Page 92 of The Longbourn Bloodline

“I agree.” Darcy finished his coffee and rose from his seat.

The two friends collected their fowling pieces from the gun room and two liver-and-white spaniels from the kennel, and strolled out to the stark wintry landscape.

The spaniels ranged ahead, noses to the ground, tails waving. Darcy carried his fowling piece broken over his arm, watching his breath curl against the pewter sky. He tried to focus on the birds or the landscape, but it was futile.

“Caroline is not entirely wrong,” Darcy finally said, unable to hold back.

“Pemberley is still yours.” Bingley’s voice was firm. “The solicitors said so, and the law protects you. Caroline can rail all she likes, but no one is taking Pemberley from you or Georgiana.”

“The law protects a lie.” Darcy’s voice was rough. “I cannot live that way, Bingley. I cannot build a marriage on a foundation I know to be false.”

“It might be false, or it might not be,” Bingley said, cocking his gun as a woodcock burst from the bracken. “The point is it cannot be either proven nor disproven.”

Bingley did not shoot, and Darcy did not even raise his gun. The spaniels looked back with expressions of frank disappointment and returned to their sniffing around.

“Then we must find a way to satisfy both families,” Darcy said. “As long as the doubt remains.”

“I am happy that Mathilda is recognized as a Darcy.”

“Her dowry was taken, and she was driven from her home,” Darcy said. “By parents who would buy an heir and throw out a daughter for her choices. I could make a restoration of the amount to your sisters.”

“If you wish, however, you are not responsible.” Bingley adjusted his grip on his fowling piece and began walking along the stream bank, toward the northern coverts. “Come. The pheasants will not wait forever.”

They approached the fallen elm, where the large pieces had already been removed. The scar where the root ball had been torn remained, as well as the scattering of smaller branches and twigs on the Longbourn side. A brace of pheasants flushed from along the frozen streambank. Darcy’s shot went wide, and Bingley raised his gun too late to take one.

“We are,” Bingley observed, reloading, “remarkably terrible at this today.”

“Our minds are elsewhere,” Darcy acknowledged.

“Speak for yourself. I am merely incompetent.” Bingley grinned, and despite everything—despite Caroline’s machinations and the weight of the Darcy name and the impossible questions that had no answers—Darcy felt his mouth twitch.

“You are never incompetent, Bingley. You aim too optimistically.”

“A family trait, I’m told.” Bingley whistled for the dogs, who had disappeared into a thicket in pursuit of an interesting scent. “Caroline wants me to be more ambitious. Louisa believes I should be more practical. And I am happy the way I am, which is apparently a source of great frustration to everyone.”

“Not those who value you for yourself,” Darcy countered. “You do not exasperate me, nor, I suspect, Jane.”

“Jane accepts readily. Her sister, less so,” Bingley chuckled.

“You may find yourself surprised,” Darcy remarked as they paused near the stream.

Bingley settled himself comfortably on a sizable log, laid his fowling piece casually across his knees, and gazed out over the frost-frosted fields. Beyond it lay Longbourn’s north meadow, and beyond that the roofline of the house, where Elizabeth was awake, likely busy with either estate business or teasing Jane about her reading a book upside down or dropping a stitch in her embroidery.

“I have been thinking,” Bingley said, and Darcy allowed him the space, settling beside him. “About how the law does not know who should have Pemberley, because the witnesses are dead, and the law does not deal with doubt—only facts.”

“Yes, except it is no longer a fact beyond reproach that George Darcy was born a Darcy.”

“We cannot prove he was not,” Bingley said. “And therefore you cannot simply hand Pemberley to me, because the law does not recognize a claim built on a torn page and a woman’s letter written more than fifty years after the fact.”

“But morally, I cannot keep Pemberley while the possibility that I am a Bennet exists. I believe Alice speaks the truth. If not, why would she record them? What would be the reason for lying? Why would Philippa tell her George was her brother unless he was? And then, the families cut off their friendship. This restriction makes no sense if George were a legitimate Darcy; an alliance between the families would be precisely what they would encourage under such circumstances.”

Bingley stroked his chin, nodding. “Except a case could be made that Alice concocted the story because she could not admit that George left her and married your great-grandmother. And so, she⁠—”

“She would not lie,” Darcy said. “She had George’s improper letter.”

“After his wife died,” Bingley argued. “Do you suppose Caroline would forgive any man who jilted her?”

Darcy shifted, the chill of the tree trunk seeping through coat and trousers. “Caroline is not a Bennet girl.”