Voices in the Dark Read online

  Voices in the dark

  A Pride and Prejudice Variation

  by Jaeza Rayleigh

  Contents

  Contents

  Chapter 1: A Death at Longbourn

  Chapter 2: Journey to Rosings Park

  Chapter 3: A Change of Position

  Chapter 4: Lessons

  Chapter 5: Miss de Bourgh

  Chapter 6: Visits and Consequences

  Chapter 7: Ghosts and Voices

  Chapter 8: The Prisoner

  Chapter 9: Haunting conversations

  Chapter 10: Improvements

  Chapter 11: Plans

  Chapter 12: Revelations

  Chapter 13: Freeing Mr. Darcy

  Chapter 14: The Escape

  Chapter 15: London

  Chapter 16: Tea and Explanations

  Chapter 17: Shopping

  Chapter 18: A Birthday Party

  Chapter 19: Richard

  Chapter 20: Settlements and Weddings

  Chapter 21: Pemberley

  ~the end~

  Chapter 1: A Death at Longbourn

  The carriage creaked and rattled as it traveled at a steady pace along the well-worn road. On hitting a rougher patch, the vehicle emitted a persistent squeak that was both familiar and frustrating to one of the occupants. Nineteen-year old Elizabeth Bennet, Lizzy to her family, had always thought the sound was the carriage’s way of protesting at carrying the combined weight of the six women in her family. She normally only rode in it when the entire family was going to some event, and the sound always started on the rough part of the lane heading up and away from Longbourn house.

  The carriage bounced over something in the road, and the squeaking stopped for a time, only to resume when another rough stretch of pavement presented itself. Lizzy looked over to her single traveling companion. Hannah, the maid, was so slender she looked as if a good, stiff wind would blow her away. Lizzy, herself, was trim and fit from all the walking she did. The carriage certainly had nothing to complain about with only the two of them inside.

  Of course, it was not the complaint of the carriage that had always bothered Lizzy. It was the complaints from her mother. As soon as the squeaking began, Mrs. Bennet would fuss about it. “Oh, my poor nerves!” she would exclaim, followed by an outpouring of comments about the quality of the carriage and her outrage at Mr. Bennet’s refusal to repair or replace it.

  Lizzy had once asked her father why he did not have the vehicle repaired to avoid the recurring squeak. He just grinned at her in a way that suggested he might even have done something to cause whatever prompted the noise. He did so like to tease her mother, and never in a kind way. It had always been something Lizzy knew about him, but she had never thought he would carry that teasing to the cruel lengths he had.

  She sighed. Thinking of her father brought up the memory of him that she had been trying to suppress. Turning away from Hannah, who was stitching away at some piece of mending her new mistress had sent along with her, Lizzy looked out the carriage window. Normally she would have been interested in the scenery. After all, she had never been on this road before or traveled into Kent. For the moment, however, all she saw was that last memory of her father.

  It had been a gloomy, misty morning, a fitting setting for the drama to play out. Her father would have appreciated that. Nothing less than a full-on downpour or knee-deep snow kept Lizzy from her daily walks, however, so she had been out striding along the damp lanes and trails for an hour or more when she caught sight of a saddled horse standing near the brook. Curious at what it was doing without a rider, she headed across a grassy patch of meadow towards it.

  She had come almost within touching distance of the animal before she saw the form lying half in, half out of the brook. Lizzy knew immediately that it was her father, although what he was doing out there was a mystery she never solved. He rarely stirred from the house except for church service on Sunday and the tasks around the estate he absolutely could not find a way to avoid. No matter what had brought him out, he would have done better to have stuck with his usual indolent habits. Lizzy did not need a physician’s skill to determine he was dead, and likely had been for as long as she had been out walking that day.

  As near as she could tell, he had been thrown from his horse, who knew why, and landed face-down in the brook. A deep cut on his forehead showed where he had struck a large rock as he landed, although whether the blow had killed him, or he had drowned because he was too stunned by it to turn over was more than she could say. Either way, the result was the same. Her father and the security of her family, were gone.

