Discovered By Mr. Darcy (Pride and Prejudice)

Chapter One

WHEN MISS ELIZABETH Bennet realized she was with child, she was not certain what it was that she was going to do.

The situation was thus that she had no notion, no guiding light for what it was that was usually done.

It was irregular. She obviously hadn’t gotten with child all on her own, but the gentleman—if you could call him that—responsible was not someone she wished to be associated with.

Indeed, she had not been willing to do anything with him at all.

She supposed that meant she had been ravaged, but she had certain ideas in her head about what that was supposed to be like. It was supposed to entail a lot of carrying off and struggling and subduing, and she… well, she hardly remembered any of it at all, truthfully.

It had happened in Brighton.

She had been very drunk.

However, that was curious, really, because she did not know how it was that she had become so very drunk to begin with.

Really, she had not had much to drink that evening.

And, indeed, later, she felt very much like the time she had hurt her ankle quite badly and she had been given some laudanum, which had made all the pain quite disappear into a soft cloud of sleep.

Now, she had not drunk any laudanum that day, but she had a suspicion some had gotten into her drink.

Someone must have put it there, someone who wished her to fall asleep, and she supposed it didn’t take much to assume that this someone was the same someone who’d had his way with her while she was unconscious.

He was the one with the motive, after all.

She shouldn’t have even been in Brighton.

She certainly had no desire to go. She had only ended up there after she had spoken harshly to her father about the decision for her younger sister Lydia to go.

Lydia had been invited by Mrs. Forster, who was the young wife of Colonel Forster.

Mrs. Forster was traveling around with the regiment, a group of militiamen who were stationed in various spots around England.

Her husband, the colonel, was an officer with the militia.

It only made sense that Mrs. Forster, a young and vibrant sort of girl—woman, Elizabeth supposed, though Mrs. Forster was younger than she was—would want a companion to come along with her, and Mrs. Forster and Lydia had grown quite close while the regiment had been stationed in Meryton, which was quite close to where Elizabeth lived.

But Elizabeth thought it was a dreadful idea, because her sister Lydia was not the sort of person who could be trusted with such responsibility.

Once, Lydia had climbed into a carriage with a man in town, because he leaned out the door and called for her. She had been horrified when this strange man had tried to kiss her cheek and caress her. Lydia had screamed loudly, and had—luckily—been let go.

Once, Lydia had “lost” her fichu at a dance, exposing everyone to the expanse of her impressive bosom—Lydia was the most well-endowed of the Bennet sisters, of which there were five, even though she was the youngest—and this meant that the men leered at her and that they all wanted to dance with her, and Lydia thought it was a great lark until men started making awful comments about her bosom, which they seemingly thought they were entitled to do, since it was on display.

Once, Lydia had confided in Elizabeth that it was her deepest wish to be the first of the sisters married, even though, again, she was the youngest, and it was not common for the youngest daughter to be married first, and Lydia claimed that, to accomplish this, she would be quite willing to elope, if necessary.

At any rate, Elizabeth only said to her father that Lydia would likely not do well with so much freedom, far away from anyone sensible, with only Mrs. Forster as any sort of inducement to be proper, Mrs. Forster who was herself only eighteen and who had been at least a bit tipsy on every occasion that Elizabeth had associated with her.

Perhaps Elizabeth had been too sharp.

Her father tended to favor her, she supposed, and so she had become used to being quite free with him.

But her father was also a sarcastic sort of person, someone who could be quite cutting to people who he did not favor.

He was rather cruel to her mother on occasion, Elizabeth had noticed.

Well, everyone who had ever heard her father speak to her mother had noticed.

Her father said, “Lydia will never be satisfied until she has exposed herself in some public place or other. This is her opportunity to do so, and we would be remiss to deprive her of it.” He thought this was a great joke, and he chortled to himself about it.

Elizabeth did not think it was funny. “But you must realize what such a thing would do to the entire family, if she indeed does behave badly in public. It would have an effect upon us all.”

“You sound like your mother, Lizzy,” said her father.

“I am surprised at you. Besides, you needn’t worry.

