In Sickness and in Health: A Variation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, page 1
IN SICKNESS & IN HEALTH
A PRIDE AND PREJUDICE VARIATION
FRANCES REYNOLDS
Copyright © 2023 by Frances Reynolds
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 this ebook 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 Jennifer Altman and Grace Baumann
Cover by Carpe Librum Book Design
ISBN 978-1-956613-74-2 (ebook) and 978-1-956613-72-8 (paperback)
To those on the front lines of infectious disease treatment and research. Thank you.
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
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Frances Reynolds
“Well, my dear,” said Mr Bennet, when Elizabeth had read the note aloud, “if your daughter should have a dangerous fit of illness—if she should die, it would be a comfort to know that it was all in pursuit of Mr Bingley, and under your orders.”
“Oh! I am not afraid of her dying. People do not die of little trifling colds. She will be taken good care of. As long as she stays there, it is all very well. I would go and see her if I could have the carriage.”
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER ONE
Elizabeth Bennet hovered anxiously in the corner of the spacious guest bedchamber at Netherfield Park as the apothecary examined her sister for the second time in as many days. She had never seen Jane in such a state before—feverish, nauseous, and complaining of the most terrible headache of her life.
Mr Jones turned Jane’s face towards the window, into the sunlight streaming between the open curtains, and bade her open her mouth. He looked there with a deepening frown, then pronounced a single word which struck fear into both Bennet sisters, the sick and the well.
“Smallpox.”
“No…” Elizabeth breathed.
The apothecary turned his grim look upon her. “I fear it is so. I have seen several cases at the Blake farm recently. I have required them to stay at home to reduce the spread, and Netherfield must do likewise. I shall arrange for food and medicines to be delivered here, but I must insist that no one but myself enter or leave until a full fortnight has passed without any illness.”
Elizabeth’s mind was racing. “The Blakes, you say? Why, Jane and I took them a basket little more than a week ago, as the children had a fever. But I am entirely well. How could she acquire it from a visit of an hour or so? And how could I not?”
Mr Jones sighed, wiping the lenses of his spectacles with a handkerchief. “Miss Elizabeth, it has long been known in my profession that the disease will generally not appear in the week after exposure, but may begin at any time in the fortnight following. Watch yourself carefully for symptoms. There will be fever, assuredly; pains in the head and troubles of the stomach, often; and within a few days, sores in the mouth and throat. This is the stage Miss Bennet is in now,” he continued with a nod to the patient, upon whom he fixed his sombre gaze. “The lesions of the pox will appear very soon, Miss Bennet. You will be vastly uncomfortable, but do not rub or touch them, lest they take an infection. Take all the nourishment you can—you will need your strength.”
Jane looked very frightened and seemed incapable of speech, and Elizabeth rushed to her side, taking one of Jane’s hands in both of her own and saying, “Do not fret, Jane. I shall stay with you.”
“No, Lizzy, you must go, before you too become ill.”
“I was at the Blakes’ with you, dear sister, and I have been with you in your illness for more than a day. Whether or not I also fall sick is in the hands of fate—it is far too late to avoid exposure. I shall make myself useful to you, since I feel perfectly well at present.” A thought occurred to her, and she turned to the apothecary. “Jane was at Longbourn just before she fell ill—is the rest of our family in danger?”
“Everyone in the area is in danger. Smallpox spreads like scandal in a ballroom. I shall instruct your father to keep your family and servants within the estate until it passes, and we shall hope it may be confined to Netherfield and the Blake farm. I must speak with Mr Bingley immediately, for every moment increases the likelihood that someone will leave the house, perhaps bearing the disease with them. After I have done that, I shall look in upon you, Miss Bennet, and answer any other questions you or your sister may have.” He bowed to them and exited the room.
Jane turned wide eyes on her sister. “Oh, Lizzy, am I going to die?”
Mr Jones descended the stairs and found Mr Bingley pacing the floor of the parlour as his relations and guests kept him company, looking rather bored.
“Mr Jones!” The young man rushed up to him. “How is Miss Bennet?”
“Oh, Charles, you are being ridiculous,” Miss Bingley drawled from her seat. “It is naught but a trifling cold, I am sure. Shockingly inconvenient, but hardly dangerous.”
Mr Jones ignored the lady. “Sir, I regret to inform you that you must place this house and all within it under quarantine. Miss Bennet has contracted smallpox.”
Mrs Hurst fainted onto the shoulder of her husband, who awoke with a startled grunt. Miss Bingley leapt to her feet, shrieking like a scalded cat.
“We must leave this instant,” she cried. “Bring the carriage round! The servants may follow later with our trunks!”
