Longbourn's Songbird Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Author’s Question & Answer

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Bio

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  LONGBOURN’S SONGBİRD

  Copyright © 2015 by Beau North

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any format whatsoever. For information: P.O. Box 34, Oysterville WA 98641

  ISBN: 978-1-68131-002-2

  Cover design by Zorylee Diaz-Lupitou with images from 123RF and iStock

  Layout by Ellen Pickels

  To Amber Carter

  for pushing me into the dark places.

  Chapter One

  August 1948

  Netherfield Plantation

  Meryton, South Carolina

  By the time Will Darcy realized his mistake, it was already far too late.

  He stood hidden in the shade of an ancient oak tree, fingers gripping the rough bark as he watched the girl peel off her dress. Sweat trickled down his forehead in the sweltering afternoon heat, stinging his eyes. He blinked it away as best he could, not daring to move.

  He had spent the day surveying the property his friend Bingley wanted to buy, but eventually the humidity had gotten to be too much for him. Darcy considered seeking shelter inside the house, but it still smelled strongly of the elderly woman who had recently lived there. Instead, he wandered into the cooler shelter of the trees when he heard the unexpected sound of a woman singing. Curious, he followed the song deeper into the woods until he came to a small clearing and a pond. He saw the girl and ducked out of sight behind the tree, trying to make his tall frame as inconspicuous as possible.

  From his hiding spot, he could see that she was a young, slight woman with a cascade of dark, curly hair. She turned in his direction to drape her dress over the branch of a nearby tree, giving him a full view of a heart-shaped face with small features, her long sooty lashes obscuring her downcast eyes. She sang some simple and melancholy tune as she undressed. He felt his fingers curl against the bark as he watched her step out of her undergarments, placing them alongside her dress.

  Darcy stood frozen as she padded over to the water, caught in a war between his body’s wild urges and his mind’s grim formality that was as much a part of him as the color of his eyes.

  He asked himself why he could not look away. A better question: Why was he spying in the first place like some dizzy kid not out of his short pants? Was he not better than that? She was not the first naked woman he had seen. Maybe it’s the setting, he thought. Society women rarely strayed from their darkened boudoirs, preferring their trysts on satin sheets. Darcy tried to picture the woman before him on satin, but that did not fit her. She seemed to belong in the woods with the morning sun saturating her skin.

  The singing did not help his struggling scruples. Her voice was unrefined but rich in its wildness. It carried across the air between them and sank into his flesh, pulling him forward like a fish on a hook.

  Although I can’t dismiss

  The memory of his kiss

  I guess he’s not for me

  Darcy’s heart did a double-thump in his chest as he heard the words of the song. Memories long pushed aside resurfaced as his mind made the connection to that day his parents took him to Loew’s Theater to see Girl Crazy. His mother, pale and tired but happy, teased him afterwards that he was girl crazy. “You’re getting to be that age, Will,” she said as she attempted to smooth down his unruly hair. “You’re going to give me the devil when it comes to the girls; I just know it.”

  But he never did. He never got the chance.

  Those memories, the song, the girl—they were all working some strange spell on him, freezing him between the more immediate needs of a boy and the heartsore longing of a man.

  The dark water rippled around the girl as she stepped into the pond. Darcy watched in helpless fascination, not daring to breathe until her head slipped beneath. The seconds ticked by as he stood waiting for her to emerge again. Finally she surfaced, the glimmer of the sun on the water playing against her bare skin.

  Only when she started swimming slow laps across the pond, her singing far more subdued, did he dare move. He crept from his hiding place, not turning around again until the swimming hole was no longer visible. Shaken and aroused, he walked back to the main house as quietly as he could, allowing his feet to carry him forward while his mind wandered. He could no more explain the way he felt than he could fly to the moon.

  Fitzwilliam Darcy, Peeping Tom, he thought as Netherfield House came into view, his friend waiting outside for him.

  “Darcy! Where the hell have you been?” Charles Bingley was Darcy’s oldest friend. They met as freshmen at Yale, both of them by early acceptance and younger than most of the freshman class that year. Bingley’s easy disposition and quick humor were a good balance for Darcy’s reserved demeanor, and they became fast friends.

  Darcy shrugged in response, but this was not the sort of reaction that bothered Charles Bingley, who had long ago accustomed himself to his friend’s taciturn ways. “What do you think of the property?” Bingley asked, reminding Darcy that he was supposed to be inspecting the house and grounds, not sirens masquerading as country girls. A slow smile spread across his face, making him look younger and more at ease.

  “It’s really lovely, Charles.”

  ***

  October 1948

  Meryton, South Carolina

  Elizabeth linked arms with her sister Jane as they made their way down the front steps of the First Presbyterian Church. She sighed appreciatively at the crisp weather. After months of relentless heat and humidity, the new coolness in the wind lifted her spirits.

  The girls chatted as they made their way through the parking lot to the Bennet’s weathered Ford, happily discussing everything from the choice of that day’s hymns (good) to Mrs. Goulding’s choice of Sunday hat (very, very bad). From across the lot, the girls could hear their mother’s flustered voice over anyone else’s.

