Writerly Ambitions Read online

  Writerly Ambitions

  An Elizabeth and Darcy Story

  By Timothy Underwood

  Copy edit done by DJ Hendrickson

  Copyright © 2019 by Timothy Underwood

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Prologue

  1820

  Two dear friends galloped up a hill in Hertfordshire to overlook the red brick manor house and ripe fields waving with wheat of a substantial estate.

  “Well, well, Darcy, do you have another disapproving opinion?” Bingley said, his old grin returning. “I say Netherfield is a fine place, promising in essentials. A little run down — but the price is run down just as much.”

  Mr. Darcy shifted on the broad back of his horse. He looked down on the fine building in three stories. White marble columns framed the main entrance and the large portico, a wide spread of fields all around surrounded the building.

  There were fences unrepaired, spots where the wheat was spotty in the lower areas because the drainage had probably not been cleared, pathways overgrown with weeds.

  Years before Darcy would have counselled his friend against taking such an estate, no matter how favorable the price, not believing him sufficient to the task of putting it back into order. But over the years Mr. Bingley had grown.

  “Come on,” Bingley encouraged with a laugh. “You are full of enough complaints upon the land to send that Mr. Morris who showed it to us into apoplexy.”

  “On the contrary, what had been in my mind was this: You can manage this place. You’ll be a good master.” Darcy smiled wryly at his friend. “But I dare say you do not need me to say as much.”

  Bingley leaned over the pommel of his saddle. “Isabella and I, we always planned to do it. Actually buy an estate. Fulfill the ancestor’s dream. But we never took the time away from the parties and the ah… other fun.”

  Six months had passed since the death of Bingley’s wife in childbed. He no longer dressed entirely in black, but Bingley was still clad in somber greys, and he always kept a thick black silk ribbon around his wrist.

  “I miss her as well. Not a thousandth part so much as you, but you chose well when you married her.”

  “By chance. Entirely by chance.” Bingley laughed and pushed himself higher in the saddle to look around from side to side. The estate’s marble portico gleamed almost reddish gold in the fading afternoon sun. “I nearly took this very estate — to let, not buy — before I met Isabella. Had an appointment to ride down from town, meet the estate agent… and lightning struck. Saw her the night before, and I forgot entirely about the matter.”

  “You were convinced she was the most beautiful angel you had ever seen in your life — I remember the illegible letter you penned to me the next morning.” Darcy shook his head fondly at his old friend. “You were not yet the most responsible gentleman in the world.”

  “Nay?” Bingley grinned broadly. “Izzie helped me grow. She still does, looking down on me from up there, and wagging her finger anytime I do something stupid.”

  Neither gentleman said anything for a span as their horses calmly shifted their feet on the soft grasses.

  “So when will you marry, dear chap?” Bingley spoke unexpectedly and grinned at Darcy’s expression. “Eh? Izzie is no longer round to play matchmaker. My obligation now.”

  Darcy laughed and clicked his horse into a canter. “Race you to the estate.”

  Bingley whooped and chased after him.

  Chapter One

  A week before the settlement of Mr. Charles Bingley, accompanied for a time by that fine fellow, his estimable friend Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, into the neighborhood of Meryton, yet one other person arrived in the environs of that aforementioned market town from that great sinful city whose name is London.

  Following a significant absence of many years from her home county, Miss Elizabeth Bennet rolled towards her one time home in the well sprung and supple new Bennet carriage her mother had sent unto London to fetch her daughter.

  The gravelly roll of the wheels was a familiar old sound.

  It was cold in the carriage, but Elizabeth kept the window open so she could see more easily everything in the half familiar and a quarter forgotten landscape. Elizabeth had not seen her home territory since those fated weeks during her fateful twentieth year.

  She giggled inwardly to herself; these days, ever since Elizabeth had acquired notable success as an author, when she spoke to herself she often talked like a silly melodramatic book.

  She had been expelled from the wild woods, furrowed fields and… cold creeks of the country county of her birth when scandal exploded, like a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day, after she had been trapped alone in a hunting lodge during a blizzard for two whole days with that darling of stupid and silly girls, Mr. George Wickham.

  Ah, Wicky.

  An annoyed and disgusted expression went over Elizabeth’s face, like she’d just stepped with a new pair of shoes into a deep pile of horse muck — unknown to Elizabeth, this was the expression her face took every time the memory of that thinly charming individual imposed itself on her like the gentleman had attempted to impose on her.

  What ever happened to Wicky?

  He’d been quite put out when Elizabeth absolutely refused to let him have any “waggy entertainment” — “Be a nice, sweet girl,” he’d said. “It shan’t hurt at all. You’ll like it very much. No one will find out.” — during the duration of that stay. She’d been required to make the point that she lacked any interest with the sharp edge of her knee to his groin before he accepted her polite demurral.

  Mr. Wickham’s revenge was to spread scandalous stories about their lascivious and lewd deeds.

