The Avenger- Thomas Bennet and a Father's Lament by Don Jacobson

Author:Don Jacobson [Jacobson, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-12-25T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter XXXI

From his vantage point, Tom considered his wife, glowing back at him in self-satisfaction envisioning that she, once again, could engage in combat on the Field of Venus. Bennet comprehended that Fanny had spent the past quarter hour informing him of her observations not to ask his permission to proceed, but rather to share with him what would become the context for her future actions. He would trust her to pull back the moment she perceived any discomfort on the part of either of her principals. However, he would not interfere in what, as she had surmised, was also a pairing he devoutly wished to come about.

Like Mrs. Bennet, he, too, had been reflecting upon Eileen’s future. His concerns were not matrimonial. Rather, they grew from the uncomfortable knowledge that the Trust had made little to no provision to secure the financial status of “lost Bennets.” Eileen Nearne was most assuredly a “lost Bennet:” and one who had no family and no fortune.

True, she could petition the Board to acknowledge her as a direct descendant of Jane and Charles Bingley. That would trigger a life-long cascade of pounds from long-maturing DBE bonds. Bennet had no doubt that he and Lord Thomas could force a favorable conclusion.

However, he was equally convinced that Miss Nearne, unassuming and quiet as she was, would never allow either the Founder or the Managing Director to advocate on her behalf. The lady clearly cared nothing about fortune or position.

A cynic like Bennet might have concluded that earlier Boards had decided that “ignorance was bliss”—necessary to preserve their own shares of Trust income—when they took the decision in the 1860s to disband the Trust’s Genealogy Department. That division had been tasked to ascertain the lineages of the various descendants of Christopher Bennet. The office had been quite diligent—and successful—in their efforts to reach out to those who might be unknowingly eligible for a great inheritance.

The uncomfortable presence of additional acknowledged heirs rising along Five Family lines in addition to those from the adjacent Hunters and Collins family trees could damage Five Family fortunes. The collective and individual treasuries had been weakened in 1865 by disastrous losses due to unsound investments in Confederate States of America notes. The search for “lost Bennets” was therefore abandoned with alacrity. Not a single case of an individual claiming Bennet blood unprompted had been encountered in nearly forty years.

Bennet smiled as he imagined the Second Earl of Pemberley, sour, greedy Managing Director that he was, cringing each time he had to sign letters prepared by Wilson and Hunters advising unsuspecting Smiths or Joneses that they were heirs to ducal-sized fortunes. His fingerprints were all over the hasty action rolling the Genealogy Department into the Research Department “for the sake of efficiency.”

The Founder had tasked the self-same, albeit more modern, legal minds at Wilson and Hunters to explore how he and Mrs. Bennet, as closely related to Miss Nearne as to nearly any living Fitzwilliam or Cecil-Darcy, could assist the young woman.

Bennet had hoped that he and Fanny could do that which they had done after the Fire: adopt the child.

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