A Season for Elizabeth Bennet (Pride and Prejudice Variation)
Chapter 1
The Ladies’ Work Room
Longbourn
The workroom was largely quiet and peaceful, with one blonde and two redheads bent over their individual pursuits.
Mary Bennet sat curled in a chair beside the fire crackling in the hearth, reading a book.
Her sister Jane sat adjacent to her, workbasket at her feet and linen handkerchief spread across her lap, needle darting in and out, forming neat little hemming stitches.
Elizabeth, the second Bennet daughter, was seated at the table a short distance away, a candlestick illuminating the bits of silk and lace and ribbon spread around her.
A hat rested on the worn wooden surface in front of her half-trimmed.
The door flew open abruptly, and all three ladies looked up in surprise as their two youngest sisters, Kitty and Lydia, tumbled into the room and flung themselves towards the window.
“There he is!” Kitty squealed. “Oh, how handsome he is!”
“His horse is even more handsome,” Lydia declared with a toss of her red curls.
“Who are you talking about?” Elizabeth asked, carefully setting aside her project and walking over to the window, where Lydia had her eyes wide and nose pressed against the glass.
“It is Mr. Bingley,” Kitty explained. “He visited Father in the library for twenty minutes and is returning to Netherfield now. He looks very fine, does he not?”
Elizabeth had excellent eyesight, but even squinting, she could see little beyond Mr. Bingley’s blue coat and black hat as he rode away. His black horse was indeed very nice.
“I suppose,” she said, just as the door opened again. The Bennet ladies turned as Sally, one of the maids, entered the room and said, “Miss Elizabeth, your mother wishes to see you in her dressing room.”
“Oh, thank you,” Elizabeth replied. “I will be along immediately.”
She patted her hair into place, smoothed her skirt, and followed Sally out into the corridor.
It was a bit of a walk from the west-wing workroom to her mother’s east-wing dressing room, but Elizabeth hurried with the confidence of long practice through the hallways of her home to Mrs. Bennet’s dressing room.
She tapped lightly at the door and then let herself inside, looking around with pleasure.
Mrs. Bennet had impeccable taste, and she had made this cozy little room entirely her own.
Strong notes of emerald green in wallpaper and furnishings were softened by ruffled, cream-colored pillows on the settee.
A delicate and small dressing table sat in the corner with its polished mirror and wealth of glass bottles, perfumes and potions.
The mistress of Longbourn herself sat in one of the deep-cushioned chairs beside the fire, a porcelain tea service, the one painted with violets and forget-me-nots, steaming gently on the low table between the chairs.
Elizabeth gave the teapot a curious look as she carefully closed the door behind herself.
She enjoyed afternoon teas with her mother, as all her sisters did; Mrs. Bennet made it a habit to have tea individually with each of her daughters, just the two of them together, to ensure each girl received her regular, undivided attention and affection.
However, Elizabeth had already had her turn at tea with her mother less than a sennight previously; it was Lydia’s turn, unless she was out of her reckoning, but certainly not her own.
“Sit down, Lizzy, sit down,” Mrs. Bennet said with a smile, gesturing toward the chair across from her.
“Is something the matter, Mamma?” Elizabeth asked as she obediently took her place. “I thought it was Lydia’s turn to enjoy tea with you.”
“It is, and I promise I will invite her here tomorrow,” her mother replied as she poured a cup for her daughter and expertly added two lumps of sugar. “But I need to speak to you on a matter of importance.”
Elizabeth accepted the tea and straightened her back. She knew her mother well, and based on the expression on the lady’s face and the tone of her voice, the situation was one of some gravity.
“What is it?” she asked.
Mrs. Bennet blew out a slow breath and said, “You know, of course, that Mr. Bennet is your stepfather.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth agreed cautiously. Obviously she knew that.
Her mother sighed and continued, “As I have told you before, your father, Mr. Harper, was the son of a very wealthy merchant in London. When he died in a fall down the steps two months before you were born, he left a substantial amount of money in trust for you, his only child.”
