That smooth talking Mr. Wickham! He can mean nothing but trouble… later. 🙂Â
XOXO Elizabeth Ann West
Chapter 5 - A Winter Wrong, a Pride and Prejudice Variation
Sweat dripped off Elizabeth’s nose and splattered into the pot of animal fat she stirred. Blowing out her breath in exasperation, she looked to Jane who was just as sweaty and dirty as she. In two weeks, the women of Longbourn had become most oppressed by the cost saving measures undertaken by Mr. Collins. From fewer meals with meat to mending ripped petticoats, Mr. Collins had even made Lydia and Kitty polish the silver!
Elizabeth wiped her forehead and continued to stir as Jane dropped more chunks of nearly rancid fat into the pot. “I cannot fathom why we are suddenly unable to afford candles! This is humiliating, Jane.”
“Tsk, tsk, not humiliating, humbling, cousin.” Mr. Collins stepped down into the small back room where the home’s original kitchen had once situated. During the spring and summer months, the girls had happily used the room to craft infused oils and hand creams.
“Mr. Collins, our household has always afforded to purchase candles in town. To give our families less fat and keep more for ourselves, well, it will send the wrong message to the neighborhood.” Elizabeth argued.
“Oh, and how shall the neighbors find out, Cousin Elizabeth? Do you plan to discuss tallow making with your particular friends? Or do you insinuate that there are servants employed here that cannot be trusted?” Mr. Collins’ tone lowered as his paranoia sprung forth again about the servants.
Elizabeth hung her head, and she heard Jane quietly make a hushing sound. Their beloved Hill was dismissed last week for a trifling matter concerning bed sheets, and a new housemaid was present that answered Mr. Collins’ every beck and call but mostly ignored the Bennet family altogether.
“I think what my sister means to say, cousin, is that the biggest contribution to the household accounts would be for my sisters and me to marry. I am in a courtship with Mr. Bingley, and my sisters have a chance at more advantageous matches if they are not thought to be servants in their own home, sir.” Jane offered her cousin slightly more respect than her sister could muster.
Mr. Collins eyed Jane Bennet up and down before he tugged on his breeches to return them to his waist as his round belly made them regularly sag. Both girls had to turn away as Mr. Collins was not suited to be in company, and the veiled laughter was not missed by him.
“A man who cannot value you beyond adornments and society’s reputation is not a proper husband. It is the man who can attest to a woman’s humble nature before Almighty God that is the strongest to stand beside in church. Mark my words, cousins!” he shouted.
As Elizabeth began to lose her composure and giggle outright, Mr. Collins turned around and stalked back through the door. Once he was gone, even Jane lost her serene expression, and the two women laughed until a large bubble popped and scalded Elizabeth’s hand still on the spoon.
“Gracious!” Jane grabbed the spoon to continue stirring while Elizabeth clasped her wrist and squinched her face in agony as the fat cooled. She peeled the fat off and dropped it back into the pot leaving an angry red welt on her hand.
“He is impossible to live with Jane! Please promise me you will send for me not too long after you marry Mr. Bingley?” Elizabeth looked at her sister with the droopy eyes of a puppy, but Jane shook her head.
“Things are not settled, Lizzie. Mr. Bingley and I may not get married,” Jane said, softly.
Elizabeth’s mouth dropped as she strained impurities off the top of the rendering fat.
“How can you say such things, and you scold me for running away with my tongue?” Elizabeth asked, not expecting such behavior from her eldest sister.
Jane pulled the spoon to the side and stepped back while Elizabeth made the first dip and pulled the strainer up, then dipped again and again before pulling the strainer completely away. Jane resumed stirring.
“He is changed these last few weeks. It is not as easy between us as it once was.” Jane shrugged as her words rang true.
Elizabeth’s eyes slanted, but she kept her suspicions to herself that it was Mr. Bingley’s sisters and friend behind his sudden change of heart.
“Winter never was a proper season for courting,” she said, hoping to lend support to Jane’s feelings.
