The Servants’ Matchmaking (Pride and Prejudice Variations)

Chapter 1

Elizabeth

Rain reached Elizabeth Bennet halfway to Netherfield.

It began as a fine mist, hardly worth turning back for.

Within a quarter hour it had found the seam at her shoulder and darkened the blue wool of her shawl to something nearer navy.

By the time Netherfield appeared beyond the elms, the road had given up being a road at all.

It had become a succession of brown pools, each one determined to outdo the last.

Her elder sister, Jane, was ill. Mud could make no argument against that.

Elizabeth crossed the final field with her skirts gathered in one fist. Wind worried at the loose fringe of her shawl, tugging like an impatient child, and three strands gave way before she gained the gravel sweep.

She did not stop to mourn them. The door opened before she reached it.

A footman hurried down the steps, and behind him came Netherfield's master, Mr. Bingley, without a hat, as though the idea of fetching one had not occurred to him in the general alarm.

"Miss Elizabeth, you are soaked through. You should not have walked in this weather."

"I began in better weather. How is Jane?"

"The apothecary calls it a severe cold. Her fever rose in the night — she has asked for you twice."

That was enough. Elizabeth surrendered her wet shawl to the footman and followed Bingley inside, leaving a trail of small dark footprints across marble that had never expected such treatment.

Miss Bingley stood near the hall fire, her orange silk looking particularly warm by comparison. Elizabeth thought this an uncharitable observation and kept it anyway, tucked away for later enjoyment.

"Good heavens. You truly came on foot."

"Only the last three miles."

Mr. Hurst laughed from the doorway of the breakfast room, a short bark with no real humour in it.

Mrs. Hurst examined Elizabeth's hem as if it might have arrived without its owner's permission.

Bingley's guest, Mr. Darcy, stood by the library door with a folded newspaper he had stopped reading some time ago.

His gaze travelled from Elizabeth's damp hair to her ruined half-boots and stopped, at last, on her face.

The insult from the Meryton assembly came back with unwelcome accuracy.

She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.

A woman ought not preserve insults like pressed flowers between the pages of a book.

Some arrived already preserved, whether she wanted them or not.

He bowed. "Miss Elizabeth."

His voice carried no amusement at all. Elizabeth lifted her chin and held his gaze until the surprise of it passed clean through her.

"Mr. Darcy."

Bingley summoned the housekeeper, who arrived with a young maid trailing behind. "Sarah will take you to your sister. We have put another room at your disposal, if you will remain. You must remain. I will send to Longbourn at once."

"Thank you. I mean to stay while Jane needs me."

Bingley addressed the room at large, as though daring anyone to object. "She shall certainly stay."

Caroline arranged her expression by stages. It was a smile assembled one careful muscle at a time. "Naturally."

Sarah curtsied. She was perhaps four-and-twenty, with quick hands and a face that went blank whenever Caroline looked her way.

"This way, miss."

Elizabeth followed her upstairs, water still dripping from the hem of her gown with every step.

The sickroom held too much heat and too little air.

It had the particular closeness of a room where a fire has been fought against a fever and neither side has yet won.

Jane lay against a bank of pillows, her cheeks bright with it.

Elizabeth forgot the hall, the mud, and Mr. Darcy's fixed attention all at once.

Jane's eyes opened. "Lizzy."

"I am here."

She sat and took Jane's hand. It was dry and far too hot, her fingers curling around Elizabeth's own. The apothecary had left draughts, instructions, and confidence in roughly equal measure. Elizabeth trusted the first two considerably more than the third.

Sarah crossed to the window. "The fire has been built high all morning, miss. Shall I lower it and open the sash a little?"

"Yes, please. The room is close."

The maid worked without fuss, moving with the quiet economy of someone who had done this before and knew exactly where every minute went.

She shifted the screen, drew back one curtain, and found clean linen for a cool cloth.

When Jane coughed, Sarah raised her with care while Elizabeth held the cup to her lips.

"You have nursed before."

"My mother, miss. Some years ago."

There was no invitation to ask more in the way she said it. Elizabeth did not press.

An hour passed. Jane slept. Rain ticked against the glass, steadier now, and somewhere below a door shut against the wind.

