Page 19 of Companions of Their Youth (Pride and Prejudice “What if?” Variations #9)

I have read your letter. I am ashamed of the language you chose and the sentiments you expressed.

I know you are angry, but that does not excuse rudeness.

You are not the only one whose life was upended by recent events.

You were not thinking clearly. I hope, in time, you will recognize that what I did was to save you, not to punish you.

I expect better from you than this petulance.

– F. D.

He crumpled the page before the ink had dried. Too harsh. He would lose her entirely if he sent it.

My dearest Georgiana,

I am sorry. Sorry for Ramsgate, sorry for hurting you, sorry for making you feel abandoned and trapped. I only ever wanted to protect you. I know I have failed in many ways. Please believe that I did what I thought best. I will do anything to make this right.

Your devoted brother,

Fitzwilliam

No. She would take that as license to blame him further. It made him sound weak. She would laugh at it, or worse, dismiss it entirely. He scratched it out, then tossed it into the fireplace, along with the first.

Dearest Georgiana,

I have read your letter. I will not pretend your words did not wound me, but I will not answer your anger with anger.

I love you. I am sorry that you are unhappy. I will not give up on you.

Your brother,

Fitzwilliam

There. That would have to do.

He sealed the note before he could second-guess it.

Then, finally, he undressed slowly and collapsed into bed.

The moonlight glowed faintly against the windowpane, and he stared up at the ceiling as sleep eluded him.

For all his efforts to put things in order, he felt more adrift than ever.

∞∞∞

The morning sun filtered through the drawing room windows as Mark fastened the last button of his riding coat and tugged on his gloves. Mr. Bennet stood nearby, holding his crop and looking over a slip of parchment.

“I think we ought to stop by the Crowley lease,” he said. “There was something odd in his last tithe report—higher output, but reduced income. I want to see it for myself.”

Elizabeth looked up from her embroidery. “Crowley? Beth’s husband?”

“Who is Beth?” Mr. Bennet asked, bewildered.

“She used to be a maid here at Longbourn a few years ago, Papa. Do you not remember?” Elizabeth said.

“The very one,” Mark said, smiling. “She traded her polishing cloth for a hen yard and a husband.”

“I thought it terribly romantic at the time,” Elizabeth mused aloud. “They had to wait for permission from her father, but he saved all that year and bought her a brooch at the Meryton fair.”

Kitty, curled in a corner with her mending, glanced up. “Do you think being a tenant’s wife and mother is harder than being a maid at Longbourn?”

“For love?” Elizabeth said thoughtfully. “People are willing to work harder, live smaller. It is not as if a scullery girl tried to marry a prince.”

Mark chuckled. “Perhaps I ought to marry an heiress. We could build an addition to Longbourn. With a library large enough to house all of Father’s musty pamphlets on barley and turnips.”

Lydia, sprawled near the hearth, perked up. “I like that idea! I could help decorate. Silk curtains and a chaise in every room.”

Jane, seated beside Elizabeth, said gently, “There are many lovely girls here in the neighborhood, Mark. Perhaps one of them would suit you without the need of silk or dowries.”

Elizabeth grinned and wiggled her eyebrows at her twin. “Miss Bingley is an heiress.”

Mark made a face. “I would prefer a wife who at least tolerates me, not one who looks down on me for daring to breathe.”

Mr. Bennet chuckled. “Marriages of fondness and mutual respect, in my experience, are the very best sort.”

Mrs. Bennet, who had been quietly threading a needle by the window, glanced up and smiled at her husband in unexpected warmth. “How well said, my dear.”

He tipped his head to her with a ghost of a smile. “Come, Mark. If we linger any longer, we will not have time to complete our tasks.”

The gentlemen departed, leaving the women to settle with their work baskets. Lydia was sent upstairs to attend to her lessons, leaving with a hint of resentment in her footsteps. They passed the next hour in quiet industry, sewing and chatting lightly of inconsequential things.

The arrival of Mrs. Philips broke the peace.

“I have news,” she announced breathlessly as she entered without waiting to be announced. “I hope I am not interrupting.”

“Not at all,” said Mrs. Bennet, setting aside her work. “Come, sit down. You look flustered.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Philips, adjusting her cap, “you know I would not bring gossip where it did not belong. But I felt I must tell you myself, sister, before you heard it from someone else. The Meryton militia is to be quartered here for the winter. Several officers arrived this morning to begin arranging their accommodations.”

