Page 83 of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Exile

“Well?” Mama asked before they had even stripped off their coats. “Are you engaged?”

Elizabeth took a deep breath and smiled. “Not as yet, Mama.” She set down her gloves.

There was no gentle way to say it, and she had given up somewhere on the road home trying to find one. “There is something you must all hear, and you had as well hear it from me.” She waited until she had them—her mother; Mary in the doorway with her book; Kitty and Lydia hanging over the banister. “The gentleman you have known these weeks as Mr. Robinson, Papa’s secretary…is actually Fitzwilliam Darcy. He is the man I have been promised to since I was a girl. He came to Longbourn under a borrowed name, and I did not know it any better than you did until the will was read.”

For a moment, no one spoke at all.

“The secretary,” Lydia said from the stairs. “Our Mr. Robinson is Mr. Darcy of Pemberley?”

“He is.”

Mary set down her book. Mama, who had scolded her husband’s secretary for leaving damp footprints on her clean floors and once sent him to the village in the rain, had gone quite white. “I offered that man cold mutton,” she said faintly.

It was then that Jane came down. She had heard enough from the landing to arrive with her composure already slipping, and she stopped on the last stair with one hand on the rail. “You cannot mean it. Mr. Robinson. You are certain?”

“Quite certain.”

Jane said nothing more. But Elizabeth watched the whole of the last weeks rearrange itself behind her sister’s haunted eyes—every warning pressed upon her, every reminder that a secretary was beneath her, every assurance that the Darcy name would be their salvation. The man Jane had forbidden her to love and the man Jane had insisted she must marry were, and had always been, one and the same. Color climbed into Jane’s cheeks and down her neck. She did not apologize; she was not yet a woman who could apologize for a pride she had believed was prudence. But she came down the last stair and stood beside her sister, which, for Jane, was a great deal.

The silence that followed was like the calm before the storm.

And then it broke. Whatever wonder the news had struck into her mother lasted precisely as long as Mama’s wonder ever lasted, and gave way to the older, louder grievance beneath it.

“Not as yet,” she mother repeated with dramatic emphasis. “You went all the way to Pemberley…”

“Mama—”

“… after all these years we have waited and lived for this arrangement, and you are not engaged.” She flung a hand toward the door, toward the whole of Hertfordshire, toward the absent man himself. “The master of Pemberley beneath this very roof, mending your father’s ledgers and chopping our wood and making sheep’s eyes at you in a manner every girl dreams of, and you left without a promise? Have you taken leave of your senses entirely?”

“The situation is more complicated than we anticipated. I need time to consider.”

Mama turned to her husband with a fierce expression that made him wilt. “This,” she said, “is your doing.”

Papa, who had been attempting to achieve invisibility in the general vicinity of his study door, paused. Sighing in resignation, he turned away from his room and faced his wife with an admirable display of determination. “Lizzy possesses a strong will and an intelligent mind. She will make the best choice for her future without my intervention.”

“Without your intervention, you say? When, Thomas Bennet, have you ever intervened on behalf of your family? Tell me that! Any education our girls have received has been my doing, and that only with the help of Lizzy and Mr. Darcy, may he rest in peace. What have you done but sit in your beloved room and read books?”

He stiffened, brows bunched in displeasure. “I taught her estate management, and I did a fine job of it, if the success of Longbourn is an indication.”

“You speak of the success of Longbourn when we have a shell of a house, empty fields with no money to plant or laborers to work?”

“Before the debt, of course! Be sensible, Mrs. Bennet! Lizzy has increased the estate’s profit considerably from year to year, and I have no doubt that, with her help, Longbourn will prosper again.”

“And how does that help us now, Mr. Bennet? You have a room full of books, but your daughters will not get new gowns this year, nor do they have money for ribbons.”

“Perhaps they would not be so destitute had you not taken it as your mission to spend every penny of your pin money each month!”

A collective gasp. Followed by silence. Elizabeth could not recall ever hearing her parents quarrel like this.

Mother was up to the challenge. “How dare you!” She drew herself up, several inches shorter than Papa but taller in every other respect. “I have managed this household and kept our five daughters presentable on a budget that would make Lady Lucas weep, and I have done it with a husband who considers a quiet afternoon more important than his family's future.” She pointed at him—a single, decisive finger. “You will not speak to me about spending.” So still was their audience, not even Lydia fidgeted. Papa opened his mouth, and then, wisely, closed it again. “Furthermore,” Mama said, apparently recognizing the advantage of her momentum and resolving not to waste it, “everything we have of any value in this house is thanks to Elizabeth. Not to you, Mr. Bennet. To your daughter! And you are content to allow her to squander her future without any guidance from you so long as she fixes the mess you have made here at Longbourn.”

To his credit, Papa did not argue, but the heightened color of his skin made it plain to see his indignation. To Elizabeth’s surprise, he spun about, flung his door open, and marched inside his study. “Maddening woman! Always must have the last word. How can a man have any peace⁠—”

Mama chased after him, finger extended. “Do not say that odious word in this house!” At that, she lifted a book from his desk and hurled it at him. Her aim was not sound. Pages ruffling, it smacked against the bookshelf behind him, landing with an unceremonious thud on the floor. She reached for another.

He grabbed the cushion on his chair, holding it up like a shield in front of his head just as the second book went flying. But just as the book would have hit the cushion, Papa dropped it, still half turned, his gaze fixed on his favorite chair, to take the brunt of the impact on his ear. The book fell to the ground, and Papa did not react. He stood still, a grin spreading over his mouth.

Mama paused mid-reach for a third book.