But Jane shook her head and stepped aside as Elizabeth brought the antique candle mold forward with wicks already in place. As she filled the long slender chasms, another bubble popped and stung her arm. Elizabeth knew she was completely finished with lessons in humility. All she could think as she and Jane continued to cast tallow candle tapers was where on earth was Mary and her love for all church teachings when you needed her?
* * *
Chapter 5 (cont'd) - A Winter Wrong, a Pride and Prejudice Variation
Dinner was a muted affair as once again Mr. Bingley attended, but this time he brought his friend, Mr. Darcy with him though the duo had not visited Longbourn together in some time. Elizabeth was stuck sitting between Mr. Collins at the head of the table and Mr. Darcy on her right. It was a most miserable seating arrangement, but she was cheered that Jane was next to Bingley at the other end of the table near her mother.
“Cousin Elizabeth, how do you like the potatoes? It is a recipe from Lady Catherine’s own kitchen and a fine one if I may be so bold to say so.” Mr. Collins grinned like a primped peacock at Mr. Darcy who appeared less than enthused with his aunt’s home recipe as he poked the offending white blobs with his fork.
“They are a touch too salty, I fear, for my own taste,” Elizabeth replied, causing Darcy to look at her. If his opinion had been asked, he would have said the same. Elizabeth felt Mr. Darcy turn his head toward her so she responded in kind and made the most displeasing frown she could. This entire exchange made Lydia and Kitty begin to giggle across the table, earning them a stare from Mr. Collins.
“I say, ladies who are barely more than children should be seen and not heard.”
Mr. Darcy looked back down at his plate as he couldn’t agree more.
“The company at the table was fine enough for my father. I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be fine enough for a man of the cloth,” Elizabeth lifted her goblet of wine and defiantly took a large sip as she glared at Mr. Collins. She did not believe her younger sisters’ behavior to be polite, but neither was a chastisement by a cousin they barely knew.
“Lizzie!” Mrs. Bennet called down the table. “Apologize to Mr. Collins. At once!”
Elizabeth smiled meekly and looked at the red face of Mr. Collins. “I’m most humbly sorry,” she said, with a stony expression. Satisfied, her mother returned her attention to Bingley.
“Cousin Elizabeth, the pain which you feel for your father is something I hope to alleviate in due time. I promise, though change is difficult for all of us to bear, the happy news I shall share with you tomorrow will make you most overjoyed,” Mr. Collins again tried to engage Elizabeth in an officious manner.
But Elizabeth was tired of her cousin’s high-handedness. “What news could you possibly possess tonight that you must wait to share with the dawn?”
Mr. Collins looked to Mrs. Bennet down the table who suddenly laughed and clasped her hands.
“Oh, go on, Mr. Collins, we’re all family here. Well, except for you, Mr. Darcy,” Mrs. Bennet said.
“Thank you, madam, for the observation.” Mr. Darcy shifted uncomfortably in his seat next to Elizabeth.
Mr. Collins suddenly stood and raised his glass. “Very well, then, I am happy to announce that on the advice of my esteemed former patroness Lady Catherine de Bourgh, I have selected one of my fine cousins as the source of my future happiness.”
The younger girls all held their breath while Elizabeth’s stomach suddenly felt it had dropped to her knees.
Oh no, please no, she thought.
“I am most pleased to say that Miss Elizabeth Bennet is the holder of my heart, and I plan to make her my wife as soon as may be.” Mr. Collins beamed, expecting mass applause at his magnanimous behavior.
Only Mrs. Bennet cheered at the announcement while Mr. Bingley could find no words despite his usual genial manners. Mr. Collins sat back in his chair unsettled by the hollow response as Elizabeth looked around the table for support. Lydia and Kitty giggled while Mary stared at her hands in her lap. She finally made eye contact with Jane who looked horrified, but too shocked to take any action. As a last resort, Elizabeth looked to Mr. Darcy next to her and was surprised to see such a stormy expression on his face. His anger breathed life back into her own ire, and Elizabeth cleared her throat.
“I’m sorry, but I will not,” she said clearly but in a small voice.
