Rebellion at Longbourn Read online

  Rebellion at Longbourn

  A Pride and Prejudice Variation

  Victoria Kincaid

  Copyright © 2020 by Victoria Kincaid

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Also by Victoria Kincaid

  Other Books by Victoria Kincaid

  Chapter One

  The coast of England was a hazy strip of dull gray on the horizon, barely a smudge. Despite its unprepossessing appearance, a shiver ran down Darcy’s back. Home again, after all this time! Georgiana must have experienced much the same sentiments. She clutched Darcy’s arm as they leaned against the ship’s rail. “There it is! Oh! I am so pleased to be home again.” She ducked her head. “Not that I am not grateful for the trip, William, but—”

  Her brother smiled. “I understand, dearest. I took pleasure in our travels as well, but I am eager to return home.”

  “Precisely!” Georgiana leaned closer to him, her eyes fixed on the land.

  The visit to Darcy’s properties in Upper Canada had only been intended to last for a year, but complications from an inconvenient war with America had made it difficult to book safe passage, extending their visit another six months. The Canadian wilderness was beautiful and glimpses of a new world had been fascinating, but they were more than ready to return.

  Bingley stepped up to the rail on Darcy’s other side. “Now, there is a sight to greet a weary traveler!” He inhaled deeply as if he could already smell the scents of home. “I pray you, tell me, what have you missed the most? What food will you seek first once we return to English soil?”

  “Clotted cream!” Georgiana said instantly. The others laughed, having often heard this lament.

  “Proper tea,” Bingley said.

  “I will be ever so pleased to have kippers for breakfast,” Darcy declared.

  Georgiana’s eyes sparkled as she addressed the others. “And what shall you do first when we arrive? I am eagerly anticipating several trips to the mantua maker. My wardrobe is sadly out of date!”

  “My purse would have been better served if we had remained in Canada,” Darcy joked.

  “Perhaps you would prefer to see your sister dressed in rags?” Georgiana asked archly.

  Darcy was delighted by the teasing tone in her voice. The Georgiana who had boarded a ship for Canada eighteen months ago had been solemn and strained. He vividly remembered the day she had tiptoed into his study and tearfully confessed that she did not feel equal to preparing for a coming out. Eventually Darcy had realized that she was still recovering from Wickham’s ill treatment at Ramsgate. Her self-confidence had suffered, and she was very uncomfortable in society.

  Their travels had done her a world of good. She had matured and blossomed into a poised young lady—one he could imagine launching into society. Their relationship had simultaneously deepened and become less formal as she came to view him more as a brother and less as a parent.

  “I long to visit Pemberley,” Darcy said. “Unfortunately, I will have many weeks of business in London before we might leave for Derbyshire. What about you, Bingley? What do you most wish to do?”

  When his friend did not answer immediately, Darcy gave him a sidelong glance.

  Bingley stared at the distant shore with an abstracted expression. “I might visit Netherfield.”

  Darcy started. As if by unspoken agreement, they had not discussed Hertfordshire at all during their trip. Bingley had seemed as eager to escape the society of London as Darcy himself, and so Darcy had invited his friend on the voyage.

  Bingley had been endeavoring to forget Miss Jane Bennet, who did not return his regard for her. Darcy had experienced a silent kinship with his friend, as he himself attempted to forget Miss Elizabeth Bennet, Jane’s sister. Although he had never breathed a word of his infatuation with Elizabeth to Bingley.

  Darcy had hoped that traveling together might encourage Bingley’s affections to transfer to Georgiana. He would make her an excellent husband, and such an engagement would spare her the necessity of a coming out. But within the first month of their travels, it had become clear that his friend’s sentiments toward Georgiana would never be anything more than brotherly affection.

  “I believed you had given up Netherfield,” Darcy said lightly, as if the matter were of no concern to him. Darcy had taken great pains to ensure that Bingley would never suspect how Elizabeth Bennet had tempted him.

  Bingley removed his hat, which threatened to blow off in the breeze, and ran his fingers through his thick blond hair. “Such was my intention, but no eligible offers were made, and now…I think perhaps I would like to make one more visit and see how…the neighbors fare.”

  Bingley’s sudden concern for Hertfordshire’s inhabitants did not fool Darcy. “Perhaps you should wait.” Although Georgiana had moved toward the prow, Darcy kept his voice low. “You should at least discover if Miss Bennet is married before you hare off to Meryton.”

  His friend sucked in a breath, his face paling. “Married! Yes, I suppose…I had not considered… Of course, it has been nearly two years since we last met; she might have married.” He directed a sharp look toward Darcy. “Do you know something?”

  Darcy shook his head. “I have no news from that quarter.” To his infinite regret. He had opened every letter from England with dread that it would contain the news that Elizabeth had married. But nobody had written about their friends in Hertfordshire, which was not terribly surprising since their residency there had been brief and their acquaintance not very wide. “I hope your sister might know more.”