  The truth of those two days had been rather less pleasant than what Elizabeth imagined a two days’ tryst filled with animal concourse between a man and a woman would have been — the two of them spent thirty and six hours shivering on opposite sides of the freezing room. Elizabeth slept not a wink the entire time, terrified of what Mr. Wickham might do if he could catch her completely off guard.

  He snored with some comfort and the only horsehair blanket in the hunting lodge.

  The yet young woman — not yet thirty! And a writer of modest repute — shook away those recollections of unpleasant past moments.

  Rather she preferred to gaze with growing excitement upon the nostalgic haunts of childhood days. There Oakham Mount, from which you could see clear for many miles around. There the Gouldings’ farm. There Mr. Long’s fine house — no, that gentleman had not remained in place awaiting Elizabeth’s return, and rather had removed himself and his wife to a retirement in Bath, and the house was now rented, though
Elizabeth could not recall the name of the family Mr. Long had let his modest pile out to.

  And Meryton.

  Yet more memories, most happy, burst in upon Elizabeth. She had spent many years, so very many, in these quaint environs. The town was so busy seeming to a girl running about who knew nowhere else. So empty and sedate to a woman accustomed to the capital’s unending and (on occasional occasions) unnerving bustle. Her carriage trundled through the town, and Elizabeth looked about eagerly.

  Many signs had changed in the seven years past. The haberdasher and the milliner had switched shops. Where the chandler stood, a greengrocer. But her favorite! The old circulating library and bookseller was still in the same place.

  Elizabeth determined she would visit Mr. Martin soon.

  Despite herself Elizabeth could not help but grin with an honest enthusiasm which made the ironic tones in her mind fade away. The old memories delighted her far more than they pained her. Twenty years of happiness could not be undone by two months of misery.

  In essentials Meryton was exactly as it always had been, though a few new built brick structures on the edges of the town had joined the brown and white timber framed buildings that had been there for centuries.

  A group of children played in a field, running back and forth as they chased each other, happily laughing.

  She grinned, this happiness at old associations long unseen unstoppably bubbling through her. Alas, not all her thoughts were so delighted, for a terrified part of our heroine — Elizabeth also tended to refer to herself in her internal monologue with such an appellation on rare, pompous, occasions — a part of her that was not yet one and twenty, a part of her which had never stopped hurting at the fervent belief her neighbors adopted in her guilt, feared they would recognize her, and despise her again.

  Elizabeth took a deep breath, full of the clean country air, with just a touch of manure from one of the pasture fields in the scent.

  She smiled.

  Nothing maudlin. Not today. The cloudy October weather which promised cold sprinkles would burst forth any moment was far too fine for her to be maudlin in. At least for a few months it would be good to be home once more.

  And there the old house was.

  Longbourn was a fine compact structure all in red brick. The sort of structure in which those gentry of middling stature, the backbone, or so insisted the newspapers which depended upon their subscriptions, of England would reside. A manor house that had seen a few generations, but which yet was modern enough that the young heirs would not be talking about how it was time to knock the old pile over and begin anew in the hallowed name of Improvement.

  A half dozen smokestacks merrily belched thin wisps of smoke into the air. A welcoming sight to the returning authoress.

  When the carriage pulled up to the manor house, Elizabeth gathered up her calf skin notebook where she kept the pages of whatever she was working on. During the day she scribbled ideas in pencil onto the sheets and then she later copied them out in ink for the working copy.

  The door was opened by her dear old Papa. He smilingly extended out his arm, and he helped Elizabeth to step down from the carriage. “Lizzy, home at last! Home!”

  Elizabeth exuberantly embraced her father and then looked at him.

  He smiled back at her.

  Papa looked older. She’d somehow never noticed when he visited her in London. But his hair had been darker, and his skin firmer when seven years before he saw her off to town, standing in this very place and waving.

  The sort of nervous feeling felt at seeing the effect of age on her father launched Elizabeth again into that way of thinking: Whilst our heroine’s father was not elderly, he no longer could be said in frank honesty to be in the middle course of a man’s life.

  “Lizzy! My dear, dear Lizzy!” Mrs. Bennet seized Elizabeth and hugged her tightly, disrupting any maudlin meanderings. “My dear, dear daughter! Lord! Home at last! I have missed you so.”

  Mama looked younger, happy and relaxed. She’d never used to look relaxed.

  Such was the effect, Elizabeth supposed, of four daughters married.

  That terrible fear had haunted her mother for many a year, that fear of starving alone, with her daughters, in the hedgerows, unwanted and unaided by any of her many relations, not a one of whom would deign to lift a finger to help their blood relation, with only the insufficient support to keep life in the bones of the income off five thousand in the four percents. The marriage of four daughters, even if not a one had married well had relieved that never particularly reasonable fear from her mother.

