Interest from Elizabeth Dower Fund.
She had always assumed it was simply her father’s private ledger; the quiet money for things that never appeared in household accounts, the sort of reserve Lydia only noticed because it occasionally became ribbons. But this was Elizabeth’s name, written in his hand.
Kitty set the ledger aside and drew out the bible. Beneath it lay a packet of papers tied neatly with string. She untied it and looked first at the uppermost sheet, where the title required no interpretation at all.
The Last Will and Testament of Philip Bennet.
It had all been spoken aloud only the night before, yet seeing it there in ink made it feel less like family quarrelling and more like fact.
She lifted the packet, and as she did a loose paper slipped free from beneath it, not part of the bundle but resting against it as though someone had meant to keep it close. It proved to be a certificate of baptism; Elizabeth Bennet, written there in a hand Kitty did not recognise, from a place she had never seen.
She crossed to the shelves, found a dusty volume no one had opened in years, and slid it into the drawer where the packet had been. The bible went on top of it, then the ledger, then the strongbox. She locked the drawer, returned the key to her father's room, tucked the will and the baptism certificate safely inside her dress, and went directly upstairs to Elizabeth's door.
Elizabeth opened the door with caution, expecting Mr. Bennet or, worse still, Mr. Collins. Instead she found Kitty standing there, still and silent, looking at her with something so earnest in her face that surprise gave way almost immediately to concern. Kitty said nothing, only held her sister’s gaze as though hoping Elizabeth might understand what she had not yet foundwords to say, and after a moment’s hesitation Elizabeth stepped aside and let her in.
The room looked as though Elizabeth had been trying to put it in order and had abandoned the effort halfway through. A drawer stood open, ribbons lay beside the washstand, and her travelling bag had been brought down from the top shelf of the wardrobe. Kitty said nothing of it. She reached inside her dress, drew out the papers, and held them toward her.
Elizabeth took them. She read the title of the first and sat down on the edge of the bed as though her legs had decided the matter without consulting her. The Last Will and Testament of Philip Bennet. She looked up at Kitty. "How. What."
"It was in the locked drawer of your father's desk. Lydia showed me where the key was kept, months ago, when she wanted pin money. I went with her and I saw the bible while she counted coins. I did not understand any of it then." Kitty paused. "I understand it now."
Elizabeth turned to the second paper. A certificate of baptism. Her name. Her father's name. Her mother's name. Margaret Trevelyan Bennet. She read on to the godparents' names and her breath stopped entirely. She knew those names but was not sure how they were connected to her father and mother. She could not make it mean anything coherent, not now, not with Kitty sitting across from her and the will in her lap and ten o'clock still hours away, and she set the papers aside and pulled Kitty into a tight embrace. “Thank you. Thank you, dear girl.”
"I love you, Lizzy." Kitty's voice was muffled against her shoulder. "I know I do not say it. I do not think any of us say it to anyone in this house, not properly." She drew back. "I am going to miss you when you are gone."
"Gone. What do you mean?"
"Oh, Lizzy." Kitty looked at her with the patience of someone who has understood rather more than she has been given credit for. "You heard him last night. You have to go. I know you do. And Mr. Darcy will help you, will he not."
Elizabeth did not answer immediately. She had been so long accustomed to thinking of Kitty as merely Lydia's companion in noise and nonsense, in ribbons and officers and whatever foolishness the day produced, that she had scarcely considered what Kitty might think of her in return.
She told her everything; the courtship at Brinmouth, the engagement, the plan that had seemed so clear at dawn and now felt with every hour both more necessary and more alarming. She spoke, too, of the foolish hope she had once allowed herself; that returning with a gentleman of fortune and consequence might alter something fundamental at Longbourn, that this family might at last receive her with warmth instead of obligation, and now the knowledge that she had never belonged to them in the way she had believed.
The words came without much order, and she did not attempt to force them into one. By the time she reached the end, she had stopped trying not to cry, and Kitty was crying too.
When at last there seemed nothing more to say, Kitty moved nearer and put an arm around her, and they sat together without speaking until the worst of it had passed.
"I am glad you came home," Kitty said at last. "If only so I could say goodbye properly. Had you gone straight from Brinmouth we would never have had this."
"Until this morning I wished with everything I had that I had done exactly that," Elizabeth said. "But now I am glad too." She squeezed her hand. "I will find a way to stay in contact.I promise. You will always be my sister. Cousin by blood, and sister by everything that followed."
Their tears were at length dismissed, their appearance restored as well as circumstances allowed, and they went downstairs to tea.
The rest of the family was already in the parlour. They had barely settled when the knock came at the front door. Mrs. Bennet, who had been nearest the window, rose half out of her chair.
"Good heavens. Four horses. And a coat of arms I have never seen in my life. It is grander even than Mr. Darcy's and I did not think that possible."
Mrs. Hill appeared in the doorway. "The Earl of Ashcombe. Lord Ambrose Montclair, to call on the family."
The gentleman who entered was neither handsome nor plain. He was dressed with the kind of elaborate precision that communicates rank rather than taste, every article chosen to leave no observer in any doubt of his consequence. He surveyed the room with the unhurried thoroughness of a man who expects to find most things beneath him and is rarely surprised. His gaze moved across the assembled company, paused on Jane, moved on, and settled on Elizabeth with the air of a man completing a calculation.
"Which of you is Miss Elizabeth Bennet?"
"I am," said Elizabeth.
He inclined his head by the smallest degree that could reasonably be called an inclination.
“I am here to fulfil your guardian’s obligation. I hold a betrothal contract, duly signed, naming yourself and me, and I trust the matter may be concluded with as little inconvenienceand unnecessary sentiment as possible. Such arrangements are best handled with propriety, and I have never found delay to improve them.”
