by Jane Lark
Her narrow, sculpted, eyebrows rose, and then she turned away.
Good Lord the woman had cut him…
Jane smiled as she put down her quill. Daylight shone bright about the shutters. It was time to finish for this morning. There was still another scene to adapt—the moment of their dance. As well as another scene to write—when Darcy would be with his aunt.
Yet there were other things lacking.
The whole tale missed a sense of jeopardy between the couple. Even Elizabeth Wentworth’s tale had a greater sense of that. Yes, there was Lizzy’s sister’s elopement which had brought Darcy and Lizzy together in the end, but the jeopardy created by Lydia running off with Denny, simply because he was a soldier who wished to use her ignorance and not marry her as he should, seemed a shallow twist of fate and was so little related to Darcy…
Jane leant back in the chair and her gaze lifted to the ceiling. She wished to be alone today. To walk and think.
How might Lizzy see Darcy with his aunt and how might that fit into their story? She had thought it all pulled together and now it seemed to all fall apart.
Silence.
Silence, and patience, waiting for a moment of inspiration to speak. That was what she must do. Imagination would not be forced.
She cleaned the quill and left the sheets of paper out for the ink to dry as she washed, then she put the papers away, out of sight, and rang for a maid to help her dress.
Chapter 13
Peace was hard to find at Stoneleigh Abbey, no matter the size of the house. There was the obligation to attend the morning service, and breakfast to be eaten. Jane walked up the stairs to the West Wing with her mother. All the time, questions hovered in Jane’s head as she awaited the answers for her plot. They were not forthcoming.
When she sat down to eat in the morning room, on the prettier side of Stoneleigh Abbey’s West Wing, that had been designed for the mistress of the house, in the manor of the last century—to create half a residence for the man and half for the woman—the room was much darker than usual. Clouds blanketed the sky outside, stealing all brightness.
Rain began to fall in heavy unrelenting torrents as they ate, the drops of water descending from the heavens and throwing themselves against the tall panes of glass.
After breakfast the rain meant there was no chance of walking alone to seek the privacy Jane longed for.
She resigned herself to a morning, at least, among the other women in the drawing room, sewing, while the men disappeared to talk about the estate business.
The women sat and worked in silence, quite possibly due to the hawk-like study of Lady S & S. It was unusual for Jane, Cassandra and their mother. The hours they engaged in sewing were usually spent in steady conversation.
Jane worked on a neckcloth to send to Charles, as Cassandra continued sewing a seam on her shirt for Frank.
The only sound to be heard was the rain striking the windows.
Jane focused on her needle and thread, trying to leave her mind blank and open to inspiration. None came.
The needle slipped through the cloth, she pulled the thread through until it was taut. She pierced the fabric and pushed the needle through it again.
There was a slight unladylike snort. Jane looked up. Lady S & S had closed her eyes and her head lolled back in the tapestry chair. She had fallen asleep. Jane glanced at Cassandra. They shared a smile, but Jane could say nothing as Mrs Leigh and Mrs Hill were with them in the room. Her mother made a gentle clicking sound with her tongue in reprimand of the thought she must have seen pass between Jane and Cassandra.
The gravel outside the front of the West Wing crunched, announcing an arrival as it churned over. Jane looked to the windows. A horse neighed and the noise of the gravel stirring grew in strength, with the crisp sound of hooves and the extended pattern of the turn of carriage wheels. Jane and Cassandra stood at the same moment, setting aside their sewing.
“The servants shall see who it is,” Lady S & S had awoken and sat forward; her stance once more declaring she had the role of hostess in the house. It was nonsense, if anyone were to play the part it ought to be Jane’s mother who had come with Reverend Leigh.
Ignoring Lady S & S Jane walked to the long window and looked out with Cassandra beside her. Jane touched a pane of glass. It was cooler outside today and the glass was cold.
Cassandra looked at Jane’s fingers and smiled. Fresh marks of ink overlaid the paler stains from the night before. Jane smiled too and lowered her hand. Then her gaze turned to the window. The window was covered in raindrops, but through them she could see the carriage outside.