  Mama bustled Elizabeth inside. “Lord! So unfashionable. That dress! Was it ever even in fashion for the season? As though you’d come from some cheap rural village, not London! Mr. Bennet said he always sends you allowance sufficient for dresses — what have you spent that money on? We must go to the dressmaker tomorrow. Order something in the latest fashion for you. I’ll not have my daughter look so dowdy — everything is prepared for you, Lizzy — your room is nice and warm. You shall feel entirely at home again.”

  The more Mama talked the quieter Elizabeth felt. In seriousness she did not want to be fashionable again, especially not here. “I hope I shall.”

  “The same, the very same! Everything is the same. Heavens, you do look brown — I thought you spent all your days inside scribbling?” Mrs. Bennet frowned at her. “You are quite freckled.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “One might, if they have a pencil and paper, scribble out of their doors with even greater facility than inside of their doors — you know, like the poets.”

  “Not respectable people.” Mrs. Bennet sniffed. “Poets are not respectable at all. You’ll give off from scribbling I hope, now that you are living back here where you belong.”

  Elizabeth shook her head, smilingly. “Not at all, Mama. Not at all.”

  Mr. Bennet laughed. “You’ll not convince your mother to be happy with anything that reeks of the bluestocking.”

  “Lord, it is so exciting!” Mama clapped her hands briskly. “To reintroduce you to all our friends. Tomorrow we shall call on the Lucases, and the Gouldings and Mr. Kelton — you must know that Mr. Kelton rents from Mr. Long, I am sure I have told you three times, if I have told you once, about him.”

  “Showing me off to the neighborhood?” Elizabeth looked around the drawing room. It looked smaller than her memories. A strange and sudden anxiety stabbed through her.

  Our heroine did not want to see everyone again. She didn’t want to see them.

  “Lizzy, do you like what I have done with the room? All the furniture and wallpaper new in the room, right after Kitty married. According to the latest patterns in the magazines. Is it like the drawing rooms you have seen in London?”

  “Very like,” Elizabeth replied with only a weak pretense of enthusiasm. Our heroine would have far rather seen everything as it had once been.

  Mama took the fabric of Elizabeth’s dress between her fingers. “Heavens. Heavens. This would not do at all. You must have a visiting dress. Perhaps one with a modern cut… you know how fashions have changed so much these past years, since our victory. You must have not wished to add to the wear of your good travelling dress…” Mrs. Bennet trailed off, looking almost forlorn.

  Elizabeth took a deep breath. She was not that woman. She no longer was scared of any social disapprobation, and she had proven to herself and to the world that she was of value. Besides, in literary circles in London, amongst people who knew at least rumors of the story of her with Wickham, she was very well liked. “I have one or two visiting dresses that are better, though nothing that would be the height of London fashion, but I think I shall meet your hopes.”

  Papa snorted.

  “Now, Lizzy, be quiet, ladylike and sweet — they all remember how wild and hoydenish you were. If you want friends here, you must show them you are quite chastened.”

  “Oh, I am quite as chaste as I ever was!” Elizabeth replied laughing.

  Po
or Mama frowned at her, and Elizabeth embraced her in return.

  Mama was who she was: a wavy spirited woman of weak understanding. “I promise, I shall be on the best of my behavior with whichever of your friends you have convinced to accept my visit.”

  “They are your friends too,” Mrs. Bennet said, almost hotly.

  Elizabeth just shook her head.

  That evening, Elizabeth joined her learned father in his packed book room for conversation whilst Mama busied herself with uselessly officiating over the cookery of their cook. This room was oh so dearly and painfully familiar. That smell books got as they became old, the lingering odor of tobacco pipe on the air, the strong scent of the coffee her father drank while reading.

  It was as though she were a child who sat adoringly at her father’s knee again.

  The leaden sky of a proper English afternoon seen through the drafty windows was the favorite view of her childhood. And furthermore the fireplace with its modest marble mantelpiece was an old friend. A bit black with ash around the edges as Mr. Bennet was by no means dedicated to having it cleaned regularly. Heirloom paintings of little famed family forebears hung on the walnut paneled walls.

  Elizabeth could imagine she was fifteen, eagerly stealing Papa’s copy of Shakespeare to whisper the words of the Taming of the Shrew or As You Will to herself. She’d always been the sort of light trifling girl who greatly preferred the comedies to the tragedies. From such beginnings she had now grown, like a thorny weed, into the worst sort of person: A light trifling author whose heroines never died tragically.

  Elizabeth ran her fingers along the spines of the books: Hello old, dear friends! And hello yet to be read for the first time new friends.

  There was an entire new set of bookshelves on one wall where there used to be paintings, and the table in the corner was piled five high with books. The proper abode of such a man as her father. Though so many books must have run to a great cost.

  “Well, Lizzy. Well,” Papa said smilingly, gaining her attention, “you can see I follow all the latest girlish trends.”