Page 2 of Elizabeth Bennet and the Scottish Laird

“And you believe it is genuine?”

Philips hesitated. It was the hesitation that unnerved her the most. “The law recognises it as genuine. Whether the documents themselves are beyond question...” He gestured vaguely at the scattered papers. “I am no expert in Scottish parish records, Lizzy. The proofs are from a considerable distance. The minister's hand is unfamiliar to me. Yet I have examined what evidence exists, and I cannot fault it on any legal ground.”

“What are you saying, Uncle Philips?”

“I am saying...” Philips folded his hands. “I am saying that the claim appears valid — though I confess that a deed of this age presents complications I have not encountered before. The entail dates to 1720, and the Scots law intertwined with it gives me pause. My colleague in London has advised caution before any conclusion is drawn. Still, as matters presently stand, the estate passes to the nearest male heir in blood, regardless of where he resides. If Mr MacKinnon is indeed descended from Robert Bennet's line, then Longbourn is his — unless further examination of the original deed reveals an impediment.”

Elizabeth gripped the edge of the desk. The floor seemed to tilt. “When?”

“Mr MacKinnon writes that he intends to travel south within the month. He proposes to arrive by the end of October, weather and roads permitting.”

The end of October. They had four weeks, perhaps five.

“Lizzy?” Philips's voice seemed to come from a great distance. “Shall I leave these papers with you? You may wish to examine them at your leisure.”

Elizabeth willed herself to nod. “Thank you, Uncle Philips.”

He gathered the documents back into a bundle and placed them on the desk. Then, with a bow, this one more deferential, as though he pitied her, he withdrew.

“Shall I get you anything, Miss Elizabeth?” Hill asked, her countenance furrowed in concern.

“No, thank you, Hill. I wish to be alone.”

“Very well, Miss.”

Elizabeth sat alone in the silence.

Upstairs, her mother's wails had subsided into hiccupping sobs. Mary's voice drifted down, measured and flat. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” As though their father's death were a sermon to be parsed or perhaps some moral lesson to be extracted and catalogued.

From the parlour came Kitty's anxious murmur followed by Lydia's careless laugh. They did not understand yet. Perhaps they never would. Lydia had cried for half an hour, then asked whether they might still attend the assembly in a fortnight if they wore black. Kitty had only wrung her hands and asked what would become of them, over and over, until Elizabeth could bear it no longer and had sent her away.

Jane alone had grasped the extent of it. Jane, who had gone pale and silent, who had taken charge of the black armbands and the mourning stationery. It was Jane who had answered the condolence calls with perfect composure whilst their mother shrieked and their younger sisters fidgeted.

Elizabeth looked down at the papers Philips had left. Names written in fading ink. A minister's careful script. A solicitor's precise accounting of births and deaths. A lineage resurrected from obscurity, reaching across a century to claim what her father's recklessness had already half-forfeited.

Malcolm MacKinnon. Laird of Strathaird.

What manner of man was he? Highland or Lowland? Wealthy or desperate? The Isle of Skye seemed impossibly remote, a place of mist and mountains and customs she could not begin to imagine. What if he turned them out immediately? What if he refused even the small mercy of time to settle their affairs?

The desk drawer stuck when she pulled it open. Inside, beneath a scatter of broken quills and dried-up ink bottles, she found a slim leather portfolio she did not recognise. Her father's initials were stamped on the cover, half-rubbed away by handling.

Her fingers shook as she opened the portfolio.

Papers spilled across the desk. Not household accounts this time, but something far worse: promissory notes, scrawled in her father's hand. A hundred pounds to Sir William Lucas. Fifty to a Mr Doughty of Meryton. Thirty to a man whose name she could not decipher. At the bottom, crumpled and stained, an IOU for two hundred pounds, signed and dated barely a fortnight before his death.

She set the notes down carefully, the sums blurring before her.

Six hundred pounds. Perhaps more. Coins they did not have. Indeed, their mother's jointure would never cover this sum. And no amount of economising could conjure from nothing.

Right then, Elizabeth’s thoughts turned to Mr Darcy. His ten thousand a year, his great house in Derbyshire. She had refused him. She had refused him and felt righteous in doing so, and now her father was dead, and a Scottish stranger was coming to take their home, and there was no remedy or reprieve. Only the slow crush of consequence.

The thought served no purpose. She pushed it away.

Her father must have known these last weeks that ruin was upon them. Yet he had smiled over his port, retreated to his library, made dry jokes about his foolish wife and sillier daughters. He had left them nothing. Not even honesty.

She gathered her father’s notes and carried them to the fireplace. The gesture was futile, she knew — the creditors would have their own copies, their own records. Destroying these originals changed nothing in law.

The paper caught easily, curling and blackening. She fed the notes in one after another, watching her father’s debts reduced to ash. When the last had crumbled away, she straightened and brushed her hands clean. But it felt like something — a small act of order amid disorder, a way of closing her hands around the last remnant of her father’s private shame before the world came to collect what it was owed.