A Compromise By Design (Happily Ever After Pride and Prejudice Variations)

Chapter One

The road leading from Longbourn to Netherfield Park was by no means a remarkable road.

It wound through three miles of Hertfordshire countryside with the indifference of all country roads to the concerns of those who travelled them, rutted with wear and edged by hedgerows of blackthorn and hazel.

On a brisk November day of threatening clouds, it offered little in the way of encouragement to a young woman who had left home rather hastily, on foot, and in shoes that had not been designed with three miles of mud in mind.

Elizabeth Bennet had set out that morning in tolerable spirits, determined to reach her sister before the day advanced too far, but the walk to Netherfield was undertaken with more haste than prudence and had left its mark.

By the time the grand house came within view, her boots were splashed, her petticoat clung damply about her ankles, and a rebellious curl had escaped the confinement of her bonnet ribbon.

The hem of her dress bore the muddy proof of her determination, but Elizabeth resolved to be heedless of it all.

Jane was ill; she required a sister’s care.

Her state of dishevelment was of no consequence in comparison.

Netherfield was a pleasing prospect even in the dim light of November, surrounded by mist and the thinning gold of the surrounding trees.

The air held the damp chill of Hertfordshire in late autumn, when the leaves lay sodden underfoot and the sky seemed forever undecided between rain and restraint.

By the time Elizabeth reached the front door, her cheeks were flushed with exertion, her eyes bright with concern for her sister.

A servant admitted her with an expression of slight surprise, politely but imperfectly suppressed.

Elizabeth was shown into the breakfast room, where she found Mr Bingley’s party assembled and her sister’s absence conspicuous.

The faces around the table expressed a variety of sentiments: Mr Bingley’s was all anxious kindness, while Mrs Hurst’s and Miss Bingley’s were carefully arranged into something that resembled welcome without committing to it.

Mr Darcy was unreadable, though Elizabeth thought to herself with private amusement that his careful blank expression surely covered disapproval — of her person, of the long and muddy walk she had taken, and likely of all Hertfordshire.

Elizabeth greeted them all, asked after Jane, and accepted Mr Bingley’s offer to be taken directly upstairs by Mrs Nicholls, the housekeeper.

She did not look back. Had she done so, she might have observed that Mr Darcy’s eyes followed her departure with a steadiness that had nothing of indifference in it, and that Miss Bingley had observed this as well.

But Elizabeth’s thoughts were entirely with Jane, and she could spare attention for nothing else.

She found her sister in a chamber warmed by a small fire and scented faintly of lavender water.

To Elizabeth’s considerable relief, Jane was feverish and uncomfortable, but not dangerously so.

Her complexion was unnaturally heightened and her fair hair spread loosely upon the linen, but there were none of the signs that would have led to real alarm — she was lucid, and her temperature not so high that it might have caused her family anxiety on her behalf.

At the sight of Elizabeth, Jane smiled weakly.

“Lizzy! And to judge by the state of your hem, you must have walked. You should not have come so far just for me.”

“I could not have borne to do otherwise,” Elizabeth replied, pressing a cool hand to Jane’s forehead. “You are quite warm still.”

The apothecary had pronounced it a severe cold, but thankfully not one of a putrid tendency.

The rain-soaked ride from Longbourn, undertaken at Mrs Bennet’s enthusiastic encouragement, had secured precisely the result her mother had wished: Jane’s enforced stay at Netherfield.

Though their mother was likely delighted by the success of her scheme, Elizabeth could not reflect upon such folly without vexation.

Jane, who suffered illness with the same gentle patience she brought to everything else, apologised to Elizabeth for the trouble of the journey and enquired whether she had been very wet.

“Only a little,” Elizabeth said reassuringly. “You are not to think of me. How long have you been like this?”

“Since last night. Mrs Nichols has been very attentive, and Mr Bingley —” Jane paused, and a faint colour that owed nothing to fever crept into her cheeks. “Mr Bingley asked after me this morning. It was very kind.”

“Very kind indeed,” Elizabeth agreed, settling herself in the chair beside the bed with the comfortable ease of a woman who has no intention of going anywhere for some time. “And Miss Bingley? Has she been equally attentive?”

