The Plight of the Darcy Brothers (7 page)

“I do not know,” was her honest answer as she embraced him.

“I suppose,” he said, after trying to regain his composure again, this time in a different way, “that Mr. Bingley will take her in for the rest of her term and shelter us all, for a time, from the scandal. That may be enough time to marry off Kitty, or perhaps something else will come up. I find myself without an answer to our question. But now—I must discuss it with my sons-in-law, and I must be the properly angry father again. So, please, give me a moment and send them in, will you, darling?”

“Of course, Papa.” She kissed him on his forehead and left the room. She needed a moment herself, before she could face the waiting crowd in the next room.

“I'm quite well now,” Mr. Bennet announced as his two
sons-in-law and the physician entered the room. He shooed Maddox's attentions away, though he clearly was calmer now, if still not considerably angry. “This is a situation with only one obvious remedy.”

There was a long silence.

“I'm very sorry, but I can't go,” Maddox announced.

“Daniel,” Bingley said, “You had never even met Mary until this day. You can hardly be expected—”

“But I am the only one here beyond Mr. Bennet with a proficiency in Italian, and I spent a month of my life in Rome itself. So I would be the most logical choice, and Caroline would love to see France. But she cannot travel… right now.”

“I don't see—,” Darcy said, and then stopped. “Were you ever going to tell us?”

“I left that up to her. After all, she has to do most of the work.”

“My sister. With child.” Bingley was stupefied. “I don't know whether to throttle you or shake your hand, Doctor.”

“They
are
married, Bingley,” Darcy reminded him. “Out of curiosity, when does her confinement begin?”

“In four months.”

“In four…” Bingley had to sit down. “You bastard. You didn't tell us.”

“I told you—I left it up to her, and you know how she likes grand announcements. The only reason I tell you now is out of necessity.”

“So we will have two confinements at once,” Mr. Bennet said, his mood not lifted. “Congratulations, Doctor. Under different circumstances, I would be more generous in my compliments, but it seems I must go to Italy now.”

“Mr. Bennet, with all due respect, you know you cannot,” Darcy said.

“I am not dead yet, Mr. Darcy! Despite arrangements being made otherwise.”

Darcy turned to Maddox. “Please tell Mr. Bennet he cannot go.”

“I am not sick!” Mr. Bennet shouted, nearly deafening them all from the shock. They had never heard him shout before or raise his voice, even when he was being stern.

After an appropriate silence, Maddox ventured, “With respect, Mr. Bennet, I would not advise such a journey.”

“I do not recall asking you!”

“I cannot go,” Bingley said. “For… obvious reasons. I can hardly leave Jane with three small children.”

“Of course,” Darcy said, “I will be going.” He made the statement as if his journey was an already known fact that they had merely overlooked.

“Mr. Darcy!” Mr. Bennet said indignantly.

“Darcy, I have to inquire how your languages are,” Bingley said.

“My French is inexcusably abominable, and my Italian is nonexistent, but that's what a translator is for, and I'm sure there's at least one in the entire Continent for hire. Besides, I am clearly the only one available. Geoffrey is old enough to be on his own for a few months, and Elizabeth has never had the pleasure of seeing the Continent. So it is decided.”

“It is hardly decided!” Mr. Bennet said. “I have decided on nothing. It seems all the decisions are being made without me, and this is
my
daughter, Mr. Darcy, not yours.”

Darcy motioned to the others for privacy. He then sat down
next to the infuriated Mr. Bennet, who seemed to be calming down as the room became quieter and he was able to digest all of the information they had thrown at him.

“I will confess something to you, Mr. Bennet, if you would hear it.”

“Is it about my grandchildren being blue?”

“Well, there is that, but this is more pertinent. One of the reasons I am making the offer of this considerable journey is for Elizabeth's sake. I think it would be good for her to get out after…” Even after these months, he could not bring himself to say it, and Mr. Bennet laid a hand on his.

“I had not even considered. You show a great deal of concern for Lizzy, Darcy. You have always impressed me with that. I admit that perhaps my gallivanting across the Continent would not be ideal to my health. But I still cannot ask this of you.”

“You do not have to ask.”

Mr. Bennet sighed. He seemed to be coming to his senses, his fury exhausted, and now was sinking into a depression. “Is there any way I can repay you for all you have done for my family, Mr. Darcy?”

“Yes,” Darcy said, rising to leave and tell the others the news. “You can do me the favor of marrying your remaining daughter off without my help.”

PREPARATIONS BEGAN IMMEDIATELY FOR the Darcys' departure. Time was of the essence, as they might need two months to find Mr. Mastai and then even more time to either drag him back to England (unlikely) or to send a letter with the news of finding him and await its response. All in all, the Darcys imagined that they could be gone for several months, back hopefully in time for the births, which would probably be within weeks of each other.

