Something inside always held me back from writing a Darcy/Elizabeth novel. ’Twas not fear, dear friends, although the eternal binary is daunting for any writer. Seriously, how can one improve on the original? There was something else holding me back from tackling what is the mainstream in JAFF—Jane Austen Fan Fiction.
It was JAFF itself.
Perhaps the point was that I could not write a JAFF story. In the years since I began writing fiction, my natural inclinations pulled me away from the familiar memes and tropes that dominated the early years of the genre.
As some of my friends may recall, in an earlier blog post from 2017, I broke with the whole JAFF moniker and staked out a new direction, which now is being shared by more and more authors—evolving the genre to be less of a tribute band and more of an emerging literary stream. I was no longer in the JAFF world but in the Austenesque realm.
That shift in perspective was liberating. Now, my Bennet Wardrobe novels made sense. Mary Bennet, who had seven lines in the Canonical original now could become The Great Keeper and use her faith to benefit monumental causes. Kitty would step from the shadow of Lydia to grow into the Eleventh Countess of Matlock while her younger sister would become the Eighth. Time travel is amusing.
Other releases followed. While I had been exploring the themes of subaltern history (that of sergeants and servants and not that of generals and duchesses), the activity had often seemed to be a struggle against the current of prevailing best-sellers in the arena. I felt lonely trying to build layers of characters in the face of reactions that had the only characters that mattered being Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. #Austenesque thinking allowed me to bring life to those who carried platters of food, opened doors, and fetched smelling salts. While the paired novellas Of Fortune’s Reversal and The Maid and the Footman had been written in 2016, I did not bring them together under the same cover in Lessers and Betters to be read back-to-back until after my epiphany.
As soon as I freed myself of the inherent classism in JAFF and other Regency offerings, I transformed my work. The closing books of the Bennet Wardrobe—Countess, Avenger, Pilgrim, and Grail—were the first beneficiaries of my new mindset. Then I stepped outside the Pride and Prejudice variation sandbox like several of my friends. I wrote a North and South novelette. What was most attractive about the source material was that Elizabeth Gaskell put many of her class-separated characters on the same emotional footing. That was refreshing and helped me even more.
Thus, I arrived at In Plain Sight.
With In Plain Sight, I wanted to create something different, but the desire to do that was not the reason the action flows as it does. I am an organic writer (building as I go). The plot, the characters, and the book itself told me where to go. There were times when I engaged in automatic writing, allowing my inner guide (see the Bennet Wardrobe) to write the truth the book sought to tell.
With the inversion of position framing the tale, the supporting characters help build the story because the main characters have so much work to do creating a relationship from unfamiliar clay. Mary Bennet allowed Elizabeth to reflect on how she ignored her sister. Henry Wilson and Charlie Tomkins showed Darcy/Smith the inner goodness found in either a lord or a laborer. I see the supporting cast as the third leg of a stool—Darcy being one and Elizabeth being the second—which supports the plot (the seat).
With fully developed supporting characters, the story can flow through channels of its own making. For instance, although Richard Fitzwilliam had retired from the Army in 1806, he retained his military sensibilities. Those allowed him to plan the retreat from Meryton. Another example: we understand the nature of the baronet, Sir Thaddeus Soames, better because we know his background, and he will, therefore, act in a manner consonant with his history.
At its heart, In Plain Sight is a romance. However, the Austenesque approach allowed me to gently stoke expectations while burying those hopes beneath uncomfortable and informative realities. There are cords, fibers of invisible energy flowing throughout the Universe. The ley lines that are the life forces of Elizabeth and Darcy are so consonant, so attuned to one another, that they resonate when in close proximity. That remains true whether in Canon, JAFF, or Austenesque stories.
I write stories that I find compelling. I ask if this is something I would wish to read, and I know that most, if not all, authors do the same. In the end, though, authors write their truth. The authenticity that shines through the work becomes the more significant truth as the author’s voice speaks to the reader through characters and plot. I hope you can see the profound truth at the heart of In Plain Sight.
****
This remastered excerpt is ©2020 by Donald. P. Jacobson. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the expressed written consent of this copyright holder is prohibited.
The Harvest Ball unwound as expected. The first two sets passed without any incident. Elizabeth had shaken her sense of foreboding as the ball progressed. She was pleased to see her father taking Lydia and Kitty in hand, squelching their high spirits by regularly sniffing their punch glasses and sending withering glares at any scarlet tunic hoping to take advantage of impressionable young ladies. Even her mother had moderated her behavior and had settled into a low-tone bout of gossip with Mrs. Long and Lady Lucas as they watched the younger crowd circulate through the steps.
