Woman’s Work
Woman’s Work
Elizabeth entered the breakfast room while the light still slanted across the floor.
She had removed her shawl and brushed the dew from her shoes, but a faint dampness clung to her hem, and the flush of morning still coloured her cheeks.
The air smelled of toast and woodsmoke, and the quiet clink of crockery echoed gently in the room.
She poured herself tea and sat at the corner of the table, hands curling around the warm cup. A few moments later, the door creaked open.
Mary stepped in.
She looked much as she always did: composed, quiet, her hair neatly parted and her expression unreadable. But she walked with purpose this morning and did not go straight to her usual seat.
Instead, she stood opposite Elizabeth and said, without preamble, “Who were you planning to be?”
Elizabeth blinked. “What?”
Mary’s voice remained calm. “I know you are going. I know it is not as Elizabeth Bennet. So, who?”
Elizabeth stared at her, heart thudding.
“I, how…” She broke off, then gave a small, incredulous laugh. “You have been spying on me?”
Mary arched a brow. “You lit your candle after midnight. Went out before dawn. Tied your hair back with a piece of string. And someone folded our father’s old uniform and tucked it beneath your writing desk. I am not blind, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth looked away, caught between surprise and something very near to shame.
“I thought I might go as Thomas,” she said at last. “Father’s son. Our imaginary brother.”
Mary gave a slow nod, then reached into her sleeve and drew out a folded paper.
“Well, he need not be imaginary.”
She laid it down on the table between them.
Elizabeth hesitated, then unfolded it. Her breath caught.
Thomas Bennet, son of Christopher Bennet and Margaret née Willoughby, born 12 August 1790.
She looked up at Mary, stunned. “Our cousin—but is not his death recorded here as well?”
“No,” said Mary. “The fire was in Ashcombe, and their deaths were entered there. But Thomas was born in Meryton, before the family removed. The registers were never joined, and few would think to look in both.”
Elizabeth’s hands tightened around the paper. “I remember Uncle Bennet, Aunt Bennet… and Margaret, Thomas, and little Christopher. They came one summer, before the fire.”
Mary’s expression softened. “I remember too. Christopher followed you everywhere. He would have been sixteen now, had he lived. Thomas would be one-and-twenty this year—just the right age to take a commission. No one will question it.”
Elizabeth stared at the line on the page again, as if willing it to disappear. “So much lost, and yet this remains.”
“No one remembers a child who died before they came of age,” Mary said gently. “And that is precisely why it will work.”
Elizabeth stared at the line on the page again, as if willing it to disappear.
“You thought of everything,” she said finally, in a low voice.
“I suspected,” said Mary. “Then I confirmed. And now I am giving you something solid. Because the alternative was a name, no one could prove, and that would have seen you unmasked within a week.”
Elizabeth looked up, surprise slowly giving way to something deeper. Gratitude. Fear. Resolve.
“Mary,” she said, “thank you.”
Mary did not sit down.
Instead, she said, voice quiet but steady, “It is dangerous. You know that, I hope. If they find out, if even one-man suspects, you will be turned out. Or worse. This is not a jest.”
Elizabeth’s face was pale, but her voice did not waver. “I know.”
“You will not always know what you are doing. You will make mistakes. You are likely to be caught.”
“I know that too.”
Mary looked at her a long moment, then finally pulled out the chair opposite and sat down.
“Then at least let your mistakes begin from solid ground,” she said. “And do not go without telling someone who can help you.”
Elizabeth gave a slow, astonished smile. “You mean to help me?”
“I mean not to lose another member of this family to foolish heroics.” Mary glanced down at the register, then back at her sister. “And if you insist on going, you should at least have the proper paperwork.”
They sat in silence for a moment, the morning sun warming the edge of the table.
“You are not the first Elizabeth Bennet to think of passing as her brother. But a dead cousin from another county? That might just pass.”
Elizabeth stared at her. “I cannot believe you figured this out.”
“I am the most overlooked of us all,” Mary said simply. “People forget I am listening.”
At that moment, Jane entered, smiling and composed, with a letter in hand. “You are both awake already. Good. I wanted to tell you something. And I need your help with mother and father.”
Jane looked between them, her smile fading a little. “You are plotting something,” she said softly. “I know that look.”
“We are discussing travel,” Mary said evenly.
