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William Collins was contemplating taking the step of making contact with his Bennet cousins. He was well aware that since the days of his father’s and the current master of Longbourn, Thomas Bennet’s, common great-great-grandfather, Henry Bennet, there had been a break in the family thanks to the late Henry Bennet’s improper pride in his reaction to his third son taking the Collins name.

Before he began to write to his cousin, William replayed a conversation he had with Father a day before he and Mother had departed the parsonage.

That evening, when Mother had taken herself to bed, father and son sat with glasses of port in the rear parlour. William had wanted to seek his father’s advice beyond what they had previously discussed regarding Longbourn and now seemed as good a time as any. “Father, you mentioned that you had men go to Meryton and find out what they could about our cousins and the estate, did you not?” he had asked.

“Yes, Son, I did. With the clauses in the entail, I felt it prudent once it was certain that our cousin’s wife would not be able to deliver a son,” Father had responded.

“And what, if anything, were the men able to discover?”

“Longbourn should earn more than six thousand pounds per annum,” Father had reported. “Thomas Bennet is indolent in the extreme and prefers to hide away in his study and waits for problems to come to him rather than anticipating the needs of his estate and tenants. Due to his lackadaisical attitude, he has lost eight of the eighteen tenants. Because of this, the income is at or below three thousand pounds now. In fact, the men discovered that his second daughter, I believe her name is Elizabeth, manages the estate more than her father does.

“The wife, Frances, called Fanny, was not gently born, and our cousin makes sport of her rather than teaching her the duties of an estate’s mistress. Like many who were not born to estates, she thinks that being a mistress does not go beyond being a hostess. Hence, she refuses to lower herself to visit the tenants. Thankfully, that is done by the three eldest girls. The eldest is Jane and the middle daughter is Mary.

“The reports I was given state that the youngest two, Catherine and Lydia, are vapid, silly flirts who will ruin the family if not checked. Like he does with his wife, our cousin laughs at the youngest and calls them silly but does nothing to check them.”

“I hope at the very least our Cousin Bennet has been putting something away for his daughters so they will have dowries,” William had stated.

“It seems that our cousin has not bothered himself to save for his wife’s or his daughters’ futures after he goes to his final reward. What makes this worse is his brother-in-law is none other than Edward Gardiner, the same man with whom I invest. Your legacy which began as fifteen thousand pounds when you were born is with him. Yes, the one who was here to assist Miss de Bourgh in selling all the baubles and tasteless furniture her mother collected. Instead, Thomas does not hold his wife, who is a spendthrift, to a budget, and he indulges himself in purchasing books and port.”

“Based on what you have told me, both Mr Bennet and his wife are rather selfish.” William had paused. “How would you approach him?”

“My men reported that he likes to think himself superior to everyone, even his second daughter, who is supposed to be very intelligent. Hence, unless you make him think that he will be amused by you and you are not very intelligent, I do not think he will respond,” Father had opined.

“I can arrive without an invitation to insist that the terms of the entail are being followed without playing the fool for him.”

“Yes, you can do that, Son, but that will make things very adversarial, and you will have a hard time garnering any cooperation from my cousin. It will be good when one of our line steps back onto Longbourn’s land after the many years there has been a schism in the family due to my great-great-grandfather Bennet’s pride.”

“Then, I will do what I have to do,” William had decided.

William remembered they had gone on to speak of other subjects before they had both retired.

He needed to write a letter to Thomas Bennet giving him the impression that he was much like he had been when he had met with Lady Catherine. He sat down at his desk, the window behind him, and began to write.

~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~

Hertfordshire, November 1811

Fitzwilliam Darcy felt relief as soon as he saw the back of Bingley’s coach as it trundled down the drive bearing the two eldest Bennet sisters away from Netherfield Park. His life would be simpler without the constant effort to assure his behaviour did not raise the expectations of Miss Elizabeth Bennet!

After all the years he had been in society, he had not found one woman who excited interest in him. But here, far away from the Ton, that he would become infatuated with a country miss, the daughter of an insignificant country squire, was unacceptable. She had no fortune and her primary connections were to trade. She was an inappropriate woman to attract the attention of a Darcy of Pemberley.

No matter how fine Miss Elizabeth’s emerald-green eyes were, and they were the most beautiful eyes he had seen, it did not change the facts. Regardless of how light and pleasing her figure was, with her curves in all the right places. No matter the fact that she was rather beautiful—something he had missed that night at the assembly—she could never be more than the mild flirtation he had enjoyed so far. Darcy was aware how much he enjoyed sparring with her when they debated while she had been at Bingley’s estate. She had never once deferred to him and always argued her point cogently with logic. He had been impressed by the love and caring she displayed for her older sister by walking three miles through the mud to care for her. Unlike the cloying Miss Bingley, he thought that the exercise had only enhanced her beauty.

For the last two days she had been resident at Netherfield Park, Darcy had withdrawn and not spoken to Miss Elizabeth other than a brief greeting here or there. When they had sat in the library at the same time, he had been so tempted to engage her lively mind, but he had fought against his inclinations. It was because of his concerns that he would raise expectations he would never be able to meet.

His duty was to make a brilliant match to a woman of society with connections as good or better than his own, and a large dowry to replace the thirty thousand pounds which would be paid out when Anna married.

Thinking of his sister, Georgiana, called Anna, who was twelve years his junior, made Darcy scowl. His anger was not at his sister, far from it. He held her blameless in the whole sordid Ramsgate affair. The ire was directed at that bastard Wickham, the faithless Mrs Younge, and most of all at himself.

The conversation he had had with his aunt and Richard before the Fitzwilliams had decamped to Kent to assist Anne was still fresh in his memory so many months later.

He had been so sure of his judgement that he had refused to do as his aunt suggested and verify Mrs Younge’s characters. In hindsight, he now knew those characters were all forged by none other than his nemesis, one George Wickham. As yet, he had not been able to bring himself to admit to his aunt that he was wrong.

Only his promise to Bingley had made him come to this estate. He knew he had not been very sociable, but it mattered not when all those about the place were so much lower in society than he was. Darcy ignored the fact that Mrs Hurst and Miss Bingley, being that they were the daughters of a tradesman, were in fact lower than the landed gentry in the area. Mrs Hurst, married to one who would inherit an estate one day, was higher than Miss Bingley, but she was the same as Mrs Bennet, whom the sisters loved to disparage. Anyone born into the gentry was higher than Mrs Hurst.

His thoughts returned to the most handsome woman of his acquaintance, with her emerald-green eyes shining with wit and intelligence. He was certain that now she had returned to her small estate, his infatuation with her would die a quick death.

He had forgotten that Lankford, the steward, had told them that Longbourn was considerably larger than Netherfield Park.