Author's Note: Apologies for the long wait for this chapter. My only excuse is an excess of real life getting in the way. I hope to get a couple of chapters up in the next few days. elag

Chapter 14

It took only a few moments to locate a maid who who could direct Elizabeth to the right room. Her aunt and uncle were still with their children and had not yet retired to their own rooms for the evening, so Elizabeth made her way to the nursery.

She spent a few minutes feigning good cheer as she greeted her young cousins and helped settle their high spirits in preparation for bed. It was already well past their usual bedtime - a particular indulgence granted by their parents in consideration of them having been parted for several weeks - and they displayed that alternating excitement and droopiness characteristic of very tired children. The youngest boy stamped his little foot and loudly asserted that he was not even a bit tired, but a few moments in his mother's arms saw his eyelids drooping and his tense little body relax into slumber. Eventually, the combined efforts of Elizabeth, her aunt and uncle, saw them all tucked into their beds and reconciled to their parents' injunction that they go to sleep.

Elizabeth stepped quietly from the room, but instead of bidding the Gardiners a good night as they expected, she placed a hand on her uncle's arm to stay his departure and quietly asked for a word.

"Of course, Lizzy," he replied, stifling a yawn. "I know you would not ask if it was something that could wait for the morning. Come to my study, and I will hear whatever is troubling you."

"Not your study, if you please," was her rejoinder. "I believe my father is still enjoying your port and library. It is my father I need to discuss with you." Elizabeth recognised the surprise in her uncle's eyes, echoed by the raised brows of her Aunt Gardiner who waited a little way down the corridor.

It was her aunt who spoke first: "Well then, Lizzy, step into our sitting room. I assure you your father would never intrude there."

The Gardiners' bedroom was adjoined by a private sitting room, modestly furnished in a homely and comfortable style. There were only two chairs set before the fire, but Mrs Gardiner pulled over a wooden chair from a small writing desk at one side of the room, and promptly sat in it, her arms folded. It was clear that she intended to be part of the discussion, and she looked with expectant curiosity at her husband and niece as they took their seats. Elizabeth, who had intended a private conversation with her uncle, considered for a moment before speaking. She could appeal to her uncle in practical, business-like terms. Her aunt's presence meant she needed to invoke heartstrings as well as purse strings. But on reflection, she realised that neither was likely to act in such a matter without the advice and support of the other, and she might as well speak to them both at once.

"My father," she began, not bothering to disguise the scorn with which she referred to Mr Bennet, "tells me he intends to deny Mr Darcy's application for my hand."

The shock displayed on the faces before her was everything she could have wished for. Before they gathered themselves to speak, she plowed on: "Mr Darcy sought a private audience with my father this afternoon, and, having secured my consent, asked for his. Papa refused to answer, and put him off to tomorrow, saying he needed to speak to me before giving his answer. But he told me that he will refuse his consent!"

"This is extraordinary!" exploded her uncle. "To refuse an honourable man of wealth and property! Did he offer any explanation?"

"Oh, he was full of explanations," said Elizabeth sourly. "He hoped I hated Mr Darcy and had only agreed to marry him for his money. He barely seemed to notice the insult to my honour that implied. When I assured him I love Fitzwilliam, and would marry him if he was worth only enough to keep the wolf from the door, my father tried a panoply of other, equally spurious, arguments.

"In the end, though, he told me the truth. I don't think he had planned to, but he lost his temper and it came out." Elizabeth took a deep breath and tried to quell the tears she felt about to spill from her eyes. "It is not about Mr Darcy at all. Mr Bennet plans that I should never marry. He has decided I should be his companion for the remainder of his life: managing the estate so he needed not be bothered with it; protecting him from the need to spend time with my mother; keeping him amused with games of chess and witty conversation; and joining him in making sport of his neighbours."

"Oh, Lizzy!" breathed Mrs Gardiner, in some distress, reaching out to clasp her niece's hand.

Her husband, as Elizabeth had hoped, was more belligerent in his response: "That is unconscionable!" he cried, leaping to his feet and pacing angrily before the fire. "Are you certain, Lizzy? You did not mistake his meaning?"

"No, sir," she answered. With the sympathy of her most beloved relatives, she regained control of her emotions and was once again able to discuss the matter with a calm demeanour, impressing the Gardiners' with her serious determination. "Mr Bennet was quite clear. He was quite angry that I did not immediately see the merit of his plan, and elaborated in the expectation that I would embrace such a fate once I understood it."

"But this is terrible," offered Mrs Gardiner. "You are not yet of age, and he has the power to turn Mr Darcy away. Oh, my poor Lizzy!"