  She had pulled him from the water, but there was no way she could lift the body onto the horse or carry him home herself. After marking the spot in her memory, as if she could ever forget it, Lizzy led the horse back to the house and the chaos began.

  She had tried to put it off. On reaching the stable, she immediately sent a messenger to her Uncle Phillips, the local attorney, and asked him to send an express to her other uncle, a merchant who lived five hours travel away in London. That done, she asked for the donkey cart and a trio of serving men to return with her. There would be time enough to tell her mother when they got back. Or, at least, that was the plan.

  Someone must have seen her leading the horse and told Mrs. Bennet. Lizzy never found out who and did not care enough to ask. At any rate, her mother hailed her from the doorway as soon as Lizzy stepped out into the drive followed by the men and the cart. The shrillness of her mother’s demand to know what had happened was only exceeded by the strength of her wails when Lizzy was forced to admit under questioning that her father was dead, and she was leading the men to retrieve his body.

  In between her cries, Mrs. Bennet insisted that Lizzy must come inside and tend to her at once. No more traipsing over the fields for her. The new widow made such a fuss that the normally stolid donkey started to bray and try to back away. Finally, Lizzy had to describe her father’s location to the groom as best she could before going in and attempting to calm her mother.

  The effort was futile. Mrs. Bennet was inconsolable. Of course, Lizzy knew that very little of it was grief over the loss of Mr. Bennet as a person. Most of it was fear of the change in circumstances his death set in motion. The rest, well, Lizzy cynically attributed the quantity and volume of her mother’s complaints to dramatics and a never-ending desire to be the center of attention.

  The carriage rolled over a stone or large stick, bouncing Lizzy out of her memories of that first, horrible day and the image of her father lying in the brook. She realized the carriage had turned into the yard of a coaching inn. It was probably the last rest stop the horses would have before they reached their destination. Lizzy and Hannah would take advantage of the inn’s facilities to refresh themselves but would return to the carriage immediately after. A young woman traveling with only a maid was not safe in the common room and Lizzy saw no need to use her limited funds to rent a private room to sit in while they waited, when the carriage would serve them just as well. Mary, Lizzy’s sister, had been thoughtful enough to send a loaf of bread, some cheese and a flask of tea along with them, which eliminated any need to purchase a meal either.

  While they waited, Hannah continued her sewing, switching to a piece that required finer stitches and more precision than travel on the road allowed. The servants at Longbourn were also facing many changes in the aftermath of Mr. Bennet’s death, but Lizzy thought Hannah would probably fare well in the new order of things. Her own hands occupied in knitting a stocking, Lizzy sat back and let the memories wash over her.

  Mrs. Bennet had been afraid for good reason. Longbourn estate was entailed on heirs male, and despite her best efforts, she had not borne a living son to inherit it.
Instead, she had five daughters living and another two who were stillborn, just like the prized son, who had arrived but never drawn breath. In the absence of an heir apparent, a male cousin of Mr. Bennet was the heir presumptive.

  That cousin, Mr. Collins, became the subject of all Mrs. Bennet’s greatest fears and complaints. She had met him once, just after her marriage, and thought him the most unpleasant person conceivable. Even when she would appear to forget about the entail and his eventual power over her, it just took a few words of reminder from Mr. Bennet to wind her up again and restart her complaints about being thrown into the hedgerows to starve when Mr. Collins took over.

  Lizzy had never understood why her father would do that. She always assumed from his manner that he was teasing her about Mr. Collins being able to throw them out with nothing to their name. After all, her father was perfectly capable of setting aside funds for them or even purchasing a cottage for them to occupy that would be outside the property included in the entail. Despite his indolence and disinterest, the estate was prosperous, although not as prosperous as it could have been. It never occurred to her that he had not taken steps to protect them, since it would have made such a good joke of all her mother’s fears when the provisions that he had put in place came out. She should have realized he would never bother with a joke when he was not around to enjoy the punch line.

