Page 91 of The Longbourn Bloodline

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

TWO GENTLEMEN

Caroline Bingley arrived at Netherfield on the twenty-first of January with three trunks, a lady’s maid, and the settled conviction that Pemberley was finally within her reach—and this time, not through marriage to Darcy, which had been her previous aim.

“You cannot be serious, Charles.” Her voice carried through the breakfast room with the crack of a well-aimed shot. “You cannot possibly intend to let this opportunity slip through your fingers. Pemberley! One of the greatest estates in England! And you sit there eating your eggs as though nothing has changed.”

Darcy set down his fork, resigned to the inevitable. He had dreaded this conversation the instant Bingley’s express rider returned from London with news of Miss Bingley’s impending arrival. For a brief, perhaps foolish moment, he had harbored the hope that she might exercise restraint—either out of friendship or, failing that, a prudent regard for her own comfort. But Caroline’s ambitions, like her trunks, always arrived in excess.

“Mr. Darcy, or whatever should I call you now?” Caroline looked down her sharp, long nose at him. “I hope you are well.”

“Well indeed, Miss Bingley. Your arrival from London to this backwater wilderness is unexpected.”

“Is it? I should have thought, given the extraordinary intelligence I received from my sister here, that my arrival was entirely predictable. When one is apprised that the true Darcy line runs through my great-grandmother, Mathilda.” She paused, savoring the shape of the words. “One becomes quite interested in what one’s brother is still doing here in this backwater instead of claiming our rightful place at Pemberley.”

“Caroline.” Bingley’s voice was mild, but Darcy recognized the set of his jaw—the same stubborn angle he had displayed in the London coffee house. “We have discussed this repeatedly. My position has not changed.”

“Which is preposterous.” Caroline set down her coffee cup. “The entail is clear. We inherit through the female line. We have a legitimate claim, supported by documented evidence. You would be a fool not to pursue it.”

“The evidence is insufficient to bring before any court,” Darcy said. “Mr. Blythewood was most explicit on that point.”

“Courts.” Caroline dismissed the word with a flick of her wrist. “This is not a matter for courts, Mr. Darcy. It is a matter for family. Charles has a moral obligation—a duty—to assume the position stolen from our ancestors. And you, I should think, have a corresponding duty to vacate. Gracefully, one would hope, with appropriate reparations. Georgiana, too, naturally.”

Stolen.

The word struck a nerve that had throbbed without ceasing since Elizabeth laid the oilskin packet in his hands by the boundary stream. Four generations had lived upon the consequence of a choice made in 1695, and now Caroline Bingley sat in a morning room in Hertfordshire and called it theft.

“Nobody stole anything,” Bingley said, with an edge Darcy had heard from him only twice in six years. “The documents cannot be corroborated as everyone directly involved is dead.”

“The estate is not dead,” Louisa observed from her corner. She had the faintly apologetic air of a woman who knew her contribution was unwelcome but could not resist making it. “Pemberley is very much alive, and very much in the wrong hands. A hundred years of income was misallocated, and I suggest it be restored to the true Darcys.”

“What about the work of the Darcys in managing, investing, and improving on the estate they held in good faith?” Bingley asked. “Does that count for nothing?”

“Then they were merely stewards for the rightful owners, Charles; you know that.” Caroline rose and glided to the window, offering the room her most distinguished profile—a posture Darcy recognized, having adopted it himself whenever judgment required a scenic backdrop. She turned, her features arranged into what she likely imagined was compassion, though it bore as much resemblance as a wax fruit to the real article.

“Mr. Darcy. I do not wish to be unkind. You have been a generous friend to my brother, and we are all sensible of it. But you must see that the situation is untenable. A gentleman cannot occupy an estate to which he has no legitimate claim.” She paused, as though weighing her next words with care. “Perhaps the Navy. I understand there are always commissions available for men of… uncertain lineage. Or the Americas. I am told there are opportunities in the new world for those who wish to begin afresh, unburdened by a name that does not belong to them.”

Louisa’s teacup halted midway to her lips. Bingley’s face drained of color and flooded with an ire Darcy had never seen from him.

“Get out.”

Caroline blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Get out of this room, Caroline. Take Louisa. Go upstairs, or go back to London, or go to the devil for all I care, but you will not sit in my house and tell the best man I have ever known to exile himself because you fancy the drawing rooms at Pemberley.”

“Charles, you are being⁠—”

“I am being clear.” Bingley stood at the breakfast table, leaning over it at Caroline. “You will not press a claim. You will not write to solicitors. You will not conspire with anyone who believes lineage entitles them to another man’s home. If you do, I will cut you off. Not from Pemberley, Caroline—from me.”

“You cannot mean⁠—”

“I have never meant anything more.”

Caroline’s composure held—it was, Darcy conceded with reluctant fairness, one of her genuine accomplishments. She looked at Louisa, who had the sense to look away.

“This is injustice, and you know it.” She glared at Darcy with an expression containing the turmoil she always left in her wake: resentment, wounded pride, and deep disappointment. “Dishonorable, despicable, not the act of a gentleman.”

Bingley walked her to the doorway, ensuring her retreat, and then he stood for a long moment, his shoulders rising and falling with breaths he was working to steady. Then he returned to Darcy. “I believe,” he said, “that I need to shoot something.”