Julia Winter's Blog

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It’s been far too long since I was active on social media. My health has deteriorated quite sharply over the last two years—angina and pulmonary fibrosis are not a great deal of fun, I can tell you. I am very lucky in that both are mild. I mean, they’ll certainly feature on my death certificate (!), but there’s no reason to assume I’m going to turn up my toes anytime soon. I can live a generally normal life, other than exertion knocks me out. It has slowed me down a bit, though, and writing Fine Place took me much longer than I hoped.

However, it’s finally gone off to my editor, Megan Reddaway, to be pummelled into a shape decent enough for publication. I’m looking at mid-October, I think, to allow me to get all my Austenesque ducks in a row regarding a bit of PR for the book. The one thing I have finalised is the cover:

This is a detail from Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of Mrs Charles Fraser of Castle Fraser (one of the grandest ‘Castles of Mar’) near Kemnay, Aberdeenshire. Oil on canvas, circa 1817, currently in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The image is in the public domain.

“Once may be chance. Twice may be ill luck. But thrice? Thrice, lad, is malice.”

In 1811, Fitzwilliam Darcy of the Office of Foreign Affairs is stewing in Calcutta’s humid weather on behalf of His Majesty’s government, when word arrives that his father is dead and he must return to England immediately to take up his inheritance.

Pemberley.

The great house in Derbyshire that has never been his home. Instead, Pemberley is home to the stepmother and half-siblings, Hugh and Georgiana, whom he barely knows.

Pemberley may be his now, but an atmosphere of resentment and anger threads through every room. He isn’t welcome. His stepmother is cool towards him, Hugh hates ‘the usurper’… and when a series of incidents threaten Darcy’s life, the only people he feels he can trust are the army sergeant who guarded him in India, his steward and cousin, George Wickham—and Elizabeth Bennet, his stepmother’s penniless niece and companion whom Fitzwilliam first dismisses as a dowdy chit in a shabby dress a size too big for her.

Who is behind the murderous attempts? Will the visit of the Bingley family frighten off the enemy, or just provide more opportunities to get rid of the new master of Pemberley? Most of all, can Darcy and Elizabeth come to an understanding together that will, finally, make Pemberley feel like home?

So, fingers crossed, publication date :

I didn’t expect this. How lovely!

@mckennadeanfiction

Seriously, I can’t say enough about Julia Winter’s Pride and Prejudice variations. When you love a set of characters, you simply want to spend more time with them in their world. I read a lot of P&P variations because they are my CATNIP. But Julia Winter writes with such authenticity, it’s like reading Jane Austen herself. #prideandprejudice #prideandprejudice2005 #prideandprejudice1995 #prideandprejudicevariation

♬ Marianelli: Dawn – From “Pride & Prejudice” Soundtrack – Jean-Yves Thibaudet

Today’s the day! “Worthy” is live at last, and I can finally share my new variation on Pride and Prejudice. This one is a departure from the events of Jane Austen’s book – except in one particular, and that’s George Wickham’s attempt to elope from Ramsgate with Georgiana Darcy. Departures from canon Pride and Prejudice means the introduction of quite a few original characters, and while favourites such as Jane Bennet, Mr Collins, and the Bingleys appear, their stories do deviate from the one we know and love. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy meet in different circumstances, but their story is full of familiar misunderstandings and misapprehensions about each other that give them as rocky a road to happiness as Miss Austen depicted in her masterpiece.

Here’s a bit more about it all. I hope you enjoy it!

In the course of 1811, the Bennets of Longbourn meet two sets of estranged relatives: Mr Bennet’s unprepossessing heir, and his mother’s family. Elizabeth Bennet journeys into Kent to stay with the Palmers at Wingham Hall: her grand-aunt Iphigenia, her cousin Sir James Palmer, who had loved her grandmother ardently in his youth, and his son Galahad. Pleased with her new relations, Elizabeth is less content with the taciturn friend Galahad has invited to join him at Wingham. Fitzwilliam Darcy—rich and proud, disdainful of those beneath him—has escorted his sister Georgiana to Ramsgate, to recuperate from a dangerous illness in the care of her companion, Mrs Younge.

Complications arise with the arrival of Elizabeth’s sister Jane and, separately, Charles and Caroline Bingley, the authors of Jane’s unhappiness. Tensions and quarrels result in the Bingleys’ abrupt departure, swiftly followed by Darcy after a maladroit proposal that Elizabeth spurns with a pride that matches his own.

Unfortunately, Darcy leaves Kent just as his enemy, George Wickham appears, intent on securing Georgiana and her fortune. Who will stand between Georgiana and ruin? Who will win Jane Bennet’s hand? And can Darcy and Elizabeth ever be reconciled?”

(NB British spelling, punctuation and grammar throughout).

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Title: Worthy
Author: Julia Winter
Wordcount: c125,000
Category: P&P variation, Regency romance.
eBook Publication Date: 31 October 2023
Publisher: Glass Hat Press © 2023
Editor: Megan Reddaway
Cover: Detail from a portrait by Eugen von Blaas. Provenance and whereabouts unknown. Image in the public domain, obtained via ArtVee, and available for unrestricted use.
Goodreads Link

Universal link to digital stores: https://books2read.com/Worthy-A-Pride-and-Prejudice-Variation

Individual Store Links (if you prefer them): Amazon.com  |  Amazon.co.uk  |  B&N  |  Kobo  |  Smashwords

Between 31 October and 10 November, enter this Rafflecopter for the chance to win a $20 (or equivalent) Amazon voucher.

Direct link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/1b5565292/?

I’ll be popping up at several blogs in the next few days, talking about different aspects of the book:

31 October      Interests of a Jane Austen Girl, where there’s a deleted scene to enjoy

01 November  My Jane Austen Book Club, where I’m being interviewed about the book

02 November  From Pemberley to Milton, with a short article about my original characters and their connection to Jane Austen herself

03 November  So Little Time, So Much To Read, with another deleted scene.

Do drop in to the blogs! It’s always great fun to visit them, and they do so much to support writers.

Gerrard Andrewes, dean of the cathedral, was an undoubted gentleman, urbane and intelligent. Like Palmer and Darcy, he had taken his degree at Cambridge. That gave them common ground in the pre-dinner conversations, and the dinner itself had been, as Palmer had promised, excellent. Darcy had enjoyed the dinner, despite finding himself escorting the dean’s eldest daughter into the dining room. She was an educated lady, and his struggles to find topics of conversation were less overwhelming than usual.

The reception, however, was something to be endured.

An hour after dinner ended, the guests for the evening reception arrived. The dining table had been cleared and relaid for a supper to be served at around ten. The deanery staff had thrown open all the doors into the spacious grounds, where gardeners had hung dozens of lanterns from the trees. The lanterns lit a dusky purple twilight, casting shadows under the scattered trees and, here and there, illuminating the heavy-headed roses filling the gardens with their rich scent: a demure, ecclesiastical version of Vauxhall, with more lemonade and far less impropriety.

A charming scene, if one did not consider the guests who, while not of the meaner sort, were also not of Darcy’s usual circle. Gentry, yes, but none held estates and incomes that could compare with Pemberley. Or Wingham. He privately acknowledged they at least had made an attempt at refinement. The ladies’ dresses were as fashionable and decorative as a provincial city could provide, but, with the exception of the dean’s silk-clad family, predominantly of mull or jaconet, and with few feathers and even less good jewellery on display. The sparkling rivière clasped about the neck of the most gorgeously-attired damsel there was certainly paste.

Palmer knew many of the gentry, and tugged Darcy along with him to make their acquaintance. It was some moments before Darcy was able to drift away and take up station in the shadows of a rose arch, from whence he could scrutinise the crowds and catch his breath. Only a country assembly could be more insupportable. Here he would have to listen to innumerable young ladies warbling Italian love songs—one was already at the piano, if the sounds coming from the open music-room windows were any indication—but at least he did not have to dance.

His respite did not last long. Palmer sought him out and with his usual raillery, attempted to persuade him into more sociability.

“Come! Have you not hidden in the shadows long enough? Surely you wish for more conversation than this!”

“Here? It would be punishment.”

Palmer would have none of this, pointing out a nearby group and claiming one of them to be an acquaintance of his father’s. He spoke with enthusiasm of the young lady in the group, declaring her to be a very pretty girl.

