AN: Still a bit (okay, a lot) under the weather, but I did manage to get the next chapter ready for you and a start on the one after that. A double posting this Saturday and Sunday is unlikely but a single posting each day is probable. This Sunday is my mom's birthday, so my sister and I will be doing birthday things this weekend with her which will cut down on my time hunched over the keyboard trying to type around the lap cat. With any luck, Mom's brother, who is one of my base models for Richard, will be joining us. A dose of his presence will do us all good. :oD
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The dining room at the Gardiner home was arranged to make it feel a little larger than it was, even with so many guests. The table had a slightly oval shape that allowed the servants to move more easily around the ends, and it was set at a slight angle in the room that also promoted a better flow around it. It was cleverly done, and Darcy wondered if it was things like this that gave Elizabeth some of the ideas she had used to hide her hut in the spruce tree.
The meal was excellent. The quality of the food and the presentation was on a level with what he would have in his own home for a dinner party. But, of course, it was the company that was truly exceptional.
Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner demonstrated that they had been the ones to prompt an interest in current affairs in Elizabeth and her sister. Mr. Bennet may have instilled a love of reading, but this was the real source and encouragement for both women's curiosity and drive to understand the world around them.
Georgiana was not wholly ignorant of the topics canvassed. All the same, Darcy thought she and Kitty might have felt isolated if separated by the length of the table along with a conversation outside their normal interests. Mrs. Gardiner had wisely seated the two together so they could indulge in their own quiet conversation when the discussion the others shared became too much for them.
Darcy's amusement increased when the ladies retired to the sitting room leaving the three men to enjoy their port. It was time for Richard to make his request of Mr. Gardiner. Darcy doubted his cousin would have as easy a time, since Aunt Susan was not there to divert attention away from her son – not that she probably would have tried to make things easier for Richard in any case.
As he settled back into his chair after handing the younger men their port, Mr. Gardiner asked, "I am curious, Colonel Fitzwilliam, whether your strategy in battle is to wait and see what opposition other units encounter before leading your own men into the fray?'
Darcy knew immediately this question had nothing to do with Richard's military service and everything to do with Miss Bennet. He was just not sure in which direction the question led. His cousin took it as an invitation to promote himself to Mr. Gardiner.
"On the contrary, Mr. Gardiner, I firmly believe that fortune favors the bold. Of course, as a member of a military hierarchy, I must follow orders and adhere to the general strategies of those more highly ranked than myself. That said, if I see an opportunity within those constraints to seize an unanticipated victory through quick action, I will take it.
"Truly?" asked Mr. Gardiner, raising one eyebrow in a move Elizabeth must have learned from him. He said no more; he just waited for Richard to continue.
Darcy quickly took a sip of his drink. He wanted to be sure he had a chance to swallow before Mr. Gardiner sprang whatever trap he had planned for Richard. The wine was too good to waste by spewing it across the table in a sudden burst of laughter or surprise. As he drank, he watched his host's expression carefully. Darcy recognized the instant his cousin invited the trap to close around him.
"Why, yes, sir," Richard said firmly. "Behaving this way has served me well and led to more than one commendation from my commanding officers. I carry the habit over into my personal life with equally good results. That is why, when the chance presented itself to do so within the constraints of propriety, I asked your oldest niece for her hand in marriage not long after arriving at your home today. She has asked for a period of courtship first, but I will still take this opportunity to request your consent and blessing on our eventual union."
Richard obviously thought he had made his case well. Darcy knew there was a sting to come. He did not think Mr. Gardiner would deny Richard's suit, but he could tell the man planned to have some fun with him, probably the more so because Aunt Susan had prevented him from teasing Darcy much the day before. He waited for the response.
"I am having trouble reconciling your characterization of yourself with your actions, Colonel," Mr. Gardiner said solemnly, although from his own angle Darcy could see the amusement in the man's eyes.
"What do you mean?" Richard asked defensively. He was starting to see he had taken the wrong direction with his responses.
"Tell me, Colonel, when did you first realize you wished to court or marry Jane?"
"Actually, I would say it was the first afternoon I spent in her company, the day Bingley signed the marriage settlement that Darcy and I witnessed."
