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Uncomfortable as I was, that Jane looked upon the whole with steadiness and complacency surprised me.

“You are happy, Jane,” I said one evening, almost betraying the surprise this realisation caused me. Mary sat on my bed reading with a shawl over her legs, and Jane brushed out my hair.

“I am. There is substance in him, Lizzy.”

“You do not need to justify your choice to me. He cured my ankle, and for that he is due any prize, even my sister.” I chuckled.

“What sort of life will you have?” Mary asked.

Jane looked at our sister in the mirror with an expression of surprise. She was unused to having Mary in the room with us and forgot we were not alone.

“I shall have a useful life,” she said after a thoughtful pause. “I shall run a house and perhaps have more duties than I am used to.”

“Will you?” I asked.

“I shall learn to cook a little, I hope. At the very least, I am determined to become proficient at jam,” she said, and I feared I would burst out laughing.

“I have always wanted to do so, but Mama has insisted we are above the kitchen. Of course, I shall sew and manage the accounts, and I shall also see his visitors. I believe there are people who come every day to be seen.”

“Your house will be open then?” Mary asked in surprise.

“Yes. Robert spends the mornings in his consulting rooms at his home and the afternoons visiting the bed bound.”

“Will you go dancing?” I asked in a fair imitation of my sister Lydia.

Jane smiled and I saw in her expression that she was content.

“Not often, Lizzy. Mr Bromley goes out at all hours if needs must. I shall wait up for him and keep the teapot ready. You may laugh at me, but that is a life that thrills me to think on. How much more comfortable I shall be to be useful than to be on the arm of a rich man, going to balls and parties! No, I am a homebody and only want to care for someone who is useful in the world.”

“That is precisely what I hope for,” Mary said quietly.

Suddenly, what I wished for in life loomed large.

I wished to be mistress to a large estate, married to a rich and arrogant man whom I teased relentlessly into a more joyful state.

Certainly, I wished to make myself useful in a great house and to the people who served it.

But I also wished to hear great music, to see great art, to visit great cities, and to participate in great conversation.

I wished to be educated and worldly ! I wanted very good clothes and the best of everything.

I also wanted the freedom to walk the lanes of a beautiful property as though it were my own, without a care in the world.

Perhaps in the company of a man who compliments, rather than condemns, my strong walking.

Good lord! Mary would hardly countenance these unspiritual aspirations, and Jane would look at me with despairing pity for aiming so impossibly high.

The days passed with endless tumult. The Gardiners left with Mr Bromley, and Mama set about preparing for a wedding that was months away with all the serenity of a Bedlamite in mental crisis.

The weather was grizzly, and I rarely had the opportunity to run away.

Nor could I escape into music. Mary and I were deemed too noisy when we played.

We interfered with important business and were shooed out of the way.

Jane was never free, leaving the only respite to be my room where I retreated regularly.

Alone, I could not help but think with a tinge of horror upon the future I envisioned as my ideal—the impossible future upon which I had stupidly fixed my hopes.

To be the helpmate of a vicar, the wife of a councilman seeking a seat in town government, the missus of some gentleman’s dull, little house, all struck me as worse than spinsterhood.

A mediocre future did not appeal, and yet such was my destiny—if I were lucky! Hopeless!

Thankfully, my good friend Charlotte rescued me from Longbourn and the unhappy turn of my reflections.

She wrote and asked if I would come visit when her sister Maria and Sir William came at Easter.

It was with astonishing haste I agreed to go.

Jane would not be married until June, and I thought I might go mad in the interim.

Even the prospect of visiting the home of my prosy cousin Collins did not dampen my enthusiasm, and my father, bearing no expense at all, only shrugged and waved me away, telling me to do as I pleased.

I replied eagerly, accepting Charlotte’s invitation, and having nothing else to do, wrote a long letter about our family doings.

After chronicling the minutiae of Jane’s betrothal, I wrote of Mary’s improvement and my efforts there in some detail.

Of my younger sisters, I said only that they were much as they always were.

This resulted in an immediate reply asking if Mary would also like to visit.

Charlotte reassured me that Mr Collins approved of my middle sister, and upon having read my letter, he thought to invite her.

Mary expressed a reserved sort of acquiescence, but I knew she too was wild to go, and off we went to see Kent for the first time.