on him, reversing the usual courting ritual. She was a kind woman and Elizabeth could see many similar traits to her Aunt Madeline. She had accepted Edward Gardiner’s injuries without a fuss and worked with his nurse and valet to ensure that he was comfortable and that his stumps did not cause him pain or distress. Elizabeth liked her.

But there was to be a new mistress in the house. When Mr. Gardiner announced that the marriage, with the ceremony to be held as soon as the Banns were read, Elizabeth knew that things would change. The marriage was timed so that young Edward, now 17 years of age, could stand up with his father. There had been discussion as to whether Edward would return to school. His 18 th birthday was not until the following March but it had been decided that starting his apprenticeship with his father was a better use of his time.

Elizabeth had been acutely aware that young Edward had changed. And in her eyes, not for the better. The two of them were still close, they would always be cousins, but Edward Gardiner now believed that women were useless when it came to business. Elizabeth knew this was something that he had picked up at his all-boys school. What she did not know was whether it was particular or intrinsic to Edward; whether it was something that was seen to be axiomatic, and therefore did not need to be thought about further; or lastly if it was actually part of the curriculum. She had discarded the first and last and sadly concluded that it was the second. The attitude was so pervasive that it passed down to new generations with ease. Her uncle was not perfect but he had invested many, many hours sitting with Elizabeth, listening to her, educating her, helping her understand. And without being falsely modest, Elizabeth knew that she had repaid that investment many times over. And at the same time as young Edward behaved like a ‘normal’ male, he also railed against the attitude of the gentry to those in trade. He did not see the irony in the contradictions between his own behaviour to his cousin and the insults he suffered, veiled or otherwise, from gentlemen customers of the business.

Elizabeth’s two roles for the last four years were suddenly gone. She was no longer mistress of the house on Gracechurch Street and she would no longer be needed as the eyes, ears and legs of her uncle. The realisation that she would need to return to Longbourn followed quickly.

Any kind of honeymoon for the new couple was always going to be difficult but they had a creative solution. A small sloop had been hired and they had sailed down the Thames as far as Chatham. There the ship was turned around and they returned to London. It was not particularly romantic and at times it had been tough on Mr. Gardiner, but it was the first time he had been more than a mile or two from Gracechurch Street since the accident. But upon the couple’s return Elizabeth asked to speak to her uncle.

“I think I will return to Longbourn this summer.”

There was no point dancing about the issue.

“You do not have to leave Lizzie. This has been your home for more than four years.”

“I know that Uncle Edward, I do. But it is not fair to Mrs. Mallory, I mean Aunt Agatha.”

Elizabeth smiled and shook her head.

“That will take a bit of getting used to. Anyway, it is not fair to her, to the staff, even to the children. There cannot be two mistresses. My presence will just confuse everything. How will Mrs.-, sorry Aunt Agatha feel if she orders something done and the staff look to me. Things will change it is inevitable. And on top of that, young Edward is finished school and able to assist you with the business.”

That her uncle did not try to immediately refute her comments let Elizabeth know that she was correct. He reached over and took her hand.

“It feels ungrateful after everything that you have done for the family. I know I am not sending you away, yet it feels like it. I know that you are uncomfortable accepting praise and thanks, so I will say this briefly where it is just the two of us. You were a Godsend to the Gardiner family. I do not know what would have happened to the five of us without your unstinting help back in ’07 and every day, month and year since. There is so much more that I could say but I can see even this small speech has made you uncomfortable.”

Edward Gardiner patted the hand of his niece and they both leaned back letting their emotions, roiling close to the surface, settle. He took a cleansing breath.

“I would like you to stay for eight weeks please Lizzie. I know London is particularly unpleasant at this time of year but I would like you to spend time here at the house with your new aunt and help her with the transition. At the same time I want to pick that impressive brain of yours and make sure that we have all the information relating to the business. You will have to teach Edward and I about the ledgers so that we can maintain them. We will attempt them in October after the end of the Michaelmas quarter and again in January after the end of the year. Can I prevail upon you to visit in February and review them for me?”

Elizabeth smiled an enthusiastic smile.

“Of course, uncle. I would be happy to.”

“Excellent, thank you.”

The smile faded from Mr. Gardiner’s face.

“The main reason for eight weeks is so that the children can get used to the idea of you leaving. I know that you are not Michael’s mother, but you have been the mother figure in his life for the last four years. I do not think you realise how much Michael, Rebecca and Angela will miss you. Now they all like Agatha but as we have been talking it has struck me that you are right about returning to Longbourn. But just because the reason is correct does not mean that the moment of separation will not be tearful. You and I will have to spend time with the youngest three.”