The smile on Mr. Collins face began to fade. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said, I will not marry you, Mr. Collins,” Elizabeth said directly to her plate and winced in anticipation of the response.
Suddenly the table erupted with everyone talking at once, the loudest and most shrill being Mrs. Bennet with such insults and claims of Elizabeth’s selfishness to only think of herself.
As everyone yelled around her, Elizabeth began to silently cry and gripped her napkin in her lap. A masculine hand from her right slowly reached over and patted the top of hers before returning to its owner. As Elizabeth turned her head to look at Mr. Darcy, the man stood up and announced it was perhaps time for he and Mr. Bingley to depart.
Mr. Collins rose to see the men out, taking great pains to tell Bingley that he expected any and all requests for his cousins to come to him, before returning to the dining room. Taking his seat at the head of the table, he lifted a forkful of potato to his mouth and paused before eating it.
“I believe you are finished with dinner Cousin Elizabeth. Perhaps you would care to retire,” he said, with a very demanding tone.
A pin could drop and be heard as Elizabeth waited a moment before rising from her chair. When she reached the stairs, she ran up them and slammed her bedroom door at the top. Feeling alone and desperate, she curled into a ball and cried on the bed she shared with Jane.
Never one prone to melancholy, eventually Elizabeth wiped her eyes and sat up. Begging her mind to think rationally, it was no secret what would likely face her tomorrow. She rose from her bed and by the candlelight of her own making, began to pack her trunk with her most valued items, keeping her father’s books at the bottom.
* * *
WHAT A DEAL!
A kiss at the Netherfield Ball . . .
Three Dates with Mr. Darcy is a bundle of: An exclusive story, Much to Conceal, a novella that imagines what if Elizabeth confessed to Jane in London that Mr. Darcy proposed in Kent?
A Winter Wrong, the first novella in the Seasons of Serendipity series that imagines what if Mr. Bennet died at the very beginning of Pride and Prejudice?
By Consequence of Marriage, the first novel in the Moralities of Marriage series that wonders what if Mr. Darcy never saved his sister Georgiana from Wickham’s clutches?
Elizabeth Ann West’s Pride and Prejudice variations have enthralled more than 100,000 readers in over 90 countries! A proud member of the Jane Austen Fan Fiction community since the mid-2000s, she hopes you will join her in being happily Darcy addicted!
Chapter 5(cont'd) - A Winter Wrong, a Pride and Prejudice Variation
The morning came, and with the rising dawn, Elizabeth’s heart sank. She wondered to where she would be banished, and uncharacteristically she remained in bed well past breakfast. Strange voices came from below and try as she might, she couldn’t ignore that her desire to freeze time in place was overcome with her growing need to know what was being decided on her behalf.
Not caring much for her toilette, she solemnly took the stairs until a voice she recognized spoke very clearly from the parlor.
“What can you mean sir to make my nieces act and behave as beggars? Candle making and cleaning? What’s next, should you farm them out as maids?” Edward Gardiner shouted and stood outright furious as he had spied the burns on Jane’s hands. He demanded an explanation from an unrepentant Collins.
“I have asked nothing of my cousins beyond their Christian duty to the head of the household. The free-wheeling days of my predecessor are over, and a new master of Longbourn will see it rise to glory once again.” Mr. Collins, a full six inches shorter than Mr. Gardiner attempted to stare the man of trade down.
“I’ve heard enough! Jane, collect your things, you and Lizzie will leave with me this instant.”
“But Edward, Jane simply cannot go. She is in a courtship with Mr. Bingley, and he resides not three miles away at Netherfield. No, she simply cannot be taken out of the county.” Mrs. Bennet fluttered a black handkerchief for effect as she tried to dictate to her younger brother.
“Is Robert Bennet even cold in the ground, Francine, while you have these ladies worrying about marriage?”
Mrs. Bennet cried out, and Lydia and Kitty dutifully comforted their mother while giving a cold stare to their uncle. Jane slowly rose from her seat by the window and spied Elizabeth standing in the doorway. She nodded at her sister and turned to address her mother.
