Darcy entered the building with a mild sneer. He'd been a member of White's since he'd come of age and had therefore never had cause to enter such a mediocre establishment. The interior looked respectable enough, though he recognized few of the gentlemen socializing within. It didn't take him long to locate Mr. John Dashwood seated by the fire reading a newspaper. While Darcy was generally loathe to interact with those he'd had little exposure to, he'd made a promise to his wife that he intended to keep.

"Mr. Dashwood," he cleared his throat and the man in question folded down a corner of his newspaper.

"Mr. Darcy, it's a pleasure to see you, sir," he said, tripping over himself to gain Darcy's favor.

"May I have a word?" The sentence was structured as a question, but he immediately sat in the chair opposite before Mr. Dashwood had a chance to respond. Elizabeth had given him express permission, bordering on a command, to fall back into his former haughty behavior for this particular interaction.

"Of course, how can I be of use."

"I have recently become acquainted with your sister, Miss Margaret Dashwood. I believe that she has become quite good friends with my sister Georgiana."

"Goodness, is little Margaret out already!" Mr. Dashwood replied genially. "Now that you mention it, I suppose Fanny did mention that she was in town. Sadly, she had already invited some friends of hers to visit so we could not host Margaret this season."

"Surely you couldn't have missed your own sister's coming-out?" Darcy asked in exasperation. The commotion from their wedding had scarcely settled the previous year before the fuss over preparations for both his sister and wife to make their official debuts.

"Oh," Mr. Dashwood looked somewhat confused for a moment. "Well. Fanny and I leave all of that up to her mother, of course. I had very little to do with the process. Perhaps I ought to pay a call and say hello now that we've all settled in."

"You surely noticed the expense of it," Darcy led, "having recently brought out my own sister, I can empathize about the dressmaker's bills."

"Oh yes! Well, that is," he again looked momentarily bewildered, "I'm certain that it was an expense for somebody though thankfully not for myself."

"Excuse me, sir," Darcy said with steel in his voice, "are you not her brother? Her nearest male relative?"

"Of course, but she is her mother's charge after all," he swallowed. "And there is of course Colonel Brandon you know, he has two thousand a-year. Edward isn't in much of a position to do much – he lost his mother's favor, you know, due to some unfortunate business – but still."

"You are content, then, to allow her brothers-in-law to fulfill your own duty to your sister?"

"I dare say Colonel Brandon is in a far better position than I at the moment to aid Margaret and her mother. You would think that coming into my father's property would have been a boon to our fortunes, but it has been nothing but unforseen expenses for the last five years complete! I do not mean to complain, however; it is undoubtedly a comfortable income, and I hope will in time be better. The enclosure of Norland Common, was a most serious drain. And then I have made a little purchase of land that was so very desirable for me in every respect, so immediately adjoining my own property, that I felt it my duty to buy it. I could not have answered it to my conscience to let it fall into any other hands. A man must pay for his convenience; and it HAS cost me a vast deal of money."

When Darcy did not fill his pause with assent and compassion Mr. Dashwood continued on. "Other great and inevitable expenses too we have had on first coming to Norland. My respected father bequeathed all the Stanhill effects that remained at Norland (and very valuable they were) to his wife. Far be it from me to repine at his doing so; he had an undoubted right to dispose of his own property as he chose, but, in consequence of it, we have been obliged to make large purchases of linen, china, &c. to supply the place of what was taken away. There was also considerable work done to the grounds and gardens. You may guess, after all these expenses, how very far we must be from being rich.

"These all seem to be the commonplace expenses for any gentleman and landowner, what makes your income so stringent that renders you unable to do your duty to your sister?"

"I wouldn't say it was my duty, she is only a half sister after all."

"Forgive me if I was misinformed, but I was under the impression that you had promised your father that you would look after his wife and daughters when he was no longer able to do so."

"Oh," Mr. Dashwood gaped for a moment at that, "of ... of course he did ask me to make them comfortable, but he was barely coherent by the time I arrived. He asked nothing specific of me."

"His last wish was that you take care of his family and you did not do so because he was not perfectly coherent on his deathbed? I cannot see how much room for interpretation there could be, sir," Darcy said with a stony anger.

"I did think, at first, of settling some money on each of them – a modest dowry you know – but then my wife prudently reminded me that any sum I settled on them would come out of my own son's inheritance and I could not conscience it."

"And is your son's inheritance so small that he could not accommodate his aunts? I understand you had your own inheritance from your mother and your own wife's dowry on top of the Norland income."

"True, true," his brow furrowed in thought, "and yet it hardly seemed fair to limit little Henry's future for my half sisters. To draw his entire fortune from my mother and wife's dowries seemed paltry for a young man to set up his establishment."

"And where were your sisters to draw their fortunes from without a dowry."

"We reasoned that with how simple their lives would be, a dowry would not be at all necessary for them. Not all men are concerned with such things – as I believe you are a prime example. Indeed, Maryann and Elinor found suitable husbands without, and Elinor would never have met Edward had we not invited him to Norland."