Elizabeth knew that there would be many tears shed and she nodded in agreement.

“There are several more things that we should discuss now that you are returning to Longbourn. Your status, your guardianship and your money.”

Mr. Gardiner watched his niece sit up straighter. This was her future.

“Your father assigned your guardianship to me back in ’07. At first it was limited in both location and time. Meaning that I was your guardian while you resided in London and until the end of 1807. It was renewed twice.”

He sighed.

“The second renewal, so your third guardianship, had no conditions. There was some legal wording but the gist of the document was something like ‘I, Thomas Bennet, appoint Edward Gardiner, my brother through law and marriage, as the guardian of my daughter Elizabeth Rose Bennet.’. That was it, no end date, no limitations based on continuing to live in London, nothing like that. Do you understand so far?”

Edward Gardiner was sure Elizabeth was following but wanted to be clear. And it was another moment when he could delay the most awkward parts of the conversation.

“Yes Uncle Edward, I do.”

Elizabeth watched as her uncle sat quietly with his eyes closed. With a sigh he returned his gaze to his niece.

“This next part is going to be tough. Please listen and let me lay out my concerns.”

Elizabeth mentally grimaced, as an opening statement it had her heart racing already.

“I think that it will be tough for you when you return to Longbourn. We will talk more in the coming weeks about some of the details but let me explain the main points. Your actions today highlight the first point. You are going to return to Longbourn because there cannot be two mistresses here. Which very clearly shows that you have been the mistress of this house since you were 16 years of age. How do you think you will cope with returning to Longbourn and once again being under the authority of your mother? Longbourn has a mistress and you have an older sister who has been training there for years.”

Elizabeth had not been back to Hertfordshire since she had left in ’07. She and her mother wrote regularly but other than Mrs. Bennet’s one visit in the later summer of ’07 to check on her brother neither had visited to see the other. It would be a shock.

“And believe it or not, that is the easy conversation.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened.

“How do you think your parents would react if they knew I have one eighth of Gardiner Import/Export in trust for you. You have ￡1,000 in the bank from last year’s earnings and will receive more than that at the end of this year. If that income was in the four percents it would represent a dowry of ￡25,000. And you deserve it for all the work you did for the business. I know that it is almost completely unknown, but the key word in there is almost. You know, I know, and a couple of your society friends know. But again, coming back to my point, how will your parents react?”

Elizabeth hoped the question was rhetorical as she could think of no way to answer it honestly without embarrassing herself, her uncle, and her parents.

“I will save you the trouble of trying to phrase your response carefully. They will try and get their hands on it. Your parents know how to spend, they have both done that their whole lives. Or at least since Thomas became Master of Longbourn. You do not have to say anything, you do not have to express disloyalty to your parents.”

Elizabeth watched her uncle. It appeared he was happy to get a long suppressed annoyance off his chest.

“Elizabeth, you are my niece but I think of you as a member of my own family. Your sacrifice has allowed this family to grieve and recover, and then thrive. Your energy was what I needed to come to terms with my injury. Madeline and I loved to dance and in the autumn of 1807 I had to come to terms with the fact that I would never dance again. But it was not your physical energy that helped me, it was your intellectual energy. Even when sitting still your mind was racing. The Gardiner family is where it is today thanks, in part, to you. What you own, what you have earned, the connections you have made, are all down to your own ability. I do not want to see that squandered away.

“Do you remember why you decided you were going to come to London and help? You told me back in the late summer or early autumn after I was physically recovered and back home. It was the phrase that your mother recited annually when Madeline and I visited Longbourn at Christmas.”

‘If you are not kind to us, brother, I do not know what we shall do.’ The phrase came unbidden to Elizabeth’s mind.

“I can see that you remember it well. Your mother is my sister, my family, but I will tell you honestly, I am struggling with my obligations to my family.”

Elizabeth sat quietly, a traitorous part of her mind in complete agreement.

“Bluntly, what is my responsibility to help my family when that family does not help itself? I work hard, despite the loss of my legs. You work even harder, many weeks you work longer hours than our staff. From listening to Mary every quarter I can tell that Fanny flits about the neighbourhood with little restraint to her spending and Thomas hides in his library with no restraint on his spending. Again, you do not have to say anything, and I recognize that these are harsh critiques. But they are much closer to truth than to fiction.

“My suggestion is that you leave all the documents regarding your funds here in London, either with me or with one of your friends. That way there is no evidence of your wealth and you will have to come to London to spend, invest or move the funds.”

Elizabeth did not protest but did sigh.

“Do you really think it is necessary?”

“Sadly, I do Lizzie.”

“I am very likely to agree with your suggestion but might I have some time to think it all over?”