"I see. Love at first sight, some would say. And, of course, you met Bennet that day, saw that he was very ill and probably did not have long to live."
"Yes, Sir," Richard said, starting to suspect where this was going.
"Yet, you did not say anything to her father even though he was still alive for nearly a week after you made this decision?"
"Well, no, sir. I wanted to have a chance to talk with Miss Bennet and confirm whether she would be interested in a match with me before I disturbed the man or accidentally committed her to something she did not want. It was difficult to speak plainly to her with the two older sisters being under the control of Mrs. Bennet, who did not wish them to form any attachments."
"Interesting," said Mr. Gardiner, "and yet, that is where your characterization of your habits fails, Colonel.
"I do not see it, sir," Richard protested. "Today is the first time I have been able to spend in Miss Bennet's company since she left Longbourn and I have secured her favor and now ask for yours."
Mr. Gardiner turned to Darcy. "What day did you speak with Mr. Bennet?"
Darcy grinned. "The same day Richard mentioned, the day we witnessed the signing of the marriage settlement."
Richard looked at Darcy in surprise. Their discussion the evening before had not included the information that Darcy had already received consent from Mr. Bennet or that Mr. Gardiner had received a letter from her father to that effect.
"Did you have an agreement with Elizabeth at the time?"
"No, sir."
"Wait. You asked her father for his consent before you ever spoke to Miss Elizabeth?" Richard sputtered, wasting a bit of the fine wine as he did.
"One moment, Colonel. I want to clarify the situation with your cousin," Mr. Gardiner said, raising his hand in Richard's direction as a way of holding his words off. "Now, Mr. Darcy, do you feel that in your discussion with Bennet you in any way committed my niece to a contract of marriage without her knowledge or consent?"
"Quite the contrary, sir. I made it very clear that I would never force her into a marriage that was not her desire. To be fair, I had not intended to ask for his consent when the discussion began. However, having admitted my admiration for her, it felt appropriate to ease his mind over her future by clearly stating my hope to one day court and marry her."
"And it sounds like you did it all in one day," Mr. Gardiner chuckled. "So, you gave him notice of your intent…and?"
"Oh, he teased me about it and then asked if I was requesting his consent and blessing. I could not resist the opening, and so I told him that I was, provisional, of course, on his daughter's eventual acceptance of my offer."
"Ah, you see, that is the action of a man who is bold enough to be favored by Fortuna, Colonel. Even after my nieces left Longbourn, was there anything that prevented you from stopping in to check on Bennet and asking something similar for yourself?"
"Mr. Gardiner, the man was dying. We knew from Mrs. Bingley that he was dosing himself heavily with opium and was not really in any state to have visitors." Richard shook his head in disbelief. "I cannot believe you got the drop on me again, Darcy."
"Well, he did," Mr. Gardiner said, smirking, "And he impressed Bennet enough that my former brother prepared a letter for me providing his consent and blessing should Mr. Darcy approach me requesting a match with my niece. Of course, I also know your cousin's estate, family history and general financial status, so it seems unlikely he is marrying Lizzy just for her dowry. Your situation, however, is less clear. Of course, I know and respect your family, but you are a second son. Imagine for a moment that she has no dowry, or no more than the trust fund provided by your cousin's purchase of Bennet's books. How do you intend to support my niece, Colonel?"
Darcy suspected Mr. Gardiner had veered into more serious territory now. He had been largely poking fun at Richard earlier. This, however, was a pretty standard and important question for a guardian to ask. It was also one for which Richard had prepared.
He recovered from his earlier frustration and smoothly replied, "While I will not deny Miss Bennet's dowry from the book sale is welcome, I am capable of supporting her and a reasonably sized family without it. My parents have provided me with a generous allowance funded by my mother's settlement. Since I entered the Army at age seventeen, I have saved nearly all of that money, keeping my spending within the limits of my military salary. I have also managed to save some of the salary to add to my fund over the years and have deposited any prizes or bonuses I have received in it as well. I will give you the exact figures when we prepare the settlement."