"While it is certain that honorable men of independent means may marry where they choose, it seems rather a gamble to hope for such fortune three times over. Tell me, how significant was your wife's dowry in your choice?"

"I say, I am not some mercenary!" John Dashwood puffed his chest up in indignation, "I married my wife out of affection, thank you."

"And would you have made the same decision had she no fortune?" Mr. Darcy pressed on.

"Well ..." John took a moment to consider. It was true that he did love Fanny and had loved her before their marriage, but it was her dowry that had first drawn his interest. "There was no guarantee of Norland at that time, and a man must live on something, after all."

"That same logic applies to women as well."

John felt a slight pang of regret. "My sisters were at no danger of starvation. Their mother has quite a sufficient fortune to supply them with modest accommodations and the necessities. In the end I decided that occasional presents of fish and game, and so forth was more in the spirit of my father's wishes."

"I see," Mr. Darcy said coldly, "and how frequent have these occasional presents been given?"

"I ..." John paused and looked back but could not produce a single example, "well, I had every intention of doing so but then they moved so far away to Devonshire and made such efforts impractical. I believe that Sir. John Middleton, Mrs. Dashwood's distant cousin, frequently supplies them with such gifts."

"Distant cousin," Mr. Darcy tutted, "another man on whom you've passed your duties, I see. May I presume, at least, that you've granted your aid in other ways? Did you search them out a suitable property? Given them smaller sums, or furnishings to make their lives more comfortable perhaps?" Mr. Darcy paused expectantly, but as he could not in good faith answer any of these questions in the positive he thought it prudent to remain silent.

"Considering you'd forgotten that Miss Margaret had made her debut, I can scarcely hope that you've done your part to promote your sisters in society? Hosted them in London? Thrown balls in their honor? Invited them to dine?"

"We did invite Elinor and Maryanne to dine!" John interjected, happy to have a positive response at last. "We wanted to promote Elinor's attachment to Colonel Brandon and ..."

"Elinor?" Mr. Darcy cut him off, "I thought that your sister Elinor was married to Mr. Ferrars and your sister Maryanne was married to Colonel Brandon."

"Yes, well," John sputtered, unsure how much to explain, "at the time my mother in law was eager to minimize any attachment ... well ... we thought it best to divert Elinor's affections elsewhere. Mrs. Ferrars had nearly finished negotiations to unite Edward with the Hon. Miss Morton and Elinor would bring neither fortune nor rank to her marriage."

"I had heard that Mrs. Ferrars disapproved of the match between your eldest sister and her eldest son, but I had presumed that your fraternal loyalty would have fallen with Miss Elinor, particularly since her lack of dowry was of your doing."

"You don't seem to understand the relationships between women if that's your view, I had no choice but to take my wife's side." John said, recalling Fanny's proclamations on the subject.

"I beg your pardon, but I believe I understand you perfectly. I myself have been my sister's guardian since she was ten years of age. I have loved her and put her own needs before my own for nearly a decade. I could never countenance your callous disregard for your sisters futures. I further understand that my own wife and sister have become fast friends and live together rather harmoniously. If asked, I am certain that neither Elizabeth nor Georgiana would place their own comfort and ambitions over the future happiness and well-being of the other. However, if, somehow, my wife attempted to displace my sister in any way, I certainly would never have stepped in line with her. At one time, perhaps, I could have understood your rationalizations regarding class, but I could never understand or respect such gross negligence of familial duty."

"I say!" John said in anger, ready to defend himself. Unfortunately, no suitable defense came to mind in light of the look of abject disdain radiating off of his companion.

"A wise woman was once forced me to see my own flaws and her words have haunted me since. I believe they apply to you, perhaps, even more than they did to me. "From the very beginning of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressed me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, and were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built an immovable dislike. Those words changed my life and guided my own reform, I suggest you listen to them and take heed. I cannot see you maintaining your standing in society unless you learn to behave in a more gentlemanlike manner!"

John sat there in stunned silence as Mr. Darcy stood and stalked away from him. It's true that he had swayed from his initial plan to settle some money on his sisters, but Fanny's arguments had been so persuasive. He truly had planned on giving some non-financial aid to his sisters, but their mother had taken them so far out of the way. He had proposed to Fanny that they host his sisters in London, it wasn't his fault that each time he'd done so Fanny had already made plans with others.

He wasn't quite certain how he'd gone from quietly enjoying a paper to receiving a dressing down from the illustrious Mr. Darcy. He may not be the brightest man, but he was capable of understanding the parting threat that gentleman had made. He could only hope that Mr. Darcy's own radical marriage had tainted his view and that society in general would see the logic of his own actions.

Notes: A quick internet search was only giving me the names of White's, Brooks's, Boodle's, and Wattier's as general gentleman's clubs and the other clubs they mentioned were based around specific things(Beaf-steak, Athenium, Four-in Hand etc). I didn't want John Dashwood to be a member of one of the top exclusive clubs to highlight his social inferiority to Darcy but I couldn't find lists of clubs that were lower on the hierarchy. If you've got suggestions for mediocre Regency-era gentlemen's clubs, I'm open to them.