The carriage was not as grand as Stoneleigh Abbey’s carriage, nor Lady Saye and Sele’s, but nor was it insignificant. It was black with brass trims, and despite the rain which ran off it the gloss to which it had been polished made it shine.
“Who do you think it is?” Cassandra asked, as a footman opened the carriage door.
“A neighbour perhaps, come to introduce himself to Reverend Leigh.”
Cassandra glanced at Jane. “I would have thought your imagination capable of a much more exciting supposition.”
Jane laughed. “It is otherwise occupied today, but if I am to come up with a more exciting expectation of Reverend Leigh’s visitor then I would guess a long lost relative with another tale of the past to tell us, and a desire to fight both Mr Leigh, and Lady S & S, for what Reverend Leigh has already claimed. Look, he has a crest on the carriage, and within the crest are unicorns.”
“Oh. Yes.”
Jane had pointed out the unicorns in remembrance of those in the entrance hall. The Leighs’ symbol.
Jane stepped back, as Cassandra did, when a man alighted. Jane did not wish to be caught staring; that would be the height of rudeness.
When Jane turned around Lady S & S looked at her with judgement and disapproval. Jane was not moved to be penitent. Her sad tendency towards a contrary nature barked.
When the front door opened in the hall next to the drawing room, the ongoing noise and commotion of the arrival could be heard, and a servant spoke in welcome.
Jane longed to walk into the hall and discover who this new relation was. Instead she returned to her seat and picked up her sewing. She would find out soon enough. No doubt he would be brought into the drawing room for refreshment once he had first spoken with the men.
“Did you see who it is?” Mrs Hill and Jane’s mother asked in unison.
“No, we could not tell,” Cassandra answered as she too returned to her sewing.
“George Cook!” Jane’s mother cried when the door eventually opened and the new addition to their house party walked into the room beside Reverend Leigh. “Cousin,” she said as she rose. He walked across the room, as Jane’s mother did also.
Perhaps not a lost cousin… Jane looked at Cassandra and smiled, as she set down her sewing.
The gentleman bowed over Jane’s mother’s hand. “My dear, Mrs Austen.”
Jane’s mother smiled, and bobbed a shallow curtsey, then she turned and her hand slipped free from George Cook’s.
Jane assumed he must be titled as honourable, if he was neither a mister nor a lord. He had arrived in a carriage with a coat of arms on the door.
“You must meet my daughters.” Jane’s mother walked ahead of him, leading him farther across the room. Jane and Cassandra stood up.
“This is Cassandra.”
Cassandra curtseyed low, in a formal greeting. “Sir.”
He bowed when Cassandra rose, with an arm held across his waist in a gentlemanly style. “Miss Austen.” Then when he straightened he took her hand and kissed the back of her fingers. “Cousin, I suppose.”
“Jane.” Jane’s mother beckoned Jane farther forward. “This is George Cook, our cousin.” Jane’s mother knew Jane’s tendency for internal dialogue and swift judgement, and her mother’s eyes told Jane that she approved of and liked this cousin. He was a favourite of hers. There was probably another story to be tol
d later, of why she liked him so particularly.
Jane curtseyed. “Sir.”
He caught hold of Jane’s hand and encouraged her to rise. “Cousin, not sir. Miss Jane Austen.” He bowed over her hand, then lifted her fingers to his lips, but then he stopped, still looking at Jane’s hand. “I see we have another scribbler in the family.”
Warmth flared in Jane’s cheeks. He had seen the ink on her fingers.
He met her gaze. “No need to feel embarrassed by such an interest, it is common in our family I assure you, though I have not known a woman turn her mind to it before. What do you write?”
“Novels,” Jane answered, discomposed by the grip of his fingers.
“Fiction. Not poetry then, nor a periodical as your brother wrote at Oxford.”
“Were you at Oxford with James?”
“I was slightly ahead of him.” George Cook smiled. That must be how her mother knew him so well then, through James.
Anyone who was close to her brothers was an instant friend as far as Jane was concerned and it was the same with all her family. If James liked him then he must be both likable and trustable by them all.
“For what reason do we have the pleasure of your company? Though it is a wonderful surprise to see you,” Jane’s mother said as Reverend Leigh came to stand with them, with Mr Leigh at his side.
George Cook let go of Jane’s hand, and turned to her mother. “I heard of Mary Leigh’s passing, and came to show my respects.”
Then one of Jane’s guesses was true. Not a lost relative, yet another relative come to stake his claim as a rival for the inheritance. How many more cousins might arrive to claim their share?
Jane smiled. Jeopardy. Unfortunately, though, this tale of fought over inheritance was nothing to fit into Darcy’s and Lizzy’s tale, it was not her answer.
“You ought to call for tea…” Lady S & S said to no one in particular. Jane’s mother turned to ring the bell.
It was Lady S & S moving Jane’s mother about like a pawn on her chess board. Jane looked across Reverend Leigh’s shoulder, her gaze seeking Mr Butler, but he was not in the room.
Lady Saye and Sele tapped the cushion on the seat beside her. “Come and sit, sir. You must tell us about your journey. You certainly picked inclement weather for it. What hour did you leave? Were you delayed at all?”
Jane’s mother was so easily moved into the place of lesser family, and George Cook assessed to discover where he might be placed upon the board, beside or above Mr Leigh.
Reverend Leigh took the seat on the far side of Lady S & S, listening to every question as though he was learning from her conversation, while Mr Leigh sat opposite, listening too, absorbing everything in case it may be of interest or use.
When the tea arrived, Jane poured as Cassandra offered about the cakes. Then they both returned to their seats and their sewing as Jane listened to Lady S & S play with the chess pieces about her on the table of Stoneleigh Abbey.
~
The rain stopped in the afternoon, just after the clock had struck two. Jane waited for fifteen minutes, then set down her sewing, rose and went to look out from the window. The clouds had splintered, and a shaft of blue sky could be seen through the crack. The ray of sunlight moved across the farmyard before the house. The clouds were whiter farther into the distance, and breaking up; it did appear as though the rain had passed.
Jane turned. “Excuse me. I am in need of fresh air.”
Cassandra rose. “Would you like company.”
Jane shook her head. Cassandra would understand.
She left the dark-panelled drawing room and walked through the house, climbing three sets of stairs to reach her room and search out her bonnet and a cloak. In minutes she was walking back down the stairs, the footsteps of her short boots echoing on the wooden treads.
She carried on down the stairs, avoiding the West Wing.
When she reached the turn of the last set of stairs leading down to the servants’ halls and the chapel, she faced the portrait of the unknown man. It stopped her. There was just something about his face. His expression displayed such a personality… She must ask Mr Butler if he knew who the man was.
Below stairs, she followed the hall to the back of the house and descended the steps into the old abbey crypts, the kitchen, and the door into the kitchen garden.
She had spent most of the last hours in the drawing room watching her mother, Reverend Leigh and George Cook talking together and recalling family tales. Those tales and the cousins’ interaction played through her mind.
Three blackbirds, who had been taking their leisure in the sunshine and drying themselves out after the rain, took to flight as Jane walked along one of the paths. She leant down and picked a ripe, scarlet strawberry. A thrush hopped out from beneath the bushes, and fluttered away.
When Jane straightened, she bit into the strawberry. The sweet taste flooded her mouth as she walked on, looking into the distance, not at the pathway lined by more small fruit bushes, but into her mind’s eye.
Her head was full only of cousins. Family.
Cousins…
A breath slipped past her lips in a rhythm of haste, as with each step her boots softly turned the gravel beneath her feet.
Cousins.
She had wished to give Darcy an aunt, with a character like Lady S & S. What of cousins?
She walked on. An amiable, likable cousin who had known Darcy since birth, for far more years than Bingley… A man who was prepared to speak openly and might let Lizzy glimpse something more of the real Darcy. Yes. Cousins.
Jane turned a corner to follow the path as it tracked the edge of the kitchen garden. She picked a raspberry from a bush on the side of the path and slipped the berry into her mouth. Her eyes focused on the plants ahead of her and another thrush that hopped out of the way.
Mrs Leigh. Quiet and subdued.
“Oh.” The sound escaped Jane’s lips. If Darcy were to have such a cousin, the daughter of his abominable aunt, and what if she had been promised to him from birth, as his wife?
How would this cousin appear to him then, when he had met exuberant Lizzy Bennet? The woman whose vibrancy had captured his attention. If the two women were in the same room—in a silent room like the drawing room at Stoneleigh Abbey on a wet afternoon…
Yes. Yes! Darcy must see Lizzy in a setting from his world. Of course he must. He would not really have been tempted to make Lizzy an offer when he had only seen her amidst a local society of ordinary folk, or with her ramshackle sometimes ill-mannered and mismanaged family. That had been another lack in Jane’s plot that had perhaps caused its rejection. It would add far greater substance to Darcy’s over-powering desire to have a woman who seemed so ill-suited to him in all other ways than inclination.
“But why is Lizzy there, with his aunt and his cousins? Why would she be there?” The question she had spoken aloud plagued Jane as she walked towards the gate leading out of the kitchen garden.
“Lady Saye and Sele is very free with her views.” A masculine voice carried on the air from the other side of the wall.
“I do not mind hearing them. Lady Saye and Sele has a lot of wise things to say. I know nothing of managing such a large property you see…”
Jane held back as she heard Reverend Leigh reply to George Cook and when their footsteps grew closer she turned and pressed herself back against the brick gatepost, her gloved fingers pressing against the bricks behind her bottom, as her straw bonnet brushed against the wall too. She did not want to be seen through the bars of the iron gate. She did not desire company. She was so close to inspiration she did not wish anything to interfere with the workings of her mind.
They passed by on the other side of the wall, walking towards the house. Jane waited, looking up at the sky. The clouds which remained were no more than white pillows of soft down.
Reverend Leigh’s sharp, precise, very-pastor-like tone grew quieter, as did George Cook’s responses.
Jane breathed in a
nd pulled away from the wall. Then she turned and opened the gate, which had never been locked again since the day Reverend Leigh had used the key to unlock it.
She shut the gate behind her, then took the same path that Reverend Leigh and George Cook had walked along, only Jane walked away from the house.
Her strides lengthened, stretching out the narrow skirt of her dress, and her arms swung actively at her sides.
Cousins…
Yet it was no longer the conversation of Reverend Leigh, her mother and George Cook that hovered in Jane’s mind, instead Jane’s head was full of things Lady Saye and Sele had said, and how Lady Saye and Sele held herself. The chess player.
Birdsong rang from the trees. A breeze swept at the branches above her head sending down a few last drops of rain, that had clung to the leaves.
She could see Darcy’s aunt, like Lady S & S, seated in a chair, her chin high and her back stiff as she cast her gaze about those in the room, directing and ordering everyone within it.
But Darcy was not a man to be ordered, and his male cousin, Jane imagined as too friendly a gentleman to respond uncivilly, and yet too sensible to be influenced by Darcy’s officious aunt. No. Darcy’s aunt needed other people to take the place of her pawns and give her someone to play with.
Jane walked another dozen steps.
Lady Saye and Sele has a lot of wise things to say. I know nothing of managing such a large property you see… Reverend Leigh’s words of a moment ago raced through Jane’s head.
A cousin. Another cousin. A cousin for Lizzy. If she had a cousin to visit on the estate where Darcy’s Aunt lived… But who within Lizzy’s family circle would be invited to spend time with Darcy’s family?
A steward perhaps? But the thought of Mr Butler did not inspire Jane to place a steward in her plot, nor did a steward seem an appropriate choice as the pawn of Darcy’s aunt’. A steward, as a manager of people, would surely have too strong a character. No.
Jane walked a few more steps, striding over the soft mud path. It had been protected by the canopy of leaves and it was still reasonably dry. A twig snapped beneath the sole of her boot.