“I will go confer with my master.” Before the man on the step could blink, the butler closed the door. He knew full well who the man was as Mr and Mrs Taylor had prepared him. He had behaved exactly as he had been instructed.
Bennet could not believe he had been left on the doorstep. Could not the man have allowed him to wait in the entrance hall? He supposed he should have expected that the family from the former colonies would have a butler who was deficient in his duties. They would not know better. His mood would have worsened exponentially had he known that he was the object of derision in the dining parlour.
Taylor allowed a few minutes to pass, then he turned to his butler. “Mercury, in a minute or two, please give my cousin my apologies. Tell him he is welcome during calling hours, but we are still enjoying our breakfast.”
The butler bowed and headed towards the front door, making sure to walk with no urgency.
At long last, the door opened. Bennet was about to step inside when the butler delivered his message and closed the door while Bennet stood on the step with his mouth hanging open. “My horse!” he called out angrily to the groom. Five minutes later he was back atop Odysseus and on his way to Longbourn’s dower house. He had his horse up to a gallop to fight the frustration he was feeling, which meant it was less than five minutes until he reached his destination.
He did not wait for a groom. Without noting the quality of the structure, Bennet dismounted and went to pound on the door. By and by, none too soon for him, it was opened by a manservant. He tried to push past the man, but the large man was immovable. “Take me to your master! Enough of this; I am here to take my wife and daughters home,” he snarled.
“The master ain’t ‘ere. No one but us servants be ‘ere,” the man growled, showing he was not intimidated in the least.
Instead, Bennet felt rather scared. The man looked at him like he was nothing, and he guessed that if he tried to push past him, the servant would throw him from the house without a second thought. Why, oh why, had he signed rights to the dower house away as long as Uncle Henry was living in it?
“If that is true, surely you would not object if I looked around the house just to satisfy myself that I have done everything to find them, would you?” Bennet used a conciliatory tone of voice.
“Ya can look, but I will be with ya,” the man allowed. This was what the master instructed, so it was easy to grant.
While he went from room to room, first on the ground level and then the first and second storeys, Bennet began to notice the quality of the house. He even went to look in the attics after the brawny man allowed him to do so. Not a trace of his wife and daughters. Where were they?
When he exited the house, Bennet turned and looked atit. It was a well-built, modern structure, smaller, but not that much so, than Longbourn’s manor house. It seemed his wife had seen this house, which was part of the reason she had calmed so much. Why had he not instructed Philips to add a clause written into the fake contract that made his wife’s residence in the dower house contingent on the new master’s permission?
Bennet was aware he needed to ride back to Purvis Lodge to arrive in about a half hour. From there, if his women were not discovered, he would go see Phillips. If the document was not prepared yet, he would want to know why, but it would allow him to add the clause he had just thought of.
He rode back towards his house. He would wait there for the time to pass before going back to see his cousins, while making sure the buffoon was not aware he was home.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
“I am sure my Bennet nephew is fit to be bound with rope to restrain himself,” Henry stated after Lizzy read the notes from both the first attempt to enter Purvis Lodge and Thomas’s foray to Longbourn’s dower house. Thomas had the right idea, just the wrong estate’s dower house.
“If that means Mr Bennet is very angry, I agree with you, Uncle Henry,” Elizabeth responded. “He loves to make everyone else the butt of his jokes but hates being in that position himself.”
“So far, everything is going according to our plan. I wonder how my husband is enjoying his cousin’s company with none of us there to be the foils for his attempts at humour?” Fanny mused. “If he tries to hide in his study, I hope his cousin is too much of an oaf to realise Thomas is seeking solitude.”
“When will our father and this Mr Collins meet the guests? The ones already here and the others on their way?” Jane enquired.
“At the assembly, I believe,” Felicity responded. “By then, your father will be angry enough that he will not see the trap, especially after we let it be known that you three older girls and Fanny will attend the assembly. Angry people are seldom wise, so your father will not think before he speaks and attempts to act.”
Fanny did not miss how Mary was sitting, her chin resting on her fist as she stared out of the window wistfully. “Roger will come to see you as soon as my husband has made a fool of himself at Purvis Lodge.” She decided to direct her engaged daughter to another subject. “Did you notice how Charlotte seemed to attract the bulk of one of the guests’ attention?”
Mary looked at her mother and smiled. How different she was now. In the past not only would she have denigrated Charlotte’s looks in public, because Mama would not have stood for someone else attracting the attention of a very eligible man without pushing one of her own daughters at him.
“Yes, Mama, I did. I thought Jane may interest the other, but I think she may be too calm for him. It will be interesting to see his opinion of Elli when they join us for dinner later,” Mary speculated.
“As far as Jane goes, you are correct. I am only sorry it took me so long to realise that my girls would find men who valued them when the time was right, without my interference,” Fanny saw that Mary was about to interject. “I know you are about to remind me I have changed, and I have, but when I think of the past, who should suffer but myself? It has been my own doing, and I ought to feel it. I was too blind to see and too deaf to hear what was said to me about how wrong I was.”
“Mama, you need to adopt part of Lizzy’s philosophy…” Mary began to say.
“Yes, I know, only remember the past, as that remembrance gives pleasure. In general, that is a good way to live, but in my case, I must remember the past, so I never repeat the same errors ever again,” Fanny insisted.
“That, I think, is a healthy way of considering the past for you. I suppose each of us must do what works for us,” Mary understood.
“Now, I want you to think of the near future with pleasure. Roger will be here before you know it,” Fanny stated and kissed Mary on the forehead before hugging her middle daughter.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
No sooner had the time elapsed that he would not be early; Bennet was on his gelding galloping towards Purvis Lodge.
