Your father’s mother was a distant branch, but the connection is real, and I have maintained an interest in remote branches of my family. Friends in your neighborhood have written to me of you over the years, and what they have described is a young woman of uncommon intelligence, sharpwit, and the sort of moral courage that does not flinch from making itself inconvenient.
I like inconvenient women. I have been one all my life.
Come to London. Bring your family—your father, your mother, and your sisters. There is room for all of you. The house has fourteen bedrooms, a garden that is lovely in spring, a library I think you will find worth the journey alone, and a Broadwood pianoforte that has not been played well in twenty years and would welcome capable hands.
I make no demands and impose no conditions. The fortune is yours regardless of whether you come. But I am an old woman with a large house and a great deal of curiosity, and I should very much like to meet the young woman described to me as the cleverest person in Hertfordshire.
I suspect the competition was not fierce, but the distinction is yours, nonetheless.
With warmest regards,
Lady Sophia Mottistone
P.S. I understand you have a dog. She is welcome. I have always preferred the company of dogs to most humans, and I trust her judgment implicitly.
She read the letter twice, the second time silently, scanning the page for hidden meanings, but Jane was already delighted.
Pressing her hand to her mouth, she exclaimed, “Oh, Lizzy. She sounds wonderful. I do believe I shall adore her. She almost sounds like you!”
Elizabeth read the letter again, waiting for its warmth to rearrange itself into something more suspicious. It did not. Lady Sophia wrote as she apparently lived—with directness, intelligence, as if she had decided that being liked was far less important than being clear—exactly as Elizabeth preferred.
“Jane, who in the neighborhood do you suppose described me to Lady Sophia? Someone has been watching us and reporting to this distant relation of Papa’s.”
“You are determined to find fault with this gracious gift,” Jane chided gently, “rather than take pleasure in the fact that a lady of the highest circles has decided to make you her sole beneficiary.”
“I shall not order carriages and crimson silks before I know all the details.”
“I agree, and yet she invites all of us to come to her in London,” said Jane. “Wouldn’t your investigations proceed better from there?”
“And I intend to go. You too, if you will,” Elizabeth said. “Surely, a lady of her quality would not jest about something this serious, and even if it were all to be for naught, at least we would have had a grand adventure.”
“What about Darcy’s role in all of this?” Jane asked. “Being her trustee, would you be required to…”
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened on Jane’s forearm. She shook her head with a vehemence that made her loose curls lash her cheeks. “I will not have that man making financial decisions on my behalf as though I were a child who cannot be trusted with her pin money. I shall learn from Uncle Gardiner, if he is willing. And I will meet Lady Sophia and understand why she chose me on the basis of being the cleverest person in Hertfordshire.”
“I see, you are insulted that she did not call you the cleverest in all of fair England!” Jane chortled as she opened the door to share the good news.
The news had indeed been received and rejoiced upon.
Three trunks stood open in the hallway, and Mrs. Bennet, pink with triumph and perspiration, presided over the serious business of packing. Lydia loudly listed all the accessories she would require as a proper lady in London, and Kitty ran back and forth, showing her fashion plates and dreamily twirling imagined silks and feathers. Mary accompanied the bustle with a misfingered Haydn, her two hands not quite cooperating. Nettle propped herself on one of the trunk lids before extracting a length of Mamma’s best lace.
The library door was firmly closed, and Elizabeth wondered how Papa could study Lady Sophia’s documents over the Bennet bustle, louder than its usual background noise.
“Mamma,” Elizabeth said, her voice steadier than her stomach. “What are you doing?”
“Packing, Lizzy! We leave as soon as the carriages can be arranged. Hill, mind the lace—that is Belgian, and I will not have it crushed.”
“No one has decided?—”
“Lady Sophia has invited the entire family, and I will not hear a single word of argument from anyone, least of all your father, who has been hiding in his library drinking port while his daughters’ futures hang in the balance. Oh my, Hill! Hill! The dog has gotten my lace!”
Elizabeth slid to the library door while her mother chased Nettle for the purloined prize. She knocked with the distinct pattern of their private signal, and her father opened it just wide enough for her and Jane to slip through before closing it firmly against the tumult outside.
“Ah, Lizzy, Jane, my dear daughters.” Mr. Bennet removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. The documents were spread across the desk, and the port was in evidence. “Your mother commenced packing eight minutes after you went upstairs. I timed it from the first thump.”
“Papa—”
“Sit down.” He gestured to the chair reserved for serious conversations. It had been last occupied when she confessed to refusing Mr. Collins. “I have been reading these documents with some care, and I have questions I suspect you share.”