  Mrs. Long, Fanny Bennet’s closest confidant and arch nemesis, had just revealed a very important piece of news.

  “It seems as though Netherfield is taken up at last,” Elizabeth said to Jane in her most world-weary tone.

  “Yes, by a young man from Virginia with quite a fortune.” Jane played along, repeating their mother’s every word.

  “Mrs. Lucas ought to hurry over from First Methodist,” Elizabeth muttered. “A story this big calls for the studied pecking of all four of Meryton’s mother hens.”

  “Oh Lizzie, don’t be mean.”

  “You forgot the best part,” the girls’ father said from behind them, startling them both. With a twinkle in his eye, he leaned in and whispered in a conspiratorial tone, “He’s single! But don’t worry, girls. Your good aunt has already put you on such high pedestals that I’m sure it’ll be just as hard living up to your reputation as it will be for Mr. Bingley
to live up to his.”

  Elizabeth and Jane shared a laugh, neither wanting to admit in front of their father how interesting the news really was.

  Elizabeth teased. “He could be the finest of men but still wouldn’t deserve our Jane.”

  Jane blushed and looked down at her saddle shoes. “It’s you who ought to be thinking of that, Lizzie. Not me.”

  “Nonsense.” She knew why Jane pushed aside the thought of marriage, and it broke her heart. She opened the car door and hustled her sisters inside as Mrs. Bennet broke away from her gaggle of gossips.

  “Thomas, you will drive us to Netherfield this afternoon and welcome Mr. Bingley to the neighborhood,” Mrs. Bennet said as the family packed into the car.

  “I will do no such thing.” Elizabeth saw her mother’s face turn the particular shade of bright red that told everyone in the car how frustrated she was.

  “You know it isn’t fitting for the girls to go without you!”

  “Well, I’d suggest you go with them, but seeing as how you’re the prettiest, he might like you best, and we can’t have that.” Then Mr. Bennet goosed her for good measure as he ushered her into the car.

  “Thomas, really. Behave yourself! You have no sympathy for me and my poor nerves!”

  Only Jane’s pinch on Elizabeth’s arm kept her from laughing out loud at her mother’s favorite complaint.

  “Now there is where you’re wrong, Fanny,” he said in his usual dry voice. “I have the utmost sympathy for those nerves of yours. Why, I’d say that your nerves have long been my closest friends.”

  Mrs. Bennet huffed in the passenger seat. She was kind and pretty, though not a particularly bright lady. In all their years of marriage, she had not grasped that her husband took a perverse delight in annoying her.

  Elizabeth knew that her mother was silly, loud, and at times terribly uncouth. But when it came to the possible matrimony of her daughters, Fanny Bennet was as single-minded as a freight train. For the next two days, she begged Mr. Bennet to host a party to welcome Mr. Bingley to the area, seeing as how they were his closest neighbors. Mr. Bennet maintained that it was silly to have a party for a man they had yet to meet and that Mr. Bingley would probably appreciate having the chance to unpack before Mrs. Bennet foisted one of their daughters on him.

  He hadn’t told her he already met the young man and found him earnest, intelligent, and perhaps a little young but harmlessly so. He made it a further point not to tell his wife when, two days later, he pulled Lizzie and Jane aside and asked that they prepare a basket to take to Mr. Bingley and his sister that afternoon. He ordered them not to speak a word of it to their mother and sisters.

  He waited until Tuesday when his wife had her weekly bridge game at her sister’s house with Mrs. Long and Mrs. Lucas, an arrangement Mr. Bennet had long ago dubbed “The Hertford County Chin Wag Society.” With Mrs. Bennet safely out of the way, Mary busy with her piano lesson, and Kitty and Lydia visiting Maria Lucas, the only three well-mannered members of the Bennet family set out to welcome their new neighbor.

  Elizabeth always adored the old Netherfield house. She especially loved walking from Longbourn, coming around the bend in the road, and seeing the stately old house at the end of the long avenue, framed by gracefully bowing trees. It was three miles from their farmhouse to the grand plantation home, and Elizabeth had frequently made that walk to visit Miss Millie McLeod, the aging widow who lived there before. Miss Millie had “moved on” as they said in Meryton. No one died in the South. People “passed” or “moved on” or, in the case of little old ladies, “went home to Jesus.”

  After Miss Millie had gone home to Jesus, her only son, a cantankerous, middle-aged man who had come back from the South Pacific minus one leg, wasted no time in putting Netherfield on the market. He had no use for the farm and no desire to live in Meryton, which in and of itself was scandalous.

  Elizabeth was pleased to see that the outside of the house had been freshly painted a rich eggshell color. New shutters replaced the rain-swollen, sun-cracked old ones, and they were not painted traditional black but a fresh spring green. The boxwood shrubs and azaleas that had gone to riot while the property was listed were now tamed and the lawn so mercilessly manicured that Elizabeth was certain that, if she had a ruler, she would see that every blade of grass measured the same.