Sarah persuaded Elizabeth to leave the bedside long enough to change out of her ruined things.

The adjoining chamber had been prepared in haste, a small fire just catching, the air still cold in the corners.

Elizabeth's portmanteau had not arrived, but one of Jane's day gowns lay across the bed, pale muslin against the dark counterpane.

Sarah smoothed the borrowed gown flat. "Mrs. Nicholls sent a man to Longbourn. He should be back before dinner. This will serve until then, if you do not object to wearing Miss Bennet's gown."

Elizabeth examined the pale muslin doubtfully. "Jane is taller. I shall look as if I have borrowed virtue as well as clothing."

Sarah's mouth twitched — just barely, just at one corner. "I can take the hem up without cutting it."

"Then you may rescue me from two disasters today."

The maid helped her undress. The wet shawl had been carried up and spread near the hearth to steam, and Sarah lifted the damaged fringe between two fingers, turning it to the light.

"This can be mended. I have blue silk close enough to the colour."

"You need not trouble. It is an old shawl."

"Old things deserve honest mending, miss. New things have not proved themselves yet."

Elizabeth looked at her, surprised into a smile. "That is a severe philosophy for a piece of wool."

"My father farms, miss. He says it of harness."

"Then I accept it on agricultural authority."

Sarah set the shawl aside with evident satisfaction, as though a small injustice had been corrected. As she pinned the borrowed skirt, voices passed beyond the door. Mr. Darcy was speaking to another man in tones pitched low, the words carrying anyway in the way household sounds do.

"McKeever, have the south fire laid in the library. Miss Bennet may want a quieter room when her sister sleeps."

"Yes, sir."

"And ask Mrs. Nicholls whether the apothecary expects the fever to turn tonight. Do not trouble Miss Elizabeth with the question."

Their steps receded down the passage. Sarah's hands paused at Elizabeth's waist. Only for a moment, a breath, no more, and then they resumed their work.

"Mr. Darcy attends closely to his friend's concerns."

"Mr. Bingley's concerns, miss?"

The question was respectful. It was also, Elizabeth suspected, not remotely innocent.

Elizabeth met Sarah's eyes in the glass. "You have known me an hour. That is too short an acquaintance for impertinence."

"Yes, miss."

"Tomorrow, perhaps."

Sarah bent over the last pin, and her shoulders moved once, as if she had swallowed a laugh whole and it had gone down the wrong way.

Elizabeth returned to Jane. Near dusk, Bingley came to the threshold, accepted the news that the fever remained with visible dismay, and departed with obvious reluctance, glancing back twice before the door closed.

Caroline followed him to make a graceful inquiry that somehow required very little of her actual presence in the sickroom.

Mrs. Hurst sent compliments from below. Mr. Hurst sent none, which was, Elizabeth thought, the more honest contribution of the two.

Mr. Darcy did not come up. A fresh scuttle of coal arrived regardless, and a volume of Cowper had been left on the sitting-room table just outside, as if it had materialised there on its own, the way objects sometimes did in a well-run house, without anyone admitting to having placed them.

Elizabeth found it when Jane woke and asked to be read to.

There was no card with the book. There did not need to be.

She had heard the order for the library fire. Not for poetry.

"Where did this come from?" she asked Sarah.

"Mr. McKeever brought it up, miss. His master thought the quieter pieces might suit an invalid."

"His master thought correctly."

Sarah lowered her gaze, but not quickly enough to hide something like satisfaction. "Mr. McKeever often does."

Elizabeth opened the volume. A narrow strip of blue silk marked a page, and it matched the thread Sarah had chosen for the shawl not an hour before.

She looked up.

The maid had become intensely absorbed in arranging medicine bottles that did not require arranging.

"Sarah."

"Miss?"

"Did you choose this poem?"

"Mr. McKeever asked whether Miss Bennet preferred cheerful verse or solemn verse. I recommended cheerful. Illness supplies solemnity without any help from Cowper."

There was sense in that. There was also, Elizabeth thought, rather a lot of design in it.

Elizabeth read to Jane until her sister slept again, Cowper's mild wit settling the room like a hand smoothing a rumpled coverlet.