"Very good. However, I understand life for military wives can be very difficult and precarious. Where do you expect Jane to live while you are off risking your life in battle?"
"Actually, I stopped at the war office this morning and submitted my resignation. It will take a little while for the paperwork to be processed, but I will not be returning to the battlefield. Instead, I will be purchasing an estate as a home for me and my wife. It is one with which I think you are familiar. Darcy will be selling Oakbrook to me and I will bring Mrs. Fitzwilliam to live there."
The surprise on Mr. Gardiner's face at Richard's final comment was perfect. Darcy had to bite his tongue to stop from laughing at the two of them.
"You will be taking Jane to live at Oakbrook?" Mr. Gardiner asked. Disbelief and surprise were clear in his tone.
"That is the plan," Richard said blandly, "unless you know some compelling reason why she should not be mistress of the estate where her mother grew up."
Mr. Gardiner continued staring at Richard for a moment. Then, he shook his head to clear his thoughts.
"It is a pity my brother sold off the best portions of the lands surrounding the estate before Mr. Darcy's father purchased the house and remains."
Darcy swallowed his laughter and told him, "In the intervening years my father and I have purchased many of the adjoining tracts of land in order to make the estate properly self-sufficient."
"My plan is to make improvements and give the estate the attention it needs to make it highly profitable instead of merely self-sufficient." Richard added.
Mr. Gardiner nodded. "It has been in the past. If you treat the land and people right, it can be profitable again. My brother just did not understand that and he had wasted too much money on other pursuits to do what was needed to recover it. So, you have a plan, you have a home to take her to, now tell me why you want to marry Jane. What made you so certain after knowing her for essentially a day that you wanted to marry her?"
"I admit your question is valid, sir," Richard said, "but there are some things you just know are right. I will admit that Darcy and Bingley had been teasing me that I would fall for her because she is so beautiful. And she is. Heaven knows, she is gorgeous. But I have seen gorgeous before and not felt like this. She is so much more than her looks. I had not spoken with her for more than that first half hour when I knew she was intelligent, kind, caring. She can look placid and even appear soft and weak, but she is an iron fist in a velvet glove. She will keep me and any children we have on the proper path without ever needing to raise her voice."
Mr. Gardiner lifted his eyebrow again. "Do you particularly need to be kept on the proper path, Colonel?" He was clearly amused by Richard's comment.
Richard took the question seriously. "We all need help with that sometimes, sir. But with the things I have seen and done while in military service, I have become somewhat insensitive or impatient with the way matters are handled in a civilian setting. She will help me understand the effects of my actions on others, but that is not really what I meant." He paused for a few seconds, clearly trying to find just the right words. "I believe she will make me a better person, not because she is trying to, but just because of who she is and how I feel about her. I hope that I will do the same for her."
Darcy found himself nodding along with Mr. Gardiner. Richard had hit it straight on. That was the sense Darcy had felt the very first time he met Elizabeth at the Assembly. Her kindness to him, done just because that was who she was and not because she hoped to gain anything from him, had changed how he reacted to others there. She did not tell him to be more kind to people, but she set the example and instilled the desire in him to do so.
"Well said, Colonel. You should know that I was not going to deny you my consent. Jane has accepted you and I trust her judgment. Even if I did not, she is of age, so she could marry you whether I agreed or not. What I do have discretion over is how her dowry is settled. I wanted to know more of who you are before I have to deal with the business side of the arrangement. I was teasing you at first, of course. I would not really have expected you to push your way into Bennet's company the very week you met him when you had not had the chance to talk with Jane. As Bennet described it, his conversation with Mr. Darcy was more of an accidental revelation that both took advantage of as a way to ease the mind of a dying man. You did well with my teasing, and I am pleased to offer you my consent to the courtship and both consent and blessing if Jane decides you are the man she wishes to marry."
"Thank you, sir," Richard said.
The three men raised their glasses in a silent toast to each other before each took another sip of the drink. Darcy sensed the difficult part of the evening was over. He did have a few questions for Mr. Gardiner, and now was as good a time as any.
"If I may ask, sir, meaning no disrespect or disparagement of your choices, would you be willing to tell me what prompted you to start in trade, given your background as the son of an estate owner."
