I don't own Pride and Prejudice.
Elizabeth was disappointed to return home from shopping to find her husband had yet to return. She couldn't help but worry as daylight seemed to disappear and still no sign of him. He had gone on horseback as it was not too long a ride, and the weather had been not too horribly cold that day. It also had the added advantage of allowing him to travel faster.
Just as the street lamps were beginning to be lit, she saw a familiar carriage pull up in front of their home. "Is Fitzwilliam back?" Mary asked, seeing her step away from the window, and all her sisters rose to follow her to greet her husband.
None of them could hide their surprise when their father stepped into the town home. She instantly noticed that he seemed tired, and that his color was a bit off. However, they were such minor changes, and he seemed in good spirits, she probably wouldn't have notices had she not been looking.
"Mr Darcy, you promised I would be able to see my daughters on my arrival, and yet they are no where in sight." The man teased. "These ladies before me are much too beautiful and mature to be my girls. I say man, where have you hidden my daughters."
"Oh Papa, you know it is truly us." Jane laughed gently at their father's antics, while Kitty and Mary tried to smile, though the fear was clear in their eyes.
"Are you come to take us home Papa?" Kitty finally voiced their concerns.
"Not at all my dear, even if that had been my original intent, I can see how much better off you are here with your sister than you ever were with your mother and I." He smiled sadly at the smiles that appeared on the girls' faces.
"Papa, then you must come meet Georgiana!" Kitty took him by the hand, pulling him into the parlor, Mary following sedately behind, Jane going with them.
"Was it as we feared?" She asked her husband after kissing him to welcome him home.
"According to a doctor from around Meryton it is his heart. This is why I brought him here to have a specialist look him over. My hope is that we've caught it early and can help him." William told her as he wrapped an arm around her waist, slowly moving to join the rest of the family. "He would like a moment to speak with you privately, there is more going on here than even we suspected."
She nodded, trying to hide her worry before entering the parlor and joining the rest of the family. "And how are you enjoying it so far my dear?" She heard her father ask Mary, and saw her sister holding the book she had been reading.
"I find it very interesting to read if the different place in here. Colonel Fitzwilliam says he's been to some similar ones, and describes them most beautifully." Mary couldn't hide her blush, and their father was quick to pick up on it.
"Colonel Fitzwilliam, aye," For the first time Elizabeth could remember, her father truly studied her younger sister, "Is he a favorite of yours?."
"Not at all, he is Fitzwilliam's cousin, and is just nice to me is all. He would never be interested in me." Mary said, disappointment clear in her voice.
"Mary, I have known that man since he was in leading strings, and I've never seen the boy so smitten." Lady Catherine spoke up, causing Mary to blush even harder. "Why, only Darcy here could be considered more smitten than he, and even that isn't by much.
William cleared his throat, trying to fight back the blush at crept up his neck and into his face. "As much as I'm sure Richard would love this conversation to continue, I do believe dinner should be ready any moment now."
"Papa, why don't you allow me to show you to your room so you can freshen up." He stood and offered her his arm, allowing her to escort him there.
Long after everyone went to bed that night, Elizabeth found herself sitting in her husbands study with him and her father. "Your husband tells me you had suspected my illness before he arrived at Longbourn my Lizzy."
"I'm afraid so Papa, you last letter sounded so final, that I could not help but wonder at it."
"You always were a clever girl." He smiled sadly, "But you are correct, Doctor Baskin told me my heart was failing a few months before Mr Bingley let Netherfield. At the time, I feared for what would become of my daughters, but then I saw the interest that gentleman took in Jane. I felt for sure he would alone approaching me for her hand, and you all would be safe. Then the compromise happened, and it was a different daughter and gentleman I relied on to save my girls."
"It was clear to me from the start that Darcy here was an honorable man, though a fool when in a foul mood. However, nothing more than my little Lizzy could handle. This is why I didn't fight when your mother demanded a wedding, as I knew if anyone could take these lemons and make lemonade out of it it would be you two. From what I've heard over the past couple of months, and seen tonight, I was correct in my way of thinking."
"But I am afraid that is not all my Lizzy, for when I pass guardianship of my daughters will pass on to you and your husband. Your mother's treatment of Mary finally opened my eyes to just how unfit a mother she truly is."
"Papa, surely you know she will never part with Lydia." Nor did she and her husband want responsibility for the girl who was likely to ruin them all.
"Lydia will stay with her mother, I assure you." He sighed sadly, and Elizabeth finally realized what he was truly telling her. "I am not proud of how I handled thing Lizzy, but I did try the best I could to protect you all after my passing. I knew if your mother thought the funds were available she would spend them with her usual gusto, so I spent them first. I invested them into many rare copies of books, that when I pass may be sold to give your sisters a suitable home should they not marry. This way they shall not be a drain on your husband's estate unless he chooses to keep them."
"A few of the books I looked at could easily fetch a few hundred pounds or more." William confirmed.
"By my calculations, the entire collection should go for roughly fifteen thousand pounds. Not much when split between three or four young women, but should provide for them as a whole." Her father informed her.
"Papa, you know I have to ask, what about Lydia."
"I have know since before she was born that Lydia was not my child." He could not disguise his sadness. "Oh, I tried to love her, truly I did, but all I felt when I looked at her was betrayal and deceit."
"You see Lizzy, your mother and I did not anticipate our wedding vows like so many couples do." Wait, that couldn't be right. "So when your mother announced that she had felt Jane's quickening, I knew I could not be the father. I confronted her about it, for I would not let someone else's child inherit before my own.
"She came clean, telling me that she had been with one of the officers in the militia stationed there, but had been abandoned. I warned her that if the babe was a boy he would never inherit, and she promised me she would never lay with another again."
"When Jane was born, I could not have been more in love with her had I tried. It did not matter that she wasn't mine, and because she was a girl, I felt no fear of her inheriting over my own son."
"Then you came along, with your dark hair and green eyes, looking so much like my mother it was uncanny. Followed by Mary and Kitty, both so similar to you in looks and unfortunately stature I'm afraid."
"When Kitty was born I despaired at not having a boy to break the entail. I'm afraid I stopped coming to your mother for fear of another daughter to support. The estate kept us all comfortable, but only when crops were good, and I feared the thought of supporting five children when times were not good."
"I knew something was wrong when your mother started coming to me. She was almost eager to be with me, when before she barely tolerated it. So, after a couple months of refusing her, I succumbed to her advances."
"Lydia was born five months later." Her father had to wipe a tear from his eye. "Jane had been easy to pass off as mine for she favored your mother so much, but like the rest of you girls, Lydia favored her father. He was a stable hand at Longbourn, and dismissed without reference."
"I threatened to have Lydia removed from the house, why should I be forced to raise yet another man's child. We would tell the neighbors she died of some illness and send her off to your uncle to find a home for her."
"It was you, Lizzy, that convinced me to keep her. She was in the nursery, when I stormed in there to remove her. However, you were in there as well, having escaped your lessons, and you were rocking her and singing her back to sleep."
"'Is not my sister wonderful, Papa?' You asked me, and I realized it was not just your mother's daughter I was sending away, but the sister of all my girls." He looked so shamed, "I returned to your mother, and informed her that Lydia would be allowed to stay, but that she would never partake in any inheritance the the rest of you did. I also informed her that I would never return to her bed, and that any other children she bore would be sent away the moment they took their first breath. Lydia was her last child, and she began spending anything she could, for if Lydia was not to have an inheritance, than neither would the rest of you."
Elizabeth couldn't help but wipe the tears from her eyes as she hugged her papa to give him any amount of comfort she could.