  Bingley squinted into the sun. “If she possesses any such knowledge, she has not seen fit to share it with me in her letters.” He dropped his head to stare at the water. “I cannot go to Hertfordshire immediately in any event. Caroline and Louisa would chastise me, and my first travels must necessarily be to manage business in Scarborough.”

  Darcy kept his face impassive as he directed his eyes back to the shores of England, growing larger and more distinct every minute.

  Fortunately, Bingley had not spoken of his feelings for Miss Bennet over the past year and a half; if he had, Darcy might have succumbed to the impulse to confess his own infatuation with Elizabeth. Instead they had both endeavored to forget. Bingley’s interest in Hertfordshire suggested he had been as successful as Darcy knew himself to be.

  He had come within minutes of proposing to Elizabeth at Hunsford Parsonage. Knowing she was at home alone with a headache, Darcy had approached the house with that design in mind. He had long since admitted his love to himself and finally conceded he could not b
e satisfied unless she was his wife.

  But just as he drew near the cottage’s door, he had glimpsed an express messenger arriving. Fearing bad news, Darcy had followed as the maid took the message into the house; thus, he had been present when Elizabeth learned that her father had suffered an attack of apoplexy. All Darcy’s other concerns had been forgotten as he did his best to lend his aid, sending the maid for Mr. and Mrs. Collins and providing Elizabeth with the use of his carriage to reach Longbourn. Nevertheless, he had felt singularly useless in the situation.

  He had not laid eyes on her again.

  Shortly afterward, he had received a note from her uncle, Mr. Phillips, a man Darcy scarcely knew, informing him that Mr. Bennet was expected to make a full recovery of his faculties and thanking him for his assistance to Elizabeth.

  Away from Elizabeth’s enchanting presence, Darcy realized he had nearly made a terrible mistake and had been rescued by fate. As much as he loved her, allying himself with the Bennet family could have dire consequences for Darcy’s social standing and Georgiana’s marital prospects, which were already threatened by Wickham’s actions. Surely the arrival of a messenger at that particular moment was a sign that he should not be seeking a wife in that quarter. Hoping his obsession would fade with distance and time, he had arranged the trans-Atlantic voyage to visit some of his business interests in Canada.

  But now, as he watched the shores of England slowly grow larger, he was forced to concede that he had been wrong. She haunted his dreams. He would awaken during the night with her name upon his lips, having experienced sensual reveries that no man should entertain about a woman not his wife. Every day a snatch of music, the sight of dark curls, or the sound of melodious laughter would remind him of Elizabeth. The effort to forget her had been a failure. He could only hope that upon his return to England, he would meet a woman who would replace her in his affections.

  The lack of information about Elizabeth’s family—far from being a welcome surcease—had allowed his imagination to prey upon him. Every day he wondered if she had fallen ill. If she had married. If some tragedy had struck her family. He had built so many elaborate fantasies about her life that he began to question his sanity. He was a drunkard who tried to wean himself from the bottle.

  Thank God they were returning home. Now he at least might obtain some news about the Bennets. Surely it was this scarcity that preyed upon his mind. Once he knew she was well, he could begin the business of finding a suitable wife among the women of the ton.

  “’Tis good to be home,” Darcy echoed his friend’s sentiment. “No doubt much news awaits us in London.”

  ***

  “Are you ready, Lizzy?” Mary called out as she clattered down the steps into the kitchen. Elizabeth wiped flour from her hands onto her apron before untying it and hanging it on a peg. Smoothing her serviceable muslin gown, she tucked a wayward lock of hair behind her ear. Hill smiled in encouragement as Elizabeth hurried toward her sister. The housekeeper did not know precisely what was happening, but she had sensed Elizabeth’s anxiety all morning.

  Mary’s eyes mirrored Elizabeth’s apprehension. This conversation was so important. They must choose the right words and present the information in just the right way, or all their work would be for naught. The fate of Longbourn hung in the balance.

  And even so, Elizabeth was not sanguine about their chance of success, but they must make the effort.

  Mary’s arms were full of books and agricultural journals. When their father died, Mr. Collins had shown no interest in these tomes, so Mary had studiously collected and read them. Elizabeth had no doubt that the Bennets’ quiet middle daughter now understood enough about farming to serve as a steward—if anyone would hire a woman.

  Elizabeth followed Mary up the stairs and through the front hallway until they reached the study. Even in her own thoughts she was carefully neutral in naming the room. When her father was alive, it had been Papa’s study; even now she could not bear to think of it as Mr. Collins’s study.

  After squeezing Mary’s hand, she knocked on the door. Their cousin bade them enter, and the two women hurried into the room, closing the door behind them. Taking their seats in chairs opposite the enormous dark wooden desk that had once been their father’s, they faced the man who now possessed Longbourn and had owned it for nearly a year and a half.