Mrs. Bennet’s face turned pale.

Elizabeth’s chest constricted. Her mother’s hands trembled ever so slightly before she forced them flat against her skirt. She inhaled, squared her shoulders, and said evenly, “We must all be cautious. Not all officers are gentlemen.”

Kitty brightened. “What a wonderful thing for Meryton! There will be plenty of gentlemen at all the dances, and Maria Lucas told me that a man is much more handsome in a red coat.”

“You will not speak with any of them,” Mrs. Bennet said sharply. “Not unless it is at a public event, in a well-lit room, with your brother nearby. None of you girls are to be alone with them. Ever.”

Kitty’s eyes went wide. “But—”

“No,” said Mrs. Bennet, louder now, her voice rising in pitch. “You do not understand. Officers run up debts. They gamble. And worse. They lie to foolish young women and leave them ruined. I will not have it.”

Mrs. Philips nodded solemnly. “Quite right. You are very wise, sister.”

“If I catch any of my daughters flirting with one,” Mrs. Bennet said, standing, her voice suddenly tight and fierce, “I shall take a switch to your behinds.”

The room fell silent. Even Jane looked up in startled alarm.

Elizabeth blinked. It was not the threat itself that shocked her. It was the weight behind it. Their mother—flighty, anxious, all nerves—rarely spoke in such firm tones.

Switchings were not unknown to the Bennet children.

Among the families they visited—the Lucases, the Gouldings, the Longs—it was common enough to hear tales of children disciplined with canes or birch rods, some for little more than a misplaced curtsy or the accidental tearing of a hem.

Charlotte Lucas herself had once spoken, without much emotion, of being switched for forgetting a Bible verse—twenty strokes to the backs of her legs for neglecting the genealogy of Matthew.

But at Longbourn, such punishments were rare.

Mark had received the rod only three or four times in his life, always for genuine danger—like the winter he ventured too close to the frozen pond after being warned not to.

Elizabeth could still remember the terror on their mother’s face when he slipped and cracked through the ice at the edge.

He had been unharmed, but he was marched inside, dried by the fire, and then given three brisk strikes with a ruler on his bare backside. It was enough to make the lesson last.

Jane, of course, had never been switched. There had never been occasion.

Elizabeth herself had been switched just once—truly switched—and she would never forget it.

She had been seven, perhaps eight, when their first true governess arrived.

A stern woman from the north, Miss Anders believed in “forming the soul through the flesh.” Elizabeth had played a harmless prank—a frog, tucked gently into the governess’s drawer where it would surprise but not harm.

The shriek Miss Anders gave had been deeply satisfying at the time.

But the punishment was swift and terrifying.

Without summoning either parent, the governess dragged Elizabeth outside and made her cut a switch from the hazel hedge herself.

She was marched behind the stable and ordered to lift her skirts and lower her drawers, despite her sobbing protests.

When Elizabeth had refused, Miss Anders grabbed her by the arm and did it herself.

The switch came down hard across her bare bottom and thighs.

Elizabeth had cried out—how could she not?

—but that only made it worse. “Not until you stop screaming,” the woman had hissed.

So she had bit her lip until it bled, tears streaming silently down her cheeks, while welt after welt bloomed hot and red across her skin.

Jane had stood frozen in the stable doorway, her blue eyes round with horror, too stunned to cry.

Mark had tried to intervene—he had thrown himself at the governess, shouting and kicking—but she had shoved him aside. He ran for their father instead, who came storming out of the house moments later, waistcoat unfastened and fury blazing in his eyes.

He had taken one look at Elizabeth’s shaking form, her drawers around her ankles, and Miss Anders still clutching the switch—and had exploded.

“No child of mine is to be beaten unless I am the one to do it,” he had thundered. “And if I ever lay a hand on one of them, it shall be with the grief and gravity such an act deserves.”

“Spare the rod and spoil the child,” Miss Anders retorted. “This girl is a menace. She needs the devil driven from her so she behaves as she should.”

She had been dismissed before sundown, without references.

Since that day, there had been only a handful of switchings at Longbourn, and always for dangerous disobedience or willful defiance. Never humiliation. Never pain for pain’s sake.

Elizabeth still bore the faint white lines on the backs of her thighs—ghosts of that single afternoon—and she had never again played a prank more serious than hiding a pie tin.

So when Mrs. Bennet—pale, serious, and trembling—declared she would take a switch to any girl who flirted with a redcoat, her children knew to take her admonishments seriously.