A/N: I am laying this one down very quickly without any planning and almost no editing. No outline. No bullet points. No Big Axe. Only a vague idea of where each chapter is going. I DO know what the rest of the turning points are, and I knew that before I started. Beyond that, I'm occasionally as surprised as you are with some of the results.
After the dust settles, perhaps I will tighten it up, remove some cruft, etc… or not.
Wade
Col Richard Fitzwilliam and Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy found themselves outside the newly erected tent in the worst of all possible situations. They had NOTHING to do!
Oh, there were things that needed to be done, but with Simpson looking like a man aiming for a steward's position, (which Darcy thought him likely to attain), there was no required direction for the rapidly expanding list of local men in his employ. He had not personally extended the offer of employment to the Rosings servants, whom Lady Catherine was discharging by the dozen, but his valet had done so on his behalf while he made his mad dash to London. He was happy it was done, as it would have been his intent if it had not slipped his mind.
They now had most of the grooms, about a quarter of the male servants, and a third of the maids. The maids were all housed in various places Simpson arranged in Hunsford or working for Mrs Collins expanding her poultry operation. The men were doing anything Simpson thought needed doing, and if it did not disturb the crime scene. Neither gentleman worried about the details.
They eventually found themselves in the last refuge of a bored man: sitting around a campfire passing a flask around.
Fitzwilliam said, "This reminds me of the prelude to battle. Endless boredom mixed with abject terror."
"Something like a London ball," Darcy replied with a chuckle.
"What was that thing your pup Bingley used to say about you and boredom?"
Feeling slightly humorous, Darcy raised his voice a bit. "I declare I do not know a more awful object than Darcy, on particular occasions, and in particular places; at his own house especially, and of a Sunday evening, when he has nothing to do."
Fitzwilliam chuckled, though he had heard it before.
"He said that in Miss Elizabeth's presence," Darcy added ruefully.
"I suppose that did your suit no favours?"
"Oh, I had thoroughly spiked my own guns long before that," Darcy replied morosely. "And of course, at that time I was still poisoning the well."
"All's well… eh?"
"We shall see."
"We shall see what, exactly?" they heard from over their shoulders.
Both men jumped to their feet and bowed, while scrambling to put the flask away.
"Miss Bennet, how fares your sister?" Darcy asked first.
The lady gave him what he thought was a slightly evil smirk. "She is tolerable, but not recovered enough to tempt me to get any sense out of her."
Darcy laughed at his own stupidity. "Would that I had such an excuse!"
Jane sighed more seriously. "You understand I HAD to see her. Now that I have, I vacillate between a burning desire to sit with her all day making her recover by the pure force of my will as she did for me in Netherfield; and wanting to get out and do something meaningful, since Mrs Buxton is ten times the nurse I will ever be."
"I understand completely," both men said at the same time.
"I would like to thank both of you for doing something when it was required, and especially you, Mr Darcy. It could not have been easy to do what was required instead of what you wished."
"You give me too much credit, but I thank you."
Jane eyed the fire, then startled a bit when Cecil brought a chair. "Tea, Miss Bennet?" he asked. "Mrs Collins also sent food and biscuits.
"Best to eat while you can. We can make a reasonable dining table in the tent," the colonel suggested.
She looked around at the small clearing. One or two men were milling about, but they were all moving somewhere and doing something she neither knew nor cared about.
"Is that how you broke your fasts? Mrs Buxton sent us to our beds. Miss Darcy remained to learn a bit of knitting, but she will be out in a half-hour. I am tired but know for certain I cannot settle, let alone sleep."
"Have some food," Darcy suggested.
She turned to Cecil and gave him a proper curtsy, which made the boy blush and look down nervously. "Cecil, could you manage a ham sandwich, with fruit, some of Charlotte's biscuits, and a cup of tea?"
Cecil executed a quick bow and took off at a run.
Fitzwilliam observed, "That boy makes me tired just watching him."
"Yes, we must remember to send him for some sleep soon."
Jane asked, "Returning to my original question —"
"Ah, all's well that ends well? I simply said we will see how it ends."
"What would you call well, colonel?"
"In battle, survival is good, without injury better, and victory ideal. This is much the same. I hope to see my friends victorious, and my enemies vanquished."
"I am surprised you would use such a violent metaphor with a lady."
"Surprised, though not disappointed or disapproving?"
"Of course not," she said somewhat emphatically. "I enjoy that you two do not treat me like a figurine or a nick ninny."
"I would not dare!" he said emphatically, but Darcy removed some of the effect by chuckling.
Jane sighed and looked back and forth between the men rather unnervingly.
Darcy seemed to think it politic to say something. "I applaud your desire to eat rough with us. I cannot say I know many ladies who would?"
"You mean Lady Catherine would find something inadequate on Rosings' land? Perish the thought!" she scoffed to general laughter, which then turned to pensiveness.
"Do you know what I have done in less than half a day? I have travelled through the dead of night, terrified out of my wits while as nervous as my mother at the thought of what I would find, but obliged to discuss a very fraught situation dispassionately. I have climbed down a mountain that terrified me to a level I cannot adequately describe. I have had so many fraught conversations that I would say I know the two of you better than I might in a twelvemonth of ordinary acquaintance. I have dragged your sister in to see mine without asking permission from anybody, on my judgement and my judgement alone, just because I thought it might be good for both and I did not want to spend the next week seeking the right time. I have eyed up two gentleman like sides of beef at the butcher and evaluated their marital suitability in a manner that would send my mother into raptures and my sister Mary into apoplexy. I have at times acted very little more sensibly than my sister Lydia, for whose unsuitability Mr Darcy can readily attest. I have consistently behaved so out of character, or at least, my previous character, that till this moment I never knew myself."
