Late that afternoon, as Darcy sat down to tea with Georgiana and Mrs. Reynolds, an official letter arrived. Darcy broke the seal expecting some ordinary county business, only to sit back in astonishment after reading it twice. His name had been drawn for militia service. Because of his rank and landownership, he was not summoned as a common soldier but assigned a commission for the next five years.
Colonel Fitzwilliam Darcy.
Mrs. Reynolds was the first to recover enough to speak. “Surely you will be paying for a substitute, sir?”
Darcy did not respond.
The officer who came the following morning confirmed that he could. The amount named was not shocking by the standards of his former life, but it was entirely beyond his present means. At first, Darcy felt only the bitter absurdity of it. He had returned to Pemberley to rebuild his estate, and now a lottery required him elsewhere.
It felt as though fate were playing a cruel joke.
But then Darcy’s thoughts began to shift. A colonel’s pay would not be large, but itwasincome. His own expenses would be reduced. Pemberley could be closed even further, and he could still deal with matters of estate when he was not performing his military duties.
“No substitute,” he informed the soldier who arrived to collect his response.
The officer looked surprised. “You are certain, Mr. Darcy?”
“Yes.”
After the man left, Darcy stood for some time at the study window, looking out over Pemberley’s lands. The future before him was nothing like the one he had imagined at Cambridge, nor even the one he had planned the day before. But the estate was still his, Georgiana was safe, and there was now a path forward, however narrow.
Darcy returned to the desk, set the militia papers beside the estate accounts, and drew out a fresh sheet of paper.
There was work to do, and the next five years were now going to be much busier than he had planned.
Chapter 6
February 1809—Longbourn
Elizabeth Bennet stood in the small steward’s room just off the back passage near the kitchens, her sleeves rolled above her wrists and three account books spread open across the table before her.
“The numbers still do not balance,” she said wearily.
Mr. Hill, the estate butler, shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “Beggin’ your pardon, Miss Elizabeth, but Farmer Jones swears the south pasture will yield less than expected after the rain.”
Elizabeth pressed her fingertips against her temple.
“And yet somehow he still managed to purchase a new gelding at Michaelmas fair,” she replied dryly.
Coughing into his fist, Mr. Hill watched as Elizabeth dipped her pen into the inkwell and made another notation in the ledger. At eighteen, her handwriting possessed the neat decisiveness of someone who had spent years correcting other people’s mistakes.
“Reduce his spring seed grain allowance by one quarter until the arrears are settled,” she said at last.
Mr. Hill blinked. “Miss Elizabeth?”
“If he can afford a horse, he can afford to pay what is owed to Longbourn.”
The man shifted again. “Mr. Bennet generally allows extra time.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth answered shortly, “and that is precisely why half the tenants delay payment until they are nearly desperate enough to be turned out.”
The butler wisely held his tongue.
Elizabeth immediately felt guilty.
The tenants were not the true problem.
The true problem sat upstairs in his library with a book in one hand and a glass of port in the other while his daughter attempted to prevent the estate from slowly collapsing around him.