  Fortunately for the remaining family members, it was not the Mr. Collins her mother feared who showed up the day after Mr. Bennet’s funeral. The unpleasant bully her mother had met when she and Mr. Bennet were married had passed on the year before. Instead, it was his son who came to claim the estate.

  Lizzy disliked the young man intensely, but to be fair, he had behaved well by her family - much better that she might have done in his place. If he had not been such an obsequious, pedantic fool she might even have been tempted to accept his offer of marriage. Or not. There was a good deal to be said for cleanliness as well, and Mr. Collins had a very strained relationship with bath water, or so she judged from his pungent odor and lank, greasy hair.

  He had arrived in the midst of a difficult few days littered with a number of unpleasant revelations for Lizzy. She was not certain which had been worst. She felt gutted on learning that her father had done nothing to provide for his family, not even the simple step of keeping a separate account for his personal funds aside from the estate account. This meant that absolutely all the money, aside from Mrs. Bennet’s trust fund of five thousand pounds that had been her marriage settlement and whatever funds each girl had on hand left from her personal allowance, went to Mr. Collins as part of the entail.

  Lizzy knew her uncles had both discussed this simple precaution with her father many times. Even if he was not willing to set aside funds for dowries or purchase that cottage for his widow or any of the other things a responsible man might have done to give his family security, this one tiny step of separating the accounts could have been done with little trouble and no cost to him. He knew that, but from the look of things, he left the funds entangled deliberately. All Lizzy’s hopes that he was a better man than he let on died when her uncle told her he had not done even that much for his family.

  Of course, her uncles also revealed themselves to be less than she had thought. Growing up, she had always thought that even if her father was capricious and sometimes cruel, Uncle Phillips and Uncle Gardiner were caring men who could be relied on in an emergency. The very fact that they had tried so hard to get her father to prepare for his eventual demise appeared to prove that. What she had not realized was that their efforts were meant to protect themselves from having to assume the responsibility for the Bennet family one day.

  Lizzy’s hope, on sending the messenger to her Uncle Phillips was that he would come help arrange matters and bring Aunt Phillips with him to calm her sister. He did arrange matters, that was true. Uncle Phillips arrived at Longbourn quickly in response to her message, but he did not come inside the house or speak to any of the family. Once he had confirmed Mr. Bennet's death and arranged with the servants for the body to be cleaned and prepared for burial, he left. After that, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips were conspicuous by their absence from Longbourn.

  Oh, Aunt Phillips sent over a brief note of condolence to her sister. Uncle Phillips followed with an even briefer note confirming that the vicar had agreed to provide the funeral service on the second day after her father’s death. Lizzy appreciated her uncle taking over the funeral arrangements as they would otherwise have fallen to her, but aside from that, her aunt and uncle behaved more like distant acquaintances than family. It was only later, after her Uncle Gardiner arrived, that she learned all her relatives were deliberately distancing themselves from the remaining Bennets.

  Her mother’s brother stated it baldly. Almost before Edward Gardiner entered the room, his sister had begun to complain to him. Everything that was wrong with her life came pouring out of her in an uninterruptible flow. The words echoed around the room, said as they were in something between a wail and shout. "…And now Mr. Bennet is dead! If you do not help us, Brother, I do not know what we shall do!"

  The response was cold and sharp, made the second she broke for a breath, "First, you will stop screeching. It helps nothing. Then, you will do what you should have done years ago. You will live within your income."

  His words were not unreasonable. In fact, Lizzy had often wished she could have taken her mother by the shoulders, given her a good shake and insisted on something similar, particularly the bit about her mother stopping her screeching. It was the tone and the look on her uncle’s face that frightened her.

  Typically, her mother took no notice of the tone and the words were only a jumping-off point for more complaints. "Oh, Brother! How can you be so heartless? What income do you think we have? There is nothing and that man will be here to throw us into the hedgerows any time now."