“Whom do you mean?” Darcy turned and regarded the small group gathered in chairs near a magnificent weeping willow. The girl Palmer admired was simply dressed and had no claim to extraordinary beauty. He had no doubt her conversation would be as unremarkable and as insipid as her appearance. He did not trouble to lower his voice. “Pretty-ish, I suppose, but hardly tempting enough for me to give consequence to a provincial nobody.”

And so Darcy manages to shove his Hessian down his throat, and offend Elizabeth. Just as in canon, we shall have to hope he proves himself worthy of both her forgiveness and her regard.

Will he do it? Read Worthy to find out!

Oh dear. It’s been a long, long time since I last dipped my toes into Austenesque waters, but here we go with a new Pride and Prejudice variation. At least the cover is pretty!

The second chapter of the alternate WIP. Mary continues to be a rather isolated character, but a little hope appears at the end…

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind,
flight to the imagination and life to everything.”
― Plato

Mozart was an exacting master.

Aunt Gardiner had sent the latest acquisition for Mary’s collection of sonata scores from London. It lay open on the music rack above the keyboard, the white paper covered in a rash of quick black notes. Supposedly for beginners, this sonata was more difficult than it looked on the surface. Mozart had high expectations of beginners, it seemed. Well, she would take pains to learn it slowly before speeding it to the tempo the composer had written. Those runs of bridging scales looked easy enough at first glance, but she suspected would require a little work on her part to get the fingering right to make the scales ripple and dance and for it all to sound unaffected and effortless.

Music did not always come easily, despite her passion for it. She would give much for a month or two with a London teacher to help her. The sheer unlikelihood of that daunted her a little, but she persevered. She could no more stop playing than she could stop breathing. They were both completely necessary.

Longbourn was very quiet. Papa was in his book room at the other end of the house, Elizabeth was out walking in the bright, late-spring sunshine, and Mamma and the other girls had gone into Meryton, visiting Aunt Phillips to allow Lydia to make her farewells before she left for Brighton with the militia regiment. There was no one to hear Mary.

She put the new Mozart aside for a few minutes, to loosen up her fingers with something loved and familiar of his which she knew by heart. The Rondo Alla Turca. Everyone played it, but few did so well.

Mrs Hurst, for one. The elder sister of the tenant who had leased Netherfield Park the previous year, she had played this piece, furioso, at the ball her brother had held before Christmas. Mary had been mortified by her father’s strictures and sent away from the piano after only one movement of the piece she had prepared, her place taken by Mrs Hurst. The lady had, perhaps, been angry about the attentions Mr Bingley, the Netherfield tenant, had paid Jane. Not that anything had come of it in the end: Mr Bingley had apparently abandoned Jane without a second thought and nothing had been heard of him since the ball. Still, Mrs Hurst doubtless wanted someone with higher, better connexions for her brother. She had vented her ill temper on Mozart by playing at such a speed, any poor Turk depicted in the music would not be marching, but running so fast he would likely fall over his own curly-toed slippers. Mary had listened in disapproving silence. Now, though, Mary played it as it was meant to be done: fast and light and sparkling, with none of the dark, angry overtones with which Mrs Hurst had imbued it.

She kept her hands on the keyboard when she had finished, her eyes closed, allowing her breathing to deepen and slow. How beautiful that was. How… how pure. An exaltation for the spirit.

“That was very good, Mary,” Papa said, and he sounded more astonished than if he had plunged a hand into his waistcoat pocket and found a mouse cowering there in place of his pocket watch.

Mary jumped so violently she had to grasp the edge of of the piano stool with one hand to keep from falling, cringing away from the suddenness of her father’s voice, her heart going in an instant from the quiet rapture of her music to a fierce beating that could not be wilder if the local blacksmith had been hammering out horseshoes on her chest. She squeaked. She could not help herself, even though she whipped up her other hand to her mouth to stifle the noise, staring at Papa over the edge of her palm.

He jerked back a step, his eyebrows winging up as his brow furrowed into a deep frown. The smile on his mouth looked frozen into place, as if someone had taken the last of the winter’s bounty from Longbourn’s ice house, and pressed it against his face to fix it into stillness. The two expressions, at war on his face, were almost frightening. “Did I startle you?”

Mary took two sharp breaths and forced her shoulders down into place. She straightened on the stool, remembering all her childhood lessons on posture and deportment. A lady should always sit erect and show her elegance, grace and poise. She certainly should not cower on a piano stool with her hand clapped over her mouth and her shoulders hunched up around her ears.

“You did a little, Papa.” Her voice trembled, and she swallowed hard to regain control. “I did not hear you enter. I had not thought… oh! Did I disturb you? I am sorry! I did not think you could hear me from your book room. It is quite on the other side of the house and—”

“Shush, child. Do not gabble so.” His frown deepened. “Well, I am sorry, too, since I seem to have caused you a great deal of discomposure. It is true that I usually cannot hear your practice, but I was walking in the garden, thinking over a knotty problem in Plato, and well…” He gestured towards the window. Mary had lowered the top sash earlier, to let in some fresher air. It had apparently also let out her music.

Mary pressed her lips together hard. Should she apologise again for disturbing him?

“I must say that I have never heard you play so well.” Papa thawed the smile. “What was it? Beethoven?”

“Mozart, sir.” Mary raised her right hand and rested it on the keyboard again, letting her fingers ghost over the keys. She eyed him sidelong.

“You played it very finely indeed. Will you do so again, so I may hear all of it? I caught only the last few moments.”

She could only stare again. He never praised her, never asked her to play for him. Never.

He must be joking, of course. Laughing at her, the way he always did. She sought out the tell-tale signs: the droop of his eyelids to hide his cold glances, the quirking of his eyebrows, the upward tilt of the left-hand corner of his mouth. But though he smiled still, it had none of the mocking quality she expected.

Her scalp prickled with sweat under her heavy braids. Her stomach hurt in the way it always hurt when she had to perform, roiling as though someone had replaced it with the dairymaid’s churn and was handily cranking out butter and whey while she swallowed down bile. But the obedience bred into her, blood and bone, had been watered and nurtured there by the Reverend Fordyce. She could not refuse a parent, no matter what the demand made of her.

“If you wish it, sir. Of course.”

She rubbed clammy fingers together to dry them and turned back to the keyboard. Her shoulders stiffened until the muscles at the tops of her arms complained at the tension, but she could not allow them to relax. She held her entire body with the same rigidity: she was playing for someone, not just for her own enjoyment, and so it must be perfect. Every single note, every cadence, every crescendo and diminuendo… perfect, and just so, and not an iota of deviation allowed. She set her jaw so firmly the too-familiar ache went down to her collar bones, and started her fingers moving.

Even to her own ears, there was a difference. The joy had gone, but she had no notion of what to do to get it back. She struck each key with the exact pressure needed for the note to sit in its proper place in the harmony and make its punctilious contribution to the melody, being neither too loud nor soft, sharp nor flat, too allegro nor largo, but, instead, perfectly right. Her performance should have been wonderful. Instead it was a species of arid precision: Mozart in a desert, devoid of charm and gaiety, dying for lack of animation.

It was how she always played for company. She could not help it. She would get to her feet and move to the piano, clutching her music, and the butter churn would start in her stomach while her shoulders and arms took on the rigidity of a dead man. She aimed for perfection, and yet found deficiency. People listened only from civility, she was sure. It would be a relief when Lydia or Kitty or Maria Lucas would bounce up to her and demand a jig or a country dance, and she knew then that people were not really listening to her play anymore. She had become an… an accessory to the company’s pleasure; necessary to the sociability of the evening, but not the reason for it. She was the piece of trimming on the evening, the knot of dull ribbon on a pretty bonnet. Heads nodded and feet tapped along with the dance, and everyone’s smiles were for the bonnet, not the trimming. When in company, that was the closest she ever managed to come to the transcendence she looked for.

She reached the end of the piece, the last few bars reaffirming the major harmony in a rousing, energetic close, bringing the entire sonata to a balance and symmetry that must have had the Muse of music curtsying her reverence for Mozart’s mastery. At least, those final bars had achieved melodic joy when she played it for herself. She was uncertain what she had attained when playing for Papa.

There was a moment of silence, that went on too long. She would not look at him. Could not.

He cleared his throat. “Well, then.”