“Of course, everything we decide will be discussed several times. I am not going to demand anything of you Lizzie, you have earned the right to make your own decisions regardless of what the law says. There are only two additional things I would like you to think about and then we can join the rest of the family. We were talking earlier about your guardianship. My suggestion is that neither of us mention this to your father. It gives you an additional layer of protection when you are back in Hertfordshire.”

“Why do you suggest that?”

“Do you want to hear my honest answer?”

She could only nod.

“I do not trust your parents. The guardianship is a legal document, witnessed by your other uncle and one of his clerks. To revoke an open-ended guardianship would require another document. Once you are of age then the issue becomes moot. But that is not for another 11 months.”

“Do you have a specific reason?”

“No. In this case I am working off the maxim of ‘actions speak louder than words’. I have no reason to think there will be an issue but I want you protected. And on that last point, Claire and Robert will accompany you when you return to Longbourn. They will stay with you until your majority and then we will discuss them further.”

The carriage struck a rut and did not just bounce Elizabeth physically but also mentally. She returned to the present and looked opposite at her. Elizabeth did not know how to describe Claire any more. She was more of a companion than a maid, yet she was also a bodyguard as well as a friend.

“Your eyes were open but you were a long way away.”

“I was thinking back over the last three months. So much has happened, the marriage, deciding to return to my childhood home. Dealing with the business,” she grimaced “trying not to react to some of young Edward’s attitude. Trying to explain to Michael that even although I was leaving him physically I was not leaving his heart, just as he would always be in my heart. That was probably the toughest. It cannot have been easy for Agatha to see our closeness and know that she has to take over.”

“Are you looking forward to returning, Miss Elizabeth?”

That Elizabeth had to pause was an answer in of itself.

“This will sound heartless and you know I do not mean it this way, but I am more nervous about this trip than I was four years ago immediately after the accident. Now there is no doubt some dulling of the immediate memories, but I do not know what to expect upon my return. I have not seen my parents in four years, the same with my youngest two sisters. With Jane, she has not been allowed to visit since, let me think, early ’09. More than two years ago. The only member of my family that I have seen regularly is Mary. I have this image of the family as if sculpted in ice, a frozen moment in time. They are probably equally unsure about me. I doubt they are nervous but my returning after four years will disrupt their routine.”

“Do you mind me asking questions?”

“Not at all. It is forcing me to think about situations, frankly it is helpful. Ask away.”

“Did you ever think you would return to Longbourn?”

Elizabeth shook her head.

“No. Mrs. Mallory and my uncle forming an attachment was a complete surprise. I did not think about it very much but when I did my expectation would be that Angela would take over sometime between her 16 th and 18 th birthdays. I am more than eight years older than her so in that instance I would have been in the middle years of my twenties.”

“Do you mind me asking if you resent Mrs. Mallory?”

“No, when it is just the two of us we can be honest. I do not resent her for the simple reason that she makes Uncle Gardiner happy. Everything else is secondary to that. She had known him through our church for several years. They had both lost their spouses. At least uncle can take the children and visit the gravesite of Aunt Madeline. Mr. Mallory was lost at sea, there is no grave to mourn at. I will confess to an occasional moment of wistfulness when I wish that they had waited one more year. I would have had significantly more options upon my majority. But really other than that I am happy for them.”

“How are you going to fill your days here in Hertfordshire?”

Elizabeth barked out a burst of laughter.

“No, it was not a silly question, rather it was an honest reaction. Because I have spent significant time thinking about that very issue and I have no answer. Once a week I am going to receive a package with the previous week’s newspapers. So rather than reading them every day for part of the morning it will be an intense day or so of catching up on all the news. The following week I will return them together with any insights I have gleaned from reading them. But other than that, I will have to remember how to be a lady of leisure.”

They both chuckled at that. Elizabeth and leisure were not words that went together.

“But all joking aside I will have to think about all that. Reading, thinking about the news within the context of Gardiner Import/Export, and maintaining my correspondence will take up, what, three days a week? So I will have three days to fill. One day a week in Meryton, time in the stillroom, it will be tough but I think I will get back into a routine.”

“How will Robert and I be treated?”

Another laugh.

“No idea. Robert will be easy for the most part and difficult at others. If I am at Longbourn Manor for much of the week then he will just be an additional body to assist the others. It will be when he stops doing as Hill directs but instead accompanies you and I when we are out the Manor that will be the issue. I will have to explain to Papa and Mr. Hill. It will be difficult without sounding all high and mighty. Uncle Gardiner has already sent a letter to Papa so I will see how he reacts when we get there. The big issue will me being singled out. That he accompanies me but not the others unless they are with me will aggravate Mama. If I am assured to be in for the day then he may accompany the others, that will lessen the situation.”

