Page 56 of Elizabeth Bennet and the Scottish Laird

"Sit down, Bingley." Darcy broke the seal. "You had better hear this."

He read the first document aloud from Grant. It was an affidavit, sworn and witnessed—the testimony of one Reverend Alistair Campbell, minister of the parish of Kilmuir on the Isle of Skye these three and forty years.

"I, Alistair Campbell," Darcy read, "do solemnly attest and declare the following to be true in every particular. I baptised Malcolm Coinneach MacKinnon, son of Alasdair MacKinnon of Strathaird, on the fifteenth day of March in the year of our Lord 1785. The child possessed the dark eyes and fair hair characteristic of the MacKinnon line, a trait remarked upon by his mother at the christening and noted in the parish register as was my custom. He retained his close resemblance to his father throughout his childhood."

"McKinnon’s eyes are not dark,” Darcy commented and read on. "I further attest that the child christened Hamish Seumas McLeod, son of Dougal McLeod, factor to the MacKinnon estate, was known to me from infancy. The McLeod boy possessed eyes of grey-green, quite distinct from the MacKinnon colouring—a difference I noted when the two lads stood side by side at catechism. I am prepared to swear these statements before any court of law."

The silence that followed was complete.

"Good God," Bingley said at last. "You are telling me the man at Longbourn is not MacKinnon at all. He is—the factor's son. A servant's child."

"I am telling you what a minister of three and forty years' standing is prepared to swear to." Darcy set the affidavit down and took up the letter beneath it. "My solicitor writes that the original parish register was lost to a fire, but that Reverend Campbell kept faithful copies in his own hand. The impostor cannot have known it. He believed the record destroyed." He scanned the page. "The roads north were nearly impassable with the early snows. We are fortunate the minister's messenger got through at all."

"Then it is certain." Bingley sank back into his chair. "There is no possibility of error?"

"None that I can find, and God knows I have looked for one." Darcy hesitated, then drew out the remaining papers—the ones he had read a dozen times and could not reconcile. "There is more, Bingley. And it does not sit as simply as I should like."

"More?"

"Grant uncovered a good deal about the man himself." Darcy turned the pages slowly. "A solicitor in Edinburgh writes that 'Mr Malcolm MacKinnon' established a fund in 1807—quietly, under a pledge of anonymity—to assist the families displaced when Strathaird was cleared. It has operated these eight years. More than sixty families have had relief from it." He set down one page, took up another. "When former MacKinnon tenants faced eviction again from their new holdings near Inverness, the same man intervened. Negotiated for months. In the end he purchased the land outright, so they might settle and farm without fear of being turned out a second time."

Bingley was staring at him. "That is not the conduct of a common swindler."

"No. It is not." Darcy's voice was low. "The report goes further. This McLeod watched his own father hanged—a makeshift gibbet, soldiers enforcing the clearance. His mother died of cold and hunger in the winter that came after, when the turned-out families walked the roads with nowhere to shelter and no one who would take them in. He survived by taking a dead man's name and a dead man's inheritance." He folded the pages. "And he has used that stolen name, in part, to shield others from precisely what destroyed him."

"Then how in heaven are we to—" Bingley broke off, pressing his hands to his face. "He is a fraud. And he is not. He has wronged Miss Elizabeth's family beyond repair, and he has saved others. I do not know what to feel."

"Nor do I," Darcy said quietly. "But whatever he has suffered, and whatever good he has done, it does not alter Miss Elizabeth's danger. That is the one thing that cannot wait upon our sympathy."

He rang for the butler and sent for his solicitor, Mr Hartley. The man presented himself within a half an hour. Darcy filled him in on the latest developments and passed him the letter, while Bingley looked on.

“Well?” Darcy asked when he was done. “Will this evidence serve to expose the fraud?"

"More than serve, sir." Hartley folded his hands. "It is as complete a case as I have seen."

"And the consequences? For Miss Elizabeth, should she marry him in ignorance?"

"Severe." Hartley's expression did not lighten. "If this man is not Malcolm MacKinnon, he has no legal claim to any property he professes to hold. The Scottish estates would revert to whatever legitimate heir can be traced. More pressing for the young lady: any marriage settlement made upon her could be set aside entirely, having been contracted under false pretences by a party with no standing to make it. She would find herself wed to a man with no lawful name, no lawful property, and no power to provide for her or any child she might bear."

"And Longbourn?" Bingley asked.

"Longbourn passes to the next legitimate heir under the original entail regardless of when the truth emerges." Hartley turned to him. "Should the deception surface after the marriage, any children of the union would face disputed claims, their father's right resting on an identity not his own. This Mr Collins, or a genuine MacKinnon heir, might carry the matter into Chancery for years. Whatever the family possesses would be swallowed by the litigation." He paused. "I will say, sir, that Miss Elizabeth herself might face whispers of complicity—though I do not for one moment credit that she knows anything of the imposture."

"She knows nothing," Darcy said sharply. "Of that I am certain."

"Then she must be told," said Hartley, "before she is bound to him past undoing."

"She will be." Darcy rose and moved to the fire. "One thing further, Hartley. Should the Bennet family ever ask how the truth came to light, my name is not to be spoken in connexion with it. I will have no credit in this. I wish only that she be protected."

"I understand you perfectly, sir. Your part shall remain entirely confidential." Hartley gathered the papers, bowed to them both, and withdrew to seek what rest the hour allowed.

When the door had closed, Bingley regarded his friend for a long moment.

"You love her," he said. "You need not say it. I have watched you these three days."

"It matters nothing," Darcy said. "You heard her silence at the pond as clearly as I told it. Whatever I have done here, I have not done to win her. I have done it because she is in danger, and I am able to prevent it. That is all." He met Bingley's eyes. "Which is why it must be you who goes to her. If the warning comes from me, she will suspect my motives, and rightly. To you—an old friend of the family, with no interest to serve—she will listen. Will you do it?"

Bingley did not hesitate. "You know I will. And I shall breathe no word of your part in it. But Darcy—" He stopped, and something shifted in his face. "You are asking me to go to Longbourn."