A pause. That in itself was odd, because Papa was not a man whose tongue lacked confidence and finesse.

“That was not quite so free and effortless as the first time, Mary.” Another throat clearance.

She turned to face him at last. Though he frowned, and pulled at his lower lip with one hand in the manner of someone facing a dilemma he had not anticipated, he looked… kind. That was surprising.

 “I wonder… do you like playing for others? Do you relish an audience?”

“Like it, Papa?”

“Do you enjoy it? I noticed a difference in you. Not just in the way the piece sounded, but in the way you played it. Your whole mien and manner were stiffer, you held yourself with great tension, because, I think, you were so conscious of being under my eye. You were not at ease. Do you always feel so?”

Mary nodded. The straining for perfection was visible? No one had ever remarked upon it before.

“Then why continue to perform to our neighbours, if it brings you no pleasure? Would you not be more comfortable if you played for your own amusement, and forbore to exhibit? The joy you felt when you thought yourself unobserved was palpable, and your skill astonished me. It seems a pity to strain yourself into the shape of a public performer, if it disconcerts you so much.”

She was not pretty like her sisters, witty like Lizzy, or as lively as Lydia. Heavens, she was not so lively even as Kitty! Take away her accomplishments and cease sharing them with their neighbours? She had only her reading, and she had learned that was not something easily shared and she could not imagine one neighbour who would welcome the opportunity to discuss it.

She could only shake her head. “I have nothing else.”

He took her meaning directly. He grimaced, and nodded, and said “Oh, child,” in a sad, regretful voice. And when he stooped over her and kissed her brow before he went quietly away, she almost gasped aloud at the unexpectedness of it.

“You should have come with us, Mary,” Lydia bounced at Mary in the same manner that she bounced into rooms, and chairs, and dances, and—quite often—into people, greeting all such occasions with loud laughter and jollity and a freedom from care that Mary quite envied.

Mary had spent a quiet hour of introspection after Papa had left her to return to his book room. She had not played another note, but sat with her hands in her lap and her gaze on the silent keyboard. When she had heard the sounds of the family’s return, she had closed up the fortepiano that, like many of the better objects at Longbourn, had belonged to her grandmother Bennet, and made her way to the parlour the family kept for their private use.

“Yes, indeed,” Jane said, smiling in her kind way. “Aunt Phillips was disappointed that you and Lizzy did not come with us. She asked after you particularly, Mary.”

Elizabeth laughed. “I am mortified at the lack of particularity in my own case!”

“Oh, she wanted Mary to play for the officers.” Lydia’s tone was one of airy dismissal. “They came to spend an hour at cards, and Aunt likes to provide them with entertainment. Mary could have played something for us to dance to, and you are never so obliging as that, you know, Lizzy.”

“Indeed I am not, and I do not repent it. Mary is too accommodating when it comes to indulging you in dances. Besides, I would have thought the officers would have too much to do preparing for their remove to Brighton tomorrow, to spend time at cards and dancing.”

“I expect they had the common soldiers do all the work,” said Lydia, with a fine disinterest in the workings of a military encampment. “Is that not what the men are for? Wickham, Denny and the others said they were eager to be off.” She smirked at Kitty. “They made such a droll pun! Because I am to be there too, they said Brighton will be all the brighter.”

Kitty’s face could not have crumpled more if Lydia had taken it in her hands and squeezed and contorted it. “Oh,” she said, the ready tears gathering.

Lydia, of course, smirked all the more.

Jane shook her head and went at once to Kitty, to put an arm about her shoulders.

“You are a spiteful child, Lyddie,” Lizzy said, in a tone that was all the more damning for being quite dispassionate. Mary wished she could sound as quelling. “Brace up, Kitty. We shall have our fun here, without Lydia to spoil it. The regiment may be gone, but there will still be plenty of gentlemen at the Spring assembly. All the more for us, without Lydia pushing her way in, wild to get their attention.”

“Pooh!” Lydia flushed an unflattering shade of red. “They will miss me mightily! Everyone likes me a great deal better than any of you. Why should they dance with such dull tabbies as you all are?”

“Well, Lyddie, at least we dull tabbies do not shriek in a man’s ear like banshees, or thrust our bosoms into the face of every disreputable, penniless younger son who enters a militia regiment. We are not brassy.” And Elizabeth smiled Papa’s smile.

For once, Mary liked it. Jane sighed and shook her head.

But Kitty dashed away the tears before they trickle down her cheeks, and nodded. “No, indeed.”

Lydia was seldom lost for words. Her mouth opened and closed once or twice, but Elizabeth went to press up against Kitty’s other side, so Kitty was comforted between her and Jane. She nodded at Mary, smiled—not Papa’s smile this time, but her own much sweeter one, and raised an eyebrow. Not quite comfortable, Mary went to stand behind them, but Elizabeth caught at her as she made to pass them, and tucking her arm into Mary’s, drew her into line.

“Oh!” said Lydia, still scarlet as a redcoat’s jacket, and in a great huff, she flounced off.

Kitty drew a wavering breath when she was gone. “Thank you! You are all very kind. Lyddie is not always. Kind, I mean.”

“She never is.” Elizabeth squeezed Mary’s arm and released her. “She is spoilt and selfish.”

“She will complain to Mamma,” Mary warned.

Elizabeth merely smiled. “Well, it quite cheers Mamma, to have something over which she may fuss at me. I doubt either of us would know how to hold the other in any charity.”

Mary could only wonder why she had never before realised that moments of harmony with her sisters were possible outside of a concert hall.

Every now and again I put the current WIP to one side – it is not co-operating, and since I’m dealing with the aftermath of a family crisis, death and funeral, I have very few ‘spoons’ available for wrestling with a recalcitrant Darcy and Elizabeth – and as a way of dealing with the stresses and tension, I’m tinkering with another idea. I don’t know if it will go anywhere, as its tone is rather more bitter than I like, but I’ll share the first chapter here.

Chapter One: Pink Ribbons

I do not like my family.

Mary Bennet blinked at the words she had just inscribed at the top of the new page in her book of Elegant Extracts. Surely the good Reverend had not written that into his sermon? It made no sense, and did not follow the arguments the Reverend was making— and he had been a man at the pinnacle of clear and rational thinking.

She loved his writing. The sentences rolled like music, building up into a crescendo of glorious sound, and she could give no finer praise than that. When she read his words, she imagined she could hear his voice. He sounded oddly like her Uncle Phillips, who had a deep and mellifluous voice that people could scarce believe came from such an unprepossessing, ordinary-looking man. Papa always said that Uncle Phillips had become a lawyer precisely because the beauty of his voice, combined with the sheer unexpectedness of it, could persuade judge and jury that even the most heinous criminal was a gentle innocent. Mary had no view on that, but she could only admire the music her uncle created merely by speaking. And so, in her mind’s eye, Mary often imagined Fordyce leaning over the carved oak of his pulpit to fix his gaze upon the faces of his rapt congregation, calling the wicked to repentance with Uncle Phillips’s glorious tones pouring forth from his mouth in great, symphonious periods.

In turn, this reminded her of her one visit to London and the concert she had attended there. The music had… well, she always described it to herself as it ravishing her soul, transporting her to some place far beyond the mundane concert hall, so that when her sister Elizabeth had touched her hand to garner her attention, Mary had started, surprised out of a sort of ecstasy. Elizabeth’s form had been dimmed by the tears in Mary’s eyes. She had had to blink furiously to hide the joy the music had given her. Of all her sisters, Elizabeth was the most likely to share it, but still Mary’s tongue had stuttered and stilled as she tried to find the words. Elizabeth had squeezed Mary’s hands in hers, and, smiling, whispered, “How glorious that was, Mary! I was sure you, of all people, would find it so.”

One day, perhaps, her Aunt Gardiner would invite her back to London, and she could experience that joy again. Until then, she contented herself with the memory of that moment of harmony with her sister enhancing the overwhelming beauty of the music itself.