  Mr. Collins no longer dressed like a simple parish priest. Today he wore an embroidered waistcoat and elegantly tailored coat. His watch fob was gold, and the watch itself was an expensive antique purchased in London. His Hessian boots were diligently polished by Longbourn’s sole manservant, and his cravat was starched stiffly enough to pass muster on the floor of Parliament. Elizabeth had watched their lone maid of all work, Polly, toil over Collins’s cravats and had marveled at the amount of labor that could be expended over such a small garment.

  Elizabeth forced herself to smile at her cousin even though it was wrong to have this man inhabit her father’s domain. Papa’s desk, Papa’s chair, Papa’s books—even Papa’s eyeglasses—now belong to Collins, she reminded herself sternly.

  Before her father’s death, Elizabeth had rolled her eyes when her mother complained about the inequity of an entail. It was the way of the world; one might as well complain about the passage of the years or the falling of the leaves in autumn. But she now understood her mother’s sense of injustice in her very bones. It might be the law. It might be the way of the world. But that did not mean it was right. Why must an accident of birth grant everything to Collins?

  Elizabeth was willing to grant that Collins was legally entitled to Longbourn, but it was still wrong.

  “Cousins.” He bestowed a weak smile on the sisters, and Elizabeth braced herself for a patently insincere compliment. “It is delightful to see such an array of beauty before me. You put the flowers in the garden to shame.” And there it was, arriving with a thud that apparently Collins was unable to discern.

  Elizabeth managed a tight smile in reply, believing it best not to give any verbal acknowledgment to such “praise.” It only encouraged him.

  However, Mary was rather literal. “Nothing yet blooms in the garden; it is too early in the season.”

  Collins squirmed in his chair. “Yes…er…well, when it blooms, you will put it to shame.”

  Mary was still frowning, and Elizabeth had no doubt she was about to question how inanimate objects like flowers could experience shame.

  “Cousin,” she said quickly, “Mary has been diligently reading our late father’s agricultural journals and making quite a study of his books. I believe that what she has discovered will be of great interest to you. There are methods that might increase the yields at Longbourn and augment the profits.”

  Collins’s eyebrows rose skeptically. “Forgive me, but that is quite a bold claim.” He gave Mary a condescending smile. “Do you possess some sort of magic charm?”

  Mary bristled. “It is not magic, but science.” She opened one of the journals to a page she had marked. “Two innovations have recently been proven to bring about a tremendous increase in the yields of crops. These are the Norfolk four-crop rotation system and the seed drill.” She gestured to the article on crop rotation.

  Collins’s brows drew together as if he listened to someone speak a foreign language, but she hastened on, unwilling to allow interruptions.

  She tapped her finger on the page. “This article by Thomas Coke, the noted agriculturist, explains how the Norfolk four-crop system is a vast improvement on the customary three-crop system. The greatest benefit is that you are not required to leave fields fallow for a year. Using the Norfolk four-course system, fields would be sown with wheat one year, turnips in the next, followed by barley in the third, and clover in the fourth. This produces two cash crops and two animal feed crops. Since Longbourn does not have many cattle, we could sell the fodder for a profit. None of the fields must be fallow since alternating the crops ensures that vital nutrients are replenished in the soil.”
<
br />   Collins appeared about to ask a question, but Mary raced ahead, opening a book to a picture depicting a large wooden contraption, a little taller than a spinning wheel. “Seed drills sow seeds more evenly and at a greater depth than sowing them by hand. This ensures that the seeds are distributed evenly and are covered by soil, preventing them from being eaten by birds and animals. As a result, more seeds take root and grow, so more plants grow and flourish—”

  Collins’s officiousness finally overcame his reluctance to interrupt a woman. “Cousin, this is all very interesting, and I am quite gratified that you are taking an interest in…farming.” He said it as if Mary had suddenly developed an unhealthy obsession with sewers. “But Longbourn simply does not have the funds to invest in unproven theories.”

  “But they are not unproven!” Mary objected. “If you would read—”

  Collins waved this away. “Anyone may write anything in a book or journal. How would we know the truth of his words?”

  Mary gaped, flummoxed at the idea that scientists might lie about their results.

  “This seed drill would not be cheap even if we could locate one,” Collins continued. “Furthermore, if we tried this four-crop system and it failed, Longbourn stands to lose quite a bit of money!”

  “We could test the system in a few fields to start,” Mary suggested. “Spring planting will begin soon. Now is the perfect time—”

  Collins shook his head with the patient condescension of a parent denying a child who requested another sweet. “The system might work well in Norfolk, but there is no evidence it would flourish in a climate like Hertfordshire’s.”

  “They are not so different—” Mary said.

  Collins spoke over her. “I refuse to experiment with my own fields.”

  “It is not an experiment!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “It is common practice on many estates.” Unfortunately, nobody near Meryton yet practiced the method, so she could not point to their neighbors as examples.