Page 57 of May I Have the Pleasure
Elizabeth said gently, “I am not stupid, sir. I know what I am getting into. If I marry Mr Colins, I willelevatehim. Everyone who ever meets us for more than five minutes will praise him as the luckiest man alive to have won the affections of the only sensible woman in England who could tolerate him. I will be the gentlewoman whoraisedhis consequence above that of a parson andimprovedhis manner. For the rest of my life, everyone I know of any sense will understand I was the best thing that ever happened to him, and I will be respected. With you, on the other hand…”
Darcy nodded, not needing her to spell it out.
He thought a few minutes, and finally said, “I suppose you must make a leap of faith. You know what Mr Colins is, and aside from your original mission of learning about my aunt, you have a reasonable idea of how your life would proceed. With me, you have topresumethat I am better than every single interaction we have had would lead you to believe. You will have to give more credence to the past hour, with me on my best behaviour, than the six weeks we spent in company in the autumn.”
“Exactly!” she said with some finality.
They sat for some time, and then she stood up and pulled him back into motion, needing to be walking to think.
They walked on in peace and quiet for quite some distance. They had been out over an hour but had yet to cover a mile so neither was in any particular distress. Darcy was obviously thinking furiously since Elizabeth had to pull him back onto the path several times, or risk having a testy valet to deal with on their return.
In an apparent flash of brilliance, he snapped his fingers and blurted out. “What if we toss the bear some fish?”
Fishing
Elizabeth laughed at how ridiculous his poor abused analogy was faring, and said, “All right, I will bite. What do you mean?”
“We are thinking about the problem all wrong.”
“Pray, enlighten me, Mr Particular Idiot,” she said with a small light-hearted laugh, which somewhat surprised her.
“Back to the bear. I do not necessarily need to outrun Mr Colins. If I can stop the bear, we can both quit running.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning—you do not need to decidetomarry me by Saturday. You must simply decidenot tomarry Mr Colins. If we remove the distress of having to make such a big and irrevocable decision in three days, we have time to fall in love at our leisure and assure ourselves we are not condemned to repeating our parents’ mistakes.”
“How?”
“Let us get back to basics: your mother’s fear that your father will die and you will allstarve in the hedgerows.”
She grimaced. “You heard that?”
“Everyone in Lucas Lodge heard that—including Sir William’s hounds.”
Elizabeth laughed and surprisingly found herself slightly more comfortable with the man, though she was unwilling to examine exactlywhyhaving him openly slight her mother had that effect.
“Does Mrs Bennet have a jointure?”
Elizabeth was confused by the sudden jump in topic, but finally replied, “Yes, she came into the marriage with £5,000. That is the source of our pitiable dowries and most of our pin money. We each get an equal share on her death, and £50 per annum during my father’s lifetime.”
“Let us assume your father dropped dead tomorrow, and there wasnomoney saved. I have a difficult time with such a pessimistic assumption, but I suppose it is possible.”
“You would have to ask my father, but…” then she paused, and finally sighed, “…if you presume maximum indolence, you are not likely to be too far off.”
Darcy nodded and frowned. “You of course know that they will all be secure if you marry me? It would be covered in the marriage contract.”
“I assumed so, but I suppose it is good to be explicit.”
He sighed. “If you marry me, you agree to everything involved in marrying a very rich man—not all of them pleasant.”
“For example?”
“Your youngest sisters are, I hate to say, incorrigible flirts. Their behaviourmustbe curbed if we wed. It is non-negotiable.”
Elizabeth started to stammer a response, but a look at his face convinced her he was giving her a chance to work it out for herself.
She finally sighed when the answer became obvious. “They are currently mostly annoying but harmless so long as we keep them in the neighbourhood and the militia at arm’s length. However, if they have a very rich brother, they will become the target of every fortune hunter in town, and they are easy prey. They would follow Mary King’s example; except they might not have a sensible uncle take them away.”