"Ah, well that goes back to the very heart of how your cousin will be able to purchase my family estate," Mr. Gardiner said. He took another sip of his drink before he continued. "I suppose you need to know a little of our family history anyway, to understand about the girls' dowries – their full dowries, that is."
"I heard something about them having a bequest from their great-grandmother..." Darcy ventured.
"Yes, that is probably a good place to start, although I will come at it indirectly. Well, like your family, Mr. Darcy, the Gardiners have lived in that part of Derbyshire for several generations. Our estate was not as fine or large as Pemberley, nor were we ever as wealthy as the Darcys, but we had still done well for ourselves. My mother's father, Lord Chalmers, was the Earl of Densmere. It is an old and proud family, as you no doubt know. Her mother, my grandmother, was the daughter and only child of a wealthy duke. They felt that by choosing a man who was not of their station, she had married beneath herself. They largely cut the connection, although my grandmother did keep in touch with her daughter through proxies and took quiet interest in my sisters, Clarissa and Dorothea. Lady Chalmers was not willing to openly support them, but she cared enough that she designated a large sum of money that was under her control would be divided between them at her death. The bequest specified that the money would be entirely theirs, not subject to control by their husbands and that if either of my sisters was dead at the time the bequest came to them, that woman's fund would be divided among all of her living daughters to provide a dowry with several specific conditions. Clarissa received her entire bequest, but Dorothea had passed away a mere six months before my grandmother's death. Her share was divided between Jane and Lizzy with me as the administrator, something which had been planned for, in general terms, in the bequest. I was not required to tell Bennet anything about the bequest and I did not trust his new wife. I also wanted to give the girls a chance to experience their lives and potential courtships without the weight that being known as heiresses would carry."
"I can just imagine how Mrs. Bennet would have treated them," Darcy exclaimed. "She would have been scheming to find a way to get the funds for herself."
"And Jamison would have been worse," Richard guessed.
"Both girls were very much afraid that if Tony Jamison learned of their dowries he would find a way to force them into a marriage with one of his depraved friends for the sake of hefty finder's fee," Mr. Gardiner said, his voice dripping with disgust at the thought.
"So, you protected them with silence. But surely they knew about the bequest. Why were they so afraid of being left with nothing to support themselves on?" Darcy asked.
Mr. Gardiner sighed. "That is more complicated. First off, do you already know what happened to my wife when her father died?"
Richard nodded his head, and Darcy repeated what he had learned in his conversation with Aunt Susan. "There was an entail on the property and Mrs. Gardiner and her mother were turned from their home and sold lace to support themselves."
With a nod, Mr. Gardiner said, "I had grown up knowing Madeline. Part of the reason I turned to trade was in an attempt to find a way to support and make something of myself so I could one day return and marry her. By the time I left school, my brother had already gone through much of the family fortune and seemed likely to lose it all. Eventually, he did, as I gather you know. I used what I had saved over the years to buy into the business owned by the father of a boy I had met in school. I trained with him and found I enjoyed the demands of my new work. I was just settling into my work when my brother found a way to force Bennet to marry Dorothea and sold Oakbrook to your father to pay her dowry. I lost track of events in Lambton as my work claimed much of my time, so I did not know at first what had happened to Madeline's father or that she needed me. Of course, she could not write to me directly, even if she had known where I was. Eventually, I found out by chance, from someone who had purchased the lace Madeline made. I returned to Lambton at once. We were married and I brought her and her mother here. We have had a happy life, and I never regretted my decision to turn to trade. However, the experience left a deep impact on both Madeline and her mother, who lived with us until her passing nearly ten years ago. The girls learned of their experiences during their early visits and young Lizzy quickly saw the parallels to their own situation when it became clear Mrs. Bennet was unlikely to bear a son. She was frightened at the idea of being thrown out into the world with nothing. She began to save all her allowance and convinced Jane to do the same. I think Mary followed their lead without really knowing why."
"Yes, Mrs. Bingley had nearly three hundred pounds, which she offered to Bingley as part of her dowry, expecting that her father had provided very little for her."