  Once inside, she was surprised by the modern furnishings and artwork that the new owner had chosen. Each piece was expensive and well made, so stylish and elegant that they were completely out of place in an old plantation house. She found herself missing Miss Millie’s old threadbare settee with the colorful afghan Charlotte Lucas had crocheted thrown over the back. Though Elizabeth herself thought doilies should be used in great moderation, she remembered fondly Miss Millie’s exuberance for them. The Bingley’s decor was completely sans doily.

  Plush, deep gray carpet now covered the old heart pine floor; two low cranberry-colored sofas faced each other, separated by a highly polished coffee table on hairpin legs.

  Jane felt drab and out of place in the room while Elizabeth felt a smug satisfaction at the total absence of books. Mr. Bennet contented himself with watching his daughters, silently laughing at Jane’s discomfort and Elizabeth’s wry looks at their hostess.

  Caroline Bingley was sleek, polished, and completely artificial. She had a tall, willowy frame and long, wavy, strawberry blonde hair. Her eyes were bright blue with a light of sharp intelligence. Jane thought she was lovely while Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet silently agreed that she might be a little more pleased with herself than with her present company. Though she was civil, Caroline’s tight eyes and insincere smile did not go unnoticed by any of her visitors. Mr. Bennet amused himself with the thought that, the next time he visited Netherfield, he would make sure to bring his wife and youngest daughters if for no other reason than to unsettle this haughty woman.

  Mr. Charles Bingley was out inspecting the property surrounding the house and was unable to meet his new neighbors when they brought their basket of preserves, fresh cornbread, a pot of honey from their own bees, and a bottle of wine. The Bennets sat with Miss Caroline long enough to welcome her and receive her thanks and praises for their gracious “country manners.” Elizabeth coughed to hide a laugh. Mr. Bennet covered for his daughter’s outburst as smoothly as he could, asking Caroline whether she and her brother would be attending the festivities for Meryton’s Centennial that weekend.

  “Yes,” Caroline replied in her society drawl. “We’ve been invited by Mayor Lucas. Charles and I will be there with our younger sister Louisa and her husband and…a close, personal friend of the family, Mr. Will Darcy.”

  Elizabeth recognized the spark in Caroline Bingley’s eyes at the mention of Mr. Darcy. It was the same look her mother got when a rich man’s name was spoken.

  “Well that’s a happy thought indeed,” Elizabeth said with a smile. “There is always some disparity in the male-to-female ratio at these events. It’ll be nice to even the playing field a little more, wouldn’t you say?”

  She knew she shouldn’t have baited her like that, but Caroline Bingley roused the devil in her. Maybe it was that she appeared so unflappable. Elizabeth saw it as a welcome challenge.

  “I hate to disappoint, Miss Eliza,” Caroline drawled, her accent cultivated from years of charm school. “But I can assure you that dear William is not fond of that type of…public display.”

  As if I could ever be interested in her beau! Elizabeth bit the inside of her cheek, trying to imagine a man that could captivate both herself and Caroline Bingley. She was glad no such man existed; he’d certainly be a fearsome creature to behold.

  They soon wished Miss Caroline a good day with promises to see her at the assembly hall and made their way back to Longbourn. Once they were safely in the car, Elizabeth made her father and even Jane laugh by imitating Caroline Bingley’s effusions over her beau, flawlessly affecting Caroline’s nasal pitch.

  “Did I mention, Miss Eliza”—Eliz
abeth droned in Miss Bingley’s voice—“how very handy Will Darcy is at parties? Why if you run out of wine, just give him some water and he’ll make more! Were you aware, my dear Miss Jane, that Mr. Will Darcy taught Fred Astaire his first steps? Can your country sensibilities appreciate, my dear Mr. Bennet, that he single-handedly liberated France?”

  “Oh, Lizzie, you are truly wicked!” a laughing Jane exclaimed, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.

  “Yes, dear Jane, it seems you were first in line when they handed out beauty and good manners, and I was left with nothing but sass,” Elizabeth said with a dramatic sigh.

  Mr. Bennet chuckled from the driver’s seat. “Oh, that was the most fun I’ve had since that week I hid your mother’s smelling salts.”

  “If half of what she said is true,” Jane mused aloud, “it does make me curious to see what all the fuss is about.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Good heavens! To hear that woman talk, you’d think Mr. Darcy could part the Red Sea. It’s unlikely, if not impossible, for a man to live up to the kind of expectations she’s raised.”

  “Yes, if he doesn’t walk on water, I for one will be severely disappointed,” Mr. Bennet agreed, still grinning.

  “Well, if Caroline likes him so much, he must be a great deal like her.” Elizabeth laughed. “I haven’t even met him and I’m already sick of the man!”

  ***

  By the time Meryton’s Centennial celebration opened that Friday, Thomas Bennet was beyond the limits of his patience. There had been nothing but talk of dances, picnics, and parades at Longbourn for days, and more particularly, the young men who would be attending them.

  His wife was of no help, being as overtly silly about it as the rest of the girls. Even his two most levelheaded daughters could not be counted on for good conversation. He would have been happy to talk about the weather, homework, even dress patterns. As far as he was concerned, anything—anything —was better than being forced to talk about boys.