Suitably cowed by a baronet’s presence, William Collins avoided injuring anyone through his clumsiness. He had done the pretty by requesting a set from many of the neighborhood ladies, although at the ball’s early stage, he had yet to do more than dance with Miss Lucas while Miss Catherine Bennet had assented to accompany him in the second.
Sadly, Collins’s supper set was open because of his elevated estimation of his prospects as a suitor. He could entice no single female to stand up and, thus, sit down with him. Hunsford’s rector stood on the sidelines to observe the dance. He hummed an off-key, asynchronous accompaniment to the small orchestra’s efforts. Occasionally, he sipped the brackish thin lemonade to cool the revelers after their exertions. Collins assumed that the watery liquid was a faithful replication of the brew served by Almack’s patronesses. He admired Miss Bingley’s attention to the smallest detail. What impressed him even more was that she followed the example of the judges of all that was correct in the ton.
About twenty minutes earlier, one of the red-coated officer guests had offered to “sweeten” the brew with a bit of the hair of the dog. Collins, not wishing to seem above the company, readily agreed. A sizeable tot topped off his cup. Soon, a warm fuzziness flooded the cleric’s sinuses, numbing the tip of his nose and reddening his ears and cheeks.
William Collins was enjoying himself.
As the set continued, he wandered back to the refreshments table. As he approached, he heard a lady’s voice berating someone.
“How could you have been so clumsy? Those coupes were French crystal and are—or were—part of a matched set my mother imported before the war!
“Yet crush one while polishing it, you fumble-fingered buffoon? I shall see its cost deducted from your wages, and I promise you, it will be dear!”
Collins looked closely as the audience parted to see a tall, redheaded lady in a seafoam-green gown snarling at a cowering footman. After she had dismissed the quivering soul to some darkened dungeon near the kitchens, Mr. Collins approached.
He spoke in his most unctuous voice, for he recognized her as his hostess, Miss Bingley. “Allow me to commend you, madam, for your discernment and refined taste. I may be a humble clergyman, but I would assess this evening’s festivities as nearly perfect. Why, my patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh of Rosings Park, would see little that needed any remediation.
“I would go so far as to say that she would offer only one or two constructive suggestions to assist you in your future efforts.
“In truth, Miss Bingley, whatever Lady Catherine pointed out would only be apprehended by society’s highest. The fine folk here tonight, their senses dulled by living outside the first circles, will never understand the nuances a competent hostess will adjust to complete the experience.”
Caroline’s eyes narrowed at the mixed compliments offered by the sweaty, silly man by her side. She was too polite and too near the dining room doors to allow her earlier ire at the footman’s crime to overtake her best manners. Her response was careful. “You are Bennet’s cousin…the clergyman, Mr. Collins…are you not?”
“Indeed, Miss Bingley, I am him. I have the privilege of being the heir to Longbourn as Mrs. Bennet was thoroughly unsuccessful in birthing any sons.”
“I see.” Caroline looked around the room for some excuse to cut short this brief but already tiresome conversation.
Collins forged ahead. “I do hope that you will forgive my presumption in approaching you. I could not help but overhear you correcting that servant who had damaged an heirloom. Lady Catherine is known for her desire to instruct the lower classes in proper deportment, especially when handling her property. Although you do not know my patroness, I can assure you that you certainly follow in her footsteps.
“And I am positive…”
Caroline let Collins’s drone recede into the background as she caught sight of Richard Fitzwilliam with Eliza Bennet moving across the parquet floor. His attention to that country chit curdled her insides. Although her sights had shifted recently, Miss Bingley refused to concede any suitor to another woman. Miss Bingley’s manner became increasingly brittle, and she ground her teeth behind thinned lips. Collins’s prattle softly buffeted against her subconscious and continued to do so until he said something that immediately caught her attention.
“…and I am frustrated that Mr. Bennet refuses to heed my counsel. After all, I am to be Longbourn’s master! One would think that he would be more concerned about the behavior of one of his older daughters. I can understand if he chooses to ignore the hoydenish attitudes of the infants—”
The behavior of one of his older daughters? “Of what and whom are you speaking, Mr. Collins?”
Collins preened. While the man condemned gossip as uncharitable and skirting the limits of proper Christian manners, he loved being able to inform the world at large about the weaknesses of others.
His voice strengthened as if he were in his Hunsford pulpit. “Why, thank you for your interest, Miss Bingley, in knowing which of your neighbors, in this case, your nearest, are acting in ways contrary to good social order. As Lady Catherine has said time and again—”
“Thank you, Mr. Collins; however, please stick to the facts of the tale about…”
Collins paused and collected himself. “You are correct. Perhaps you could provide this young lady the sort of guidance her father refuses to give. I am speaking of Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
“I had planned to bring her back to Kent as my wife. Lady Catherine insisted that I extend an olive branch of peace to my cousins and marry one of them to heal the rift in our family brought on by the Longbourn entail,”—he sped up at Caroline’s growl—“but she proved herself thoroughly unsuitable. I could not countenance a fallen woman as my helpmeet.
“I came upon her at the Longbourn Dower House consorting with a servant!
“She told me all that she had meant to do was chastise him, but her laying of hands upon the man beggared the truth!
“’Twas Eve and the serpent all over again!”
Urged on by Caroline’s prodding, the story, as perceived by William Collins, tumbled out. At some point, she stopped looking at his greasy countenance and again focused on the dancers.
There was something more to Collins’s dissertation, though—something that gleamed like a diamond buried in a coal pile. Miss Bingley had seen the posters outside of Meryton’s shops. The description, while rudimentary, seemed remarkably like that which she drew from the unsuspecting bumbling fool of a priest.
She scrutinized Lizzy dancing and laughing with Fitzwilliam. At some point, the germ of an idea closely held since the day of the invitation exploded into malevolent bloom. Caroline would ruin her and win her baronet at the same time.
As her resolve hardened, Caroline noticed that Collins had wound down. She thanked the man for his care and concern about propriety within his family. Miss Bingley excused herself by saying she needed to attend the upcoming meal.
She worked through the crowd, searching for her next target: Sir Thaddeus.
Caroline spotted him in a small group just outside the card room. The man held court with some minor landowners who hung on his every word. The more senior men like Mr. Bennet and Mr. Goulding were nowhere to be found. The younger masters were still on the dance floor, although the dinner break was fast approaching.
Bestowing her best smile upon every one of the gentlemen, she reserved its brilliant focus for only one man. He responded as all men had done ever since she had discovered her own tigress’s power: his chest puffed out a little fuller, his shoulders squared, and his chin jutted ever so much more.
Miss Bingley crossed through the group until she stood directly before Soames. Then she shifted her gaze to John Lucas standing on the baronet’s right. She held that stare until the young man mumbled something about needing to escort his sister into dinner, nervously bowed, and left the group. Caroline floated into the notch ripped in the group’s circumference and lingered for Sir Thaddeus to shift so that he was facing her.
After receiving the gentleman’s cordial greetings, Caroline went to work. She widened her emerald orbs so they bore deeply into Soames’s eyes. She waited to allow him to become mesmerized.
Then she began her campaign in a slightly infantilized, poor little me, but my life is now complete in the sunshine of your attention voice that never failed to melt even the hardest of men. “I cannot tell you how happy I was to be led out by you in tonight’s first set. I shall own to being surprised that you would find the time for these sorts of social events, given the demands on your time, especially now since your elevation.”
At this, she stopped and waited for Sir Thaddeus to fill in the conversational gap with the appropriate protestations about how he could not have missed such a stellar event. Once the man had accomplished that small feat, Caroline continued. “I have been, I fear, rather nervous. I nearly asked my brother, Mr. Bingley, to close up Netherfield and return to town. The entire neighborhood has been in an uproar since that convict escaped into the forest.”
Soames’s face darkened that this fine lady was so frightened over something that could not—should not—be. Wadkins had assured him that everything was in hand and no corpse would appear until spring, if ever. While Soames was displeased at his man’s excesses, what was one convict more or less?
Yet, his heart was sorely taxed to see the quiver on Miss Bingley’s lip and the hint of diamonds upon her lashes. He ached to ease her worries.
The baronet spoke fervently. “I promise you, dear lady, I have teams of men scouring the entire area. If that convict is still in the vicinity, we shall find him. However, he would be a fool to stay around here. Based upon that thought, I have been making inquiries as far south as Portsmouth and off to Liverpool in the west. He is either on one of our frigates heading to the blockade or a merchant bringing goods to Cousin Jonathan.”
“Everybody, Sir Thaddeus, is talking of it,” Caroline pushed. “Rumors are rife. Some have seen him at the coaching inn, waiting for a seat to the north. Others claim he is hiding out amongst the millworkers down by the river.
“I even spoke with someone who told me”—at this, she raised her voice a notch to include not just the gentlemen who had joined Soames but also women who were advancing to collect their husbands—“that a man matching the description on the poster, ‘tall, dark-haired, a claret-colored birthmark on his left forearm,’ was seen consorting with Miss Elizabeth Bennet at the Longbourn Dower House not a fortnight ago!
