Elizabeth: A Bennet By Marriage - Handsome, Clever, & Rich

 

Hello again, lovely readers! I am happy to announce, at long last, that I have a new release coming soon! Handsome, Clever, and Rich will be available on Kindle Unlimited on Thursday, April 6th, with a paperback soon to follow. 

 

My ninth novel has been almost two years in the making, and I am beyond excited to finally share it with all you wonderful Janeites! Today’s excerpt is from the very first chapter - the very first plot twist! This novel presents a Lizzy Bennet who married into the family at a young age, a la Lydia. After being widowed at sixteen, Lizzy chooses to remain at a Longbourn with her infant son (tough luck, Mr. Collins!) rather than return to her family. Any guesses on where in the world of Austen this Lizzy’s origins might lie, or who her relations are? 

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Elizabeth Bennet smiled sadly at the infant in her arms, his pale, perfect skin a stark contrast to her uncomfortable mourning garb. She handed the child off to his doting grandmother, and then flicked her gaze up to Edward Gardiner. “It is a sort of olive branch, I believe,” he told her, producing a letter from his coat pocket.

Her jaw clenched; Elizabeth narrowed her eyes, the crisply folded paper eliciting a surge of old resentment in her bosom. She bit back a bitter retort, having no wish to wound the man before her – she knew he held himself responsible for the breach between herself and her family. It was he who had introduced her to her husband. Her late husband, she reminded herself.

Expecting to see her eldest sister’s hand, Elizabeth recoiled as her eyes drifted over the terse penmanship; it was her brother-in-law’s writing. Her posture stiffened in anticipation of his succinct and sardonic style of judgement. 

“John has been my friend for many years,” Mr. Gardiner said, his voice low and gravelly with emotion. He shifted, the fidgeting of his hands betraying the conflicted loyalties that plagued him. Elizabeth gestured for him to sit beside her, and he gently laid a hand on her shoulder as he did so. “I think I can guess what he writes. Your family wants you to come home. It has been a year – have you no wish to heal the breach?”

Beside Elizabeth, Mrs. Bennet looked on in alarm. “Surely not,” she gasped. “They cast her off most cruelly – have I not said it was the hardest thing in the world they should deny her what was hers by right? Not that my poor son ever cared for her money – but she ought to have had it! And now I daresay they want our little Tom! Well!”

The babe began to cry, causing Elizabeth to flinch and instinctively reach for him. A gentle admonishment from Mr. Gardiner silenced his elder sister – Mrs. Bennet gave Elizabeth an apologetic look before returning her attention to the child in her arms. For a few minutes, there was silence in Mr. Bennet’s book room as Elizabeth read over the letter from her brother-in-law, until the tears that welled in her eyes prevented her from reading any further. But she had seen enough to take John’s meaning; she crumpled the letter and tossed it into the fire, hugging herself to still her trembling.

Mr. Bennet took a protective step closer to her. “Well, Lizzy?”

Elizabeth glanced over at Mr. Gardiner as the tears finally spilled down her face. Her husband had been dead for a week now, and she had not yet cried as a proper widow ought. The handsome, lively young gentleman who had swept her off her feet at only fifteen had scarcely spent three months with their darling son before he was forever lost to her – and she had been too numb from the shock to shed a single tear. Now, faced with such a communication from the family she had fled, she could think of doing nothing else. She covered her face with her hands and began to weep.

“Oh, Lizzy!” Jane, the eldest of the four Bennet sisters, had slipped into the room, though Elizabeth had not perceived the door opening over the sound of her own sobs. She leaned into her sister-in-law’s tender embrace, and Jane offered her a handkerchief, whispering, “I heard little Tom – shall I take him?”

Elizabeth dabbed at her face with one hand, the other one feebly clutching the black bombazine of Jane’s sleeve; she was scarcely aware of the shuffling around her. Jane perched at Elizabeth’s side, cradling the baby, while Mr. Gardiner moved to stand with Mr. Bennet, making way for Mrs. Bennet to hover at Elizabeth’s other side. When Elizabeth had calmed herself, dried her tears, and steadied her own shaky breathing, she looked up to find her husband’s relations staring expectantly at her.

Her eyes met Jane’s, and Elizabeth forced a brave smile at her dearest friend. In the year she had spent at Longbourn, Elizabeth had grown closer with Jane than she had ever been with either of her own sisters. They were fussy and full of self-importance, while Jane was perfectly possessed of every gentle quality they lacked. Her sweet, steady gaze bolstered Elizabeth’s resolve, and something unspoken passed between the two sisters-in-law. They could not be parted at such a time.

“My brother-in-law has written to me,” Elizabeth said, keeping her focus on Jane as she addressed the family she had chosen with her whole heart.

“A letter of condolence? Or… something more?” Jane’s voice cracked, and she cast her eyes down to the babe in her arms to hide the uncertainty in her countenance. 

“They want me back,” Elizabeth replied. “John says I am welcome to raise my son in his home, alongside my sister and her children. He even offers to act as an intermediary between my father and I, if I prefer to go back to my family.”

Mrs. Bennet’s lips curled with disdain; her affection for Elizabeth was such that she had always felt obliged to despise those who would wound the girl who had given Longbourn an heir. But whatever indignant aspersion she might have cast on Elizabeth’s relations was cut off by Jane’s trembling voice. “Will you do it?”

“It is a chance to reconcile, my dear,” Mr. Gardiner said gently. “I should hate to see you deny young Thomas the opportunities your connections might afford him. And think of your poor father, and your sister at home – I am sure they miss you very much.” 