“I will be honest with you,” Darcy said to his father-in-law. “The best we can hope for is a considerable settlement, if his family is so inclined. If he is already a priest, the discussion will be even more complicated.”

“That I have already realized,” Mr. Bennet said. “Whether you wish to tell Lizzy this or not is at your own discretion. I have no intention of telling anyone else the expected outcome.”

So it was decided. Elizabeth loathed to be separated from Geoffrey, who obviously could not travel with them without slowing them down considerably. Darcy assured her that, at two, Geoffrey was quite old enough to be on his own for a bit, and
that their absence might even do him some good. “We do have a general tendency to spoil him.”

“And you think Bingley will not?”

Darcy only smiled at her from behind his desk, where he was gathering the papers he thought he would need.

“You don't think there's any chance of having Mr. Mastai return to England with us, do you?” she said.

“No,” he answered. “I will not encourage unreasonable expectations. If we can even locate him in time, he will probably either have taken vows or be so intent on taking them that our best hope is a settlement.”

“He did offer her something in France.”

“I imagine now that he is faced with her family, perhaps even willing to throttle his collared neck, he will offer more,” he said. “How much, I have no idea. The point is, we will not let this injustice pass by.”

Elizabeth seemed satisfied by this answer and left him for the moment to return to her own packing. Darcy had no further intrusions until there was a knock on the open door. “Come.”

It was Mrs. Reynolds, not an unexpected face in the hurry of packing, as the Master and Mistress of Pemberley were to go on a long and unexpected journey. “Mr. Darcy.”

“Mrs. Reynolds.”

“I seem to recall—it's been some time since you've been to the Continent.”

“Yes,” he said. “I went only once, after college and before my father's death. I was not particularly enamored of it. Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering—do you intend to stop at the mansion in Valognes?”

“The Hôtel des Capuchins?” Generations back, it had been the old d'Arcy estate, or so the history went, and had been held by very distant relatives of his until the Revolution, when they fled their home. Now an imported English family owned the mansion and ran it as a hotel. The head of the family was a military officer who had taken a liking to the mansion while stationed there to fight Napoleon. Darcy had stayed there for a few days in their company during his journey to the Continent, and the family held him in esteem.

“I suppose we would shelter there for a night or two,” he replied. “I admit to not having a formal itinerary at the moment, but if Valognes is on the way, then yes.” He thought about it. “Why do you ask?”

“Well—it's probably nothing, Sir, but I do recall your father mentioning to senior Mr. Wickham that he had some financial papers there of some import. They may have been burned in the Revolution… I don't know. I was just askin' if you know anything about them.”

Darcy stopped his work for a second and looked up at her. “No. I mean, yes, there are piles and piles of old papers there going back centuries, because the mansion itself was not burned when my relatives fled. But I did not peruse them while I was there, nor was I told to do so by my father.” But come to think of it, that had been before his father's illness and death, and young Master Fitzwilliam had been given a year to explore and have fun before settling down to the serious matters of learning to be the real Master of Pemberley and Derbyshire. His father might not have mentioned the need to view the financial papers, or Darcy might have simply forgotten about it and so had his father. “I suppose, if there is time, I will look into it. Thank you, Mrs. Reynolds.”

She curtseyed and let herself out. It was not until he was returned to his sorting that the oddity of the conversation descended on him.

“I don't understand,” Elizabeth said later that night in their bedchamber—or, properly,
her
bedchamber. “Why do you find that so odd?”

“Despite being the housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds is not involved in the financials of Pemberley,” he explained. “Her knowledge extends to a certain idea of how much the servants beneath her in the house are paid. At times, I have asked her advice in deciding on the salary of a new employee, as she is given the task of choosing certain ones herself, but I always make the final decision and do not always tell her.

“The only way she would even know about these financial papers in France is if she happened upon a conversation between my father and his steward, or if my father specifically told her for some reason that I cannot imagine. More to the point, Mrs. Reynolds has never, in my life, approached me about anything pertaining to my family's personal finances. About hiring and firing hands, yes. But my father's personal accounts?” He shook his head. “It was just an odd thing for her to do.”

“Are you saying there may be more to it?”

He smiled. “You are always a step ahead of me.”

“In some countries, wives walk two steps behind their husbands, I think.”

“Thank God, then, that we are not in one of those countries.”

He climbed into bed with her, still temporarily dressed.

“Do you think it will be all right with Geoffrey? To leave him now?”

“We will not be gone so terribly long,” he assured. “And he is certainly old enough. Who knows? It may do him some good.”

“Are you implying something is wrong with our son?”

“It could hardly be from my side.”

“I thought we had established that it was.” She kissed him on the head. “Colonel Fitzwilliam implied that Geoffrey's behavior was not, in fact, from the Bennet lineage, and that you were quite the savage in your days as a child.”