This Disconcerting Happiness: A Pride and Prejudice Variation by Christina Morland

Author:Christina Morland [Morland, Christina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency, Jane Austen, Romance
Published: 2016-11-08T23:00:00+00:00

*

December arrived with unexpected companions: a cloudless sky and a mild breeze. Squinting at the sunlight pouring through dining room window, Elizabeth tried to muster up the enthusiasm she should have felt at such a sight.

“I will go for a walk after breakfast,” she announced, more to herself than to her family.

“You will catch cold and die!”

At her mother’s pronouncement, Elizabeth managed a smile; she looked to the head of the table, waiting for the sardonic observation that Mrs. Bennet believed in endangering her daughters’ health before, not after, they became betrothed. But there was no wit to be found at the breakfast table; her father remained in his bed.

“I will not be gone long.” In the past, Elizabeth had made this promise rather flippantly; Mrs. Bennet thought anything above five minutes an unbearable wait, whereas Elizabeth believed five hours no wait at all, not while outdoors.

Her father’s illness, however, had altered her understanding of time, so that she had become nearly as restless as her mother. She had not, in the past fortnight, taken a walk longer than a half hour, and it struck her, as she wandered the park outside Longbourn, that she might never again make the hour-long trek to Oakham Mount. That, after all, had been the favorite walk of a carefree Elizabeth Bennet, one who did not worry that her father would die the moment she was away from the house. A more anxious Elizabeth tried to recall the last time she had walked to the Mount, but she could not remember the particulars of that day. Had she known that it was to be her final journey along the path, she would have noted the number and color of the leaves on the old oak that gave the place its name, would have listened for the song of the skylark, would have taken off her bonnet and let the wind, which she had often regarded as a nuisance for its tendency to muss her hair, muss as much as it wished.

Elizabeth leaned against the stone wall separating the park from the road and stared off into the distance. It would do no good for her to succumb to melancholy; staving off such feelings had been her purpose in escaping the house. Besides, what reason had she to despair? Her father’s condition, while worsening, had been known to her now for nearly two months. Surely her sadness should have become more governable? Indeed, were not her circumstances today infinitely better than they had been on that terrible day in October when her father had told her his secret? She had at least the solace of knowing that her mother and sisters would have a comfortable home after they could no longer claim Longbourn as their own, and in little more than a fortnight, Elizabeth Bennet would become Elizabeth Darcy. Why did she not feel more joy at the prospect of her marriage?

“Elizabeth?”

She turned to see Jane making her way across the park.

“I have an astonishing power,” Elizabeth said when her sister reached the wall.

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