“I can hardly understand how his mind works.” Mary shrugged. “Lizzy shooting at him raised her enormously in his opinion.”
“Oh.” Robert contemplated that. “But whatarehis plans?”
“My Lord Rochester,” Mr. Collins said for his wife, “has declared to all that Lady Elizabeth is certainly his daughter, and that she must be given the privileges and rights which appertain there to. After some extended discussion with my wife upon the manner of her education, he said—I memorized this, as I thought it to be most telling—he said, ‘Mr. Bennet did better than raising a daughter for me. He raised a better son than I did. She has the stomach that would not shame a peer of the realm. Oh, what a son she would have made.’—and after he said that he remarked in an unkind way upon my Lord Hartley’s tendency to cry easily which I—”
“By George!” Robert exclaimed. “But nothing more about that.”
“I merely wish to say, and I said as much to his Lordship, even though it contradicted him, that I do not think it is in fact unmanly for a gentleman to be able to cry. And he in a very kind way said that this opinion was fitting for a member of the clergy.”
“By George! Must he always—but continue. After declaring that Elizabeth, who he has metoncein these fifteen years, is a better son than I am, what did he say then? About practical matters, not his opinions on my character. Or Lizzy’s.”
“His Lordship declared that he would see to it that the income from her fortune was released to her use immediately, and that he would add an additional ten thousand pounds to what had been guaranteed to her by the marriage articles,bringing the total to fifty-two thousand and one hundred seventy-three pounds, as of the accounting at the end of the last quarter.”
“Good God,” Robert cried, clearly still upset by his father’s insults. “You memorized the exact number?”
“No, I cannot recall whether it was seven or nine shillings, so I did not say which,” Mr. Collins replied. “But I hope that shall not shame me in your eyes my Lord, or in yours, my Lady.” He bowed deeply to both Elizabeth and Robert.
Elizabeth caught Darcy’s eye. He was smirking. So was Papa.
Well then, best to be gracious about it. “I thank you, Mr. Collins. This has been very kind of you, and I have no need to hear the present sum down to the penny.”
Elizabeth very much did not wish to think about a sum of money which would provide an income greater than the Longbourn estate. She would become rather faint if she thought about it too directly.
“This was a task given to me by his Lordship,” Mr. Collins said proudly. “How else could I have shown my gratitude, except to do it with as much diligence and capability as I could.”
“Fifty thousand pounds!” Mrs. Bennet exclaimed. She looked as though she might faint in truth.
“Well, well,” Papa said. “And did he say anything else about me?”
“He declared that he will not sue you, though it is his right, and he does not disclaim that right, unless Lady Elizabeth wishes for him to. And he complimented you on how well you taught her to shoot, and the steadiness of her hands.”
“Good God!” Robert said again. “All these years I could have had his approval if I only made a serious attempt to kill him, instead of simply imagining doing so to while awayunpleasant hours. Jove! Lizzy, I am glad tonotbe the favored child.”
Once they had returned to sit in the drawing room, Elizabeth perched herself on the edge of the couch, sitting confidently, like she really was a great Lady. It was happening again. She noticed it now: Simply hearing this number “fifty-two thousand” and “to be released immediately” made her start to think of herself as something bigger and more impressive than she actually was.
Even bigger than she’d thought herself this morning when Mrs. Bennet begged her to use her own dressing room as a favor.
Lord, money could be a frightening, awful thing.
She scanned through the letter from Lord Rochester, readinghiswords in Mary’s familiar writing. But Mr. Collins had already summarized the essential points.
Beneath Mary’s neat hand was Lord Rochester’s shaky scrawled signature, made with giant letters and odd angles, as though the writer could barely manage to make a straight line, and curves were beyond him.
Elizabeth looked towards the group and asked Mary, “Is he so very ill? Do you think it was the shock of me shooting at him that caused his attack?”
Robert answered instead, “He told me that his doctors had insisted he must avoid excitement, and that his health was in a precarious state. He said to me that he had no intention of doing so. That he would live as the earl, full of dignity, so long as he could. If it was not this shock, then likely something else. You should not blame yourself.”
“That would be odd.” Elizabeth laughed. “To blame myself for giving him apoplexy when I meant to murder him.”
“Self-defense,” Darcy said.
“To self-defend myself until he was dead, then.”
“I can state,” Mary said, “that he was delighted to speak about you. It was while he was laughing quite hard about how you had gone to shoot him when the apoplexy struck him. That he decided to think highly of you afterwards did improve my opinion of his Lordship, but that he did so for such a cause left me...”
“Confused?” Robert said. “By Jove, Lizzy, I would have shot at him too if I’d known he’d like the experience so.”
“No, no. It would not workthen.It only counts if you are displaying the stomach of a peer,” Elizabeth replied. Then she frowned and looked back at the letter.
