Page 64 of Bitten By Mr. Darcy
“Can I not?” said Mr. Darcy. He mused over it. “Perhaps it would seem odd if I did, though we are family now.”
“What about my other sisters?” said Elizabeth.
“Do you wish me to find dowries for each of them?” said Mr. Darcy.
“No, I would not think to ask such a thing!” Elizabeth was adamant. “Why, the colonel is always worried about your using Darcy resources when they all belong to Georgiana—”
“I should use my own money, obviously.” Mr. Darcy was affronted.
“Your own money,” Elizabeth repeated. “Yes, you’ve had time to amass your own fortune and would not need the Darcy fortune. Quite obviously, that is true. You’ve been alive over a thousand years, have you not?”
“What?” said Jane.
Mr. Darcy glared at her. “Dowries for all of them, then.”
Elizabeth’s lips parted. “You… I cannot… that is too much.”
“I don’t think you have any idea how much money I have, Lizzy,” said Mr. Darcy.
Elizabeth swallowed very hard.
“We must come up with some other place where the money has come from, of course,” Mr. Darcy mused. “We could say that it was an inheritance from some relative or other, and we shall charm everyone in the family to tell the tale without question.”
“What is all this charming about?” said Jane, frustrated.
“Miss Bennet,” said Mr. Darcy. “With me?”
Jane looked at him.
“Yes, here with me, in my eyes,” he said. “You will go after whatever gratification you desire, so long as it does not harm you or others. You will believe that you can have what you want, that you can be satisfied.”
Jane felt something unraveling in her, something deep down, something that had been knotted up for far too long.
She let out a breath, and it was as if she could breathe for the first time in a very long time.
ELIZABETH HADN’T REALIZEDhow much she missed her sister.
They spent a week together, always in each other’s company, talking and playing games together during the day, spending each evening with Mr. Darcy, and Jane was cheerful again, back to her old self.
Mr. Darcy went without her to Hertfordshire one evening to charm her family into this news about the inheritance. Then, two days hence, they received a letter from their mother, informing them of it. The inheritance stipulated that it must be used for the girls’ dowries, she said, but the amount was staggering. They would all be able to marry very well, her mother wrote, and that she was insistent that Mr. Bennet take them all to London this instant. Though their father hated London, he was considering doing so.
There was a time when Elizabeth would have been wary of her husband’s incredible generosity, but now she knew the man too well to ascribe any ulterior motives to such a thing. He wanted her happiness, first and foremost, whether her choices made him happy or not. She was grateful to have met Mr. Darcy, even if he was a blood-sucking fiend, she thought with a little wry smile.
There was a ball at the end of the week that they all attended—Elizabeth, Jane, and Mr. Darcy.
Everyone knew of Jane’s fortune somehow. Elizabeth wondered if the news had spread because of her mother’s inability to keep her mouth shut about anything at all, or if Mr. Darcy had done something to spread the rumors himself.
At any rate, Jane was the belle of the ball. Her dance card filled up immediately. Positively everyone wished to dance with her. The next day, they had all sorts of callers in the afternoon, and the day following that as well.
At first, it seemed the callers had arrived at the Darcy town house, where everyone assumed that Mr. Darcy resided. They were redirected to the house where Mr. Darcy actually lived by the servants at the Darcy house.
Elizabeth worried that this would raise suspicions about Mr. Darcy not living where he was meant to live. Could it be easy to discover her husband’s vampirism? But her husband told her it was likely no trouble at all, and that the callers were only temporary. Once Jane was married off, no one would remember this address at all.
Indeed, by the third day, the suitors began to dwindle. That was the day that Colonel Fitzwilliam came.
He did not bring documents for Mr. Darcy or anything of that nature. He came in while two other men were there to speak to Jane and he sat down with Elizabeth and eyed them. “Your sister is quite sought after.”
“Well,” said Elizabeth, “she is beauty and sweetness personified.”