She turned back one page. Her own handwriting, giving the Reverend Fordyce a new voice through the thinly sloping, neatly looped letters:

“For my part, I could heartily wish to see the female world more accompl-
-ished than it is ; but I do not wish to see it abound with metaphysicians, histor-
-ians, speculative philosophers, or Learned Ladies of any kind. I should be afraid,
lest the sex should lose in softness what they gained in force—”

She had reached that point in her copying, and had turned the page to continue. Just as so…

She flipped the page over again, and there, indubitably in her own hand at the top of the left-hand page of her book, was that disconcerting sentence. Not the Reverend’s words at all. He, indeed, went on to say

“—and lest the pursuit of such elevation should inter-
-fere a little with the plain duties and humble virtues of life—”

—a sentiment with which Mary was in hearty agreement. But oddly, that was not what she had written when she had turned the page to continue her extract.

She picked up her cherished copy of the Sermons, and turned the pages back and forth, searching.

No. There was not one word about her family, or anyone else’s. Why, then, had she written that odd, disturbing sentence? She had been copying Fordyce, and she copied him with great exactness. Always. Where the text broke a word in two where it was spread between lines, Mary did so also; where there was a comma or a colon, Mary transcribed them with precision. For who was she to alter by so much as one iota, the immortal words the great sermoniser had bequeathed posterity? Modest and eager to learn as she was, painstaking faithfulness and accuracy were her watchwords. When she read her extracts, she would see them exactly as the Reverend had published them.

As was proper.

Of course, she had been thinking about her family when she decided to transcribe that particular sermon into her Extracts book. In particular—

The faint hub-bub of noise outside the closed door of Mary’s bedroom erupted into shrill shrieks and screams, interspersed with the clatter of feet on the landings and stairs. Here, on the bedroom floor of the family wing, out of sight of visitors, only narrow runners carpeted the hallways, rather than the thick, expensive Oriental rugs used for show in the public rooms downstairs. Her sisters’ hasty feet often missed the thin strips to slap angrily against the polished wooden floorboards.

Kitty and Lydia, that is. Her two younger sisters. Jane and Elizabeth were older, and too dignified to run. Jane had probably always been too dignified to run.

Her contemplation disturbed, Mary cocked her head to one side and listened. It would be a bonnet, or a spangled scarf, of perhaps an artificial flower, or—

Her door burst open. Lydia danced in to breach the sanctuary of Mary’s bedroom, waving a garish pink ribbon above her head. Kitty ran in after her, clutching hands held out to recapture her property.

—or a ribbon.

Of course, it was a ribbon.

“I shall take it to Brighton with me when I go with the Regiment, to furbish up my second best bonnet. It suits me much better than it will you, Kitty. Does it not, Mary?” And Lydia—so brash and bold, spiteful and selfish at fifteen that Mary could not conceive of her in any other light, no matter how old Lydia grew—laid the bright ribbon across her brow as if it were a diadem, and pranced up to Mary to thrust her face up close for inspection.

If Mary had not drawn back, her world would have shrunk into a panorama of Lydia’s peachy-pink cheeks and bright blue eyes. Lydia would have blotted out everything else—which would have pleased her immensely, of course. Lydia’s entire raison d’être was to blot out everything else and be the entirety of everyone’s world. Lydia was very pretty—not so much as beautiful Jane or witty Elizabeth, but more so than pale, delicate Kitty and infinitely prettier than Mary herself. Mary was well used to hearing herself described as the ‘plain Bennet girl’ and hearing the notes of slight disbelief in the speaker’s voice, as if such a creature was as exotic to Hertfordshire as an aardvark or a mongoose. To know this, and then to have that peach and blue prettiness pushed into one’s own face… it was too much. Mary sat back in her chair until Lydia’s face resumed its proper proportions.

“But it is my ribbon!” Kitty, despite being two years older than Lydia, was fretful and ineffective. “And so is the bonnet! I want them back!”

“The bonnet makes you look like you are wearing a coal scuttle, and the ribbon becomes me far more.” Lydia cast only a sidelong glance at Kitty. “Truly, Mary, does it not?”

Mary pushed up her spectacles. They had a most annoying habit of sliding down her nose. “I shall have to see Kitty wear it before I venture an opinion.”

Lydia unloosed the ribbon from around her brow and made a gesture as if to hold it out for Kitty to take, before shouting out a laugh and snatching it away again. “I am not such a ninny as to allow you to trick me as easily as that!”

Kitty, who had brightened, slumped again.

Mary blinked. Trick? Why would she attempt to trick Lydia? “I meant only that I cannot tell, when I have not seen Kitty with the ribbon.”

“A likely tale!”

Mary turned her head away, frowning. She did not lie, and Lydia knew it. There was no good, rational point to falsehoods, and even less of one to the sort of tricks and japes her younger sisters found so amusing. They were not amusing at all—neither the japes, nor her sisters. All of them pointless.

She slid her right hand under the desktop to rest it on her leg, and made her fingers tap out a melody, unseen and unheard. Something soothing to the heart. It soothed hers, until she could watch her sisters with more kindness than they might, perhaps, merit.

Neither would be receptive to the Reverend’s gentle admonitions on gentility and good taste, Mary was sure. They were too much Mama’s daughters for that. Their mother’s estimation of taste was measured in ells of lace and ribbon. Mrs Bennet thought only the poor dressed plainly, which was why she so often deplored Mary’s simpler taste: she was shamed by it. Mama was querulous and petulant now—a larger, older Kitty—but her sister, Aunt Phillips, always said she had been livelier even than Lydia. At sixteen, then, she must have been very like Lydia and Kitty combined.

It was a quite disturbing thought, and Mary shied away from it. She returned to Fordyce’s words, a little concerned that without the passage before her, she could not quote him exactly. She had no time to search out the relevant sermon, lest the moment pass. Instead she stopped playing Mozart on her leg, and lifted her hand back above the desktop to rest it on the book’s cover to bolster her fortitude. She would do her best.

“We are told that it is wrong for a virtuous lady to be overfond of finery, as it takes her mind from more serious matters and gives her over to an unpleasing frivolity.” Mary gestured at the ribbon, which was a particularly trying shade. “And that we must learn to distinguish, too, between what is glaring, and what is genteel.”

Lydia snorted. Not at all a genteel sound. “I do not know why we thought to ask you! You are such a… a… mopsy, Mary Bennet! You are merely eaten up with envy that you cannot wear such a thing without everyone laughing at you. I do not suppose you would ever think to wear a ribbon as pretty.”

Mary could only nod complete agreement. “I would not.”

“No indeed! You are all dull brown and greys… and your dresses are all so dowdy. Everyone can see you will soon be at your last prayers, just as Jane is, and you not yet twenty! I should be shamed to be such an old maid in waiting.”

Mary ignored that. It was a common enough jibe from Lydia’s mouth. “It takes a particular kind of brassy colouring to wear such a pink well.” She glanced at Kitty. “You should let her have it, Kitty. You are more delicate than Lydia, in figure and aspect. A softer, duskier pink will compliment you better.”

Kitty stared, her mouth dropping open a trifle.

Lydia stared, too, her eyes narrowing and her brows drawing down into a decided snapping frown. Then, her pink prettiness suddenly a brighter red that most definitely was not complimented by the ribbon, she let out a screech that hurt Mary’s ears. “What are you saying? Do you dare— Brassy?”

Mary swallowed, trying not to show her wince at the piercing nature of Lydia’s shrieking. How very like their mother! Mary could see the truth of Aunt Phillips’s words for herself, for what her mother had lost in liveliness she had retained in volume and, sadly, the same selfish spite that imbued Lydia. Any shrinking away on Mary’s part, any indication of hurt feelings or lacerated sensibilities, would have Lydia exploiting the weakness. Mary strove to show the bland, indifferent face she used to meet jibes about her looks, or her prospects, or her piano playing, or her desire to live a good and useful life. She would not recant. After all, she had spoken nothing but the absolute truth.

“I said only that it was not a colour for Kitty. I said nothing about you.”

Kitty, though speechless, preened and smirked.

Lydia was unappeased. “I will have you know that the officers all think that I am corky! That is what Lieutenant Wickham said, only yesterday evening at the Lucases’ reception, when he and the other officers were so pleased I am to go with them to Brighton. Corky! How dare you say I am brassy? The two are not the same!”

Mary tried to smooth out her frown. “What is ‘corky’?”

“I am bright and lively. That is what Wickham meant. Oh, you are such a stupid! How can you not know things like that? I suppose it is because your precious Fordyce does not talk of corky girls.” Lydia snorted again.

