When the curate was offered the living, he fell to his knees to thank God. Hoult was not motivated by the parsonage or the greatly improved income. It was rather something that the increased earnings would allow him to do. He had been in love for more than two years, but he had not been willing to propose until he felt secure in his ability to support a wife and, hopefully, in the near future, children.
Hoult could not be further from the late William Collins in character, something which supremely pleased those living in the Hunsford parish.
When Bennet thought of his late cousin, he conjectured that if Mr Collins had lived, discovering who his new patron was after losing Longbourn, the unwelcome knowledge would have more than likely caused a rather large apoplexy, leading to the same result.
He pushed the thoughts aside and returned to his work.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Another one of Elizabeth’s long-held assumptions was proved wrong at Rosings Park.
Whenever anyone asked her if she rode a horse, Elizabeth’s rejoinder had always been that as long as she had two good feet, she did not need to sit atop a great big beast. She knew the truth, but did not want to admit, that she had a fear of horses ever since, at the age of seven, she had fallen off a horse and broken her arm during her first lesson. As it did not fit her maxim about her courage always rising at any attempt to intimidate her, she kept to her claim of preferring to walk.
It did not take Elizabeth more than two lessons to learn to ride at Rosings Park; the stablemaster opined she had a natural aptitude for riding. William, who was her principal teacher, and the now-former colonel, both agreed with the assessment. She had taken to driving the phaeton as easily as she had learnt to ride, and greatly enjoyed her time in the small carriage. In the days since she had accepted a courtship, a group had ridden out several times.
On one occasion, the five Bennet sisters, Anna, Hilldale, Hadlock, Darcy, and Fitzwilliam, had ridden to the glade where some of the footmen had been waiting with picnic food to break their fasts. They had been serenaded by the croaking of the toads and frogs; bird song provided by the robins, wrens, and larks in the tree branches, as well as the susurration the very slight breeze caused in the leaves of the trees above them.
Sitting on a blanket next to William, Kitty, Anna, and Lydia, Elizabeth remembered how she used to seek solitude in this oasis of nature. Now, she could not imagine it other than sharing it with those around her. Jane and Jamey were seated on one of the benches deep in conversation, as was their wont, while Mary and Andrew—Lord Hilldale had given them leave to address him informally—were on another bench also engaged in an intense discussion. Elizabeth had always thought that Mamma’s exclamations about God being good to them were hyperbole, but as she sat here and looked around the glade, part of an estate which belonged to her family, she could not imagine life getting better.
‘Well, perhaps when William proposes to me, it will be better,’ Elizabeth thought. She froze as she did not know where that thought had come from. Could it be that she was already falling in love with William?
He was not at all the rude, proud, insufferable man he had been. In fact, with all the amendments he had made to his character, there was none of that man left in him. But then again, he was not the only one who had changed. Elizabeth was not the same judgemental and prejudiced creature she had been then. She shook her head. No matter how many times she chastised herself for thinking of the past, occasionally she still did so.
Shaking the unproductive thoughts from her head, Elizabeth joined the conversation with which those sitting on the blanket with her were engaged.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
The Bennets and those who had been hosted at Rosings Park with them arrived at what used to be Netherfield Park in the afternoon of the first Monday of June. The Carringtons, who were still in London—they had waited to make their way directly to Hertfordshire rather than Holder Heights first—were to arrive the following day.
Due to the expected numbers of guests at the wedding, Bennet leased Purvis Lodge for the month of June, to make sure that any guests who needed to be hosted overnight would have somewhere to rest their heads that was not the Red Lion Inn in Meryton. The Purvises had departed the area in April to seek their fortunes in Upper Canada. As the small estate abutted Longbourn, Bennet was considering purchasing it to add more land and tenants to his primary estate. The Purvis’ solicitor was in contact with Phillips to see if a mutually agreeable price could be reached.
On Tuesday morning between a coach and horses, those residing at what would one day be the estate’s dower house, travelled the three miles to where the combined estate’s manor house was being built. The five Bennet sisters were shocked at what they saw, or more accurately, what they did not see.
“Mamma, Papa! Where is the house?” Jane managed, as her sisters nodded, also wanting to hear the reply.
“In the end there was so much to do that your mother and I decided to completely rebuild rather than adding onto the old house. We did not want a house which looked like a puzzle someone had put together incorrectly,” Bennet explained. “The new structure will be quite a bit larger than the house we are residing in currently, and will have a nice large ballroom as well as all of the modern conveniences.”
“Will there be pipes for water fed from cisterns and boilers?” Elizabeth enquired.
“Yes, there will be. I should have known you would understand what I meant by ‘modern conveniences’. It was to be a surprise,” Bennet replied. “Before you ask, all fireplaces will be of the Rumford variety, and there will be water closets which flush.”
As Darcy listened to Bennet, he reached a decision. He had long been thinking about adding plumbing to Darcy House and Pemberley’s manor. It was time to move ahead with the project. Not only would it spare the footmen climbing up the stairs with heavy pails of water, but if one wanted to bathe, it would be a matter of minutes. More importantly, he believed that Elizabeth would enjoy having it in the houses where she would live.
Without knowing what the others were thinking, Matlock, Hilldale, and Hadlock were also considering ways they could have a water system installed in their houses.
When Lizzy was busy speaking to the Hills, who were in a cottage until the new home was built, Bennet stood next to Darcy. “You know, when she accepts you, it will be to Purvis Lodge with you.”
“When… if Elizabeth accepts my proposal this time, I will accept the move to Purvis Lodge with pleasure,” Darcy responded.
As he stood and watched Elizabeth speaking to some of her sisters, Hadlock, and Richard, Darcy marvelled at the fact that, as an heiress with a very wealthy family, she was still basically the same person that she had been when she had been the penniless daughter of an insignificant country squire. Yes, like he had, she had made some changes to her character, but the acquisition of wealth had not made her look down on anyone like so many in theTonand thosenouveau richelike Miss Bingley were wont to do.
As he stood watching the only woman he would ever love romantically, Darcy remembered his father’s words in his letter about weighing character and not wealth and connections. His nightly prayers contained thanks for the fact he had woken up to that reality and had begun to act accordingly. He suspected after Elizabeth’s reproofs, he would have reached that realisation on his own. The difference was that it would have taken him far longer to see the truth.
That led him to ask himself whether he would have had a chance to begin again with her as she had granted him. Darcy lifted his eyes to the heavens. ‘Thank you, Mother and Father. I believe you guided my hand, albeit painfully, so I would find the letters at the exact moment I needed them the most,’ he said silently.
Before they departed, Bennet informed everyone that Netherfield Park was no more, it was one estate, Longbourn, as of a few days past.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
