AN: I hate not being able to give my loyal readers at least one post each day. I really do. These last few weeks have just been...well, it would be unladylike to use the words that are trying to bubble forth. At least I have managed to put together this chapter for you, but again, I can make no promises on the timing of the next one.
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Lizzy was amused by the general re-introductions. It did feel better to have everyone on a more familiar basis even if it was not strictly proper. Since Aunt Susan proposed it and agreed to it, they had the best of excuses. Better yet, thanks to Aunt Susan they had everything settled to protect Maria. After years of having her own movements controlled by Sir William, it felt good to know he was about to be manipulated by someone who represented everything he wanted – power, social status and money.
Lizzy knew Aunt Susan would not have stepped in under ordinary circumstances. However, she had been outraged on hearing of Sir William's long-term manipulation of the Bennet sisters and their family. Now, she looked delighted by the thought of giving him a figurative poke in the eye. Lizzy had no objections, especially since it benefited her young friend.
"Now that we have Maria settled for the moment," she said, "what other news do you bring us from Meryton? We have the arrival of Mr. Collins and the resulting despair of Longbourn's servants. You already told us by letter of Papa's funeral and Tony's death and burial. Has anything been heard from Mrs. Bennet?"
"I have some news indirectly, through Aunt and Uncle Phillips," Mary said. "Mama has not contacted me directly and I do not expect her to do so. She said she washed her hands of all of us the day of my wedding."
"And what did Mr. and Mrs. Phillips have to say?" Aunt Madeline asked.
"The most surprising part was that Mama and Lydia had not previously learned about the trust funds from the sale of the books. We all just assumed they had, but they were away so much of that time none of us really mentioned it to them. Papa certainly did not."
"It was such a big thing for all of us," Lizzy said, "but now that you mention it, I realize we were not talking to them any more than absolutely necessary at that point. We were all busy working on Mary's gown. At the time we thought Mrs. Bennet was visiting her sister every day, so it seemed natural she would have known."
"Exactly," said Jane, "After all, no one told any of us about it directly. We only knew because Mr. Phillips mentioned it to Mrs. Hill the day William was doing the inventory so she would know why he stayed after Charles left. She told us and then Lizzy prompted Papa to admit he was selling the books. If Papa had not written to Uncle Gardiner, we would not even know the amount of the funds."
Lizzy turned to William as he sighed. "Why am I not surprised at that?" he asked weakly.
His chair was placed tightly against the side of the sofa on which Lizzy, Mary and Jane sat together. It was easy for Lizzy to simply reach over and take his hand. She gave it a gentle squeeze.
"Papa told me that women did not need to know. Dealing with the dowry was a man's work. I was chiding him for not letting Mary have any idea of the value of the dowry he provided for her after he told me hers was separate from the sale of the books. None of us expected he would offer more than fifty pounds. Hearing about the wine cellar was a complete surprise."
"One hundred," William growled, with a slight squeeze to her hand.
"What?" she asked.
"Papa offered one hundred pounds and the contents of the wine cellar," Mary said. "Charles assures me that wines were very expensive and included several bottles of fine brandy that William purchased from him."
"It was a good investment," William said a little defensively. "Plus you cannot legally get brandy of that quality anymore due to the embargo. I am saving it for special occasions."
"I hope your wedding is one of them and that you will share a little with us," Uncle Edward said.
"We shall see."
"It really was a fine dowry, if a little unconventional," Charles said. "I truly think it was at least equal to my sister Caroline's twenty thousand pounds. By the way, thank you for allowing us to bring Caroline to the soiree day after tomorrow, Aunt Susan. She really does need to find a good match, and this will help, I hope."
"My main condition is that she wear the orange and puce gown. I really must see this creation. Do warn her, however, that she must be polite to everyone. I will not tolerate discourtesy and she only gets this one chance to prove herself to me. If she is rude to any member of our party, I will give her the cut direct and request she return home at once."
"I will tell her. I do not know if she can manage it, but I will tell her."
"That is all that you can do. She is an adult and should know how to behave properly if that select seminary your sisters attended was any good at all."
Aunt Susan spoke sharply and with great firmness. Lizzy already knew she did not approve of publicly sniping at other people or trying to make yourself look better by making others look small. She was quite serious that Miss Bingley would write her own her own fate with her manners two evenings hence.
"I will convey your message to her," Charles said seriously.
"That still leaves the news about Mrs. Bennet," Aunt Madeline reminded them. "Since she did not know about the trust funds, what had she done?"
"Oh, yes," said Mary. "Well, she contacted Uncle Phillips to write a settlement for Lydia."
"Oh, no," said Jane. "Which of the officers did she trick into marrying our silly sister?"
