A Learned Romance Read online

  A Learned Romance

  A Sequel to Pride & Prejudice

  Elizabeth Rasche

  Copyright © 2021 by Elizabeth Rasche

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Ebooks are for the personal use of the purchaser. You may not share or distribute an ebook copy in any way, to any other person. To do so is infringing on the copyright of the author, which is against the law.

  Edited by Debra Anne Watson and Mary McLaughlin

  Cover Design by Carpe Librum Design

  ISBN 978-1-951033-87-3 (ebook) and 978-1-951033-88-0 (paperback)

  “She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.”

  Jane Austen, Persuasion, Chapter 4

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Untitled

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Elizabeth Rasche

  By all rights, George and Lydia Wickham should have been destined for a hovel, cheap lodgings, or a debtor’s prison. The fact that after only a year of marriage, the two were ensconced in a fashionable London town house seemed to spite the divine order of things, or so Mary Bennet thought. Her sister Lydia’s foolishness in running away with Mr Wickham was equalled only by his unscrupulousness in refusing to marry her without being paid, and Mary had predicted a dark reckoning to come. If any weighty punishment was due them, however, it had not yet fallen; the Wickhams lived in reckless enjoyment and dazzling wealth. Though the two coveted the position of courtiers at St. James, they could not expect to achieve that without patronage, and so far, their wealth and fashion had not allured anyone to sponsor them in so great an endeavour.

  No one knew the exact cause of the Wickhams’ sudden ascension to wealth. Some rumours posited a distant relative, whose grasping hands had been so tightfisted in life that rigor mortis had, comparatively speaking, loosened them and spilled gold into Mr Wickham’s lap. Others pointed to a shrewd investment in a coal mine in Wales and an even shrewder decampment before news of the flooding of the mine became public. Though Mary had asked her brother-in-law how he was able to afford a luxurious town house, a transfer into an elite London regiment, and Lydia’s unmanageable spending, Mr Wickham had never given her a straight answer. Lydia claimed it was all due to her husband’s cleverness, an infinite source of good things in her mind, and Mr Wickham only smiled.

  “Ladies never understand business, and I shall not bore you with it,” was the most he would give to Mary’s pressure, and then he would excuse himself to perform his duties. Those duties were light—the business of an exclusive London regiment appeared to be mostly dressing in uniforms better suited to ballrooms than battlefields and marching in formation. Lizzy Darcy called those uniforms ‘England’s best incentive to pacifism,’ and certainly the soldiers who wore them were careful not to soil them with wearisome, useless tasks like practising shooting. Their gloves were unspotted with powder; their boots knew no mud. Mr Wickham’s regiment marched in docile formations like ninepins for a portion of the day and bowled themselves over with drink and play the rest of it. Mary often wondered what would happen if the regiment faced a real battle with the French. Their skills seemed to consist mainly in turning smartly from left to right and wearing well-shined boots.

  Mr Wickham’s professed business in life was the regiment, but Lydia’s was something more tender and filial: she intended to please her mother by helping all her sisters get married. Jane and Lizzy had pre-empted her plan, making not only sensible, but also loving, choices of their own before Lydia could even look about her. And by the time Lydia had written to invite Kitty to stay with her, Kitty had found a hot-headed lieutenant on leave in Meryton. That impetuous gentleman had marched off to Spain shortly after marching Kitty down the aisle, and Kitty had settled in to wait for him at Longbourn in surprising cheerfulness. Now Kitty scoured the papers for news of her particular officer with as fond a heart as her mother had once had for the general class.

  That left only one sister to benefit from Lydia’s generosity: Mary. At first, Mary had hardly thought of efforts towards marriage. Hertfordshire had few prospects for her, and although she had the same girlish hopes of a love match, she had long since tempered them with a more realistic appraisal of her chances at any match at all. Though London bettered those chances, Mary still thought more of her role as a sister or churchgoer than the idol of devoted swains. She had agreed to stay with the Wickhams, who by that time had bloomed in wealth and glory in London, in full expectation of some dramatic revelation and catastrophe, after which she would support poor Lydia with her own piety and quiet sisterly comfort. Surely no good could last for the Wickhams.

  And yet, Mary had to admit that so far, her premonitions of disaster had been disappointed. The worst she had seen was Mr Wickham well into his cups in the evenings and regular squabbles between the couple that made Mary cringe. The squabbling discouraged Mary from being too eager for a marriage for herself.

  “But dear Wickham, it is only natural that I wish to change the drawing room a little.” Lydia appealed to her husband by widening her brown eyes and giving a little shake of her dark curls. As a girl in Meryton, her tastes had been showy, but a Season in London had refined them into a studied carelessness, adorning her with the finest of Indian muslins in the most sumptuous (yet proper) of designs. The coral lips she used to pout at her husband displayed the prettiness he had chosen to reign in his household, but Mr Wickham admired them without falling in with her wishes. He had grown used to her charms and frolics soon after their marriage.

