I scoffed. “I am only commenting that she is pretty, not committing myself to matrimony, Miss Bingley.”
She looked relieved.
“Indeed, I have no intention of marrying anyone, not for some time,” I said.
She looked less relieved. She turned away from me. “I understand that Miss Bennet has some benefactor. I think it is that woman, Lady Susannah Wilmont.”
“Who?” I said.
Miss Bingley turned back to the gathered assembly of people. “She is there, seated, with her gray hair and her cane and that dress that is only ten years out of fashion.”
I spotted the woman now. I remembered her from dinner. She had spoken a few times, each time with a sense of disdain. She had not liked the potatoes or someone’s joke or the lateness of the hour in which we had sat down to eat. “And she is a benefactor to Miss Bennet?”
“I understand that Lady Susannah, who is an heiress and who’s father was a baron, lives at Trawlings.”
“What is Trawlings?”
“It is the estate between Netherfield and Longbourn,” she said. “You know this. We have driven past it.”
I had paid no mind to such things, so I said, “All right, if you say so.”
She glared at me. “I hear that Miss Bennet goes to read to her daily, to tend to her, and is her companion, though she does not live there. And that, as long as Miss Bennet does not marry, she will inherit all of Trawlings.”
“Does not marry?” I said.
“Lady Susannah thinks marriage is horrible or something. I think she was jilted in her youth or something else ridiculous,” said Miss Bingley. “It is a stipulation. Of course, once the woman is dead and Miss Bennet has inherited that estate, there isnothing stopping her marrying one of them, I suppose. She’ll be quite sought after in that instance.”
I gazed at Lady Susannah.
“But for now,” said Miss Bingley, “no one pursues Miss Bennet at all.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Because my brother danced two dances with her at Meryton, and ever so many helpful ladies have come to explain to me that he cannot marry her if she wants to inherit from Lady Susannah. That he must wait until after the woman’s death.”
“Lady Susannah does not look on death’s door,” I said.
“I suppose not,” said Miss Bingley.
I turned to look at Elizabeth Bennet. “How old you think Miss Bennet is? Why, if Lady Susannah has another ten years of life, Miss Bennet might be nearly thirty when Lady Susannah dies.”
“You do not think Miss Bennet is over twenty?”
I scrutinized her. “I do not know. She could be.”
Miss Bingley laughed. “Your reaction tells all, then. You are not pursuing her to marry her, you say, but you are quite crushed at the idea you cannot marry her.”
“I am not crushed,” I countered. “It is only that seems a waste for a woman like her, entirely a waste.”
Miss Bingley shrugged. “Well, Charles knows to stay clear of her, and now you do as well.”
It seemed that was the end of the matter entirely.
I should be going back to London at the end of the fortnight, and I should leave this place behind, thinking no more of it.
And it would have been the end of the matter, truly, if it were not for two things that happened.
One was that I saw Mr. Wickham, who was the man who had attempted to make off with my sister this summer, with the regiment of officers who were encamped near Meryton.