Elizabeth blinked in confusion at her mother. “Truly? How much money will I inherit, Mamma?”
Mrs. Bennet took a sip of tea, placed the cup deliberately onto a small table, and turned to gaze into her daughter’s eyes. “It started out as forty thousand pounds, but because it has been sitting in the four percents for twenty years, it is now worth almost ninety thousand pounds.”
Elizabeth was suddenly very glad that she was sitting down. The room actually tilted for a few seconds, and she carefully lowered her cup onto her lap.
“What?” she asked, her voice sounding odd in her ears.
Mrs. Bennet reached out to take the cup from her now trembling daughter, and she said contritely, “I am sorry, darling. I have hidden this from you for so long because … well, a variety of reasons, but partly because I could not find the words. I should have broken it to you more gently, but yes, nearly ninety thousand pounds. You are a very, very wealthy woman.”
Elizabeth shook her head, her brain whirling with confusion. “I have a fortune of … of…”
“Eight and eighty thousand pounds, though to be exact, you do not yet have control of it. You will be a very wealthy woman when you turn one and twenty.”
This information somehow provided balance to Elizabeth’s unsettled brain, and she said hopefully, “So I do not have the money yet?”
“You do not,” Mrs. Bennet agreed. “Not until 16th January next year when you achieve your majority.”
Elizabeth swallowed hard and leaned back against the comfortable backing of her chair.
“That must earn over three thousand five hundred pounds a year in the four percents,” she said aloud.
“Yes,” her mother acknowledged with a nod.
Elizabeth compressed her lips and forced her gaze to shift to the window to the right of the fireplace.
It was a beautiful day, with blue skies and the occasional pleasingly puffy cloud.
There was a tree some fifteen feet away from the window, and Elizabeth stared at the softly waving branches with their leaves now a golden hue.
Elizabeth adored her mother, but she could not help a throb of resentment. She was almost one and twenty, and her mother had never told her…
“I should have told you,” Mrs. Bennet said in an eerie reflection of her own thoughts. “The truth is that I have been so happy here at Longbourn, and given the peculiar circumstances, I thought I need not do anything until your majority.”
Elizabeth frowned. “What peculiar circumstances?”
Annabelle Bennet sighed deeply and turned to look into the fire, her still pretty face bathed in the soft light of the flames.
“In order to explain that, I need to tell you about Mr. Harper, your father. I know I have spoken very little of the state of affairs of my first marriage, and I daresay that has been difficult for you.”
“Yes, it has,” her daughter agreed, “but I understood from a young age that you did not want to talk about my sire.”
The older lady turned back, her expression sorrowful, and she said, “You always were such a bright girl, my dear, and very sensitive to the feeling of others. But now you are all grown up, and I simply must explain it all for your sake and the sake of your sisters. No, my marriage to your father was not a happy one.”
Elizabeth gulped. “Was my father … cruel?”
Mrs. Bennet blinked and then said, “Oh no, not … that is, he was not physically abusive to me, never. But he was a gambler and a spendthrift, and he did not care about me at all. You see, I am the only daughter of a Viscount, and my father effectively sold me off to a merchant’s son in exchange for money to pay off his substantial debts. ”
“Mamma! That is horrible!”
“It is,” Annabelle said, blinking back tears even as she produced a determined smile for her daughter.
“Your father, Gregory, was the only son of Mr. Harper, one of the wealthiest merchants in the city, and Gregory was horribly spoiled. He was completely selfish, a gambler who drank too much and behaved in a thoroughly reckless fashion. We spent very little time together, as Gregory married me only because his father required it in return for financial support.”
“Like the Prince Regent,” Elizabeth said wryly.
“Yes, exactly like that. It was a transactional marriage. Old Mr. Harper had the pleasure of seeing his son married to the daughter of a viscount. My father received a tidy fifty thousand pounds to meet his debts.”
“What debts?” Elizabeth demanded.