“I will go to London, Mama. Miss Bingley has said she expects she and her brother are soon to depart for the Christmas holiday, and I shall make use of the shops and Uncle’s contacts for my trousseau.”
“You most certainly will not be going off to London. And neither will Cousin Elizabeth. Oh no, I will be sending her ungrateful disposition to be a governess in the most disagreeable household I can find.” Mr. Collins muttered as he paced the floor.
Jane’s eyes widened in fear as her Uncle reached out for her. “Pack quickly, my dear,” he whispered.
“Mr. Collins, I am aware that you took possession of this house swiftly due to the coincidence of your arrival and the timing of my brother-in-law’s passing.” Mr. Gardiner cleared his throat and pulled a document from his vest. “However, it appears you failed to consult the will of my late brother concerning his children.” He passed the letter to Mr. Collins who suddenly paled as he read the missive.
“It’s not— not possible. Five? Five thousand pounds?”
Mr. Gardiner nodded. “Each.”
Angry, Mr. Collins balled up the letter and threw it to the ground. He turned on Mrs. Bennet.
“You, madam, have lied to me from the very start! Lies! All of you have an hour to pack a single trunk of personal effects and get out! Out I say, this instant!” Mr. Collins stormed out of the parlor and slammed the door to the study.
Mrs. Bennet was quiet for a moment before she began to wail again. The younger girls, unsure of what was happening followed their mother’s example and began crying in solidarity. As Elizabeth was already packed the night before, she returned to the parlor first and picked up the crumpled piece of paper.
The details made her hands shake, and she sputtered out the first tears of happiness in over a month. Her father hadn’t been a drunkard, or a gambler, or a womanizer! He had provided for them! All of them! After a few minutes, Mrs. Bennet began to recover, and she nearly knocked her brother out of the way to slap her hand repeatedly on the study door to plead with Mr. Collins.
And so, on a dreary afternoon in December 1811, Elizabeth Bennet made a hasty farewell to her childhood home and boarded the carriage with her uncle, sister Jane, and sister Mary. The rest of her family, unable to persuade Mr. Collins to allow them to remain, decided to impose upon her Aunt Phillips in town until a suitable house could be found for the widow and two young girls.
The air outside was crisp and cool, and Elizabeth shivered under the carriage blanket, but a warmth bubbled inside of her and spread to her frozen toes and the tip of her nose. Her life wasn’t over; it was just beginning.
You’ve been reading A Winter Wrong
A Winter Wrong, Book 1 of the Seasons of Serendipity
a Pride and Prejudice novella variation series
Release Date: July 17, 2014
33,000 words, ~177 pages in print.
When Jane Bennet’s illness at Netherfield ends up not being just a trifling cold, but an epidemic that sweeps through Hertfordshire, the lives at Longbourn are turned upside down. Elizabeth Bennet finds herself lost without a cherished loved one and the interferences of one Fitzwilliam Darcy most aggravating. Combating the bombastic behavior of Mr. Collins, Elizabeth runs to London for the protection of her aunt and uncle. But acquaintances and introductions bring Mr. Darcy back into her life and Elizabeth discovers he might just mend her broken heart.
A sweetheart romantic novella, A Winter Wrong is the first in a series of seasonal episodes following the Bennet family after the loss of their patriarch. Winter explores the feelings of grief and loss we all have experienced, while still retaining a silver lining for that dark cloud.
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So making candles . . yes it would have been illegal to do so as there was a tax. Rush lights, made from animal fat, was exempt. Most estates would give the fat to poorer tenants to spare them expense, so it truly would be a sign the “neighborhood” could see that the animal fat at Longbourn is not being distributed, but used to make smelly, nasty rush lights that could burn at both ends.Â
Thank goodness for the Gardiners! A twist on the old gothic tales of the dastardly uncle stealing an inheritance, here the uncle is our white knight!Â
XOXO Elizabeth Ann West
A Jane-of-all-trades, mistress to none! Elizabeth Ann West is the author of 8 novels and 11 novellas, 18 of which are story variations of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice.