Attempting Elizabeth (15 page)

And if I never tell, does this mean I can never read
Pride and Prejudice
again? What if Mark and I date for years, get married, have gorgeous, red-headed, baseball-playing, history-fact-spouting babies, and one night I forget myself and fall asleep reading and
poof!
—mommy’s gone.

Obviously, I am borrowing trouble here. First of all, I’m perfectly able, the Caroline debacle notwithstanding, to write myself back out of the book. Secondly, it was only our third date. However, I’ve never been accused of being the most calm, rational person. Or of being able to stop the stupid confessions that somehow pour out of my mouth.

My phone kept buzzing. I didn’t respond to any of Mark’s texts. There were three, and one call that I hit decline on. The last text was:

—
Please call me, I’m worried about you.
—

For some reason that made me even more frustrated. Like if he really did care he would have believed me, not just texted.

I tossed my phone on my nightstand and yanked
Pride and Prejudice
off the shelf. Jumping while angry wasn’t really the best idea, I’d demonstrated that by ending up as Caroline-
freaking
-Bingley of all people, but I had something to prove. I’m not sure who I was trying to prove it to. I already knew I could jump. It’s not like I could record it or take anyone with me. I was destined to be the only one who knew I was telling the truth.

It made me angry.

I slammed the book open, verified that Elizabeth’s name occurred on the page and lay down on the bed, covering my face with the book and closed my eyes.

I could feel my tears getting the pages wet.

I woke up as Elizabeth Bennet.

“Headstrong, obstinate girl!'

I was in
a small but neatly furnished bedroom. I was standing by a window that looked out over an extremely tidy garden. If the hedges hadn’t been green, I would have assumed they were some kind of wall instead of plants. They were trimmed within an inch of their lives. Only one gardener that I could think of would have such obsessive-compulsive habits.

Mr. Collins.

I ran to the vanity table on the other side of the room and stared excitedly into the mirror.

Elizabeth Bennet’s almond shaped, dark eyes gazed back at me.

“Oh my god, I did it!” I breathed as I ran my hands over Lizzy’s face and dark curls. “I am Elizabeth Bennet.”

I could barely contain myself. Luckily, I seemed to be alone in Lizzy’s room at the Collins’s, so I gave into my excitement and danced around the room singing “Lizzy, Lizzy, Lizzy Bennet, yeah!” in a manner entirely inappropriate for a Regency lady.

After my little victory dance, I plopped down on the bed and thought through my situation. I was Elizabeth, and I was obviously on my visit to Hunsford parsonage during which I would encounter Lady Catherine (argh), and Darcy and his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam (yes!), and suffer through the disastrous first proposal. Unless I already had. Maybe it was the day after and I was reading Darcy’s letter.

I stood up and searched the room for Darcy’s letter, silently berating myself for not paying more attention to the scene I was jumping into. I should make a list of jumping rules, put them on sticky notes, and plaster them to the front of the book.

Rule One: Never Jump Angry

Rule Two: Pay Attention to What Scene You Are Jumping Into

Rule Three: Avoid Scenes With Caroline Bingley in Them as if Your Life Depends On It.

I had completely ignored rules one and two when I jumped after my confession to Mark. Thankfully, I had managed to at least pick a scene without Caroline.

There was no letter from Darcy to be found in Lizzy’s room so I had to assume we were pre-proposal. But when?

The answer came in the form of a huge commotion downstairs, the sound of feet running up the stairs, and someone calling “Eliza! Eliza!” in a high-pitched squeal. The words I had glanced at before I cried myself to sleep fell into my mind just as I opened my door so I wasn’t surprised to find a panting Maria Lucas standing in front of me looking as frazzled as if someone had just announced that the world was ending in five minutes.

“Oh, my dear Eliza! Pray make haste and come into the dining room, for there is such a sight to be seen! I will not tell you what it is. Make haste, and come down this moment.”

“What is happening, Maria?” I asked, though I knew she wouldn’t tell me, as I allowed myself to be dragged downstairs. Maria lead the way to the dining room, and we peered out the window to see Mr. Collins and Charlotte talking to two women in a phaeton that was stopped outside the garden gate. I knew it was Mrs. Jenkinson, the companion of Lady Catherine’s daughter Anne, and Anne herself, but of course Lizzy didn’t know that. I was mentally searching for Lizzy’s lines and trying to calculate the timeline. This was Elizabeth’s second day at Hunsford, how many weeks did that leave me until I saw Darcy?

“Is this all? I expected at least that the pigs were got into the garden. This is nothing but Lady Catherine and her daughter!''

Honestly, the pigs probably would have been more interesting. I was still trying to figure out the ETA of Darcy as I stared out at poor Charlotte getting blown about by the wind as she chatted with the ladies from Rosings. It was early March and it looked ridiculously cold out if the steel grey skies and brisk wind were any indication.

“La! My dear, it is not Lady Catherine. The old lady is Mrs. Jenkinson, who lives with them.” Maria could not have sounded more shocked if Lizzy had confused Mrs. Jenkinson with the Prince Regent himself. Mr. Collins had obviously instilled The Awe of Lady Catherine in his young sister-in-law. “The other is Miss De Bourgh. Only look at her. She is quite a little creature. Who would have thought she could be so thin and small!”

A huge gust of wind blew through the front yard, causing the front gate to bang open and closed with a huge sound. I swear Charlotte tipped over sideways before recovering herself. “She is abominably rude to keep Charlotte out of doors in all this wind. Why does she not come in?''

Maria turned her saucer-like blue eyes to me, her blonde curls swishing around her face. She looked a bit as if I suggested inviting the Christ child in for tea. I mentally snickered. “Oh! Charlotte says she hardly ever does. It is the greatest of favors when Miss De Bourgh comes in.”

We both turned to stare out the window again. Mr. Wickham had told Elizabeth that Mr. Darcy was to be betrothed to his cousin. Of course it wasn’t true no matter how much his aunt, Lady Catherine, might wished it. Lizzy didn’t know that though, as far as she knew she was looking at the future Mrs. Darcy.

“I like her appearance,'' I repeated one of my favorite Lizzy lines. “She looks sickly and cross. Yes, she will do for him very well. She will make him a very proper wife.”

Maria looked at me with her too-wide eyes again, but I didn’t explain what I was talking about. I’ve always enjoyed Lizzy’s little snarky asides, I know that they were indications that she was too quick to judge people, but it’s not like she was alone in those judgments. Everyone in Hertfordshire had thought Darcy was a proud, stuck up prig. Anne de Bourgh looked like a cross between a wraith and an unhappy bumblebee. The weird yellow and brown striped spencer she was wearing did not help her sickly, sallow complexion one bit. Nor did the perpetual frown.

I frowned in response. I’d just finished the math in my head. I had about three weeks until Darcy showed up at Rosings. Could I handle three weeks of living with Mr. Collins? That seemed an extreme price. But then, here I was, finally, as Lizzy. What if I jumped back out of the novel to try to get closer to a Darcy scene and ended up not being able to get back as Lizzy? That would suck.

So would sitting through the first proposal and breaking Darcy’s heart, because unlike Lizzy, I knew Darcy wasn’t a complete and total jerk. But he needed that first rejection to become the great romantic hero we all know and love. I’d already broken his heart once as Georgiana. His sister’s almost elopement had really shaken him, and playing that scene had not been a walk in the park. Breaking his heart as Lizzy, saying the truly hurtful things she said to him, that wasn’t going to be fun.

You should have thought this through before you decided to just jump, willy nilly, into to the book, Kels.

However, there was plenty of Darcy goodness before the proposal. There’s no reason I couldn’t enjoy that while it lasted. If I could just get through the next three Collins-tastic weeks, I’d be rewarded by several Darcy-centric days.

Decisions.

I hadn’t been trying this long and hard to be Elizabeth Bennet to back out now. I squared my shoulders as the phaeton drove away and Mr. Collins and Charlotte returned to the parsonage. I even managed to greet them and Charlotte’s father, Sir William Lucas, as they all tumbled through the front door, breathless with stories of the graciousness of Miss de Bourgh and her invitation to dine at Rosings the next day.

~

Living in the same house as Mr. Collins was slightly less torturous than I’d assumed it would be. This was mostly because Charlotte had him so well managed that during the day we rarely saw him. We had to sit through his soliloquies at dinner and our occasional trips to Rosings Park were excruciating tests of my ability to respond politely to absurdity. Mr. Collins at Rosings was quite possibly the most socially uncomfortable thing I had ever witnessed. Which is saying a lot because I’d sat through the last half of my blind date with Mark.

Then there was Lady Catherine de Bourgh to contend with. She really was an imposing figure. I could see similarities in her coloring and features with Darcy, and she certainly shared his propensity for thinking he knew what was right. However, Darcy had nothing on this harpy. Seriously, the things that came out of her mouth should probably get her smacked, or at least cast on The Real Housewives of Regency England.

As it turned out, my obsession with Elizabeth Bennet had born the fruit of me being more familiar with her lines than anyone else’s so I was more than up to playing her part against Lady C during what I termed “The Quiz.” On her first visit to Rosings, Lady Catherine asks Lizzy all about herself and her family, and basically disapproves of everything. Seeing her reaction to Lizzy’s answers was almost worth the price of having jumped into Lizzy a little too early.

“Upon my word, you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person.” I once pulled the exact same face that Lady C was staring at Lizzy with. I’d eaten an entire bag of Sour Patch Kids and was having a mini-meltdown. “Pray, what is your age?”

