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“At least you have the opportunity for marriage,” Charlotte said. “Your uncle has given Mr. Darcy an incentive. Do you not see it? Before the will was read, he never gave you a second look. Now, he has sequestered himself at Netherfield to allow you to come to your senses.”

Elizabeth felt the blade slide between her ribs as clearly as Caesar had greeted his bosom buddy, Brutus.

“You?” Elizabeth stared at her dearest friend as though Charlotte had been seized by the same madness as her mother. “How can you believe I would sell myself so?”

“Lizzy, you know I care for you,” Charlotte replied without flinching, holding Elizabeth’s gaze. “It is the only option. We do not know why your uncle chose Mr. Darcy, or why he included the marriage clause, but Mr. Darcy is not the worst man out there. He has Pemberley and ten thousand a year. He is a gentleman with an honorable reputation. He might have presented himself better, but Elizabeth, pride is not misplaced in a man who is truly of the elevated circles. I only speak thus because my father has found him respectable, and our family would be more than honored if he were to address my sister or me.”

“But, Charlotte, that is preposterous! Mr. Darcy did nothing to earn his place in my uncle’s will.”

“Neither did you.” Charlotte sat opposite, hands folded in her lap, and regarded Elizabeth with the unblinking clarity that had made her Elizabeth’s truest friend—a clarity that did not flinch or flatter. “You have three weeks. Banns must be read on three successive Sundays, so the first reading must happen this Sunday, and the rector must be spoken to by tomorrow. You have one eligible gentleman, currently residing at Netherfield, who is waiting for an answer. You have no other suitor with the means or the proximity to meet your uncle’s terms.” A pause, measured as a physician’s pulse-count. “Mr. Lefevre is in County Cork. He has neither fortune nor estate. He is my cousin, and I am fond of him, but fondness does not pay a rector’s fee.”

“I know all of this, Charlotte.” Elizabeth set down her teacup and walked to the window, pressing her fingers to the cold glass. “I am not pining for Byron. I am mourning the idea of him. The possibility of choosing my own life instead of having it chosen for me by a dead man who claimed to love me.”

Charlotte rose and stood beside her. “Then you know that your choice is not between Mr. Darcy and some better option you have not yet discovered. Your choice is between Mr. Darcy and nothing. And nothing, in this case, means Mr. Darcy receives the fortune anyway, your family receives not a farthing, and when your father dies, the entail delivers Longbourn to a cousin none of you have met.”

Elizabeth’s cup rattled against its saucer, and she set it down. “You make it sound as though I should be grateful for the cage.”

“The cage has a door, and you are the only one who can open it. From either side.”

“And if I open it? If I stand in a church beside a man who told a ballroom full of people I was not worth the trouble, who counted my dances as though I were a ledger entry, who walked out of the only set we ever shared and left Hertfordshire without a word—if I marry that man, Charlotte, what am I?”

“Practical.” Charlotte’s voice did not waver. “You are practical, your family is fed, your sisters have prospects, and your mother has a home when your father’s health fails. That is what you are.”

“And what of love? What of respect? What of choosing a life instead of being assigned one?” The fire cracked. Elizabeth stared at the flames and thought of Uncle Henry, who had sat in the Longbourn parlor and told her she was the cleverest of his acquaintance and ought never to let any man dull her wit. “Why did my uncle do this to me?”

“Those are excellent questions for a woman with options,” Charlotte said. “You have a deadline.”

CHAPTER FIVE

BANNS BEFORE BRIDEGROOMS

Elizabeth wondered whether her life was better described as a cautionary folktale or a ridiculous farce when her mother yanked her door open and pounced on her with the weight of a sow landing on a sour apple.

“Mamma! I thought you were abed with the vapors!”

Her mother’s head was still bandaged in its dramatic white linen wrap, but she was as vigorous as a fishmonger’s wife filleting the morning’s catch.

“Vapors do not pay the butcher, Lizzy, and neither do prostrate attitudes on a Turkish rug! Your father requires you in his study immediately. It seems he has received a most troubling piece of correspondence.”

“That Uncle Henry’s will was in error?” Elizabeth hazarded, swinging her legs out of bed. “And that my uncle is still alive, but merely lost at sea? Or… perhaps if I forfeit, the proceeds go to the next of kin, which would be Mary. Oh, Mamma, we must send for Uncle Philips/ There has to be some legal trapdoor we have overlooked.”

“Uncle Philips cannot overturn a will in three weeks.” Mrs. Bennet grabbed Elizabeth by the hand. “Your father wants you. He has received a most discourteous letter from a most troublesome man.”

“Mr. Darcy wrote to him?”

“Mr. Darcy! If only it were Mr. Darcy, I should have the banns up by noon.” Her mother was already towing her toward the door. “It is a Collins. A clergyman Collins, from Kent, and he writes the longest sentences I ever heard read aloud, and he means to have the house.”

“Mamma, I am in my nightgown.”

“Your nightclothes will do very well for this calamity. Come!”

Elizabeth snatched her shawl from the chair and was swept down the stairs, threading her way past a row of sisters arrayed on the landing like spectators at a hanging.

Kitty tugged at Elizabeth’s sleeve as she shoved by. “Is it true Papa received a letter? Is it about your fortune? Has Mr. Darcy refused you already?”

“I have not offered Mr. Darcy anything to refuse, Kitty.”

“But you will, won’t you? Mamma says you must. She says if you do not secure Mr. Darcy by Sunday, we shall all be thrown into the hedgerows.”