“No one has ever seen the contents of this bequest. Your great-uncle was very particular about such things. My departed partner, Mr Hawthorne, was the one who witnessed and sealed the letter. Only he knew its contents. All I knew was that there was a very impressive sum to be passed along to you.” Mr Simms opened the letter with great gravity, then peered through his horn-rimmed glasses to make out the words. “It says here that the sum of forty-thousand pounds is to be paid to Miss Elizabeth Bennet, either on the event of her marriage, or on her twenty-fifth birthday.”
Elizabeth nearly fell off the wooden chair when she heard the monumental sum. “Are you certain, Mr Simms? Did you say four thousand or forty thousand?”
Mr Simms looked again at the paper and then back up at her. “Forty thousand,” he repeated, as loudly and clearly as though he thought her hard of hearing. He looked at Mr Darcy then. “Have you the marriage certificate?”
“Yes,” Darcy said, pulling out a leather carrying pouch. “We’ve our marriage license just here,” he said and handed the document over.
Mr Simms took it and studied it for several moments. “Hmm, it seems that all is in order. Well then, all that is left is for me to finish reading the bequest, and we can start to draw out the funds. Would you like them sent over to your bank, Mr Darcy?”
“Yes, please,” he replied.“I have the information written here.”
“Very good. Now, it says here that the funds are in the form of an investment that your great uncle bought into, the —” Mr Simms halted, frowning deeply. “The Galbraith Trading Company.”
Mr Simms snapped his head up so fast that he nearly lost his glasses. His face blanched as white as milk. Elizabeth reached for him across the desk, immediately concerned. “Whatever is the matter, Mr Simms? You look quite ill.”
He stood and went to his sideboard without a word and retrieved a newspaper from a stack near the window. “I am very sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, Mrs Darcy. But —” He took a shaky breath. “The Galbraith Trading Company declared bankruptcy after they lost every one of their ships to a typhoon.” He came around the desk and leaned on it as though the shock had left him unable to stand on his own. “I am afraid the vast fortune your uncle wished to give you is now worthless.”
Elizabeth blinked slowly, then turned to Darcy, and back again to Mr Simms. Slowly, a smile crept across her lips. A laugh escaped, startling Mr Simms to the extreme. “My dear Madame, are you quite well?” he asked.
Elizabeth continued to laugh for a moment, then got control of herself. “Oh, Mr Simms, do not trouble yourself on my account. I only think this is quite funny!” She laughed again, then took Darcy’s hand. He squeezed it, smiling down at her.
“I do not see what is funny about losing a fortune,” Mr Simms said, straightening his jacket in disgust at her apparent flippancy over the whole ordeal. She supposed his reaction was only to be expected. Surely, anyone else would have been lividwhen they found out their promised fortune was nothing but a mirage.
Mr Simms went back around his desk and sat down, putting his glasses back on the top of his nose to finish reading. “Well, the only other holding in this bequest is an estate…” He let us words trail off as he read. “A small fishing cottage near the sea, valued at two thousand pounds.”
Elizabeth could not help but laugh again at the absurdity of it all. She was stunned, of course, but as she had never put her hopes too much in the inheritance, they could not be too badly dashed. Elizabeth had never felt that she ought to be an heiress, and now it transpired that she never really had been. She stood and thanked the barrister, who still seemed to regard her as a madwoman of sorts. Mr Darcy shook his hand and stowed their copies of the bequest with their marriage license.
Soon, they were back in the carriage, rolling leisurely toward home. Darcy smiled as they settled in for the short drive. “I do not think Mr Simms has ever been greeted with quite so surprising a reaction to a bequest.”
“I know, poor man. But I could not help seeing the humour in it,” Elizabeth laughed. “To think of all of those men who were after me for my grand fortune and ‘fine estate’. How very shocked Mr Wickham would have been if he had convinced me to run away with him!”
“Hmm, if it were any other woman, that might be an amusing prospect to think about. But I am so glad he failed to use you for his own gains. Or lack of gains, I suppose.”
“As am I,” Elizabeth replied fervently. “As am I.”He took her hand and kissed it, holding it close to his heart.
Viewed in another light, the matter was not quite so amusing. Had things turned out differently, the lost inheritancemight have meant disaster. If Elizabeth had needed it to save her family from penury, she could not have viewed the matter so lightheartedly, but with herself and Jane so well married, she was afforded the luxury of never worrying for her mother and sisters again — and thus, the luxury of laughing at the irony of losing what she did not truly need.
Elizabeth thought again of all the gentlemen who had veritably come out of the woodwork when they had heard about the inheritance. She bore Colonel Fitzwilliam no ill will for wanting to marry a rich woman who might keep him in the style an earl’s son would expect, but he would have been sorely disappointed. And the perfidious Mr Wickham—well, he did not even bear mentioning. And the myriad others who would have been surprised to find that she was not rich at all! She shook her head and gave a low chuckle.
“What has tickled you now?” Darcy asked, a smile touching the corner of his mouth.
She snuggled closer to him and he leaned forward the retrieve the heavy wool blanket from the opposite seat. He spread it over their legs and made sure she was warm and comfortable. She took his hands and sighed. “They would have all been very disappointed, the men who were courting me for my supposed fortune,” Elizabeth said, shaking her head. “It is just as well that you married for love, for I am afraid I have little else to give you.”
He wrapped his arm around her and held her close. “They would have all been fools. In marrying you, my angel, I have gained the greatest riches of all.” He kissed her then, with all the passion and love she had ever dreamed of.
Darcy truly was the perfect man for her — even in his imperfections, he was a man of nobility, character, and acapacity for love that she never would have imagined. In him, she had truly found the greatest treasure.
Epilogue
Three Years Later
It was a lovely spring day, so lush with cherry and apple blossoms that the countryside appeared to float on pink and white clouds. Elizabeth took a deep breath and let out a contented sigh. The bundle nestled in her arms shifted, raising her arms over her head to stretch. “There, there, little one. You go on back to sleep,” she soothed.
Mrs Gardiner leaned forward over the newest addition to the family, holding her hand up to shade the baby’s face from the sun. “She is a perfect little angel, Lizzy. Ah, you must be so proud.”
“Yes, I must confess, she has stolen our hearts. Haven’t you, Melissa?” Elizabeth cooed. She looked across the round, linen-covered table where they had set out the tea service, and smiled at her husband. It was strange to think that they had already been married for three blissful years. She felt as if she had known him her whole life, unable to imagine life without him.
“She is, indeed,” Darcy agreed.