You and Jane, the only sensible daughters in the family, will always never be judged the way the rest of our little crew is judged.

And besides, I think womenfolk make too much of reputation in general.

Everyone expects young people to behave a bit badly. ”

And perhaps everyone did expect that, Elizabeth supposed, in 1784.

But it was the year of our Lord 1812, and everyone knew what had been wrought of the excesses of the previous decades.

The people of the world had gone mad, thinking that they could behave as they wished, could throw all customary behavior to the wind, could be enlightened of such burdens of tradition.

And it had led to exactly one place: the guillotine.

People, in general, were warier these days.

Consequences had been illustrated rather strongly.

The younger generation was less wanton than the elder had been.

But, at any rate, her father was unmoved.

“You have been gone all spring in Kent, and Jane was gone in London for months. Which meant that I was shut up in this house with only a pack of shrill women, and I could not bear it. Lydia is perhaps the shrillest of the bunch. I have an opportunity to have months of peace and quiet, and I aim to take advantage of it.”

Elizabeth should have let it all go, but instead, she made a comment to Colonel Forster at a whist party at Lucas Lodge one evening, and she only said, lightly, that she would hope he would not let his wife and Lydia get too out of hand.

Colonel Forster said that he would be ever so busy, of course. “But you should come along, Miss Elizabeth.”

“Oh, no, I was not invited,” she said. “And besides, I am to go to the Lakes with my aunt and uncle this summer.”

“How lovely,” said the colonel. “Unfortunate for us, of course. We should have enjoyed your company.” And that should have been the end of the matter.

Except the colonel did not remember her previous engagement and went to speak to her father about Elizabeth coming along, and her father, remembering their conversation, thought it just capital that Elizabeth go and keep her eye on Lydia.

He made it into a joke. “You were ever so worried, and now you can be sure that she does not misbehave!”

“But I cannot go to Brighton,” she said. “I do not wish to go to Brighton. I wish to go to the Lakes.”

“Aha!” said her father. “There it is, you see. You do not want to be in the presence of such shrillness either. You would visit it upon me, go off to the Lakes yourself, and as I have said, I have been shut up with Lydia’s whining for months.

No, my darling, it is your turn now. You have made your bed, and now you must lie in it. ”

She tried to treat it as a jest, as if he were not truly serious, but he seemed to take a bit of perverse pleasure in it, in forcing her to Brighton.

And the Gardiners, her aunt and uncle, it turned out, could not go to the Lakes as they had planned, but had to alter their plans for a much shorter trip, in the late summer, going only as far north as Derbyshire.

So, perhaps, in the end, it shouldn’t have mattered.

There was little for it.

Elizabeth went to Brighton.

Brighton was hot. There was little to do in the day except go and watch the water.

The men in the regiment were also doing shockingly little.

There was, occasionally, an attempt for the men to be called together for maneuvers, but primarily the regiment seemed to be engaged in playing cards and drinking port.

The activity often began early in the day, even as early as eleven o’clock, and it raged late into the night.

Lydia and Mrs. Forster thought it great fun, and they drank too much port, too, and they joined in the card games, and it was all revelry and laughter and the terrible singing of utterly inappropriate songs (rather badly offkey, moreover) and Elizabeth was miserable.

The worst of it was Mr. Wickham.

There was a complicated tangle that involved Mr. Wickham.

Before Elizabeth had left for Kent, as her father had spoken of, earlier in the year, she had been rather enamored of Mr. Wickham, to the degree that people had noticed.

Mr. Wickham had paid her enough mind that everyone expressed pity to her when Mr. Wickham was said to be engaged to a woman named Miss King, an heiress.

But when Elizabeth got back from Kent, it turned out that Mr. Wickham was not engaged to anyone and that Elizabeth knew exactly what sort of man Mr. Wickham was.

He was a fortune hunter, one not above debauching fifteen-year-old girls if it suited him, and a liar. He had spoken very badly of a man named Mr. Darcy, so badly that Elizabeth had been determined he was the worst sort of man and had denied his marriage proposal.

Mr. Darcy’s marriage proposal, that was.