“So am I.” Jane held up the letter. “Mrs Hensley, the vicar’s wife at Baldham Heath, has written to say they need help, nurses, seamstresses, anyone with a steady hand. I had been wondering whether to go.”
Elizabeth blinked. “Baldham Heath?”
“It seems,” Jane said slowly, reading their faces, “that would narrow down my choices.”
Mary met her gaze, a faint smile tugging at her lips. “Indeed it does.”
Jane folded the letter, her decision made. “Then I shall write and tell Mrs Hensley I am coming. It will be good to be useful, and I suspect I will be near the people who most need watching.”
Elizabeth laughed, half relief, half affection.
“You always were the wiser sister.” They need help, with relief work.
Clothing, food, tending the sick. I thought I could be of use.
Quietly. Safely.” Her voice grew stronger.
“I need to do something, Lizzy. I cannot sit at home while everything changes.”
Elizabeth was silent for a beat. Then she reached for Jane’s hand and squeezed it tightly.
“I know you are going to try and talk me out of going, but I need to do this.” Jane continued.
“Dearest Jane, of course I want you to be safe, but if this is something you need to do, I will support you,” Elizabeth said gently.
Mary looked thoughtful. “This might work well. Lizzy, you should go too.”
Elizabeth looked up sharply, wary. “Go where?”
“With Jane,” Mary said simply. “At least part of the way. It would solve nearly everything.”
Jane’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“We will explain,” Mary said, “but not here.”
They moved to the sitting room, voices low as the household stirred upstairs.
Mary laid out her plan: Elizabeth would not vanish in the night like some runaway.
Instead, she would leave openly, in daylight, beside Jane, bound ostensibly for the vicarage near the relief outpost. The destination would be real enough to satisfy anyone who inquired, but vague enough to deflect suspicion.
Jane, initially surprised by the deception, soon embraced it. “We will pack together, say our goodbyes, and leave in the same carriage,” she said. “No one will question it.”
Mary added the finer points. “Say you are both staying at the vicarage. Leave a forwarding address for letters, and ensure Mama knows they are unlikely to reach you directly. That way, any silence can be blamed on the circumstances.”
From the corridor outside came the faint creak of a floorboard. None of the sisters turned, but Elizabeth’s breath caught.
Captain Bennet passed the open doorway a moment later, a book in hand, his expression unreadable. His eyes moved briefly to the folded blue coat upon the chair before returning to his page.
“Our father has sharper eyes than he pretends,” Mary said once he had gone. “You should not leave things where they may be noticed.”
Elizabeth pressed her lips together. “He will think I was only cleaning out the drawers.”
“Perhaps,” Mary replied, though the look she gave suggested doubt.
Elizabeth would carry, beneath her cloak, a small bundle containing her disguise, the documents, and the rest of Thomas’s things. A mile outside Meryton, the carriage would slow, and she would disembark to join William at the agreed point.
Jane would continue on alone to Baldham Heath, taking the same route Elizabeth would eventually march, but under her own name and for her own purpose.
Mary would remain behind, composed and unreadable as ever. “If anyone grows suspicious,” she said, “I will be the one to write letters from the vicarage. No one reads my handwriting anyway.”
Elizabeth stared at her in astonishment. “You have thought of everything.”
“I have had to,” Mary replied. “Someone in this family must.”
In the days that followed, quiet preparation filled the spaces between routine.
Mary took the lead on practicalities. Under the guise of mending linens, she altered the breeches and waistcoat William had provided, narrowing the seams and shortening the legs.
She reinforced the shirt cuffs and stitched padding into the shoulders of the coat, giving Elizabeth’s slighter frame a straighter line.
The boots were harder to fix, but with new laces and extra wool in the toes, they would do.
Elizabeth practised binding her chest with a strip of linen, learning how to breathe shallowly and move without strain. She borrowed a mirror from Jane’s dressing table and stood before it, practising a more masculine stance, studying the lines of her jaw and the set of her shoulders.
William met her again at the old stone bridge and brought additional supplies: a second cravat, spare stockings, a penknife, and a battered satchel. They spoke of sleeping arrangements, how best to avoid attention in the early days, and how to answer without hesitation if questioned about her past.
Mary assembled a small writing kit and ink phial, and packed it with a carefully blotted sheet containing Thomas Bennet’s baptism details. “You will need to carry this,” she said, tucking it into a hidden pocket. “If questioned, it may be enough.”