Her mother wrinkled her nose and said, “My father was a great deal like yours, my love. He drank, and he gambled, and he managed to bury himself in debt. I do not know the particular situation with Wrayburn, our family’s estate in Sussex, but I am confident it is in poor heart.
I can only hope that the current Lord Langdon, my cousin Stanley, is wise and wealthy enough to bring it back into good condition. ”
“So you had no brother to inherit,” Elizabeth said, her brow furrowed.
“I was an only child. When I was pregnant with you, your father assumed you would be a son, and my father-in-law arranged for forty thousand pounds to be set aside for the child. Then Gregory died, and...”
Mrs. Bennet shook her head and took a sip of tea, and now her hand was trembling.
“What, Mamma?”
“It was very distressing,” Mrs. Bennet said and swallowed hard.
“I did not trust my father, not at all. He had sold me to the highest bidder, and I knew in time he would run through the money gained from the Harpers. There was a vast sum put in safekeeping for you, and I feared that we would fall under my father’s power again, given that I was a widow and you were my father’s only grandchild.
The Chancery Court will not permit a woman to serve as guardian for a child, and since my father was a lord, well …
I made the difficult decision to run away.
I was only a month short of delivering you when I crept to Meryton to stay with old Mrs. Simpson, who had been my nursemaid when I was a child. ”
“It sounds dreadful, Mamma!”
“It was but a few short months after I arrived here in Meryton that I met Mr. Bennet at the lending library. He was a widower after the first Mrs. Bennet died from puerperal fever after Jane was born. We quickly grew to care for one another and married, and I am very happy as his wife and mother to you girls.”
“What about my maternal grandmother?” Elizabeth asked. “Where was she?”
“My mother died when I was fifteen years old,” Mrs. Bennet said, her eyes faraway now.
“I have often wondered whether, if she had lived, she would have been able to convince my father that I ought not to marry Mr. Harper, though truly, it is unlikely. She had been in delicate health for some years before her death, you see, and my father was very strong-willed. But she did love me, with all her heart, and when she died, well…”
She trailed off and Elizabeth said, with sympathetic tears springing to her eyes, “I am so sorry.”
“It was difficult,” Mrs. Bennet agreed, and then forced herself to smile. “But while I did not like Mr. Harper, not at all, I am grateful for you, my darling.”
Elizabeth smiled back and said, “And what of your father, the viscount? Is he still alive?”
Mrs. Bennet shook her head, took a sip of tea, and said, “No, he died six months ago.”
Elizabeth blinked. “Only six months ago? He must have been…”
“Nearly seventy, and considering that he drank a great deal, I confess to some surprise that he lived that long. But yes, part of the reason I stayed silent was because until recently, I worried that Old Lord Langdon would try to pull you and me back into his orbit. Given that you are wealthy, well…”
Elizabeth blew out a breath and said, “And what do you think about the current Lord Langdon?”
“My cousin Stanley is the eldest son of my father’s deceased younger brother. I liked Stanley when we were young, but know nothing about him now.”
Elizabeth, observing the longing on her mother’s face, said, “What is Wrayburn like, Mamma?”
“Oh, well, it is hard to describe. It is far larger than Longbourn, but previous owners made rather a point of adding on here and there, and so it rambles. The estate itself is four times bigger than Longbourn, but the rent rolls have been much reduced by the stupidity of my father. An estate will not maintain its income when its master uses every penny for his own pleasures.”
Elizabeth, regarding her mother narrowly, came to a surprising discovery. “You love Wrayburn.”
A tear slipped down her mother’s cheek. “I do, so very much. I have such fond memories of playing hide and seek with my mother when I was small, and when my cousins would visit, well…”
She trailed off, pulled her handkerchief out of her sleeve, wiped her face, and straightened her back.
“But enough of that. I have been very happy here at Longbourn as wife to Mr. Bennet and mother to you girls. But now that Mr. Bingley has arrived in the area, a wealthy man whose father was in trade, I find myself filled with old anxieties. I do not want any of my girls to marry a man whose primary concern is to obtain a gentle bride.”