The Ghosts of Pemberley (Pride & Prejudice Variations)

Chapter One

Elizabeth Bennet woke for the last time in the bed she had slept in since childhood and lay still, listening.

The crack in the plaster above the wardrobe had been there since she was nine.

The faded roses on the wallpaper had not changed since long before that.

Everything was exactly as it had always been, except that after today, none of it would be hers.

From the corridor came the muffled sounds of a household in controlled upheaval.

Mrs Hill’s voice issued instructions to the maids.

Somewhere below, her mother’s higher register rose in what was either delight or despair; with Mrs Bennet, the two were often indistinguishable.

The clatter of crockery suggested that breakfast was being laid with considerably more fuss than a Tuesday in late September would ordinarily warrant.

Elizabeth closed her eyes. One more breath of this air, which smelled of dried lavender and old linen and the faintest trace of woodsmoke from the chimneys below. Then she sat up, pushed back the covers, and planted her feet on the cold floorboards.

“You might have put your slippers on first,” said Aunt Irene, from the chair by the fireplace. “You will catch your death, and then what a waste of a wedding this will be.”

Elizabeth did not startle. She had not startled at the unexpected dead since she was four years old, when the ghost of her grandfather’s spaniel had walked through the nursery wall and she had shrieked so loudly that Jane had fallen out of bed.

One learnt, over the years, to moderate one’s reactions.

“I shall not catch my death from cold feet, Aunt Irene,” Elizabeth replied, reaching for her dressing gown. “And even if I did, I trust you would inform me promptly of the fact.”

Aunt Irene sniffed. She was, in truth, a great-great-great aunt, or possibly one more great than that; Elizabeth had long since given up counting and settled on the simpler address.

She had been sniffing in genteel disapproval for the better part of a hundred years after her death, and had, if anything, grown more proficient at it.

She was a spare, upright figure in the chair, a Bennet born and bred.

She had never married, never left Longbourn, and was thoroughly disinclined to leave it now merely because she happened to be deceased.

Her gown was the style of the previous century, her cap pinned rigidly in place, and her expression that of a woman who had seen every folly the Bennet family had to offer and was not yet finished tallying them.

“You are remarkably composed,” Irene observed, “for a girl about to leave everything she has ever known.”

“I am remarkably composed,” Elizabeth corrected gently, “for a woman about to marry the man she loves. There is a difference.”

“Hmph.” Irene folded her translucent hands in her lap. “Love. Your grandfather said the same thing about your grandmother, and she rearranged all the furniture within a fortnight of the wedding. Nearly gave me an apoplexy. That escritoire had been in the same position since Queen Anne’s time.”

“You had already been dead for twenty years when Grandmama rearranged the furniture.”

“That does not mean I did not have feelings about it.”

Elizabeth smiled, tender and affectionate. She was going to miss Great-Aunt Irene almost as much as any of her living family. She crossed the room and stood before Irene’s chair, looking down at the sharp, familiar face that no one else in this house could see.

“I need you to look after them,” Elizabeth said quietly. “Papa especially. He will pretend he does not miss me, and everyone will believe him, because he is very good at pretending. But you will know.”

Irene’s expression shifted, a softening so slight she would have denied it furiously if accused. “I have looked after this family since before your grandfather was born, Elizabeth. I do not require instruction.”

“I know. But I require the comfort of giving it.”

A pause. Then Irene inclined her head, the gesture carrying more dignity than many a living woman could manage with a full curtsey.

“Very well. I shall keep watch. Your father will not want for company, whether he knows it or not.” She hesitated, then added, her tartness not quite concealing her feeling: “And I shall keep an eye on that Collins creature when he comes sniffing about. We do not want that inheriting any sooner than strictly necessary.”

Elizabeth laughed despite herself. “No, indeed. Though I think Papa is likely to outlive us all from sheer contrariness.”

“He does bear a strong resemblance to your grandfather in that respect.” Irene settled back in her chair, taking up her permanent post. “Now go and dress, child. You have a wedding to attend, and I will not have it said that a Bennet bride was late to her own nuptials.”

