Page 1 of Only Mr Darcy (Obstinate, Headstrong Girl #1)

PROLOGUE

January 1802, Meryton

“I do not want to go in, Lizzy,” Jane said. “I cannot believe you convinced me to go with you. It is a terrible idea.”

Jane could be a dreadful stick-in-the-mud at times.

“Do not you wish to know whether or not your future husband is out there, somewhere? How can we ever be certain whether we even have a future, if we do not ask?”

The sisters were standing at the bedroom door of old Mrs Gardiner—their maternal grandmother—and she was dying. Everyone knew it.

Mrs Gardiner, as was well known to all the Bennet sisters, had a gift for second sight. From the time they were little, they had been told about it, had feared it, had wondered about it, and had, on many occasions, seen it in action.

How had she known when Elizabeth was sneaking out of Longbourn to go to the river? What about the time she had found the unfindable missing hair comb? Or most of all, how to explain her inexplicably accurate human predictions? She had been certain that Sidney King would marry a shrew, that Ernest Long would never leave his mother, and that Esmeralda Morris would elope to America with the first tradesman to ask her. It was uncanny, Mama always said, just how often Mrs Gardiner was right .

They held her in a deep—and fearful—respect. Every time she visited them, or they visited her, Mama or Papa was sure to remind Elizabeth not to try any of her mischief, for Grandmama would see .

Old Mrs Gardiner was not a cheerful, apple-cheeked grandmother, such as were so often illustrated in the picture books. No, her hair was worn piled high atop her head in a massive silver crown; her eyes were so dark, they were black, and it was whispered she held a strain of gipsy blood in some long-dead past great-grandparent. She often told stories, yes—but they were more often the stuff of night terrors than fables with happily-ever-afters. She was short-tempered, fierce, irritable, and just as likely to pinch or slap as she was to answer a question. Lydia cried whenever she entered a room.

But now they had been told she was soon to meet her Maker, and twelve-year-old Elizabeth Bennet had questions she had longed to ask for ages.

“Jane,” she murmured, “Now is our chance. No one is with her.”

“Mama said we are not to bother her,” Jane replied worriedly.

“We are not bothering. We are her granddaughters; if she knows anything, she should tell us.”

“But Papa would disapprove. You know he would.”

“Papa hates her, so of course he would. But Jane…do not you wish to know ?”

This was a certain temptation for the eldest Bennet daughter, who lately had begun to worry inordinately about weddings, and not having an adequate settlement to gain a husband or whether or not Papa would live to be ninety. Mama worried a lot as well, but much more noisily. Jane’s anxiety was a quiet, constant humming threading through their every conversation.

Elizabeth worried too, but her concerns were not the same. She was not overly nervous about finding a husband; after all, if Mama had done it, surely anyone could, if they tried hard enough. But she wanted to find the right sort of husband; she did not want merely ‘respectable’ and ‘practical’. No, she wanted a husband who was, to her, the sun, the moon, and the stars. She wanted a wildfire, not a small, neat flame in a tidy hearth. She wanted to marry for love—an aspiration she had been taught to avoid all her short life. And she was terrified of making a mistake.

As her parents had.

They tolerated each other, but that was about the best one could say for them. Elizabeth could not count the number of times she had heard Mama’s loud weeping or Papa’s caustic remarks to or regarding his wife. Yet, Mama spoke of their first meetings as a magical time, with Papa a handsome prince, almost. They had both been wondrously in love, in the beginning.

But Papa maintained he had ignored signs that it would not be a propitious match. After deciding to propose to Frances Gardiner, his favourite horse had gone lame, his watch had stopped keeping good time when it had always been so reliable, and he had lost the lucky penny he always carried in his shoe. These were all warnings, he believed, that he had set his life upon the wrong course. Mr Bennet swore that the only thing Grandmama Gardiner had ever usefully predicted was her disgust of his marriage to Mama.

But upon meeting Frances and falling recklessly in love, he had failed to listen to her, or any other portents; all had gone unheeded in favour of a life with Mama, and he had not been happy as a result. To Elizabeth’s mind, such vague warnings as he had discounted were omens anyone might overlook. Who cared about a watch, a penny, or even a complaint from an old woman? Horses could be the most finicky animal alive, predisposed to grievances whether or not Fate rested upon their strong backs. No, she wanted answers—specific ones—and this was to be her last opportunity to get them.

She took Jane’s hand and opened the door. As they crept into Mrs Gardiner’s bedchamber, the bright noonday sun disappeared, replaced by gloomy shadows. The smells of poultices, illness, and candle wax perfumed the air in a musky, thick heat. Elizabeth had the urge to throw open the windows and allow fresh air to enter—surely this stuffy room was only making everything worse? She did not quite dare, however.

Jane stood, seemingly paralysed, but Elizabeth grabbed her courage with both hands and strode to the old lady’s bed.

“Grandmama,” she began, in a voice not quite as steady as she had hoped. “It is Elizabeth, your granddaughter. And Jane. We have come to visit you. And…and ask you some questions.”

By the light of her candle, she saw Mrs Gardiner’s beady eyes flash open beneath her aggressive brows, fixing upon her. She grunted something that might have been a greeting. For what seemed forever they stared at each other, Elizabeth wondering how exactly to ask questions that seemed almost unthinkable.

“Grandmama, Mama has told us that you have a gift—a gift for seeing the future. Is it truth?”

“I have always known things,” the old lady mumbled, frowning.

“I believe you!” Elizabeth agreed eagerly. “We would like to know…surely you would tell us whether or not Papa shall live to a ripe old age?”

“Not things like that!” she snapped in her creaky voice. “Do not be stupid, girl! There is the devil in such questions. Your father is healthy and as like to live as long a life as the next man, and that is all you need remember.”

Elizabeth puzzled about whether her question had been answered, or not quite. She decided it had been, and in the affirmative. Taking a deep breath, she blurted out the question she had carefully prepared for this exact moment.

“What is my future husband’s name?” It was the perfect question, in her opinion—explicit, definite, not allowing for ambiguous warnings, imprecise portents, or confused understanding.

But her grandmother stared at her, scowling fiercely; Elizabeth wondered if she was to get another lecture on the devil. Instead, old Mrs Gardiner rose from her pillow, suddenly grasping at Elizabeth’s arm with a claw-like grip; she tried to pull away, but the woman was stronger than she appeared, and seemed to struggle to speak.

“What is the matter, Grandmama?” she cried.

“Charles…” the elderly woman croaked out in a ghastly whisper. “Charles!” A draught of cold air, rising from out of nowhere, snuffed out all the candles in the room in an instant, and her grandmama flopped back down onto her pillows, still clutching Elizabeth.

Between one moment and the next, Mrs Gardiner was dead.

Elizabeth had her answer. Jane screamed and screamed and screamed.