Mary rather thought he did, only in less vulgar terms and in order that he might hold up his hands in horror and deplore them and their immodest behaviour. She contemplated saying so, but had no opportunity. Jane and Elizabeth appeared at her door to shush Lydia’s freaks and tempers. That in itself was not an uncommon occurrence. Lydia required frequent shushing.

“Girls, girls! What is all the commotion? Our mother is laid down—”

At that point, in the quiet safety of her own mind, Mary found herself chorusing the words along with Jane.

“—with one of her nervous fits and headaches, and this noise is all too much for her. You must be quieter, for her sake.”

Mary nodded, satisfied that she had correctly anticipated Jane. Of course her mother was having a nervous fit. Such maternal paroxysms filled up the hours between nuncheon and visits to and from their social circle. If Mama were not planning on visiting neighbours in the nearby market town of Meryton, they would come here to Longbourn. In either event, Mama would be miraculously restored to health, rejuvenated by having a new audience to condole with her on her latest nerve spasm.

“Oh, poh!” said Lydia, with a dismissive wave of the hand still clutching the ribbon, which fluttered through the air with the same sense of gay indifference to decorum that Lydia herself showed. She and the ribbon were well matched in every way. “There is nothing new in that.”

“No matter, Lydia. Please have some compassion for Mama.” Which was as severe as Jane could possibly be.

“Or at least shriek in more dulcet tones,” suggested Elizabeth.

“But Jane, you do not understand! Mary said I was brassy!”

“Our Mary has a commendable fondness for truth-telling.” Elizabeth’s mouth was twitching in a very familiar way.

“I said no such thing.” Mary glanced down at her Extracts book and closed it gently, lest any of them read that damning sentence. “I said that only someone with a brassy colouring could wear that particular shade well.”

“And that I was too delicate to wear it.” Kitty had found her voice. “You may keep the ribbon, Lydia. As Mary says, it suits you better than it does me.” And with an added burst of resentment: “But you shall not have my bonnet!”

Lydia let out a noise like the steam hissing out of the housekeeper’s largest kettle, and tossed the ribbon to the floor. “I do not want it!”

“Shush, Lydia!” Jane said. “Remember Mama.”

“As if anyone should care what Mary thinks! She is a bracket-faced old tabby with more hair than wit! And Lord, her hair is dull enough! No ribbon could improve that.”

Jane’s eyes widened. “Lydia! Lydia, that is very unkind.”

Gratifying as it was to have the beauty of the family protest against Lydia’s spite, Jane made no attempt to deny any of the jibes. Mary would have preferred a sharp denial, an acerbic riposte along the lines of Lydia’s eyesight being as defective as her moral character. But that, it seemed, was not to be. Still, Jane’s indiscriminate, gentle goodness was soothing.

Elizabeth was not so lacking in fervour. Her mouth still twitched, and she pulled her bottom lip in under her teeth. Mary thought that was to stop herself from laughing aloud. “Mary can no more help not being blonde than I can, Lydia, thank you very much! We are neither of us dull-haired!”

Mary glanced at Elizabeth’s bouncing dark curls, and almost raised a hand to touch her own smooth braids, held confined in their plain, workmanlike style. She stopped herself, just in time. When she had started making the extract that day, she had been considering Elizabeth. A year Mary’s senior, Lizzy was witty and intelligent. It would do her much good to reflect on Reverend Fordyce’s words, and consider the considerable softness she had lost in her desire to be a sparkling conversationalist. She attracted a great deal of attention, but at what cost? She was far too like their father.

It amused Papa, of course, to have his own hard, sharp wit replicated in his favourite daughter; Elizabeth’s eyes glittering with amusement, matching, somehow, the way their father’s mouth lifted always at the left corner in a crinkling sneer.

They had done it that very morning, just after breakfast, when Papa had been talking of the latest letter from his cousin and heir, Mr Collins, following Lizzy’s return that week from a visit to Mr Collins’s parsonage in Kent. He had turned to Mary and asked Mary’s opinion on some point their cousin had made about the proper reverence to be shown his noble patroness, and as she tried to think of something sensible to say that might garner her father’s rare approbation, he had laughed and added, “For you strive always to improve your mind, I know, by reading great books and making extracts.” Mary had stared, mute, while Elizabeth shared his sly smiles.

That had been unkind. But then, none of them, parents or sisters, was kind.

It was as well that Mary was used to it.

When they had all gone, chivvied out of her bedroom by Jane, and she was left to quiet solitude again, Mary returned to her Extracts book. She ignored the bright splash of pink silk lying huddled on her bedroom floor. Kitty or Lydia would retrieve the ribbon eventually. Or one of the servants would.

The old writing case she used had been her grandmother’s. A long polished walnut-wood box with brass corners, it just fit on the small table set in the window embrasure that Mary used as a desk. No one else in Longbourn had claimed it, and Mary had been happy to make it her own.

She reopened her Extract book and smoothed it out on the writing slope formed when the lid of the box was lifted. The wood of the slope was less good than the case, although thinly veneered with walnut and overlaid with tooled leather. She ran one finger down the tooling, feeling where the gold inlay was missing in the bumps and hollows, and considered the page.

Her first thought had been to strike through that odd sentence that, no matter how hard she tried, she could not recall writing. She disliked crossings out a great deal. They made a page so untidy, threw the whole extract into disorder, and muddled her reading later. Her eye would always be drawn to the thick black lines striking through the wrongness, and her mind would wander from Fordyce’s righteous truths and turn instead to contemplating what lay beneath the harsh black ink. The imperfection was never expunged.

Still, what else might she do? The words did not belong to Reverend Fordyce. They were all her own, however unconsciously done.

She hesitated, quill poised, a small drop of ink glistening on the point she had carved herself with the tortoiseshell penknife Jane had given her one Christmas.

She truly did not like crossings out.

The right hand page of the book was pristine. She would continue the extract there. This left-hand page she would leave alone. Perhaps…

Perhaps she would add more of her thoughts. For a moment she stared out over the garden, then bent her head. Now the only sound was the scratching of her quill.

I do my best to love them, in the way that the Scriptures demand. I honour my father and mother, and I love my sisters as I must love all my brethren in Christ.

But I do not always like them.

Here’s another of those scenes that I had to cut from the finished book so I could sharpen up the pacing etc. This is taken from the early part of the book, just after the storm damages Nether House, the dower house for Netherfield, which is Elizabeth’s home. Elements of it were, as usual, cannibalised into the final text, but it’s interesting (I think!) to see some of these longer scenes and see how the book evolved. Of course, that may only be interesting to *me*, but hey ho! That’s the way of the world.

Chapter six: deleted scenes

The storm blew itself out in the small hours and the next day dawned cool and bright, with a sky so clear no one would ever suspect it of ever daring to rain. The entire household was up before dawn. The maids were long-faced on seeing the damage, and brightened only when Elizabeth promised to hire extra help for the hard labour of scrubbing and scouring. She went upstairs with Thomas to view the attics and servants’ rooms for herself, and came away saddened by the wreckage of her roof and chimney stack and the ruin it had made of the maidservants’ rooms. She opened the door of her little drawing room once and closed it again almost instantly, allowing the mellow oak door to close out the ruinous shambles the fallen bricks and soot had made of a room in which she had once taken such innocent pleasure. Charlotte’s bedroom, immediately above, was in little better state.

Mr Muir arrived before ten, with assurances that Netherfield Park had no damage beyond two lost roof slates and that he had already set the estate carpenter to the task of replacing them. Her tenants, he said, had not apparently noticed the damage and nor had they, when he had called at the house, been down for breakfast. He would call on Mr Bingley later.

“Town hours,” Elizabeth said, when Charlotte raised a condemning eyebrow over the Netherfield party being still abed so late. “Any news from our other tenants, Mr Muir?”

So far, none of the tenant farmers had reported any damage. Thankfully the harvest was fully in and, since the farmers took better care of their barns than their houses, the grain kept for the spring sowing was stored safe. Nether House had suffered the worst damage. So it was with a lighter heart that Elizabeth stood in the garden, ignoring the faintly overheard murmurs of shock from townspeople and militia officers passing by her gates, while Mr Muir climbed the ladders Thomas had borrowed that morning from the White Hart.

“I have noticed Thomas cultivates a strong alliance with the White Hart.” Charlotte remarked. “You have such sensible servants.”

