Page 1 of Longbourn’s Son (Pride and Prejudice Variation #22)

Longbourn

Hertfordshire

The windows were wide open, allowing the breezes to cool the heated brow of the panting woman on the bed. It was unusual to allow a laboring lady to be exposed to outside air, but Mrs. Winton had always been an unusual midwife.

“You are doing very well, Mrs. Bennet,” she assured her patient, just as the woman screamed as another contraction bore down on her.

The apprentice midwife, Emily, wiped down Mrs. Bennet’s sweaty forehead, and Mrs. Winton cast an expert eye on the other end, where the main business of the morning was coming to a satisfactory conclusion. “I see the head, Mrs. Bennet. It will be but a little while now.”

“May God on High bless me with a son!” the lady cried out, and then howled again as a wave of pain pushed the baby further into the world.

There were advantages to working with a woman who had already given birth three previous times. It took only one more strong contraction, and Mrs. Winton cleared the baby’s shoulders and pulled the little one into the open air, who promptly let out a sharp, outraged cry.

“It is a girl,” Mrs. Winton said sympathetically, quickly handing the little one to Emily, who was standing nearby with a blanket at the ready. Mrs. Bennet, whose face had worn an expression of hopefulness, caved back into the mattress with a wail of despair.

“No, no!” she cried. “Not another daughter. Why must Heaven be so cruel to me?”

The midwife and her apprentice exchanged sorrowful looks. On the one hand, it was a sad response to the birth of a healthy child. On the other hand, Longbourn was entailed to the male line, and Mrs. Bennet had thus far produced only four daughters.

“The child is small,” Emily murmured to her mentor as she carefully inspected the babe in her arms. The little one was still howling, apparently indignant at being removed from the warmth of her mother’s womb.

Mrs. Winton frowned at this. Mrs. Bennet had been extremely large, and it was odd that her new progeny was so tiny.

The lady of the house was weeping in disappointment when another contraction shifted her wailing from sorrow to pain.

Mrs. Winton checked her patient rapidly and jolted in shock.

“Mrs. Bennet, you have another baby in the womb! You have twins! Emily, this one is breech; I may need your help; summon a maid to care for the little girl.”

Twenty minutes later, the second baby slid into the midwife’s hands and this time...

“Congratulations, Mrs. Bennet! You have a son!”

/

Longbourn

April 3rd, 1807

“Husband?”

Mr. Bennet started, rose to his feet, and hastened over to the bed where his wife lay, her beauty ravaged by cancer. Mrs. Bennet had been asleep most of the last three days, partly because of her sickness, partly due to the laudanum which kept the pain at bay.

“Husband?” she repeated feebly.

“I am here, Fanny,” he murmured, taking her skeletal hand in his own.

“Promise me ... promise me that you will keep Luke safe,” she murmured though dry lips.

“He is my only ... my only son, Mr. Bennet, and so very reckless. You must keep him safe, for the sake of the girls, for Longbourn. Promise me you will not send him away to school, or allow him to enter the military. Promise me.”

“Of course I will, Fanny,” he assured her, tears filling his eyes.

He had fallen out of love with his wife within two years of their marriage and since then, had delighted in provoking her.

When she had started complaining of pain in her side, he had ignored her until the apothecary informed him that a mass was growing in her breast, and that Mrs. Bennet was not long for this earth.

Several doctors had been summoned from London to attend to Mrs. Bennet, and all had concurred with Mr. Jones’s assessment.

They had also assured Longbourn’s master that nothing could have been done to help Mrs. Bennet – the cancer was fast growing and fatal – but guilt still lay heavy upon him.

He was not a particularly warmhearted man, but he had once loved Mrs. Bennet, and she had blessed him with six beautiful children.

He vowed, in that moment, to fulfill her last wish, to keep their son safe from harm.

/

April 12th, 1807

Elizabeth Bennet stared soberly into the mirror in her bedroom.

She hardly recognized herself, with her eyes red from crying and her body clad in unremitting black, which did not suit her complexion.

Not that it mattered how she looked – her mother was dead and nothing would ever be entirely right again.

There was a tap on the door and Lydia Bennet, the youngest of the Bennet children, peeked inside, her own face blotchy with recently shed tears. “Elizabeth?”

“Yes, Lydia?” Elizabeth responded, walking over to wrap her arms around her ten-year-old sister.

“I am worried about the twins. It is growing dark, and they have not yet returned.”

Elizabeth cast an anxious glance at the window. Sunset was indeed approaching, and while she understood why Luke and Kitty wished to avoid Longbourn, it would soon be cold.

“Shall we go fetch them?” she asked gently.

“Yes, but I do not know where they are.”

“I expect Luke is up the oak tree next to the stables, but if not, we will find them.”

