In the Wilds of Derbyshire Read online

  In the Wilds

  of

  Derbyshire

  Jann Rowland

  By Jann Rowland

  Published by One Good Sonnet Publishing:

  PRIDE AND PREJUDICE VARIATIONS

  Acting on Faith

  A Life from the Ashes (Sequel to Acting on Faith)

  Open Your Eyes

  Implacable Resentment

  An Unlikely Friendship

  Bound by Love

  Cassandra

  Obsession

  Shadows Over Longbourn

  The Mistress of Longbourn

  My Brother’s Keeper

  Coincidence

  The Angel of Longbourn

  Chaos Comes to Kent

  In the Wilds of Derbyshire

  PRIDE AND PREJUDICE VARIATIONS

  Co-Authored with Lelia Eye

  WAITING FOR AN ECHO

  Waiting for an Echo Volume One: Words in the Darkness

  Waiting for an Echo Volume Two: Echoes at Dawn

  Waiting for an Echo Two Volume Set

  A Summer in Brighton

  A Bevy of Suitors

  Love and Laughter: A Pride and Prejudice Short Stories Anthology

  THE EARTH AND SKY TRILOGY

  Co-Authored with Lelia Eye

  On Wings of Air

  On Lonely Paths

  On Tides of Fate*

  *Forthcoming

  This is a work of fiction, based on the works of Jane Austen. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are products of Jane Austen’s original novel, the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  IN THE WILDS OF DERBYSHIRE

  Copyright © 2017 Jann Rowland

  Cover Design by Marina Willis

  Published by One Good Sonnet Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1987929667

  ISBN-13: 978-1987929669

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, digital, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  To my family who have, as always, shown

  their unconditional love and encouragement.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Please enjoy the following excerpt from the upcoming novel On Tides of Fate, book three of the Earth and Sky trilogy.

  For Readers Who Liked In the Wilds of Derbyshire

  Also by One Good Sonnet Publishing

  If you’re a fan of thieves with a heart of gold,

  then you don’t want to Miss . . .

  About the Author

  Chapter I

  It has long been said that change can be a harbinger of better times to come, but Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn in Hertfordshire could hardly believe that to be the case.

  It was the spring of the year eighteen hundred and twelve, and the previous year had brought changes, such changes in such a brief period that it seemed nothing familiar had been left behind. That this upheaval had been brought about by the most wonderful events was an irony not unknown to Elizabeth, and though she felt lost in the aftermath, she could not deny that her family’s situation had been improved or that certain of their members had been blessed as a result.

  The previous autumn had seen the arrival of several new acquaintances, two of whom would change Elizabeth’s life forever. The first was, of course, the new master of Netherfield, a Charles Bingley by name. Though Mr. Bingley was the son of a tradesman, a man who had worked all his life to allow his son to rise in society, his five-thousand-pound income guaranteed the approbation of the residents of the neighborhood, and the eyes of every young woman in the village were turned to him. His appeal was also enhanced because of his handsome countenance and amiable nature, and in the eyes of society he was in possession of every virtue.

  Though every young maiden dreamed of drawing Mr. Bingley’s attention to herself, it was not a surprise, to Elizabeth at least, that it was her elder sister, Jane, who immediately captured his attention, and if the other ladies were honest, they must not have been surprised either. The only one who expressed any doubt at all had been Jane herself.

  “Well, Sister dearest?” Elizabeth had asked her sister one night after Mr. Bingley had given a spectacular ball in which Jane had been the exclusive focus of his attention. “When will Mr. Bingley confirm what all of us have known for some time now?”

  Jane, in her usual modesty, had not understood Elizabeth’s question. “Of what confirmation do you refer?”

  “Why, when he confirms his love for you!” exclaimed Elizabeth as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. To her it was.

  “He has said nothing of the kind, Lizzy,” replied Jane, though Elizabeth thought she sensed a hint of pleasure in her sister’s manner.

  “He does not need to say it out loud for me to see it. It is evident in his manners, in the way he looks at you, in the way he defers to you and listens to everything you say as if they are the most important words ever spoken. I declare, Jane, that if he does not ask for your hand in marriage when he returns from his business in London, I shall think him a simpleton.”

  “But I have nothing to offer him.”

  “You, yourself, are more than enough. Anyone admitted to the pleasure of knowing you must know your worth, and I am sure Mr. Bingley knows it better than any other.”

  Though Jane protested Elizabeth’s words, they were proven true, as Mr. Bingley had returned to the neighborhood within five days, and on the sixth, he had requested a private audience with Jane, and then her hand. Elizabeth had looked on with no small measure of smugness, not least of which because the man’s sister, Miss Caroline Bingley, had looked on with barely concealed anger. Elizabeth was certain that the woman, who had followed her brother to town the day after he departed, had spent the entire time attempting to convince her brother against his inclinations.