"None of the ones we know. Apparently, Mama has been leasing a small house in Sandridge for a few months now. Even before Papa died, she was visiting the house, getting it set up, and making herself known to people in the neighborhood. Like Meryton, Sandridge is hosting a small militia unit this winter. Mama arranged a marriage for Lydia with a captain in that unit using the dowries that she has been setting aside over the years for me, Kitty and Lydia as an incentive. Of course, since I was already settled and Kitty threw her lot in with you, Mama put the whole of the amount towards Lydia. It was less than two thousand pounds, but far better than fifty."
"Why did she never mention she had dowries set aside for the three of you?" Jane asked.
"Actually, that one is easy to answer, Jane," Lizzy replied. "If she let on that she had the funds, Papa could have taken them from her. In addition, Tony would have tried to take the money. I think she was under no illusions about what he would have done to any of us if he had a chance to turn a profit."
"Well, it sounds like this mystery captain is in for a pleasant surprise," William mused. "His not quite two thousand is now a little over seven thousand. I hope your uncle wrote a good settlement to protect her. Since the officer was not expecting the extra, he should not object to half or even a bit more being set aside as a jointure."
Mary nodded. "Uncle said he wrote it for half and then added Lydia's potential share of the five thousand pounds that will be split equally between Mama's surviving children on her death to the jointure as a clause in the event of Lydia inheriting any portion of the funds. Since Tony is gone, that stands at a one-third share right now. More importantly, we now know why Mama was so frantic to find husbands for all three of us."
"What?" "Why?" The questions rolled around the room. Lizzy did not voice hers aloud, but she was just as curious as the rest of them.
When the hubbub died down a bit, Mary continued. "Once we realized Mama had been extracting funds to eventually support herself, the lengths she was going to in order to get us all married seemed rather extreme. It makes more sense now that Uncle Phillips has learned that Mama has been trying to arrange a third marriage for herself. The prospective groom is a gentleman in Sandridge. He had expressed himself as being willing to marry her after Papa's death for certain financial considerations, but he refused to take in any daughters. His first wife had given him four and he felt them to be a terrible drain on his estate and, apparently, an offense to nature, so he insisted that all of Mama's daughters be married or otherwise disposed of before he would marry her. That is why she arranged the compromise for me and why she has essentially disowned Kitty, who she would otherwise have auctioned off to the most willing bidder."
"That is terrible!" exclaimed Kitty. "Even if all I wanted was to marry an officer, like Lydia did, I expected to at least choose which one. I could have been in the same situation as Maria if I had stayed with Mama."
"Yes, you could have," Mary agreed. "I just got lucky with Charles." She smiled at her husband, who rolled his eyes while grinning.
"So, did she ask Mr. Phillips to prepare a settlement for her as well?" Richard asked.
"That was her plan until she found out about the trust fund. With the interest on that in addition to the other funds she had set aside, she must have realized she might be better off without a husband than with one. Uncle Phillips said she took the settlement to review with Captain Triplett, Lydia's betrothed, but said she wanted a chance to think things over before she signed her own freedom away."
This statement was followed by a round of questions to which Mary and Charles really had no answers. The group continued to discuss Mrs. Bennet, Lydia and the, to them, much smaller happenings of Meryton until well into dinner, as well as talking over the sewing, shopping and other events that had occupied the Bennet sisters since their arrival in London.
After the meal, Uncle Gardiner used his own knowledge of contracts, along with the documents Mr. Phillips had prepared to transfer guardianship of Jane, Lizzy and Kitty from Mr. Bennet to him and to make him administrator of their trust funds, to prepare the two documents Aunt Susan wanted to send to Meryton the next morning. While he worked on the legal side of the matter with William and Charles, who both also had extensive experience with contracts, as sounding boards to ensure the document matched the intent of their action while remaining legally enforceable, Aunt Susan drafted her letters to Charlotte and Sir William with aid from Maria and the Bennet sisters.
When the letters and legal documents were complete, William took them. He promised that they would be on their way to Charlotte with one of his personal messengers as soon as it would be safe for the man to leave the following morning. He would have his messenger stay until there was an answer, using Netherfield as a base if he needed to do so.
As planned, Maria went home with the Bennet sisters. She settled easily into their small establishment. Kitty shared her room with her friend while all three sisters did their best to make the young woman comfortable.
Before leaving the Gardiner house, Aunt Susan insisted that Maria would join them at the soiree, just as Kitty and Georgiana were. Ordinarily, she would consider the trio too young for a society event, but this one was being held by one of Aunt Susan's oldest friends and would also be the first public appearance of William and Lizzy as a betrothed couple and Jane and Richard as a couple in a courtship. It only made sense to have the younger women there in a show of solidarity as well as being a way to gently introduce them at the same time as the older two Bennets.