"I think you underestimate that young man, my dear," said Mr Gardiner. "He is most fixed in his intentions. If the news of Lydia eloping with Wickham did not scare him away, you do not think he will be put off by a recalcitrant father, do you?" He turned to Elizabeth and added, "The question is, what are we to do about it? I take it you sought me out for more than a shoulder to cry on, Lizzy?"

"Indeed, Uncle. I have come to beg your aid. I think Lydia is not the only daughter who might surprise my father."

This broke the tension in the room: Mr Gardiner snorted in amusement and resumed his seat. "What would you have us do, my dear?" he asked.

Elizabeth paused a moment. She was about to take a step that could never be undone. Some would say she was betraying a daughter's first duty - to honour her father and her mother, as the Commandment would have it. Or that she was displaying an abominable sort of conceited independence, to insist upon a future beyond the familiar life her father had planned for her. She could not find it in herself to resile from the path she had chosen, but she could - and did - deeply regret the necessity of it.

The father she had thought she knew - the father who could command her respect and who she would have felt obliged to obey - was lost to her. Perhaps he had always been an illusion, borne of her own wishful thinking. Perhaps he had once been a better man, but years of disappointment and inertial had allowed a jaundiced view to overtake his better instincts. It really did not matter now. The man she had left in her uncle's study was not a parent she could honour. Although she herself had not noticed it, her uneasy shifting between calling him "my father" and "Mr Bennet" said as much to her uncle and aunt of her disenchantment with that man than the actual tale she told.

Straightening her shoulders and sitting ramrod straight in her chair, Elizabeth firmed her resolve. She would not spend her life in service to her father's selfishness. If the best she could hope for was a life in service, then she would seek employment as a governess or as companion to an elderly widow - anything where she was valued for herself and had the choice to stay or go- where she could seize the reins of her own destiny.

But as it happened, she now had the prospect of true happiness. Against all odds, she had been reconciled with the only many who had ever loved her, and discovered, somewhat to her own surprise, that she loved him too. It was the sort of unlikely coincidence which was the stuff of romance novels, but she would not quibble. Elizabeth Bennet would grab the chance that life had dealt her and secure a better future than ever her mother's vivid imagination might have conjured. She would marry Mr Darcy!

"Uncle," she began, "when Jane and I have visited London over the years, and when we went on our holiday this time, did Mr Bennet give you authority to act in his stead as my guardian?"

"Yes," said Mr Gardiner, thoughtfully.

"And what were the terms of that arrangement? Was it for a specific time, or expressed in any limited way?"

"Well, he has said nothing specific since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. The first time you and Jane came to London for a holiday without your parents, your father spoke very seriously to me, pointing out that so long as you were in my care, I was in loco parentis and must care for you as my own children. I remember it well, because he used the Latin, and I had to ask him to elaborate to be sure I had it correctly. He explained that I stood in the place of a parent, and would have to make all the decisions a parent might need to make. He pointed out that it might take too long for a message to reach Longbourn if a decision needed to be made quickly, although, knowing him, he was also pleased by the prospect of not being bothered with messages flying back and forth. Of course, you were only seven at the time, and Jane nine, so I doubt he had anything so serious as wedlock in mind! Since then, he has simply said "Take good care of my girls", or something similar whenever you have come to us, but that original injunction has always stood."

Elizabeth smiled tightly - a stretching of the lips that looked more pained than happy. "You have been good to your word, Uncle. And you, too, Aunt. I have always felt safe and cared for in your company. So to be clear, while we were travelling this last month, you believe that you had the authority to act in my father's stead in respect of things affecting me?"

"Yes, quite definitely so. Should something have befallen you, I would have been responsible for your care. Should you have asked to do something unusual, I would have been the one to make the decision whether to allow it or not. I was in loco parentis from the moment you boarded our carriage to leave Longbourn. But I can hardly say I still have that authority when your father is here in the same house, Lizzy."

"Oh, no. I quite understand that. But I was wondering. Mr Bennet has not yet given Mr Darcy an answer. He has told me what he plans to say, but has not actually said it, either to my suitor or to you. You could not possibly suspect that he would be so foolish as to refuse such an offer. You did not hesitate to approve Mr Darcy's request for a courtship. Indeed, I recall when we first heard of Lydia's disappearance, you pressed him quite firmly about his intentions, and made his journeying to London with us conditional upon his persisting with his suit." Elizabeth waited while both her uncle and aunt nodded their agreement. Sure she had their undivided attention, she continued: "Here is what I have in mind."

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