Mr. Bennet sighed. “I suppose you will hound me like Mrs. Bennet until I answer you.”
She did not like being compared with her mother, but he was doing it to distract her, so she bit her tongue and prepared to listen.
“Something like that,” she said, cheerfully. “I will not take no for an answer.”
Mr. Bennet gave a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose you may as well know the reason. If I do not tell you, you will ask Matlock or Grayson. Prepare to be shocked, Lizzy.”
“I am all ears,” she said, with a smile.
“As you know already, I was a rebellious young man, and I already had many reasons for wanting to leave the Academy.” He paused.
“Papa, I know this. Is this going to be one of those stories that go nowhere?”
“Very well. I will be more direct. I simply wanted it to be clear that it was not the only reason I left the Academy.” He took a deep breath. “I left because, if I had stayed, they would have forced me to marry Lady Alice.”
“Marry Lady Alice?” she repeated, and then felt silly for doing it. She could not imagine Lady Alice and Papa in the same room, let alone married. Looking back, however, she now understood the hostility between them. And she also finally grasped why Lady Alice had disliked her so much. “Obviously, you turned her down. It must have been humiliating for her.”
“She was too arrogant to be humiliated.”
Elizabeth noted that he spoke of her in the past, but she was too busy absorbing the information he had given her.
“So you were obliged to leave because you refused to submit to an arranged marriage?”
“Something like that. Or let us say, I walked away and never looked back. I married your mother quickly, to make sure no one could force me into the marriage.”
“And you do not think it ironic thatIwas forced into marriage, yet you did not lift a finger to defend me when the same happened to me? You handed me over to them – toLady Alice herself– on a silver platter.”
She was growing more and more incensed. The hypocrisy of it!
“Of course it was ironic, but I took no pleasure from it.” He looked away. “The Council deliberately sent Lady Alice to take you with her because they knew I could not refuse her, not when I had already done so before. She was only too happy to twist the thumbscrew. I do believe she derived a certain satisfaction from making me pay.” Mr. Bennet looked down at his hands. “You must understand, the situations were very different. We were not at war at the time. My marriage to her was merely an attempt to strengthen the Bloodlines. Besides, Lord Matlock had already written an express to tell me about his nephew. Matlock spokevery highly of Darcy. He said he was a kind man and would treat you well. He assured me Darcy would make a good husband.”
“And you believed him.”
Mr. Bennet gave a little shrug. “I had no reason not to. I knew Matlock well. I trusted him. I still do. More than ever.”
He indicated Matlock, who was sitting in a large armchair with a cushioned piano stool under his bandaged leg, his hands still wrapped in white. A lady Elizabeth had never seen before was hovering around him, covering him with blankets and being most solicitous. A three-wheeled Wicker Bath chair was positioned next to the armchair.
“Who is that Lady with him?”
Mr. Bennet’s mouth twisted. “That is Lady Matlock, his wife. It is an arranged marriage. Much like I would have had with Lady Alice.”
“Except Lady Matlock is not a Royal Mage.”
“She is not.”
She had never even heard Lord Matlock mentioning a wife. Elizabeth would not have liked to be in that situation. Still, Lord Matlock had told Mr. Bennet the truth about Darcy.
“I hope I was right, Lizzy. Is Darcy a good man? Does he make you happy?”
His good eye settled on her with such intensity that she knew her answer was important.
“Yes, Papa. I never would have thought so when we first met, but as I started to know him, I realized how fortunate I was. I love Darcy dearly, Papa.”
"Do you forgive me?"
"Of course I do," she said, squeezing his hand as tears sprang to her eyes. "It is the best thing that ever happened to me. It was an amazing gift."
“Good,” he said. “Now go and talk to someone else. I am going to keep Lord Matlock company. I need to make up forabandoning him when Bingley came to Hythe.” He paused. “And Lizzy, I would rather you kept what I said about Lady Alice to yourself, if you don’t mind.”