“And me?”

“As we discussed. Mama will be up in arms that I have a personal maid, you should be Jane’s maid as she is the oldest and prettiest. Again, Uncle Gardiner has sent a letter to his sister, but I doubt that she will take the news well. You are more my companion than maid and so we will have to navigate the waters of the Bennet family to see how everything plays out. I will talk with Mrs. Hill so that she knows not to try and assign you to other duties. But you will accompany me on all visits, be it to Meryton or to the neighbours. I hope that after a bit of fuss and bluster everything will settle down quickly.

“And to answer the question you cannot ask. You have been my closest companion for the last three plus years, Robert for even longer than that. You are not my blood family but you are family to me. I have always felt safe when accompanied by the two of you, and you have calmed me many times when I felt overwhelmed. You are being paid by Uncle Gardiner and I will not allow you to be reassigned while we stay at Longbourn.”

“Thank you, Miss Elizabeth. Your phrasing was careful at the end there, ‘while we stay’.”

“I know it will be difficult for everyone, and I think it would be most foolish to assume everything and everyone will return to how they were in ’07. I know I am a different person, a very different person. The people I remember will be equally different. Even with my limited knowledge, it will still be different.”

“How do you mean?”

“Sorry, I was being unnecessarily cryptic. Mary visited so frequently and regularly because I continued to maintain the ledgers for the Longbourn Estate for my father. His record keeping was not flawless and it made more sense for me to maintain them. Arithmetic has always been easy for me. So I can see how the family is living by reviewing the ledger. But it does not give the full story.”

“Can you explain, I am still not getting the point.”

Elizabeth pondered for a moment.

“When you live on an estate, or in our case in a house, you experience everything. For instance, Cook and her assistants prepare meals not just for the family but for the staff as well. You are around the kitchen every day, you eat the food, you see the foodstuffs being delivered, you can see that the meat or fish are fresh. In ledgers all I see are the bills, and the payments to the staff for their wages. I do not know whether the assistant cook is good, whether the scullery maid is lazy, whether the footman is cheeky. The numbers show none of that. That is what I mean when I say I have limited knowledge. The ledgers tell part of the tale, they are the skeleton. But they are only a modest part of the story. It is all the things I have talked about, and a thousand more, that flesh it all out.”

“I see what you mean. Thank you for explaining it.”

“This has been useful, it is helping me get ready to meet my family again.”

At that moment the carriage pulled into the courtyard of an inn. It was a convenient spot to rest the horses and also allowed all the occupants of the coach to refresh themselves and have a quick meal. Elizabeth alighted.

“I will request that the innkeeper send out a groom to assist you. Please take turns to visit the taproom for an ale and some food.”

The coachman and the second footman both smiled and nodded. They knew Miss Elizabeth would look after them. Elizabeth, Claire and Robert entered the inn and requested a table. Elizabeth relayed her instructions and the innkeeper did as she requested. The inn was moderately busy but their table was private, with no one able to eavesdrop.

“Would you prefer me to eat in the Taproom, Miss Elizabeth?”

“No Robert, sit here with me. I want a burly man at the table to discourage anyone from approaching.”

Claire smiled at her husband as he sat down beside her. They were going to stop for 30 minutes, for the horses more than for them personally, so there was time to order a small repast and hot fresh tea, although Robert preferred an ale. As they were quietly eating they heard a commotion from across the room. There was a party in a private room and with the door open they could hear an unpleasant nasal voice berating the server.

“I demand to see the innkeeper, you foolish clot. You nearly managed to spill food on my dress. Do you know how much this cost?”

The innkeeper hustled over to the room and closed the door behind him upon entering. Words could no longer be discerned but the noise from the occupant was still able to be heard, even with the door closed. When the innkeeper and server finally left they carefully closed the door. But Elizabeth caught an eye-roll and grimace before they returned to the kitchen.

Just before they were ready to continue the journey the door was opened and two couples left the private dining room. They turned to the outside door of the inn and so Elizabeth saw nothing but the back of their heads. Their carriage was leaving the courtyard as Elizabeth and her companions returned to their own carriage. They too settled themselves and followed the other carriage as they both headed north. Elizabeth was surprised to note that the other carriage turned off for Meryton and they followed it all the way to the small town. It was only there that they separated. Elizabeth noting that the carriage took the road that led to Netherfield Park. Maybe these were the new owners? Thinking back to the voice at the coaching inn she grimaced, the idea suddenly not so appealing. But then it was time. The carriage turned into the short drive and pulled up outside the door of Longbourn.

Elizabeth was back. But was it still her home?