Lydia nodded without a word, and together the two sisters descended the stairs to the main floor.

Longbourn, usually buzzing with the activity of six active children, was as silent as a tomb, which was appropriate enough.

Only this morning, Mrs. Bennet had been laid to rest in the churchyard in Meryton, and this was a house of mourning.

She and Lydia walked out a side door which led past the kitchen.

The door was partially open, and Elizabeth heard her elder sister Jane within, planning meals with the cook.

She choked back a sob; it was entirely wrong that her sweet elder sister, only eighteen years old, was now the mistress of Longbourn.

The air outside was cool, bordering on cold, and the two girls walked quickly toward the stables. A minute later, they stopped underneath a tall and spreading oak tree. Sitting on the ground, her face pale with sorrow, was Kitty.

“Kitty, it is growing late and cold,” Elizabeth said gently. “You and Luke must come inside.”

Kitty looked up and Elizabeth did as well; near the very top of the great tree was Luke Bennet huddled in the crook of a great branch. “He will not come down, Lizzy,” Kitty explained, “and I will not leave him alone.”

Elizabeth gazed down on her sister with compassion. Kitty was afraid of heights – indeed, she was a timid girl, and afraid of many things – but she was extremely loyal to her brother.

“I will stay with him and bring him back into the house,” she assured the girl. “You go inside with Lydia and eat some dinner.”

“I am not hungry.”

“I know you are not, but we all must keep up our strength. Mama would want that.”

This provoked both Lydia and Kitty to begin sobbing again, and Elizabeth spent the next few minutes embracing and soothing them. Finally, when the two youngest Bennet daughters were on their way back to Longbourn, Elizabeth leaped up to the nearest branch and began climbing up to her brother.

She found herself gulping back her own tears as she steadily made her way up the tree. Mrs. Bennet had always decried the tomboy tendencies of her second daughter, and would no doubt be yelling at Elizabeth to come down if she were here.

Elizabeth had often found Mrs. Bennet frustrating, but now – oh, how she wished that her mother was still here to fuss at her.

“Luke?” she said softly as she reached a stable position below where her brother sat in a fork of the tree, his face lifted toward the crescent moon flying freely in the heavens.

“Lizzy.”

Her brother sounded so downhearted, and Lizzy’s heart ached. She was broken-hearted to lose her mother at sixteen years of age, and for the younger ones, it must seem like the very foundation of their lives had abruptly been ripped away.

“Luke,” she repeated, reaching up to pat his leg. “You must come down. It is getting cold and dark.”

Luke shivered a little but kept his face resolutely turned upwards, though she heard a sob escape him.

Elizabeth tried again. “Luke, we are all mourning the loss of Mama, but we cannot stay up here forever.”

The heir of Longbourn tightened his grip on the tree branch. “I do not think Father is mourning.”

“Of course he is, but he has never shown his emotions easily. I know he is exceptionally grieved.”

“If that is true, Father should have done something when Mama began complaining of pain.”

Elizabeth sighed. “You are correct, of course, though it would not have made any difference in the outcome, except to give Mother the comfort of sympathy. Jane and I talked to the doctors; all said the same thing, that her cancer was relentless and a swift end could not have been avoided.”

A salty tear fell on Elizabeth’s face from above, and she daringly climbed a little higher, the better to place an affectionate arm on her brother’s shoulder. “Do come down, Luke. Please.”

“I do not know what I shall do without Mama,” the boy gasped.

“We will grieve and mourn her, for the rest of our lives, I daresay, but you are not alone, Brother. You still have Father, Jane, Mary, Kitty, Lydia, and me, and we all love you. We will weep for a time, but I promise you, we will find joy again.”

“I do not think Father likes me.”

Elizabeth jerked in amazement at these words. “My dear Luke! Of course he does. You are his only son!”

“Yes, and Father finds me dull and disappointing. He wants me to be like you – interested in great literature and able to play chess. I find most books incredibly boring, and I hate playing chess with Father since he always wins with ease.”

Elizabeth found her eyes filling with tears again, this time not from grief but from worry.

It was true that her father valued intellectual prowess above anything else and openly denigrated his son’s interest in livestock and farming.

Mrs. Bennet had not been compatible with her husband, but she had provided balance in the house and had doted on her son and more frivolous daughters.

Elizabeth could only hope and pray that the family would find a new equilibrium with time.

“Luke, your interests are very sensible given that you will one day inherit the estate. As for Father, he does not always mean what he says. But please, do come down before it is too dark to descend safely.”

“Very well,” the twelve year old agreed wearily, and the twosome carefully made their way to the ground through the rapidly growing darkness.

When they had achieved the safety of the ground, Luke reached out a hesitant arm to halt his older sister. “Lizzy?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Luke.”