Elizabeth’s gaze remained on the roof, and Mr Muir and Thomas. “Yes, though I do hope they are taking care up there.”

“Sensible,” Charlotte repeated. “Mr Muir will not take risks.”

It was a shame that Mr Muir was married and the father of a brace of sons. He and Charlotte would otherwise have made a fine pair, both so practical and rational.

“Thomas is probably right,” Mr Muir told them when he came back from inspecting the roof. “I think years of rain damage down the east side of the stack, rotted the mortar. Yesterday’s high winds were enough to push the entire chimney over.”

Within ten minutes, Thomas had borrowed another of the White Hart’s men and sent him to the builder’s yard in St Albans in a gig, bearing Mr Muir’s note of instruction. Mr Muir was in the attics inspecting the internal damage when Papa arrived, Sir William Lucas with him. Elizabeth and Charlotte greeted their respective sires, taking them into the dining room on the dry side of the house.

“A lamentable sight, to be sure.” Sir William’s mouth drooped to show his sympathy. “To see such a venerable old house so spoiled…”

“It was a difficult night, though everyone in the household were Trojans.” Elizabeth smiled as Sally brought the tea tray. “ Thank you, Sally. Would you call Mr Muir? I am sure he would welcome some tea.”

Mr Muir did indeed welcome it. He downed one cup quickly—the better to wash the soot from his throat, most likely—and did not gainsay a second cup. “I am sorry to say, ma’am, that we have a long job ahead of us. Not only must the roof and stack be repaired, but with so much rubble and dirt coming down the flues, we must open up the chimneys in the drawing room and the bedroom above and rebuild them from top to bottom. Then the rooms will need to be refinished and redecorated. The muck and discomfort will be considerable. It will take some weeks, I fear. I dinna think you ladies will wish to remain in all that dirt.”

Elizabeth hid her frown behind her teacup. “How inconvenient, then, to have leased out Netherfield Park so quickly.”

“Come to Longbourn, Lizzy,” said Papa. “Your mother and I will be delighted to have you at home for a while.”

Elizabeth looked quickly at Charlotte, whose serene smile reassured.

“I will stay at Lucas Lodge. We will look on it as our usual Christmas arrangement, brought in a little early.”

“Three months early!” Elizabeth’s chest tightened again, and she rubbed a hand against her breastbone. Longbourn, possibly for some weeks. How was it to be borne? The noise, her mother’s fidgets… she sighed, then brightened, because Jane and her father would be there.

Sir William nodded eager agreement. “Your home is always at Lucas Lodge, Charlotte. We will be very happy to have you there again.”

“I will be very happy, too,” Charlotte said, as kind as her parent.

“Capital, my dear! Capital!”

“It is the best solution, Miss Elizabeth.” Mr Muir put down his cup and stood. “I mun’ be away to Netherfield and see Mr Bingley. I shall return later, although I doubt the builder’s reply will come much before dark.”

“Bennet and I will call on Mr Bingley later today to welcome him to Meryton.” Sir William looked up from his investigation of the plate of small cakes Mrs Rance had supplied. “I must make sure he knows of our little assembly on Saturday and press him and his party to join us.”

“He will find it difficult, do you not think, sir? They have barely arrived, after all. His sisters will not have had time to unpack.” The swift sidelong glance Elizabeth aimed at her father showed him to be in a state of high amusement.

“You give no credence to Sir William’s powers of persuasion?”

“I do, of course, Papa, but I feel for Mr Bingley, whose household must be at sixes and sevens while they settle in.”

“Whereas Sir William and I feel for ourselves, and the penalties incurred by ignoring the instructions laid upon us by our wives.” Papa smirked at her raised eyebrow. They both knew better. “I am certain you will see your tenant at the Assembly. I trust he will not disappoint.”

“Well,” said Elizabeth, “we must hope, I suppose, that neither will Meryton.”

“It is the best thing to do.” Mrs Rance had been invited to join their conference in the dining room, when the two gentlemen had departed on their neighbourly mission. “We’ll be well away from it in our rooms, Rance and me, but you and Miss Lucas would be in the thick of the dirt if you stayed. Will you take Sally with you, Miss Elizabeth?”

“Will you not need her here?” Elizabeth glanced up from her contemplation of the hands she had linked together in her lap.

Mrs Rance shook her head. “She and Bessie would be better out of it. There’s no point in their normal work if the house is to be upended for weeks, and they won’t be able to get at the rooms on the east side at all. And with builders’ men in the house for weeks on end… well, I can keep Jenny with me, but I’d rather we didn’t have the girls too close to the men.” She added, in a dark tone, “Bad enough we have all those feckless soldiers in town, without half a dozen workmen inside our very doors.”

Mrs Rance was not usually given to flights of fancy of the type Elizabeth’s mother favoured, but this gloomy apprehension was worthy of anything Mrs Bennet could produce.

“Well, my mother will appreciate another maid to take on the extra work involved in my living in Longbourn for some weeks. Sally will get plenty of training, too, in helping look after my sisters… yes. She may come with me.” Elizabeth glanced at Charlotte. “Will you take Bessie?” At Charlotte’s rather startled look, Elizabeth added, hastily, remembering that the Lucases did not have the luxury of Longbourn’s income or her own, “She will remain in my employ, of course. You are used to her acting as your maid each day, and I will be in your mother’s debt if she will house Bessie.”

“I am sure Mama will be happy to oblige you,” Charlotte said with all due solemnity.

And so it was settled. Sally and Bessie were told, and sent to pack their mistresses’ respective belongings and their own, while Mrs Rance departed to do whatever it was that cooks did when their plans for meals that day were upended by catastrophe.

“Do you mind me wishing Bessie upon you, Charlotte? If it will be too much, I will take her to Longbourn.”

“Mama will be happy to have an extra pair of hands while I am at home.” Charlotte turned up her mouth in a sly smile. “Besides, with Bessie there, Maria and I will not be called upon to help with the housekeeping. I have become quite the lady of leisure living as your companion and I believe you have quite spoiled me for a more restricted life.” The smile slipped at little. “I shall find it hardest to return to being merely the eldest, unmarried daughter at the Lodge. Bessie’s presence will remind me that is not my true life now.”

“Yes.” Elizabeth found herself looking at her hands again. “I understand. It is a diminishment, a return to a place where we are dependent and insignificant. I hope I can the irritation with grace.”

“A state of dependency is my lot, unless I marry and secure an establishment of my own. I am not sure that I regret a husband so much as the chance for children. Since, sadly, the children are consequent upon the husband, I will likely have neither.”

“You will always have a home with me.”

“That is not certain. You are very young still and you may yet remarry. My life is narrower. The only remedy for ladies of our class is marriage and that is unlikely now. I will make the best of it, but I do sorely rue how confined and… and lacking my future may be.”

“Charlotte—”

“You have greater immediate vexations in having to give up your own establishment, even if just for a while.” Charlotte’s sly smile was back, and her shaken head told Elizabeth she would not discuss this further. “I quite understand you would wish Mr Bingley to perdition until, perhaps the Christmas quarter day. We could have returned to living at Netherfield.”

“I do not like Netherfield.” Elizabeth pleated the soft muslin of her dress between her fingers. “I suppose Longbourn is the better option, though I abhor its noise and busyness.”

“And living again with the family.”

Charlotte understood all too well. Elizabeth could not match her smile for smile, but they nodded at each other.

“Yes. You know what I fear in this prospect of spending so many weeks in my father’s house.”

She left it unsaid. Charlotte leant forward to put her hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder.

Living in Longbourn for any length of time would test Elizabeth’s fortitude to the utmost. She would have to guard her tongue, and show nothing of what she felt. For even after almost five years, she feared that she would never forgive her mother.

Never.

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It’s inevitable that not everything makes it through to the final draft of a book. In my case, Mistress was already a very long book, and I had to look to see where I could trim a thousand words here, or a thousand words there. Much of my editing was tightening up the prose – you’d be surprised how much you can shorten the text if you set out to cut, say, 10 words on every page – but I also cut entire scenes.

