Page 49 of The Longbourn Bloodline

“Because he is an infuriating prig!” The words exploded from her chest. “He comes to Longbourn as the presumptuous heir. He tells my father he intends to marry me without consulting me, and then he is kind and generous, looking at me as if he sees through me. He told me, grinning, that I did not hate him, that he knew it was a farce, yet deliberately withheld a formal offer precisely to deny me the satisfaction of refusing him!”

“And you are angry about this?”

“I am bewildered by it.” Elizabeth pulled a thread from the edge of a moth-eaten shawl. “When a man behaves exactly as you expected, you can manage him. When he behaves as nobody would expect—when he gives away his inheritance and confesses his worst fault and walks out without demanding so much as a kind word—what do you do with that? How do you explain it?”

“Lizzy.” Charlotte unraveled the shawl from Elizabeth’s hands before she destroyed it. “You do not explain it. You feel it in your heart.”

“Yes, well.” Elizabeth felt her chest tighten and put her hand over it. “That is the difficulty, isn’t it? I cannot explain what I feel.”

“You do not need to. When Mr. Collins died, I did not try to explain my grief or measure it. I did not judge whether I had cried enough or whether others believed I was relieved. I knew my chances for another marriage had disappeared. A widow before her wedding night. A joke to some, and a proverb to others. But, Lizzy, you are so much more fortunate than I am. You have a man who noticed you, and you were terrified. Because you are Elizabeth Bennet, and you do not allow yourself to want things you cannot have.”

“Are you finished?” she asked when Charlotte took a breath. “Because you must not think I did not notice what I was doing. Because I did, every time I sharpened a remark or threw a dart at him. I told myself he was proud, disdainful, and yes, all those things, but also—” she stopped, and the string was cutting into her finger. “I told myself a great many things, Charlotte, and they were all very clever, and some of them were even true, and none of them were the real reason.”

“What was the real reason?”

Elizabeth unwrapped the bag and shook out a miniature, no larger than a playing card, painted on ivory and set in a plain brass frame. The portrait showed an infant—perhaps six months old—painted in the soft, round-cheeked style of the last century.

“I was afraid that I would become like Miss Bingley.”

“I beg your pardon?” Charlotte blinked. “Why would you?”

“I did not wish to be a pest who follows him from room to room. Who contrives to sit beside him, and practices accomplishments for his approval. She is so transparent in her longing that every person in the room can see it. I watched her try to hold on to a man who was not reaching for her, and it was—” She swallowed. “It was the most mortifying thing I have ever witnessed. And I thought: if I allow myself to feel this—if I allow myself to want Fitzwilliam Darcy—I will become like her. Trying to hang on to lightning.”

“Except he is the lightning that has already struck you, Lizzy.” Charlotte looked down and turned the miniature over. The writing on the back was simply labeled George. No date, no surname, nothing. Just George.

A baby with dark eyes, little hair, and strong eyebrows. Elizabeth slipped the miniature into her pocket. Had George given this to Alice as a keepsake? And had she worn it close to her heart?

“Charlotte, I think we found what we were looking for.” She gathered the items she had set aside. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Seeing through me and saying what Jane could not.”

“Jane sees you perfectly well, but she is too kind to say the uncomfortable things.” Charlotte squeezed her arm. “I have no such handicap. It is one of my few advantages.”

“Will you come for Christmas dinner?” she asked. “Jane would want you here. We all would.”

“As would I,” Charlotte replied.

Arm in arm, they made their careful descent from the attic, candles guttering. Charlotte had once reached for a future and lost it, but she had been unafraid to cast her lot with Mr. Collins and the chance to be mistress of Longbourn.

Alice, by contrast, had carried her keepsake through a lifetime, mourning a love she had never dared to claim. Elizabeth, at least, was certain of this: she would not be Alice Bennet.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

AN UNEXPECTED GIFT

Elizabeth did not particularly feel the Christmas cheer as the morning unfolded in a world of pewter and mist. While there was scant snow on the ground, the air was still and hushed, holding a promise of snow. Jane was already up and had gone downstairs. Now that she was the heir of Longbourn, she was expected to act as hostess, even though both parents were still around. Mrs. Bennet was eager to advertise Jane’s newly elevated status and had invited the Philipses and the Lucases to spend the day with them.

She did not begrudge Jane’s good fortune. Far from it, because she had the pride of knowledge that Mr. Darcy had done it for her. Four days had passed since he had ridden away, lifting his hat as he disappeared around the bend. His sister had been ill, and Elizabeth prayed that she would recover.

No letters had arrived, not that she had expected one. The only person he could properly write to would be her father—a short note that he had arrived and had found his sister well. But Elizabeth knew that he had barely arrived at Matlock, and hence there would be no note and no word from outside Hertfordshire.

“Lizzy, it is Christmas Day!” Her mother’s voice sliced up the staircase. “Do not dawdle. Put on a festive dress and a ribbon in your hair, for we have much to celebrate.”

Elizabeth took up the pink ribbon Darcy had given her and opened her improvement journal, though the only entry she longed to inscribe was a name she dared not write. That name, and the face it conjured, haunted her waking hours and those shadowed by dreams. She wove the ribbon through her curls, tucked the infant’s miniature deeper into her pocket, and descended. If only her grandmother were still here, she might have spoken of Alice. As for her father, Elizabeth doubted he would recognize the miniature, though those eyebrows—so familiar—were a resemblance she preferred not to dwell upon, yet could not ignore.

The boisterous Bennet bustle met her halfway up the stairs as Lydia came flying up in a flutter. “Mamma has invited all of Meryton to our house but none of the officers. To think of them freezing in the snow while guarding us against marauders, and not being able to refresh themselves with our cider, goose, and mince pies!”