I smiled Lizzy’s not-quite-saucy smile. I was really in love with that look, I’d entertained myself the night before by practicing it repeatedly in front of the mirror. “With three younger sisters grown up your Ladyship can hardly expect me to own it.''

The Sour Patch Kids overdose face got even more pronounced. I almost expected her to start twitching. Lizzy’s description of Lady C as “dignified impertinence” was spot on.

“You cannot be more than twenty, I am sure. Therefore you need not conceal your age.”

Talk about an obsession with youth. Hollywood has nothing on the Regency era. Though I suppose if your life expectancy was closer to forty than eighty the focus on marrying at a young age was to be expected. I suppose that at twenty-three I would be nearing old maid status. Except that I wasn’t Kelsey, I was Lizzy Bennet and a full three years younger.

“I am not one and twenty.”

And Darcy was twenty-eight, I knew this because by the end of the book—next year—he’d be twenty-nine, the same age as Mark. The gap between Lizzy and Darcy was a full eight years, whereas between me and Mark it was six. Actually, it was really only five and half. Wait a minute, why was I comparing myself and Mark to Lizzy and Darcy of all people? I mean, comparing me to Lizzy I get because I’d been doing that for roughly half my life, but Mark to Darcy?

I was jarred out of my musings by Sir William and Mr. Collins rejoining the group. In a way this saved Lizzy from further questioning because Lady Catherine turned the full force of her meddling personality on Mr. Collins and the hapless parishioners that he represented.

Thankfully our visits to Rosings happened only once or twice a week. They were all “off-screen” in the novel, so I didn’t have a script, but I figured if I acted as Lizzy-like as possible the novel would just keep chugging forward. I managed to not do anything, either at Rosings or Hunsford, that bumped me backward in the timeline.

I found myself, surprisingly, becoming good friends with Charlotte. I guess it shouldn’t have been that surprising to me that she had a dry, sly wit and was always good for a laugh, but somehow it did. There must have been a reason that Elizabeth and Charlotte had been friends: it wasn’t just that they were of a similar age and lived near each other. Charlotte was seven years older than Lizzy. Jane was the eldest Bennet, yet it was Lizzy and Charlotte who were good friends.

Other than the spectacularly lame decision to set her cap at Mr. Collins (and could I really blame her? It was live with stupid, simpering Mr. Collins in her own home, or live with her stupid, simpering parents in theirs), she turned out to be sensible and easy going. I actually started enjoying our daily chats in the sitting room and walks along country lanes. Charlotte had managed to make a comfortable life for herself and had an uncanny ability to minimize her husband’s influence on her day. After her father returned to Hertfordshire, Charlotte, Maria, and I had even more time to ourselves.

“Are there any new gentleman come to Meryton since I have been gone?” Charlotte asked one day while we were in her sitting room.

“No. Though the militia are still there which means my sisters have plenty of handsome men in red coats to pine after.”

“And are you pining after a certain man in a red coat?” Charlotte quirked an eyebrow at me. Her face was very expressive. It wasn’t typically beautiful, but she was pretty enough that I wondered why she hadn’t married before twenty-seven. The answer, of course, was that Austen needed her character to save Lizzy from Collins and also provide a way for Lizzy to visit Darcy’s aunt’s home so she could run into him. Poor Charlotte was just a plot device.

“I suppose you are referring to Mr. Wickham. I must admit that I am not pining for him or for any other gentleman.” I answered. Although, as I said it a certain gentleman’s face flashed into mind.

It wasn’t Darcy’s.

That night I dreamed of Mark. The dream was unsettling. It was a distorted version of my telling him I could jump into
Pride and Prejudice
, but instead of me running away at the end of the conversation it was Mark running away from me. I ran after him but I couldn’t reach him.

I woke up in a cold sweat and vowed to myself that I wasn’t going to think or dream about Mark again.

The Darcy countdown had begun. In fact, everyone at Hunsford knew that he was expected soon at Rosings. Mr. Collins spent the better part of two dinners waxing poetic about how gentlemanly he was when they had met at Netherfield. I smiled into my wine glass, knowing that Darcy had been horrified when Collins had approached him without an introduction. But I nodded and kept my own counsel.

Lizzy would not have been looking forward to Darcy’s impending arrival, but I sure as heck was. Finally the day was upon us. Charlotte had seen Mr. Collins approaching the parsonage with Mr. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam in tow and had dashed into the sitting room to tell Maria and me.

“I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility. Mr. Darcy would never have come so soon to wait upon me.”

I started to protest. She was right of course, but Lizzy was still absolutely clueless that Darcy had designs on her. My protest was cut short by the gentlemen coming into the room. They bowed. We curtsied. I attempted not to throw myself at Darcy. Okay, that may have been overstating it, but after weeks of Mr. Collins being the only male in the general vicinity, the introduction of the hotness that is Darcy was almost too much to take.