That’s because the scenes slowed the book up, or didn’t tell us anything new about the characters, or I could use some of the material in other, tighter, better ways. Often it was because my crit group members, who are tough and can be relentless, would be all “Nope. Nope, Jules. Take that bit out. You don’t need it/Mr Bennet just gets in the way there/seems a bit out of character for me/you can do it better and differently and with fewer words.” They were usually right. Mistress still weighs in at just over 140k words, but they had me trimming it by the better part of 25k. Without their help, the book would be so hefty it could probably feature on Murder, She Wrote as a blunt instrument.

That leaves me with several complete scenes that drifted away from the book like so many autumn leaves on a breeze. I did use them when I wandered around the JA blog scene begging people to buy my book – and as an aside, the bloggers in the JA-verse are awesome people who were kind and generous to a newbie – but otherwise they are sitting forlornly on my computer, looking for a new home.

So I’ll post them here, occasionally. Here is the first, taken (appropriately!) from chapter one, where Elizabeth has words with her two younger sisters at a party at Longbourn. For context, Lydia has just announced the coming of a regiment of militia:

With a murmured excuse to Charlotte, Elizabeth rose and went out into the garden, seeking her two youngest sisters. She drew them to one side away from their companions, though both complained at the curtailment of their merriment.

“I will only take a moment,” Elizabeth said, choosing to soothe rather than inflict the acerbic correction she longed to apply to the two heedless girls. “I wish to speak to you about the regiment coming to town next month.”

Lydia clasped her hands at her bosom again, and sighed. “Oh. Redcoats.”

“Yes. Indeed. When they arrive you must remember that you are not to speak to strangers of Netherfield or that I have any connection to it. You must promise that you will remember.”

“No one cares about that,” said Lydia, while Kitty nodded.

“No one cares here, where everyone knows about it. But I do not choose to have strangers know so much about me.”

“La! What difference can it make?”

“Oh well.” Elizabeth affected a careless indifference. “If you wish me to take every red-coated conquest from you, that is entirely your decision.”

Kitty stared. “Whatever do you mean?”

But Lydia narrowed her eyes, and tapped her foot.

“What I mean is… sisters, have you never considered what sort of man becomes a militia officer?” At their blank expressions, Elizabeth hid a frown and a sigh, while wishing their mother would take a more sensible approach with her younger daughters. With all her daughters. “Well, take Sammy Goulding.”

“I would much rather not!” Lydia snorted most inelegantly. “Sammy has not two ha’pennies to rub together!”

“That is my point, Lyddie. Sammy is the Goulding’s third son, and he has no prospect of an inheritance. He is just the sort of man who will join the army or the militia, because there he will have an excellent opportunity to make a living for himself. Such men will always have an eye to marrying a lady who has some property of her own. They cannot afford to do otherwise. If you boast that your sister has such a property… well, I dare say your beaus will think as much of their pocket books as their hearts.”

“You would never steal them!” Kitty stated. “You are too old!”

“I am barely one and twenty!” Elizabeth choked down her offence. “No, I think you will find that your elder sister with a property is a fine, attractive proposition for a young officer. They will be as bees around a flower.”

“You will not steal the officers. You are far too prim and proper.” But Lydia’s eyes were still narrow with suspicion.

“But you cannot be sure they will not wish to be stolen, can you?” Elizabeth said, softly.

They stared at each other until Lydia huffed out a breath and nodded. “We will not say anything, will we, Kit?”

“No, indeed. You have had your turn, Lizzy.”

“Excellent. Then we are agreed. You will say nothing, and I will be indifferent to the officers.”

The girls nodded. Kitty was already looking longingly to where the other girls were taking turns on the swing set under the old oak tree on the lawn, and preening and flirting before their audience of similarly aged young men, including the despised Sammy.

Elizabeth smiled. “Thank you. Now, go and join your friends.”

They needed no further encouragement. They ran across the lawn with more haste than decorum to push into the crowd of young ladies exhibiting before the young men, quite the two flightiest moths fluttering around the masculine candles.

Elizabeth could only hope they had the sense not to be burned.

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We all have our little quirks and bugbears when we’re reading. Things that we love, or things that we hate. Things that snuggle us into the story and are comforting, and things that throw us, fuming, right out of the narrative and which we then have to try and overcome before reading on. They can be tiny little things, too.

With historical fiction like JAFF stories, those little things can make all the difference between reading something that genuinely feels right for the period with no major bloomers, or something where the characters are all swanning about in Regency Fancy Dress, but have no stronger connection to the real period than their corsets and bonnets.

A little hint: I am not fond of fancy dress.

I can more or less get by with an eyeroll when a writer talks about wolves howling when there have been no wild wolves in Britain since the 1680s, or turtles or cardinal birds. One story about an underground railroad for escaped slaves had me actually ‘tutting’ out loud at this retelling of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Derbyshire. But the biggest bugbear that has me huffing with displeasure? When an author just does not get how the nobility (the British aristocracy/peerage) works, or how baronetcy and knighthood titles work. Specifically English titles, as Scotland differs in some aspects and I don’t want to get in so deep we’re all drowning.

It annoys me to death when otherwise good writers decide that the daughter of a baron is Lady Somebody or other (she isn’t); or that if Caroline marries a Baronet—Sir Walter, shall we say?—she is henceforth known as Lady Caroline (she isn’t); or that Sir William Lucas is known to all and sundry as Sir Lucas (he isn’t).

I do get that is possibly arcane stuff, but it is important. It really matters in Jane Austen, because society was stratified and clearly delineated, and everyone knew his or her place in it. Pride and Prejudice is usually described as a comedy of manners: that is, it’s about the behaviour of people within a particular social group. That means it really only works if you have a good idea about that social group. You have to grasp some understanding of the group before you can be ironic about it. You need to appreciate the similarities and differences between Darcy and Elizabeth to get every little nuance of their conversations, to understand their relationship. Otherwise, all the JAFF story is, is fancy dress.

There are rules governing titles. Who has them, who doesn’t, what a ‘peer’ is, how the hierarchy works from royalty down to gentry, how you address someone with a title, how titles get passed on.

All of which is Googleable.

That’s what gets me, you see. I can forgive mistakes made in the dark ages before Tim Berners-Lee created the world-wide web, but for the last 20 years at least, finding this stuff out could not have been simpler. You just have to ruddy google it. Debrett’s has an entire website on this stuff. How can so many authors have missed it?

So, here’s a quick reference sheet for those people who are allergic to Google, or something. Taking it from the top down (ignoring Royalty)…

(i) Duke

If all you ever read was Regency fiction, you’d get the idea that the UK has so many dukes you could stand them in a line, shoulder to shoulder, from John O’Groats to Lands End, and they would still be so numerous that they’d be falling into the briny at either end.

In reality, there are very, very few of them. Some dukedoms (Cornwall, Clarence, York, Cambridge, Sussex – and of course, Edinburgh) are reserved for members of the royal family. Putting those aside, there are so few you’d be hard put to be able to form any sort of line at all. In 1818, there were 28 dukes. That’s right. 28.

Dukes are rare animals.

They are always ‘of’ somewhere, by the way. So Darcy’s noble neighbour up in Derbyshire is “The Most Noble, the Duke of Devonshire.” Not “Duke Devonshire” (who sounds rather more like he’d be a porn star).

The duke is addressed as “Your Grace” (by inferiors) or “Duke” (by social equals) the first time in conversation, followed by “Sir” as the conversation proceeds. The Duchess is Your Grace, or Duchess, followed by Madam or Ma’am.

The duke’s eldest son will use one of his father’s titles as a courtesy. In the case of the Devonshires, for example, the eldest son is the Marquess of Hartington. The duke’s daughters are all Lady Firstname Familyname, his younger sons are all Lord Firstname Familyname – again these are courtesy titles, rather than a title in its own right.

Things get complicated with girls marrying one of those younger sons. Think of Lord Peter Wimsey, the 1920s detective as written by Dorothy Sayers, who is the second son of the Duke of Denver. When he marries Harriet Vane, she doesn’t become “Lady Harriet Wimsey” or “Lady Wimsey”. Her title is Lady Peter Wimsey or Lady Peter.

I may as well mention here that royal dukes (siblings/children of the monarch) are His (or Her)/Your Royal Highness.

Dukes, by the way, are the only rank of the peerage who may be addressed by rank: ie, simply as “Duke”.

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(2) Marquess

Note that it’s Marquess (pronounced mar-kwess), not Marquis. His wife’s rank is Marchioness. He is the possessor of a marquessate, usually (like a duke) ‘of’ somewhere.