None of the gowns Maria had brought with her were suitable for such an event, but Kitty was able to loan her friend one of her new, fancier gowns so she would look the part of Lady Matlock's ward, as Aunt Susan intended to introduce her. It was not the special gown that Aunt Susan had commissioned, since Kitty would be wearing that herself, but it did feature some very fancy embroidery that Kitty and Georgiana had done under Lizzy's supervision. Since the standards were less severe for the younger women, she would still look as if she belonged with them, and any deficiency could be explained away by her very recent arrival in London.
The following day, Lizzy went with her sisters, including Mary, along with Maria and Georgiana to the Fitzwilliam townhouse for last minute instructions and expectations for their behavior the following evening. Aunt Susan wanted to be certain they all worked together to give exactly the right impression. To the great delight of all of them, Jane informed them that she had accepted Richard's proposal the previous evening just before the gentlemen took their leave, so they would now be making their first appearance as a betrothed couple, just like Lizzy and William.
Aunt Susan pulled Jane into a hug, almost crying with her pleasure at finally being able to see her beloved younger son settled with someone she believed would make him very happy. As she released Jane she teased her as well.
"You have done it now, you know, Jane. I shall have to tell his father and his father will tell his older brother. One or both of them will be showing up any time now to meet the young woman who has finally tamed the wild Fitzwilliam. They are already wondering about William's betrothal and when they hear that Richard is going to marry the sister of William's love they will simply have to meet you."
"I am not afraid of them," Jane said with a smile.
"Nor should you be," Aunt Susan said. "Perhaps seeing his brother's good fortune will finally push my older son to find a wife of his own. He has been using William's and Richard's reluctance to pick from or even look at the pool of eligible young women in Society as an excuse to avoid dipping into the marriage mart himself. Just like William has done for years, he comes up with emergencies on his estate or any other possible excuse to avoid attending events. I sometimes think Richard joined the Army just to have an excuse to stay away from that and I think Henry would have done the same had it been an option for him."
"Is Society truly that frightening?" Kitty asked, wide-eyed. Georgiana and Maria looked just as shocked and curious.
"In many ways, it is," Jane told them. "It is a dance of wealth, position, power and connections, where everyone is jostling to grab a spot as far above the one where they currently are as they can."
"You are correct, Jane. Men and women who are shallow-minded and have the money, position or good looks often enjoy the power they have in the marriage mart, while those who do not must endure the situation because it is the best way to meet their goals. The Season is the best way to see and meet a large selection of people, but is not the way to see them at their best. Members of the
Ton seem to think that their exclusive events and the assemblies at Almacks will allow the cream to rise to the top, as it were. In truth, they limit or exclude perfectly acceptable young men or women with arbitrary standards and situations that prod people to show themselves in false ways. William and my sons hate the events considered as the marriage mart with good reason."
"But is not that exactly what you will be preparing us to enter once we are presented?" Georgiana asked, her nervousness plain in her voice as well as her expression.
"I will not simply throw you to the wolves, my dears," Aunt Susan said, looking around at all five young women. "You will have to attend Almacks and the like a few times because people will think something is wrong with you if you do not, but I doubt that is where any of you will make your eventual match. The problem for my sons and William is that they were so frustrated by those events that they refused to participate in any others I suggested or to allow any of the introductions I wished to make."
"Do they not trust you?" Lizzy had to ask.
"I do not know. I never could get a straight answer out of any of them. They would just go quiet and get out of the conversation as quickly as they could. It did not help that my sister-in-law was always insisting William was somehow obligated to marry her daughter, my niece Anne. Lady Catherine would browbeat the poor boy terribly. Yet, it was something neither he nor Anne wanted."
"Why did her mother insist on it then?" Kitty asked.
"Like my boys, she would never exactly say, although unlike them she has never been quiet. It is only lately that she has finally given up her fantasy of a childhood betrothal between the two."
"Well, I for one am glad of that," Lizzy said pertly.
Aunt Susan laughed softly. "As am I, dear girl. I think you will be good for him, just as Jane will be a good match for Richard. I am looking forward to introducing all of you at the party tomorrow. So, let us go over how we will handle the introductions and inevitable questions about your backgrounds."
There followed a session in which Aunt Susan carefully drilled each young woman in what they should and should not say. She paid particular attention to Maria, since the others had heard much of it before, although they needed to know how to handle Maria's presence as well. Despite the drill, they were all very much looking forward to their first night in society and the announcement of the pair of betrothals.
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AN2: I had hoped to give you the night at the soiree, but this chapter is already getting long and doing the soiree right would take even longer to get to you. I decided to make this a good breaking point and give you the party (and Caroline) in the next chapter. See you then...