  "You have the interest on your settlement. That is what has been provided for your widowhood. And yes, your husband's heir, Mr. Collins, will be here soon. Phillips notified him immediately, as was right and proper. However, he has no reason to throw you into the hedgerows unless you drive him to with your wailing and incessant complaints. Do be silent, Fanny!" Edward Gardiner had finished in a shout.

  Silence was not something Lizzy’s mother did well even when she was happy. It was impossible to expect when she was not. More argument followed, in the midst of which Lizzy learned her oldest sister had not returned from London with their uncle. When Lizzy protested that Jane should have come for the funeral, her uncle had turned his anger on her.

  "Women do not attend the funeral. She is not necessary here and I saw no reason to go to the expense of bringing her just to turn around and take her back with me again. There are certainly enough wailing women in this house already."

  Surprised by his sharp tone, Lizzy had looked around. Mary sat quietly with her favorite book of sermons. Kitty and Lydia, the two youngest, were giggling to one another, wondering if their uncle had brought presents with him from London. Clearly, they heard or understood nothing of the conversation or the consequences of their father’s death. Her mother was the only one wailing, but she could do the work of ten. As if to prove the point she had cried out again.

  "Oh, my Jane! To think she could be so beautiful for nothing!"

  "Jane may be beautiful, but she has nothing." Mr. Gardiner had said with asperity. "No money, no accomplishments, none of the other things a man of quality might wish for in a wife. She will earn her keep helping Madeline with the children until I can find one of my colleagues who is willing to overlook her lack of dowry for the pleasure of having a beautiful woman as his wife. She is serene and docile and has learned how to run a household. That may be enough."

  "Oh, but you must take Lizzy and Mary as well. I cannot have them here in the way while I try to find husbands for Kitty and Lydia!" Mrs. Bennet had insisted.

  "I must do nothing of the sort," was his sharp response. "It is enough of a favor t
o you that I take Jane. We have no room for any more of your daughters and Jane is the only one of them ever likely to marry. If she marries soon, I may be willing to take Kitty for a time and see if she can be trained into a proper enough young lady to be married once separated from the wild influence of your youngest daughter."

  Despite the warmth of the carriage in which she was sitting, Lizzy shivered at the memory of that battle just as she had done at the time. It went on, of course – her mother wailing and her uncle shouting.

  Her mother had responded, "I will have no place to keep them. If you will not take us in, the Phillips will only have room for me and the two youngest. If I must have Lizzy and Mary as well, we shall end up in the hedgerows, as I have always said."

  "You are very good at saying things, Fanny, yet you do nothing to help yourself. You and Bennet both have had twenty-four years in which to prepare for this day, yet you have saved nothing. Your husband was indolent and weak-willed. He simply laughed instead of trying to rein in your spending or poor behavior. He added nothing to your settlement or to your daughter's dowries, although he could easily have done so. Like you, he expected that Phillips and I would take on the burden of your family at his passing. I begged him to set more funds aside, yet each time he laughed at me then used the money to order more port and another rare book. I asked him to insist you not overspend your budget, and he waved me off, saying it was too much trouble to stop you and you should have your fun while you could. Well, you have had your fun and now you must learn to make do with what is left."

  "But you are my brother! Why would you not help us?"

  "I may be your brother, but I will not take away from what I have worked so hard to earn to support a silly vain woman and her useless daughters. I will not see my wife and children go hungry so that you can continue your life-long spending spree. I will help you, but I will not take you in or pay your bills. That library your husband wasted a lifetime building will start you off, but it will not keep you long if you are not careful. Fortunately, the books are not part of what Mr. Collins will inherit. I have already found a buyer for them and will take them back to town with me. The funds can be used to purchase a small cottage., something your husband should have done for you years ago since Longbourn has no dower house. Anything left over after the purchase will be added to your settlement and invested. Then the interest of your settlement can be used to pay for your other needs, particularly food. You should be glad I am leaving Lizzy with you. She, at least, knows how to set a budget and stick to it. Allow her to manage your household and you may not starve."