Back to the Devonshire family: the Marquess of Hartingdon is addressed as Lord Hartington the first time in conversation, followed by “my lord” (or, more familiarly, “Hartington” if you’re one of his best chums). The Marchioness is addressed as Lady Hartington, then “my lady”.

As with dukes, the heir apparent to a marquessate may use one of his father’s lesser titles by courtesy (probably, but not always, an earldom). Again, just as with a duke’s family, a marquess’s daughters are courtesy-styled Lady, the younger sons courtesy-styled Lord.

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(3) Earl

An earldom is usually but not always ‘of’ somewhere: so Earl of Matlock in so much JAFF, but the brother of Princess Diana is Earl Spencer with nary an ‘of’ to his title. Either is valid. It depends upon how the title was bestowed on the first Earl.

His wife’s rank is Countess – but he is never called “Count”. That’s the European version, but not the UK.

Let’s use Matlock as an example. As we know from P&P, the family name is Fitzwilliam. We’ll call him John.

John Fizwilliam is formally The Right Honourable The Earl of Matlock and Viscount Derwent. He is addressed as Lord Matlock, the first time in conversation, followed by “my lord” (or, more familiarly, “Matlock”), but never as Lord John Fitzwilliam. His wife is The Countess of Matlock, and addressed as Lady Matlock, then “my lady”; but never as Lady Firstname Fitzwilliam.

Lord Matlock has two sons and a daughter. His elder son The Hon James Fitzwilliam is given the viscountcy as a courtesy title and becomes Viscount Derwent (not ‘The’ Viscount Derwent, mind – see more below). He is addressed as Lord Derwent, his wife is addressed as Lady Derwent.

The younger son is, as we all know, a colonel in the army. Let’s call him Richard, shall we? Otherwise it seems blood will flow. Cough. So, he is Colonel The Hon Richard Fitzwilliam. Younger sons are never given the courtesy title of “Lord.” They only have the right of using ‘The Honourable’ before their names, which is shortened to “The Hon” when writing it.

Lord Matlock’s daughter Mary, is given the courtesy title Lady. She is Lady Mary Fitzwilliam.

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(4) Viscount

This is where it’s a substantive rank, a viscountcy, rather than a courtesy title given to an eldest son of one of the big three peerages (see above).

Let’s pretend there is a George Darcy, The Viscount Lambton. He is addressed as Lord Lambton, the first time in conversation, followed by “my lord” (or, more familiarly, “Lambton”). His wife is a viscountess, addressed as Lady Lambton. Children are The Honorable (shortened to The Hon): The Hon Fitzwilliam Darcy and The Hon Georgiana Darcy.

Note: because this is a substantive rank, rather than a courtesy title, it has the “The” in front of it.

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(5) Baron

A barony is the lowest rung of the peerage. Again, let’s play pretend, this time that there is a Thomas Bennet, The Baron Meryton. This works in the same as for Viscounts: he is addressed as Lord Meryton, the first time in conversation, followed by “my lord” (or, more familiarly, “Meryton”). His wife is a baroness, addressed as Lady Meryton. Children are The Honorable (shortened to The Hon) . So Thomas Bennet, The Viscount Meryton, has a son, The Hon Robert Bennet, and five daughters, The Hon Jane Bennet, The Hon Elizabeth Bennet etc etc.

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(i) Baronet

Baronet is an hereditary title, but baronets don’t count as peers. A baronet is “Sir” somebody – so Sir Walter Eliot, in Persuasion. He is addressed as Sir Walter. His wife was Lady Eliot, and if his son (we’ll call him John) had survived childhood, the son would have inherited the baronetcy to become Sir John Eliot. None of his other children, of either sex, have titles. Not even an “The Hon.”

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(ii) Knight

A knighthood cannot be inherited. It’s a one-off, once only deal.

Mr William Lucas, shop keeper and merchant in the county of Hertfordshire, receives a knighthood for his making an address to the king. He is now Sir William Lucas. He is addressed as Sir William.

He is NEVER addressed as “Sir Lucas”. “Sir” only ever goes with the first name—Sir William. I cry every time I read of this mythical Sir Lucas, and that is not a pretty sight.

His wife is Lady Lucas. Their children do not have titles, and are just Mr/Miss Lucas.

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(i) For all the peerage except dukes, speakers should address them as Lord/Lady, and not the rank. (Scots titles may be different.)

(ii) A girl with the courtesy title of Lady Firstname Familyname – whether the daughter of a Duke, Marquess or Earl –can retain her title on marriage if she marries ‘beneath’ her. If her husband is of the same or higher rank, she takes on his title. But if she marries a mere Derbyshire gentleman, or a knight or baronet (it’s not clear which Sir Lewis de Bourgh is), then she can keep her Lady: hence Lady Anne Darcy, not Mrs Darcy, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh, not Lady De Bourgh.

(iii) titles aren’t interchangeable. By that, I mean you address the title holder the way Debretts tells you to. John Fitzwilliam is, The Right Honourable, The Earl of Matlock, or Lord Matlock, or Matlock (or even John) depending on who’s speaking, and to whom. He is NEVER Earl John Fitzwilliam, Earl Matlock, Earl John, Lord John or Lord Fitzwilliam.

(iv) “The” in the title (eg The Viscount Lambton) always is capitalised, even in the middle of the sentence, if it’s formally stating the title, eg on a legal document or correspondence.

(iv) Re those sons and daughters who have “The Honourable” title. This is written as “The Hon Firstname Family Name” BUT they are addressed in speech simply as Mr/Miss—nobody is called “The Hon/ourable” to their face.

(v) Military titles come before the nobility title. For example, the Iron Duke’s formal title was Field Marshal His Grace The Duke of Wellington, or as above, Colonel The Hon Richard Fitzwilliam.

(v) An heir apparent is the eldest son. If there are no sons, another man in the close family (brother/brother’s son/cousin) may be next in line, but doesn’t get a courtesy title because he is only an heir presumptive: he would be totally out of the running if the duchess or whatever suddenly has a son. This is Mr Collins’s position by the way. He is heir presumptive to Longbourn, but if Mrs Bennet has a son, or dies and Mr B remarries and the second Mrs Bennet has a son, Collins will not inherit.

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And…. breathe. There. That wasn’t so difficult, was it? And really, it was rather fun…

Er… no. No epilogue to Mistress of Netherfield. Sorry?

Mistress has garnered some great reviews. In just over a week since publication, it has over 90 ratings on Amazon.com alone, and some breathtakingly wonderful reactions that had me smirking a lot. But more than one reader bemoaned the lack of an epilogue that recounted the fate of each character after the curtain dropped.

An epilogue isn’t the end of a story. It’s an add on. Something that comes after the conclusion, after the story is resolved. I get that they’ve been around ever since someone first sat down and actually wrote a story (as opposed to Homer, say, and the oral tradition in Ancient Greece), and maybe they give the reader a feeling of “ooh, happy ever after” warmth after those final words “The End”.

Problem is, I’m not fond of them. I have a very lively memory of that last Harry Potter book and the gawd-awful epilogue Rowling tacked onto it to show everyone married off and sending their kids to Hogwarts 10 or 15 years after Harry defeated Voldemort. How boring it was. How mundane. It told us nothing of great interest. She’d actually ended Deathly Hollows at a great place, a uniquely lively ending. And then she killed it stone dead with that epilogue.

For me, when the story’s over, it’s over. I don’t want to tack on another 3000 words of how many children Darcy and Elizabeth had, or what happened to Matthew Grayson, or how Wickham fared in Australia. I carefully crafted a final line that personally I thought ended the book in a moment of enormous (and very sweet) romance and overwhelming trust between the two characters. When Elizabeth puts her hand into Darcy’s, she’s accepted him, faults and all, and has overcome her doubts and demons.

To me, that’s a high spot. An add-on epilogue that robs the reader of the chance to imagine for themselves the future lives of the ‘happiest couple in the world’ would feel, well, anticlimactic.

So set your imagination free. If you like to know who Mary Bennet married, and whether Lydia ever rode on an elephant in India, then feel absolutely free to imagine how that all will happen. That’s exactly why I ended Mistress where I did. It’s over to you, now!

Mistress of Netherfield is available now from the bookseller of your choice at this link: https://books2read.com/MistressOfNetherfield