  Not as used to them as I am, Mary Bennet thought, but then, I have had a lifetime to adapt. Mary’s own curls were not fresh from a maid’s touch, nor were they mahogany-coloured like Lydia’s. They were mouse-brown and as mousy as everything else about Mary. In another family, she might have counted as pretty, but arrayed against her sisters—especially the eldest, Jane—Mary did not impress. Plain brown eyes, dull brown hair—the only features in which Mary could compete with her sisters were her delicate skin (a mouse stayed huddled at home) and the elegant dexterity of her hands, skilled in home pursuits like embroidery. She used them now to spread butter over her morning toast, tapering the moistness perfectly to the edges, but her eyes remained on Mr Wickham. Even after two weeks of living with the Wickhams, Mary felt uneasy at their incessant quarrelling. Goodness knows there was enough arguing at Longbourn.

  “The dr
awing room was refurnished before we moved in, my dear,” he said. Mr Wickham’s trim figure and handsome face had only benefited from their change in position; he looked as dashing as he always had, but the sheen of gold gave him a needed air of respectability. His attitude towards his wife was indulgent, but Mary suspected that indulgence stemmed less from desiring his wife’s happiness and more from indifference to her. Even Mr Wickham’s cosseting had limits, however, and the two often quarrelled over how to divide the spoils. Mr Wickham preferred the gambling table and neat little dinners out with his comrades. Lydia preferred hosting routs and shopping. Mary could not say Mr Wickham had ever denied her sister anything she really needed, and he gave her a great deal of leeway as to her desires. Lydia’s white muslin bore ribbons of the finest silk, and a generous garland of hothouse flowers poked from Lydia’s curls. The Wickhams’ London home boasted shining china, glittering candelabras, and polished mahogany—everything bright and new that ought to be new, everything impressively old that ought to be old. No one doubted Lydia’s taste. It was simply that Lydia’s desires to make herself and her home the objects of envy in the Season of 1814 were expansive indeed.

  “Perhaps—” Mary tried to think of something to say that would curtail Lydia’s pleas, but in the end, she faltered and dropped her gaze back to her toast. Lydia had not heard her soft voice any way.

  “Before we even moved here! They are ancient ruins now, as far as I am concerned,” Lydia said, as if Mr Wickham’s admission completed her case. “Lord! I shall have to tell the draper to be sure to bring a shovel when he comes.” She laughed, and although the disagreement still unsettled Mary, the trill of Lydia’s laughter reassured her a little.

  I daresay all married couples argue, Mary reassured herself. It is not really any different from Mama and Papa, or the Lucas boys tussling in the garden. But those battles had always made her cringe as well, and how she hated the thought of her sister’s life becoming like that of her mother, where arguments were replaced by snide asides and sarcastic wit. The thought spurred her to try again to distract her sister.

  “Lydia,” she said, “I thought you were going to…um, teach me a new dance.” Mary’s face flushed, although she had no reason to be embarrassed.

  “Oh, of course,” her sister answered, scanning Mary’s face. “Why, Mouse, you look positively abashed! Nobody was scolding you, you know.” She reached down the breakfast table to pat Mary’s hand. “Mr Wickham knows perfectly well that I need to redecorate—”

  “Actually, I know perfectly well that you did redecorate every other room on that floor—”

  “But not the drawing room! And it is my drawing room—”

  Mary held herself still. If I stay quiet, it will all blow over like a storm over the sea. Arguments in Meryton had whipped up and misted away in that way, and however unpleasant they were, she could at least reassure herself that she had not caused them or made them worse by interference. Except that once, with Harry Lucas. Regret sliced through her, and she pushed the memory back. She waited until the debate died down enough for her soft voice to break through. “Lydia, you were saying? About the dance?”

  “The dance?” Lydia looked perplexed for a moment at the topic. “The newer dances. Yes, I will teach you—tomorrow, perhaps, or the day after. Just imagine being in town for the Season without knowing all the latest dances! Mama should have had you taught. She cannot expect you to get a husband without dancing.”

  Mary was beginning to think her change of subject was not to her advantage. “Perhaps she does not expect me to get one at all this Season.”

  “Of course she does. I got a husband pretty quickly, didn’t I, Mr Wickham?”

  Mr Wickham smiled. “You did, my dear. A very willing husband.”

  “And even Lizzy got one, same as I. Well, not the same husband—that would be against the law—but at the same time, almost.” Lydia refilled her teacup. “And you know she was practically an old maid, while you are only twenty.”

  Mary grimaced at Lydia’s heedless reference to her age, though honesty demanded she correct the error. “One and twenty.”

  “Are you really?” Lydia deposited the teapot on the table hard enough to make the cutlery rattle. “You had a birthday last week, didn’t you? You sly thing! I forgot, and you said not a thing to remind me.”