“Miss Bingley has been all that is civil,” Jane said earnestly.

Elizabeth stifled a grimace. Knowing how apt Jane was to interpret everyone’s actions with a degree of generosity taken to a fault, she could only interpret this as meaning that Miss Bingley had been civil and nothing more.

Such judgements, however, could only upset Jane, and her sister was uncomfortable enough already.

Elizabeth therefore kept her thoughts to herself, smoothed the counterpane, and asked whether Jane had slept.

It was soon apparent that Jane was not well enough to be left, and a servant was dispatched to Longbourn to let her family know and to bring back a supply of clothes for both sisters.

Mrs Bennet sent a letter with the servant, conveying her sincere hope that Jane’s illness would not inconvenience the household unduly, along with her firm opinion that Jane should by no means be moved until she was quite recovered.

Her sentiments were so perfectly consistent with everything Elizabeth knew of her mother that she felt obscurely comforted by it.

Some things, at least, could be relied upon.

After the administration of some draughts, Elizabeth left Jane to sleep and joined the rest of the household in the drawing room.

Mr Bingley received her arrival with unaffected pleasure. “My dear Miss Elizabeth, we are quite honoured. Though I am sorry it should be under such circumstances. Pray command whatever you require.”

Elizabeth thanked him sincerely. His concern for Jane was evident in every word, and her heart softened toward him accordingly.

Caroline Bingley’s greeting was gracious, though edged with something that Elizabeth could not immediately name.

“How excessively fatigued you must be after such a walk,” Miss Bingley observed, allowing her gaze to travel over Elizabeth’s muddy hem. “We should have sent the carriage, had we known you meant to exert yourself so.”

“That is very kind of you, Miss Bingley,” Elizabeth said evenly, “but I am quite happy to have walked. I consider it by no means an excessive distance — not when one has a motive.”

“How right you are!” Mr Bingley exclaimed. “And how good of you to come. I am sure Miss Bennet is much the better for your care.”

Mr Darcy stood a little apart, near the window. He bowed. “Miss Elizabeth.”

His tone was civil; his expression, unreadable. Elizabeth returned the bow with equal politeness.

If she felt a flicker of awareness under his steady gaze, if she remembered too clearly their last exchanges at the Meryton assembly, it would be better to give no sign of it.

Realising that she should not dirty their very fine parlour with the dirtiness of her dress, Elizabeth excused herself to change.

And as she climbed the stairs, she steeled herself for an extended stay at Netherfield Park.

∞∞∞

The first days passed quietly. Elizabeth divided her time between Jane’s bedside and the lower rooms, where she was obliged, by politeness and by the insistence of her hosts, to take her meals and spend some portion of the evening.

Mr Bingley was everything amiable. He enquired after Jane at every opportunity and wore his concern so openly on his face that Elizabeth, who was constitutionally inclined to find people amusing, found herself becoming genuinely fond of him instead.

Mr Bingley was the sort of man whose goodness was improved rather than diminished by being perfectly artless.

Mrs Hurst said little of consequence, though Elizabeth could not regret the omission.

Even their first acquaintance at the Meryton assembly had sufficed to show her that she and Mrs Hurst could have little to say to each other.

The increase in their acquaintance only confirmed the impression.

Mrs Hurst shared gossip with her sister and games of cards with her husband, seeming little interested in either, and still less so in conversing with Elizabeth.

Mr Darcy read almost without stopping.

Given the deficits of conversation among the party, that was not entirely remarkable.

Elizabeth could well imagine that a man of sense might choose to read rather than to hear Miss Bingley’s repeated and rather insistent compliments towards himself.

What was perhaps more remarkable was how he read: with the book open before him and his attention distributed with some inconsistency about the room.

Elizabeth noticed it on the second evening, when she glanced up from the page she was turning and found that Mr Darcy, who had ostensibly been absorbed in the second volume of something substantial, was observing her hands.

He returned at once to his book. She returned to hers. Neither made any remark.

She might have thought no more of it had she not, on subsequent evenings, noticed the same phenomenon: a studied absorption in what he read that did not quite account for the quality of attention he brought to his surroundings.