"Lizzy told me of that and of the dowry Bennet actually offered. I wish we had been able to bring Mary here and get to know her over the years as we are getting to know Kitty now. I have hopes we will eventually meet her and her husband."
"Mrs. Bingley is a fine young woman," Richard said. "The two of them are determined to make a good marriage of it despite the way it began and she has steadied him a great deal. But you have not explained why Miss Bennet and Miss Elizabeth felt they needed to start selling their needlework."
Darcy saw Richard rub at the spot on his hand that had been pierced by Miss Bennet's needle during his proposal. It had not bled much at the time, but it had been a rather deep stab. He was going to be reminded of that moment for quite a while.
"True," Mr. Gardiner agreed. "Well, among the conditions on the bequest was that aside from its use as a dowry, the girls were not able to access the funds. They were to be deposited in the four percents and they could not even access the interest until reaching the age of twenty-six, at which point, they would be considered likely never to marry. The principle would remain in trust to be passed on where they willed in that event."
"I see," Darcy said. "They knew that if something happened to their father, they would have to support themselves until they could access the interest. They did not want to be thrown penniless into the world and so they saved and earned."
"Yes. My wife and her mother saw no harm in teaching them to sew, embroider and make the very lace that had saved their lives. The girls worked hard to master those skills and then Lizzy begged my wife to help her find ways to sell the products. Of course, they were not good enough at first to do more than the simplest piecework, but those girls were determined. Gradually, their skills became such that they could sell their work pretty much anywhere. They used the Gardiner name so that Mrs. Bennet would be less likely to find out. You must understand, my wife and I would never have allowed them to starve. If they had not a single half-penny, we still would have taken them in as if they were our own children. But Lizzy and Jane are proud. They insisted they would and could not be a burden of any kind on us, especially since they suspected they would need to help their younger sisters survive as well. They would not even accept the majority of their support from us as a loan on the bequest because they argued that if it became their dowries their husbands might claim all of it, leaving nothing for repayment of the debt - as if we would have cared. Above all, they were worried about Tony trying to harm them and Mrs. Bennet throwing them into the hedgerows. Once it became clear that Bennet was very ill, their worries deepened. While they both accept that there is no need for concern now, the old habits will be hard to break. You will need to be understanding while they become comfortable with the feeling of being prosperous."
"I think I do understand," Richard said slowly. "It is like the feeling you get when you have been in campaign after stupid campaign with nothing to show for it but mud and dysentery. The unit fights battles for the same bit of land over and over. Then, suddenly one of the other units wins a major victory or an armistice is signed and suddenly the battles are over. You just do not know what to do with yourself and keep wondering when you are due for the next slog through the mud even though you know the fighting is over."
"That is a fairly close analogy. It sounds like you have been there yourself. How will you do as a landowner instead of a soldier?" Mr. Gardiner asked.
"I expect to make some stupid mistakes and get frustrated with myself and those around me, but I know my wife will help me stay the course and figure out what is really wrong. I grew up on a well-run estate and I know the basics, the rhythms of planting and harvesting as well as how to treat my tenants to gain their cooperation and support instead antagonizing them. If I need lessons, Darcy will be my resource. He has had to learn too much the hard way since his father died, but Pemberley is prospering well and there is much he can teach me. Some of my military skills can be transferred – strategy, organization, plans and attacks. It will be different, but not impossible to manage."
"I think you are correct. Much of what you learned in the military will transfer. It was the same for me as I started in my business. A ledger is a ledger, whether you are tracking rents and costs or profit and loss."
"Bingley said he is finding much the same as he has gone the other way, from his business to the running of an estate. The methods may be slightly different, but the goals are the same," Darcy said.
"Well, my goal at the moment is to rejoin my wife and the other women. We have left them on their own too long. Give Madeline and Lady Matlock long enough to plot and they will take over the world."
"I have often thought my mother could do that on her own," Richard joked. "If Mrs. Gardiner is another of the same kind, we are all of us in danger."
Darcy simply finished the last of his port. He had enjoyed the conversation, but he was looking forward to more time with his Elizabeth.