The morning passed in a blur of muslin, ribbons, and her mother’s voice, which seemed to fill every room of the house simultaneously, as though Mrs Bennet had somehow acquired the ability to be in five places at once through the sheer force of maternal agitation.

“The lace, Hill; no, not that lace, the good lace. Oh, where has Mary put the prayer books? Mary! Mary! And for heaven’s sake, somebody find Kitty, she was supposed to be pressing the ribbons.”

Elizabeth stood in her mother’s dressing room while Sarah, their most capable maid, arranged her hair, her steady hands untroubled by the ambient chaos of the Bennet household.

“There,” Sarah said, setting the final pin. “You look beautiful, miss. Ma’am, I should say.”

“Not yet,” Elizabeth said, smiling at the thought. “Not for another two hours, at least.”

In the reflection, she could see her mother hovering in the doorway, one hand pressed to her bosom and the other clutching a handkerchief that had already seen considerable use that morning.

Mrs Bennet’s eyes were bright, too bright, and her chin had the particular wobble that preceded either a great outpouring of emotion or an extensive commentary on the inadequacy of the neighbours’ curtains.

“Oh, Lizzy,” her mother said, and her voice cracked on the name. Sarah made a tactful and swift departure, leaving mother and daughter alone.

Elizabeth turned. She had braced herself for raptures about lace, carriages, and ten thousand a year, and was therefore entirely unprepared for the look on her mother’s face, which was not triumph but fear.

“Mama?”

“You will be careful,” Mrs Bennet whispered, and Elizabeth understood at once that they were not speaking about lace.

She crossed the room and took her mother’s hands.

They were trembling. Mrs Bennet had known about Elizabeth’s gift since Elizabeth was five years old and had greeted a woman at the market who had been dead for a fortnight.

The screaming, Mrs Bennet’s, had lasted the better part of an afternoon.

In the years since, her mother had dealt with the knowledge in the only way she knew how: by refusing to discuss it, by pretending it did not exist, by building a wall of noise, nerves, and relentless chatter so high and so thick that the terrifying truth about her second daughter could not possibly be seen over it.

It had not been courage, but it had been, in its own frantic, fluttering way, a kind of love.

“I will be careful, Mama,” Elizabeth said steadily. “I always am.”

Mrs Bennet nodded, rapid and jerky, and then pulled her hands free to dab at her eyes.

“Well! That is settled, then. Now, the flowers, Hill, I expressly said white roses, not; oh, never mind, they will do, they will do.” And she was gone, her voice trailing behind her, already onto another grievance, haranguing someone about the arrangement of the carriages.

Elizabeth let out a breath. In the mirror, she saw herself: dark hair pinned and curled, the new cream silk gown her mother had insisted on with Brussels lace at the collar and cuffs, pearl earrings her mother had loaned her.

Great-Aunt Irene said they had been in the Bennet family since before even her time.

Her own clear, watchful eyes looked back at her.

She was leaving Longbourn. She was leaving her parents and the ghosts who had been her companions, part of her extended family, since childhood. She was going to a house she had visited only briefly, to a life she could barely imagine, with a man she loved and had not told the truth.

The thought sat in her chest like a stone, familiar and heavy.

She had carried it through the engagement, through the preparations, through every tender moment with Darcy when the words had risen to her lips and she had swallowed them back down.

I see dead people. I have always seen them.

They are as real to me as you are, and I have never told a living soul outside my family.

Even Charlotte, the closest friend I have ever had, does not know.

Not today. Today was for joy, for the beginning of things. She would tell him. She would. Just not today.

Her father appeared in the doorway, his expression carefully arranged into mild amusement, as though escorting a daughter to her wedding were a task of no more consequence than selecting a book from the library shelf.

“Well, Lizzy,” he said. “Are you ready to make a very proud man even more insufferably pleased with himself?”

“Papa.” She took his arm, and felt the faintest tremor in it. “Shall we?”

Mr Bennet patted her hand where it rested on his sleeve.

“We shall.” He paused for a beat. “Though I reserve the right to claim you back if he proves unsatisfactory. I have it on good authority that Longbourn cannot function without at least one sensible person in residence, and your mother has already informed me that I do not qualify.”

Elizabeth laughed, and the sound was bright enough almost to dislodge the stone in her chest. Almost.