The men watched in fascination as the lady finished breathlessly, while essentially bludgeoning Darcy with the pure idiocy of his assertion from the previous fall that her heart was not likely to be easily touched.
The lady looked back and forth between them intensely, then relaxed slightly. "All that I have done, gentlemen and this trial is far from over. I believe I can manage a ham sandwich!"
The last was said with a saucy smile that reminded Darcy of the love of his life, and he swore he would leave no stone unturned in making certain she understood that.
Darcy's valet, Scriven, appeared with Cecil and the meals. The three sat down around the campfire, and he poured out tea.
Their plates were simple camp-ware, neither as rough as what they used in the army, nor as fancy as what they would use in a picnic. It was amusing to watch Cecil stare at the valet in wonder while trying to copy some of his mannerisms, and Darcy was beginning to quite like the boy—exhausting or not.
"He glanced at Scriven and rolled his eyes to Cecil, and all three men know the boy would be abed within the hour with nothing more said."
As Scriven and Cecil walked away, Jane took up her sandwich as if she did so every day. Of course, sandwiches in a basket was not shocking for picnic fare, and for all he knew, the elder Bennet ladies had a picnic on Oakham mount every day. Best to stop making assumptions!
It seemed clear that Mrs Collins' cook knew her business, and they made short work of the sandwiches. She had also included apples left over from the previous season, as well as dried dates and raisins.
Miss Bennet took up her tea, then with a bit of a smirk, held the cup out to the colonel expectantly and arched an eyebrow.
It took a minute for the man to work it out, but he eventually saw the light and reached for the flask.
"Just a touch," she asked with a shy smile.
Both men chuckled. They knew that true ladies always asserted they would never touch brandy, but their protestations little match reality. Nearly all ladies drank some spirits, though they were supposedly limited to sherry, cordials, and the like; but every assembly had punch, often liberally laced with rum or worse, and nobody thought anything of it. Of course, some ladies, notably Miss Lydia at the Netherfield ball, might have been well advised to take it more sparingly.
During the brief meal, they spoke of Miss Elizabeth's condition and expectations, but nothing new came out of it.
Afterwards, they had rather indecorously sat the plates in a pile on a split log, and Jane asked, "Mr Darcy, what is important to you?"
It did not seem an idle question, so he gave it some thought.
"I would say that my duty, which I accept gladly, is of utmost important. Taking care of those I am responsible for in repayment for all I have been given."
"Who are these people, and what do you mean by 'taking care'? I confess that with parents like mine, the concept seems a bit… foreign."
Fitzwilliam said, "I advise you not to be excessively harsh on your family. One man in ten takes Darcy's attitude."
"Perhaps, but it is the Darcy way, and the reason we prosper. I could become like your father or brother, but then I would lose everything generously handed to me by my ancestors in one or two generations—as the Fitzwilliams are presently doing.
Jane noticed the colonel made no argument and wondered what sort of snake pit she and Lizzy landed in.
Darcy picked up a stick and drew a few concentric circles in the dirt.
"It is less complicated than it sounds. Each circle represents people less connected to me and thus owed less. The inner circle is my immediate family and closest associates: Georgiana, Fitzwilliam, my butler and housekeeper and a few other long-term staff, a very few of my closest and most trusted friends. I would protect any of them with anything I have, up to my life."
"No other Fitzwilliams in that circle?"
"No!" he said definitively.
"Next are the people who depend on my judgment for their prosperity. Pemberley's servants and tenants, the labourers in the fields, the townspeople of Lambton and Kimpton, and even some of the owners of nearby estates. I take care of them, and they take care of me. We have servants and tenants of five or six generations. You retain them by showing care and respect. They are worthy of a great deal of my fortune, and even some risk to my person, but nothing like the first circle."
"It is admirable," she admitted with a big smile. The whole idea was anathema to her father, which almost automatically made it admirable in her sometimes-simplistic view of the world.
He pointed to the outer circle. "Other friends, business associates, businesses I have invested in. The poor of all the parishes where I do business. The charities my mother managed and those I engaged myself. They are worthy of my support, but not all of it, and not at risk to the first two circles."
"Interesting you consider them as such," she asked in confusion.
"I cannot end poverty. Nobody can, but I try to do my bit and a touch more."
"And the next, I assume is England?"
"More or less."
She looked thoughtful. "May I presume getting Lizzy and I into that inner circle would pass for the colonel's all's well that ends well condition?"
Darcy nodded, thinking that had been obvious all along.
Fitzwilliam added, "Just the two of you will be insufficient. You and Miss Elizabeth can be injured by your sisters and vice versa, so the rest of the Bennets must go inside as well."
"Yes, I can see that," Jane said, looking very much like she might not want all her family inside.
Darcy laughed freely. "Fear not, Miss Bennet. Those circles represent metaphorical connections, not physical. Those in the inner circle need not be in close proximity."
Fitzwilliam howled while Jane smiled.
Darcy noticed with approval that her smiles seemed to be of the right intensity and pointing in the right direction.