  Elizabeth kept this observation from her dearest sister, knowing that it would serve little purpose to attempt to inform Jane of Miss Bingley’s true nature. Jane was an optimist through and through, and though she was more than intelligent enough to understand that not everyone meant well, she chose to attribute the best of motives to everyone she met. Mr. Bingley had shown himself to be constant and true and would no doubt prove to be an able protector. Elizabeth thought he would not tolerate any foolishness from his sister.

  At the same time as Mr. Bingley was so assiduously courting Jane, another man arrived at Longbourn, though this man was as repulsive as Mr. Bingley was engaging. Mr. Collins was her father’s cousin, several times removed and, perhaps more importantly, her father
’s heir to the estate, owing to the births of five daughters in succession, with no hint of an heir to protect his wife and children from an unfortunate entail in the event of his untimely death.

  Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth’s mother, was a nervous woman, frightened by the prospect of losing her home to the unknown man. The Bennet sisters had little in the way of dowry, with nothing more than their mother’s five thousand pounds for their support should their father pass early. Mrs. Bennet’s brother, a Mr. Gardiner, a successful man of business, promised to provide them all with a home, should it become necessary, but fearful of losing her status, and that of her daughters, Mrs. Bennet was convinced that the only way to avoid such an ignominious fate was to see them all married as advantageously as possible.

  Elizabeth, the same as all her sisters, had been brought into their local society at the tender age of fifteen and thrown into the path of any available man. Unfortunately, the strategy had proven fruitless until Mr. Bingley’s arrival. With the wealthy man paying such exquisite attentions to her eldest, one might have thought Mrs. Bennet’s mind would be eased, her worry for her future mitigated. Elizabeth had surely thought as much. What she had not counted on, however, was the lure of having a daughter married to Longbourn’s heir, thereby enabling her to live out her life on the estate which had been her home for almost five and twenty years.

  Mr. Collins had come in all his servile splendor, all eager to extend his olive branch and offer for one of his fair cousins, making sure to inform them all that it was at the express wish—command—of his patroness that the notion had come into his mind. Besides the man’s incessant veneration of a woman Elizabeth thought likely was little more than a meddling virago, Elizabeth found him to be of suspect hygiene, stupid and servile, with little in the way of redeeming qualities.

  Of course, it was to Elizabeth herself that Mr. Collins turned his attentions, no doubt on the recommendation of her mother. Not wishing to stir up a hornets’ nest unless she was required to, Elizabeth endured the man’s silliness as best she could, but in the end, had had no choice but to refuse—several times, as it turned out—Mr. Collins’s proposal. A hornets’ nest was a mild description of the furor which ensued, but as Mr. Bennet sided with Elizabeth as she had known he would, Mr. Collins was forced to withdraw his suit. That did not stop the injured glares he directed at Elizabeth at every opportunity, but Elizabeth chose the simple expedient of ignoring him.

  Mrs. Bennet, however, still managed to obtain the desired son-in-law, as she was able to turn his attention to Mary, Elizabeth’s younger sister. Mary, solemn and moralizing, was the perfect bride of a clergyman, and they were soon engaged, though Mary showed no pleasure that Elizabeth could detect. Elizabeth accepted Mary’s choice with philosophy, deciding that her sister had consented to the engagement with her eyes open; if she was making a mistake, then it was hers to make. A little more reflection on the matter, and Elizabeth decided with a stifled laugh that they were even better suited than she had previously thought—they were both pompous, full of ponderous statements and little sense—and they likely deserved each other.

  But Elizabeth learned that Mr. Collins also possessed a vindictive side, though at first the matter did not give her the slightest concern. It was at Mary’s wedding breakfast that she made this discovery. Though Jane was acquainted with Mr. Bingley longer than Mary with Mr. Collins, the Collinses were married first, with an almost unseemly haste, which might have suggested a different and more pressing need to marry had they both not been far too priggish for any such behavior to have taken place.

  Finding herself standing near to Mr. Collins by chance, Elizabeth, feeling it incumbent upon herself to say something, observed: “I offer my congratulations, Mr. Collins. I am certain Mary will make you an excellent wife.”

  Mr. Collins, who had hardly spoken a word to Elizabeth since his failed proposal, looked away. Then, however, a thought seemed to come to him, and he turned back to Elizabeth.

  “I am certain she shall,” said he, his tone haughty. “Perhaps it is fortunate it all worked out in this manner, for I do not doubt that had other arrangements come to fruition, I would have discovered, to my detriment and eternal dismay, that I was caught in a nightmare, from which there was no escape.”

  Though Elizabeth knew he meant his words as an insult, she could not have agreed more, though she would dispute who would be caught in the nightmare. As she had escaped his noose, it was of little matter.

  “I cannot but agree. I wish you all the happiness in the world, sir.”