Of this, Elizabeth was not so sure at all. She had been happy to escape her life at home, when her father had sent her to London to stay with her eldest sister the previous summer. She had been raised in a village very like Meryton – but unlike the cheerful chaos that usually filled Longbourn, her father’s house had been all dreary seclusion in the decade since her mother’s death. As a child she had not sensed anything amiss, but as she grew into womanhood, she began to feel it keenly. One sister escaped by marrying, and the other remained, so unlike Elizabeth in temperament as to cause nearly as much discord in the house as Elizabeth’s striking resemblance to her mother.

“I have no wish to return to what I left behind, to squabble with my sister and be shunned by my father,” Elizabeth replied flatly. “And if I had been content at my sister’s house in London, I should never have eloped with Benjamin.”

Mr. Gardiner exchanged a wary look with Mr. Bennet before stepping forward, slowly raising her chin with his fingertips until Elizabeth would look at him. “You are so young, my dear. Benjamin’s death is hard on all of us, but I daresay it is hardest of all on you. Sixteen is a trying age for young ladies, from what I understand – is it not so, Jane?”

Jane blanched and began to stammer, but no real reply was expected of her. Her fingers interlaced with Elizabeth’s, and the silence in the room grew heavier. 

Elizabeth nearly wished to reply that of course it was indeed hardest on her, as Benjamin’s wife, and yet she could neither believe she had the right to such a sentiment, nor give voice to it in the presence of his parents and sister. Mrs. Bennet’s eyes, watery and full of pain, landed on Elizabeth. Here was the woman who had received Elizabeth with open arms, treated her like a true daughter, and doted on Elizabeth’s infant son. Beside her, Mr. Bennet fixed Elizabeth with a gaze of equal tenderness, stirring within her heart an overwhelming awareness of how attached to them she had grown. She squeezed Jane’s hand as she released the breath she had been holding.

“Would you have me compound their loss, Mr. Gardiner? No, I cannot do it. I am far from convinced I should be any happier at home than I was a year ago, and even if I did have some assurance of my family’s affection, I could not forsake the love of Benjamin’s relations. He would not want it. I do not want it.”

“Oh, Lizzy!” Mrs. Bennet’s slow, silent tears gave way to a more animated outburst, and she threw her arms around Elizabeth. “Oh, my dearest girl! But you know you are welcome to stay with us always! Our dear Thomas must grow up here at home, and not with strangers – those awful people!”

“Fanny!” Mr. Gardiner bristled at his sister, who squared her shoulders back in defiance. 

“I know all about it, Edward – how they drove Lizzy away. I am sure they cannot care for her half so much as we do here. Is it not so, Mr. Bennet? Tell him what a favorite of yours Lizzy has become!”

Mr. Bennet looked at Elizabeth; his lips slowly turned up into what little smile he could muster in the midst of such a scene. “I have no right to advise you, my dear. I think you can guess what I am feeling, if Mrs. Bennet has not convinced you. Your decision will not alter my opinion of you; I cannot speak for the ladies of the house.”

“But tell her,” Mrs. Bennet cried. “Tell her she will always have a place amongst us. Tell her it is best for Longbourn, and for little Tom!”

Mr. Bennet was half perched atop his desk in a forlorn pose; he leaned forward to clasp Elizabeth’s free hand, while Jane held fast to the other. “Perhaps my dear wife is wiser than I am apt to admit,” he said with a gruff, bitter laugh. “I have ever been a lackadaisical master of Longbourn. Only when Benjamin brought his beautiful bride amongst us did I begin to think of the estate’s future. We made a promising beginning, and I have learned to want better still for my young namesake. I shall likely be in the ground beside my son by the time little Tom is old enough to learn anything useful about running Longbourn, but I might pass some little knowledge along to the one who will someday guide him in turn.”

Drawing in a sharp breath of astonishment, and a great many other feelings too overpowering to understand, Elizabeth looked up at Mr. Bennet with wonder. Her heart turned over in her chest, stirring something like hope. “Do you mean it? You would teach me to run Longbourn?”

“She is just a girl, Thomas,” Mr. Gardiner said, his jaw clenching with suppressed dismay. “To be a widow and a mother at sixteen is quite enough, without you shirking your own responsibilities onto her shoulders.”

Mrs. Bennet had been dabbing at her tears with a handkerchief, but she abruptly dropped her hands, clenching her fists as she rounded on her younger brother. “Now just a minute, Edward! You have no right to speak on such matters!”

Mr. Bennet seemed hardly to feel Mr. Gardiner’s disdain. “I have known since the minute Elizabeth set foot in this house that she was too good for my son – far too clever for all of us, I think. Perhaps I ought not speak ill of him at such a moment, but I would venture a wholehearted supposition that ere long Lizzy shall be the best landlord to ever sit in at this desk. We may not be blood, but she chose us all a year ago, and if she were to choose us all again today, I have no doubt she would fight ferociously for the family she has made for herself.”

The strength of Mr. Bennet’s conviction washed over Elizabeth like rays of sunlight on a cold morning. It was all she could do to resist the childish impulse to hurl herself into his arms; instead, she closed her eyes and imagined the incredible possibilities of what he had described. A minute was all she needed to feel her breast swell with the realization of all she had ever desired being so unexpectedly fulfilled in the wake of the last tragedy her tender young heart could endure.

“Yes,” she said, turning to look at each of her in-laws, one by one. “That is what I choose. Tom shall be brought up here, in the home that is to one day be his. I shall remain here always, and devote myself to the truest home, the truest family I have ever known. You may frame my decision to John in whatever language you think best, but no consideration could possibly tempt me to accept his offer. Nothing could ever persuade me to leave Longbourn.”

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Thanks for reading! I will be sharing more excerpts at each stop of my blog tour, and as always each post comes with a chance to win a free copy of the ebook!