  “There was not any reason to do so. I do not wish for any special attention,” Mary said.

  It was true, but Lydia was hard-pressed to believe it. “Well, now I must take you shopping or something. Poor little Mouse! I forgot Mama had a whole slew of babies in January. Jane one year, and then Lizzy—”

  “Lizzy’s birthday is in May.”

  “—and then you a couple after. She must have found April a most romantic month.”

  “Lydia!”

  “Well, she or Papa must have. Oh, I know, I am awfully vulgar today. It is all on account of that drawing room. One cannot help feeling vulgar every time one goes in. It mars one’s character.”

  Mr Wickham’s tone was placid. “But you are not in it now, my dear.”

  “Vulgarity permeates, Mr Wickham. It goes through the walls. Now, as I was saying, Mary—one and twenty, is it? Whatever the age, once you know all the dances to conjure with and speak the right words to charm a man, you will ensorcell him as a husband—”

  Mary tried not to laugh. “That sounds almost demonic. Is that how you won Mr Wickham?”

  “Present company is always excluded, Mouse.”

  Mr Wickham drew the teapot, the surface of its china misted from the wintry air, towards him with an unruffled air. “My dear, you had no need to ensorcell me. There is no refuting your allurements.”

  “There! And people have the audacity to say we are all at sixes and sevens in our marriage. I defy anyone to find any other husband who says such pretty things—to his wife, I mean—and meaning them.” Lydia dropped her voice to a whisper, but it was plainly audible across the table any way. “Captain Roarke no doubt says such pretty things, but I doubt whether Lady Lucy hears a word of them.” It was moments like these that endeared Lydia to Mary. The stage whisper signified propriety to Lydia. “Society has a great many rules about what one must not say,” she had told Mary, “but I find you can break all of them if you show that you know you ought not to say it!” Certainly Mary could not reproach her sister.

  “I have no desire to—ensorcell anyone,” Mary said. She could imagine happy homes, couples leaning on one another’s arms, doting on each other and cooing at infants, but she never could picture herself as the beloved bride in such a scene. The maiden aunt mending in the background, perhaps, or a wife wed for convenience. However sweet a dream a loving marriage might be, it was more realistic to focus on what she could obtain—a peaceful home. So long as she found a quiet nook, Mary would make herself content. And she had adapted herself for such a purpose, as Lydia’s next words confirmed.

  “You know you are welcome here as long as you like,” Lydia said. “I thought you would scold me and frown at me, but I find you are a perfect mouse.”

  “Very agreeable,” said Mr Wickham with a nod firm enough to shake his dark hair.

  Mary’s heart warmed. She had made an effort to omit her usual topics of conversation: the stiff, sententious quoting of scripture and sermons. Though such thoughts still ran in her mind, Mary knew Lydia did not like such talk, and she suppressed it as much as she could stand. It made Mary silent most of the time. Lydia did not understand what it was to be shy, to hate to offer one’s own opinion unsubstantiated by anything weightier. Mary had much rather repeat what Fordyce’s Sermons said about a thing than state her own view. Who should care what Mary Bennet thought about anything? Offering an authority’s opinion seemed safer and wiser, and could there be any greater authority than that of God, or Fordyce?

  But Mary had tried to keep her mouth shut rather than quote religious sources, and here was her reward: Lydia and Mr Wickham did not mind her so much now, and even spoke warmly to h
er together. If it was like this always! Peace and harmony, kind words and quiet. Even the little nickname Lydia had given her, ‘Mouse’; some might have seen it as less flattering than she did, but it conveyed a familiarity, a sisterliness that Mary had always missed at Longbourn. It was all she wanted. But though they had a few minutes of silent chewing, Lydia soon turned to a subject that stirred the depths again.

  “Mouse, you simply must come with me on Wednesday to Mr Cole’s lecture. You will learn a great deal, I assure you.”

  “A lecture?”

  Mr Wickham’s dark brows had lowered at the name of Mr Cole, and now he supplied the explanation in a terse tone. “He is a scientist of some sort, although he seems full young to be anything such. But he gives lectures to ladies’ groups, and Mrs Wickham patronises him.”

  “Oh, yes, I find him most entertaining,” Lydia said with an eagerness that disturbed her companions.

  “What kind of scientist is he?” Mary asked, wondering what manner of young man could make a lecture sound appealing to her sister.

  “It was something ending in -ology, I know.”

  “Biology?”

  “No, not that one.”

  “Archaeology?”

  “I do not think so. Botanology, perhaps.”

  Mary’s lips twitched to hide a smile. “That is not a word, Lydia. Do you mean botany?”

  “That has not got an -ology. Well, whatever science it is, Mr Richard Cole is quite proficient. You will adore the lecture and learn so much.” Lydia’s assurance did not go for much with Mary, and apparently not with Mr Wickham, either. He shifted in his seat.