Page 87

“Father played on her sympathies mercilessly, and convinced her to have a child that could be passed off as the heir to Longbourn before Mr Collins died, because the next distant heir to Longbourn was actually Mr Wickham. He wanted her to produce a male child—any male child—before ten months after Collins death, who would be the legal heir.”

I do not love analogies as much as Lydia, but I would have to say I could have smashed a hornet’s nest in the middle of the room and gotten less reaction. Lizzy turned absolutely pale, and I felt bad about exposing her, but she would get over it. The rest went barking mad and started talking at once, competing for the loudest voice.

Lydia eventually prevailed, so angry I could see the telltale vein pulsing in the side of her neck. She turned to Lizzy. “Is this true?”

Lizzy nodded and in barely a whisper said, “It was the only way to save you… and to save myself. Yes, I agreed to it and planned to keep the agreement right up until I no longer could.”

Mary, ever the analytical member of our little family spoke up.

“It makes sense, given what you knew and what you had available at the time. It actually had a reasonably good chance of success, and had you succeeded, it would have improved all our situations considerably. Perhaps in a week I might think of another way, but I certainly cannot now.”

She took her turn with Lizzy’s hands. “It was bravely done, Lizzy! Very bravely! Does Fitzwilliam know about this?”

Mary was always faster than the rest of us, and got to the heart of the matter almost instantly, but in that case, she was well off the mark.

Lizzy’s embarrassment disappeared to be replaced by fiery temper. “Do you honestly believe I would marry a man and keep such a secret from him?”

Mary was not one to be intimidated. “Of course not! I just wanted to hear you acknowledge it!”

Lizzy looked lost in her memories. “Fitzwilliam accidentally overheard me make the bargain. We had the discussion in the exact spot we spent yesterday, since I would not let Bennet into the house. He knows! He has known all this time.”

She stared around at the sisters, and whispered, “He knows everything. Every little secret. Every bit of shame or remorse or violence, and yet he still loves me.”

The sisters all started at the word ‘violence’, and Lizzy explained in some gruesome detail exactly what Fitzwilliam knew she had done, and then they just stared at her in awe. Perhaps she shared more with our mother than you might think.

Finally, she stared into herself in reflection. “All this he knows, and still he loves me!”

She looked around at all of the sisters. “He loves you too. He took you under his wing for me, but he loves you for what you have become to him completely independent of me. The same is true of Aunt Catherine. I suspect my mother seeing to the two worst men we know only sped up the inevitable.”

Mary seemed satisfied she understood that particular debacle and turned to me.

“Pray continue, Jane!”

I blew at a deep breath.

“While father was over making that bargain—” Had it not been unladylike to spit on the floor after that word, I would have done so. “—I had a conversation with our mother. It was the very first time I used what you like to call my ‘commanding tone’, the very first time I found that particular voice, the very first time I well and truly understood what the infamous Bennet fiery temper can encompass.”

I stared around to see their reaction.

“I used it all mercilessly. For the first time in my life, I actually wished physical harm on someone. Mother told me what she had done, which we had all suspected but never confirmed. She also told me what she suspected was happening in Hunsford. She had some vague idea of what our father would propose, though he never brought her into his confidence and she was only guessing. It is fortunate there were no ready weapons in the house of the time, because I may very well have killed her.”

All my sisters sat stunned, trying to imagine the conversation that they had missed, and also, I suppose, trying to work out how I kept it from them all that time.

“When Father returned, I dragged the details out of him with words I will not repeat in polite company, or any company. It was worse than my conversation with Mother.”

Their heads were no doubt spinning in circles, while I was getting as angry as Lydia just from the memory. They all stared in rapt attention.

I took Lizzy’s hands in mine and squeezed them as reassuringly as I could before whispering, “He threatened Lizzy with the only thing she truly feared! He threatened her with our welfare. He said he would marry the rest of us off to husbands of his choosing before he allowed his family to come under the power of Mr Wickham!”

Lydia was back ready to kill someone, starting with the first of our parents that stumbled into her view, but I stared at her until she calmed down before she said anything she could not take back.

Lizzy said, “Calm down, Lydia. I offered him a choice, one of which included me killing him where he stood. He has received a set-down you cannot possibly imagine, far worse than anything Jane thinks she may have said. If he is ill, there was a good chance I could have killed him with my words alone. Please let it rest. Retribution is not yours. His reckoning will come soon enough.”

I continued before the two of them might say any more, and I did not want to know any more about what Lizzy had said to our father. What I already knew was bad enough.

“I was not about to be a party to any such thing. I forced Father to send all of us to Kent instead of just me as he had agreed, by threatening to expose the entire mess. I told him if a single Bennet sister was still in Longbourn by the end of the week, I would tell every gossip in Meryton the story myself.”

Now my sisters stared in stunned disbelief, none of them capable of saying a single word. Such a threat was so far beyond what they thought me capable of that they had no idea how to react.