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Mary did not look up from her volume. “Mathematically speaking, Mamma, an equal division is the only logical course. Besides, as you have considerably fewer years remaining to you than your daughters, a larger sum would merely represent an inefficient accumulation of capital that you lack the time to properly depreciate.”
Mrs. Bennet gasped, clutching her chest anew. “Fewer years! My own daughter telling me I am halfway to the churchyard before my pelisse is even paid for! What ever happened to ‘honour thy father and mother?’”
“Fear not, Mamma. I am honoring Papa quite sufficiently by gifting him Uncle Henry’s entire collection of rare first-edition bird books—most notably the massive French folio of Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle with all one thousand of Martinet’s magnificent, hand-colored plates—and unexpurgated Greek plays, which will keep him safely buried in the library until the millennium.”
From the doorway, where he had drifted in with a pocket full of birdseed and a look of profound distraction, Mr. Bennet blinked behind his spectacles. “Did someone mention Greek plays, or is Mrs. Bennet merely having her usual Tuesday fit?”
“My fit, Mr. Bennet!” his wife shrieked. “When your daughters are dividing up the empire behind my back and treating my maternal agony like a sum in long division!”
“Mamma can have my portion,” Jane said, so quietly that only Elizabeth heard her. She sat in her usual spot on the window seat, embroidering, no doubt dreaming of Bingley. “I do not need a portion as Mr. Bingley has proposed.”
“Then you will need your portion as your dowry,” Elizabeth insisted. “Darcy’s cousin already mocked me for not providing dowries for my sisters, and I shall not allow him to have the last word.”
“He will not have it,” Charlotte said from the corner, where she had been quietly demolishing a slice of seed cake. She drew a folded letter from her reticule and laid it in Elizabeth’s lap. “The Colonel has written to apologize, Lizzy. To you, through me. He took four sheets to say what Mr. Darcy would have said in two words.”
Elizabeth wondered that the Colonel would commit the impropriety of writing to Charlotte, but she only nodded to her friend with a squint, meaning she would interrogate her at length later.
“Jane, if you don’t need your portion, I’ll take it.” Lydia perched expectantly at their elder sister’s side, in the beseeching posture of an irritable pug.
“But what about me?” Kitty wailed. “If Jane is giving away her portion—”
“Jane is giving away nothing!” Elizabeth rose from her seat. “Now, Uncle Henry has a surprise. He left it in the trunks—one for each one of us. Sorry, Mamma, but he believed you were too old to play with dolls.”
“Are these dolls made of gold?” Lydia asked, rubbing her hands. “Then I hope mine is the largest.”
Mrs. Bennet pouted, arms crossed, her lace cap trembling with sheer grievance. “They could be rag dolls for all I care. Your uncle Henry never did like me, and he’s been jealous ever since I chose your father over him at the Michaelmas Assembly of 1787.”
“Hill, if you would please?” Elizabeth gestured to a small trunk near the hearth, shipped directly from Bexley House to Longbourn.
Hill had scarcely lifted the lid before Lydia lunged. She tore open the nearest box, shrieked, and hauled out a bold brunette with glossy black ringlets, swinging hoop earrings of bright paste glass, and a gown of startling crimson silk that looked as though it had been tailored for a Covent Garden actress.
“Oh! Oh! Look at her gown—it is silk, actual silk, and she has a necklace—Mamma, she has a necklace—are these rubies? They must be rubies. Because if it isn’t, this one is an absolute cheat.”
“‘Who can find a virtuous woman?’” Mary intoned, her voice dropping into a sepulchral pulpit register. “‘For her price is far above rubies.’ A lesson, Lydia, which you would do well to memorize before you attempt to barter with paste trinkets.”
“I do not care if her heart is made of mutton tallow and her virtue is entirely theoretical,” Lydia interrupted, already attempting to pry the tiny red strand from the doll’s porcelain neck with a hairpin. “If they are rubies, they are still worth something, and I mean to have them reset into a proper bracelet before the militia returns from Brighton.”
“You cannot dismantle your gift before you have owned it a full minute!” Kitty grabbed for her own box, elbowing Mary aside in her haste. “Besides, mine may have diamonds. Move, Mary, you are standing on my hem—”
She wrenched the second box open and seized a doll with a cloud of unruly curls while inspecting the velvet hem as if checking for inferior thread. “Her bonnet is crooked, and she only has glass beads. I knew he would give the best one to Jane!”
“This one is not yours,” Elizabeth rescued the doll from Kitty’s grip. “Lydia has hers. Kitty, yours has a “C” on the box for Catherine, and Mary goes next, then Jane.”
“Why does Jane go last? Jane always gets the nicest things.”
“Jane goes last because Jane is patient, a virtue you would do well to study.”
Hill handed Kitty the box with the letter ‘C,’ and she subsided, tearing into her own box with only marginally less violence than her younger sister had displayed.
The doll that emerged had auburn waves dressed in an elaborate coiffure, tiny pearl drops at its ears, and a cream-colored gown trimmed with what appeared to be actual Valenciennes lace. Kitty’s face shifted rapidly from avarice to delight to suspicion. “Mine has pearls. Lydia, you said yours had rubies.”
“Because I am the tallest and prettiest,” Lydia screeched. “And you are boring as milk, hence the pearls.”
“I am not boring!” Kitty snapped, clawing at Lydia’s sleeve. “And I think it is abominable of Uncle Henry to distribute pearls to some and mere glass beads to others! I am profoundly cross with him, even if he is quite dead and cannot hear a word of it!”
“One presumes he would weather your displeasure admirably from his current residence,” Elizabeth said, dodging as Kitty’s elbow clipped the edge of the tea tray. “Now, it is Mary’s turn.”
Mary opened her box with deliberate care, unfolding each layer of tissue as though performing a sacred ritual. The doll within had dark plaits wound about a porcelain head, spectacles painted onto its delicate features, and a sober brown gown that put Elizabeth irresistibly in mind of a very small governess.