Outside, the storm strengthened and branches scraped the panes with a sound like something asking to be let in.

When Sarah carried the empty tea tray downstairs, Elizabeth watched her go and turned the day over in her mind.

The maid had known exactly which poem to choose.

Mr. Darcy's valet had known exactly which volume to send.

Mr. Darcy himself had thought, had actually troubled to think, about what might ease Jane's evening.

Three small facts. None of them proved kindness, let alone regard.

They did, however, make dislike considerably less comfortable to hold onto.

Jane woke near eleven, thirsty and confused, blinking at the low fire as though she could not place the room. Elizabeth helped her drink while Sarah rebuilt the fire at a gentler heat.

"Are we still at Netherfield?" Jane asked.

"We are. Mr. Bingley has offered half the house to your recovery."

"His sisters must be pleased."

"Their joy has been very well disciplined."

Jane's amusement softened her tired face, colour rising in her cheeks that had nothing to do with fever. She closed her eyes. "He was kind before you came."

"Mr. Bingley?"

"All of them, in different proportions."

"Mr. Hurst's proportion appears to live in the cellar."

Sarah turned away from the fire too quickly, her shoulders betraying her.

"You may laugh. A sickroom need not become a chapel."

The maid glanced towards Jane before letting her mouth twitch properly this time. "Mr. Hurst asked the kitchen for a tray at four and forgot he had ordered it. Cook found it congealing on the sideboard an hour later and nearly wept."

"That is extremely useful intelligence. We shall hide Jane's broth from him at once."

Jane drifted back to sleep, her breathing evening out. Elizabeth carried the candle into the sitting room and found Sarah folding linen with the brisk, unthinking competence of someone whose hands rarely stopped moving.

"You need not remain all night."

"Mrs. Nicholls assigned me until midnight. Another maid comes after."

"You have already worked the whole day."

"An unexpected guest makes for unexpected hours, miss."

There was no complaint in the sentence — but Elizabeth heard the fact beneath it all the same, plain as a bell.

"Do you want to become a lady's maid?"

Sarah looked down at the shirts in her hands. "I have the sewing for it. Mrs. Nicholls says I need better hairdressing and more French."

"Do you have French?"

"Enough to know when a label says lavender."

"That exceeds Lydia's practical vocabulary considerably."

Sarah's face brightened, unguarded for a moment. "A lady's maid travels. She may earn more. My father had a poor harvest last year."

The information placed the whole day differently in Elizabeth's mind.

Sarah's eagerness was not some charming quality arranged for her comfort, a servant's pleasant disposition put on like a clean apron.

It had wages behind it, and a father, and the memory of a poor field somewhere that mattered a great deal more than Cowper.

A knock came at the outer door. McKeever stood in the passage with a folded blanket over one arm, his coat still damp at the shoulders.

"Mrs. Nicholls sent word that the sickroom may cool once the fire is lowered."

Sarah took it. "Thank you."

"Has the apothecary left?"

"Ten minutes ago. He expects the fever to ease by morning."

McKeever's glance reached Elizabeth, who stood within sight of the door. He bowed, a precise, economical bow, the kind that had been practised for decades. "That is good news, miss."

"It is. Please thank Mr. Darcy for the poetry."

"I will."

He left without further conversation, though Elizabeth thought his exit carried a faint air of a man who had accomplished exactly what he had come to accomplish. Sarah laid the blanket over a chair.

"You and Mr. McKeever exchange a great deal of household information."

"A guest's valet must know whether his master will be needed below, miss."

"For Jane's fever?"

Sarah arranged one corner of the blanket with more attention than the fabric required. "Mr. Darcy asked."

There was the answer, offered plainly and without further embroidery. Elizabeth returned to the bedside before she could turn it into a question she was not quite ready to hear answered.

Rain and illness had altered the whole household's hours.

Beneath the drawing rooms, people carried blankets, adjusted fires, and sent news along passages their employers seldom noticed existed.

Elizabeth had entered Netherfield concerned only with Jane, thinking of nothing beyond the next hour and the next cool cloth.

The house, it seemed, had begun noticing her in return.