“Now, I never would have imagined it of a gentlewoman from such a distinguished family. My source says that Miss Eliza claimed ’twas only one of Longbourn’s servants.
“However, I have been to that estate several times and have never seen a man of that appearance. Maybe he truly was one of the workingmen on the estate. Maybe he was not someone convicted of Heaven knows what. What seems obvious is that he was not of her class. If this is the case, how can the gentry shun we who have improved ourselves from our family backgrounds in trade when their daughters do not distinguish between lessers and betters?”
By now, all conversation had ceased.
Caroline’s first-ever gambit, where she implicitly admitted the roots of her family’s fortune, struck an emotional chord with Sir Thaddeus. He was only half a year removed from the stench of trade. When she saw his face pale and then become suffused in the crimson rising from beneath his neckcloth, Caroline knew that her bolt had struck home.
***
Everything Thaddeus had fought for from his days as a child in Liverpool’s gutters was in danger simply because Wadkins had more muscle than brains. That thug could never control his instincts when it came to his lessers. Yet, that talent was what made him valuable to Soames. The newly minted aristocrat cared little about the chattel he had purchased, only about what they could deliver to his coffers. How far he had come from a man who sold blackamoors for their labor before the year nine to one who kept strings of those His Majesty classified as but one step above slaves. Nobody would care if he ended his year with one less in his “employ.” The man was a convict, utterly beneath anyone’s notice, including his mother’s, whore that she probably was.
This man, this Smith, was lucky not to have been hung outright, although Britain’s punishments had been brought into the nineteenth century, especially after the unfortunate events in France during the Terror. Soames could understand that hatred. He had felt it when a rich man’s carriage had splashed him with street grime or footmen had pushed him into the gutter when a wealthy lady moved along the walk before entering a sweet shop, the insides of which the child Soames could only hope to imagine.
Everything was imperiled. Soames could never hope to win an accomplished woman like Miss Bingley with this sword hanging over his head.
On top of his visceral fear of being tossed back into the dung heap of trade, he knew that he had to see this man at the Dower House if only to confirm that he was just a poor sod working out his days chopping weeds for Bennet.
Soames could not stop himself from plunging ahead without protecting his heart. Miss Bingley drew him, pulled by her beauty and magnetic personality that swirled him in a whirlpool centered upon those unforgettable green eyes.
Impulsively, he reached out for her hand and bowed over it. “I can never imagine you, dear lady, as ever being anything less than the nonpareil that you are. You and your family have proven that Englishmen can lift themselves from coarse backgrounds into the highest levels of society when given the opportunity. Fear not that any but the most narrow-minded will punish you because your ancestors earned their keep not by exploiting tenants but rather through the dint of their wits.
“As for your desire to amend a dangerous situation despite the elevated connections of those who may be abetting the malefactor, I can only commend you.”
***
His delicate speech, belying his rough exterior, caused Caroline to flush that cherry tone that was so becoming on ginger-haired ladies. She snapped open her fan to hide her crimson cheeks behind its fluttering silk and coyly turned away. She sensed Soames standing just over her left shoulder.
Together, they watched the damage wrought by Caroline’s declarations.
What had begun as a low murmur spread quickly from the epicenter made up by the pair. Plumed turbans bobbed throughout the ballroom in a queer ballet dipping first together and then spinning away to cross with other gaudy ornaments. Rumor and innuendo swept across the room like a brush fire fleeing before an autumn wind. Closer, ever closer, it came to the small grouping of Bennet women celebrating their sister and daughter’s wedding day. Caroline watched in macabre fascination as the object of her envy laughed, unaware of the approaching disaster.
Then, like a gigantic comber slamming into the rocks of Enys Dodnan, the flood broke over the Bennet party, parting around it in a massive splash before subsiding back into the roiled crowd. The ladies could not have appeared more shocked if icy seawater drenched them. Eyes were widened. “What did she say?” was silently mouthed, and bewildered looks were cast around the hall.[i]
Eventually, though, as if Caroline had willed it, Elizabeth Bennet’s dark eyes reached out across the great hall to catch upon the satisfied and triumphant glare sent her way by Miss Bingley’s emerald ones. Longbourn’s daughter blanched, and she quickly looked away. Caroline could apprehend when the young lady began to weep as her shoulders began to hike up and down spasmodically. The other five women promptly closed ranks and obscured her.
Although she had set her sights elsewhere, Caroline, savoring her victory and the destruction of a rival, elegantly turned to speak to Sir Thaddeus, only to discover him gone.
[i] Remarkable formations at Land’s End, Cornwall.
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