  Then Elizabeth turned to depart, having had more than enough of his brand of civility, only to be forestalled by him moving in front of her.

  “Cousin, if I might impart a little advice?”

  Elizabeth was certain there was nothing her cousin might say that she would wish to hear, but she gave him a curt nod and waited for him to speak.

  “I would advise you,” said he, his customary foolishness replaced by a gravity colored by spite, “that you look carefully for your own companion in life, little likely though you will actually find someone. Remember that I am to inherit all this estate, and after what has passed between us, I doubt we would be comfortable living in this house together.”

  Elizabeth took the man’s meaning in every particular. She decided that there was no reason to be angry, though she was amused at a supposed man of the cloth speaking to a family member with such uncharitable words. It was more amusing to reflect on how he had surprised her—it was the second statement he had made in as many minutes which was actually sensible!

  “You may be assured Mr. Collins,” replied Elizabeth in a frosty tone, “that I agree with you completely. Now, if you would excuse me, I believe we would be better off if we avoided further words. I would not want an argument to mar my sister’s wedding breakfast.”

  It was clear that the man was not of mind to remove himself from her path, so Elizabeth chose the simple expedient of stepping around him. She did not look back and did not farewell the Collinses when they departed after the conclusion of the wedding breakfast. But Elizabeth could feel the man’s eyes on her form as she walked away, and it was only with a supreme force of will that she did not show him her discomfort.

  Refusing Mr. Collins the way Elizabeth did was not without consequences, though it might be debatable whether these consequences were detrimental to Elizabeth’s peace of mind. Quite simply, with Elizabeth’s refusal to marry Mr. Collins, her mother stopped attempting to arrange a marriage for her second daughter.

  “I wash my hands of you, Lizzy,” she was told. “I have more important things to do with my time than to attempt to see an ungrateful daughter situated in life. You will shift for yourself.”

  Since Elizabeth did not appreciate her mother’s propensity to put forward anyone wearing pants as an eligible husband, the matter caused her little concern. After Jane was married early in the New Year, life at Longbourn went on much as it ever had, though now, of course, two of the family had departed for their own homes. But despite that lack, Mr. Bennet still hid in his library, Mrs. Bennet remained invariably silly, and Kitty and Lydia, Elizabeth’s two youngest sisters, were still improper and loud, flirting outrageously with any man in a red coat. As a regiment of militia had taken up residence in Meryton for the winter, they had ample opportunity to embarrass their still unmarried sister.

  But for Elizabeth, the loss she felt most keenly was that of her eldest sister. Jane and Elizabeth had always been the closest of siblings, the ties between them profound. When Jane married late that winter and soon after left on her wedding trip with Mr. Bingley, Elizabeth found herself without her best friend. Charlotte Lucas, who had been a close friend for years, attempted to fill the gap, but it was not the same, even though Elizabeth loved Charlotte dearly.

  When Jane returned, however, Elizabeth’s mood did not improve. She had hoped that when Jane made her way back to Netherfield that the sisters could once again enjoy each other’s compa
ny, though they would still be separated by their different homes and Jane’s new responsibilities. But the Jane who returned from her wedding trip was not same person who had left Longbourn only months before.

  “There is some great alteration in your sister, Lizzy,” said Charlotte Lucas one day when they had gathered at Lucas Lodge for dinner.

  “Well do I know it,” replied Elizabeth. “She appears to have acquired a certain air about her, one which I would never have expected Jane to possess.”

  “You mean she has become more like Miss Bingley.”

  Elizabeth scowled, and her eyes found Mr. Bingley’s younger sister. The woman was even now sitting next to her sister by marriage, and every so often she would lean over to Jane and make some observation. Jane’s countenance did not change—she was so inscrutable that even Elizabeth, who knew her better than any other, had difficulty interpreting Jane’s thoughts. Whatever Miss Bingley was telling her sister, Elizabeth did not believe it was benign in nature.

  “I do not know what to think,” replied Elizabeth. “I have never known Jane to be this way. She does not display her feelings, but she seems almost . . . contemptuous of the company.”

  “I rather thought I detected a sadness in her eyes,” replied Charlotte.

  Elizabeth turned her attention to her sister’s face, but she could not make out anything extraordinary. “Perhaps you are correct, though I cannot say for certain.”

  “Being the wife of a rich man has gone to her head,” observed Charlotte.

  Turning a glare on her friend, Elizabeth waited for an explanation, which Charlotte did not hesitate to give.

  “She would not be the first to succumb to such thinking after having the good fortune to come into riches.”

  “No, but then she would not be Jane.”

  Charlotte obviously knew when to hold her tongue, and she did so with nary another word. Elizabeth watched her sister, and the more she did so, the more she became convinced that Jane had, indeed, acquired a hint of superiority in her manner, though Elizabeth would have thought Jane to be the last person in the world to behave in such a way.