“Miss Bingley, no one should enter or leave this house for at least a fortnight, longer if others fall ill,” Mr Jones explained patiently, rummaging in his satchel as her brother and his friend—Mr Darcy, he recalled—fixed her with looks of censure. “If you fear exposure, I suggest you keep to your rooms.” He produced a small bottle which he waved under Mrs Hurst’s nose. The lady regained consciousness with a cough.
“That is an excellent idea,” Mr Darcy said sharply before turning away from Miss Bingley to address Mr Jones. “Is Miss Elizabeth in danger of contracting the disease as well, given that she has been tending her sister?”
“Yes, although at present she shows no symptoms. I have asked that she inform me at the first sign of illness, and she has determined to remain with her sister and be of use as long as she may.”
Mr Darcy only nodded in reply, though his expression reflected respect for Miss Elizabeth’s decision.
Miss Bingley was openly appalled. “These country hoydens have brought smallpox to our house!” cried she. Taking no leave of them, she whirled and scurried from the room as though the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels. Hurst escorted his pale and trembling wife from the room in her wake.
Bingley’s face was rather red when he turned back to the apothecary, but he spoke with admirable calm. “I was inoculated at university, sir—if there is any way in which I might be of assistance, I beg you will tell me.”
Mr Darcy looked with raised eyebrows at his friend and then, with a small nod, spoke. “As was I, and I would also wish to be of use.”
Mr Jones looked between them and asked, “You are aware that inoculation is not infallible? There have been cases of previously inoculated persons acquiring the disease. According to the medical journals, it is rare, but not impossible.”
Mr Bingley did not hesitate. “If it is to fail, let it fail in the service of my fellow man, not hiding away at Netherfield hoping to be spared.”
After taking what appeared to be a moment of consideration, Mr Darcy replied cautiously, “I will place my trust in the rarity you speak of, Mr Jones.”
The apothecary nodded slowly. “I had it in mind to attempt to visit every household in the area every few days, to check for new infection. If you would be willing to do this in my place, to call at houses and determine the health of everyone—family and servant—who dwells within them, I should have more time to spend with those who are ill.”
Both gentlemen readily agreed with the scheme and Jones quickly sketched out several possibilities for routes. Mr Da
As Jones departed after a final check on his patient, it appeared all three men felt better about the situation: two, from being of use, and one from having his burdens greatly lightened.
That afternoon, Darcy struggled to compose a letter to his sister which would inform her of the situation in which he found himself without causing her undue concern. This effort was hampered not only by his own jumbled thoughts, but also by Bingley’s agitated pacing. Back and forth across the modest study, muttering to himself, stopping abruptly to stare out the window as though some rescue had been sighted upon the horizon, only to fling himself back into motion again so violently as to startle his friend.
With a sigh and hardly half a page written—and much of that struck through—Darcy set his pen aside. “Bingley, I doubt your landlord will be best pleased if you wear a hole in that new rug. The situation is unsettling, I grant you, but you are acting as though we are surrounded by a barbarian horde and running low on food.”
“Unsettling?” Bingley cried. “It is terrifying. She is ill, Darcy! She might die! People do, all the time!” He canted his head back and glared at the ceiling as though he might see through the joists and plaster through sheer force of will.
Ah. This is about Miss Bennet. How like Bingley to be frantic over his latest infatuation and completely insensible to any danger to himself. For his own part, Darcy almost regretted his earlier offer of assistance. The risk was low, it was true, and would arise more from riding about the countryside as autumn became winter than from the disease itself, given his inoculated state. Yet as his sister’s primary guardian and support, did he not owe it to her to keep himself as safe as possible? This was the question which had occupied him and distracted him nearly as much as his friend’s perambulations. He would not go back on his word, of course, and certainly he would not leave the area, possibly carrying the infection with him, as Miss Bingley wished to do. But he wondered all the same if he had not been too hasty in agreeing to participate in the scheme.
“I cannot say that she will not die,” he replied softly, and Bingley’s head whipped around to regard him with wild eyes. “We must hope and pray that it will not be so, but her fate is not in our hands. Mr Jones seems more than competent and Miss Elizabeth will no doubt be diligent in her care also. Comfort yourself that she is well-attended.”
“So long as Miss Elizabeth remains well.”
There was a thought Darcy did not wish to confront. An image flashed through his mind: Miss Elizabeth’s face, cold and pale, her sparkling eyes shut, all her joy and liveliness, her wit and laughter consigned forever to the cold ground. Bile rose in his throat, and only a lifetime of self-command and one or two deep breaths kept him from offering that fine new rug an insult far worse than Bingley’s pacing.
“I will not tell you not to worry,” he said at last. “I have my own fears regarding what is to come, and what may come. We shall, at least, have occupation and purpose through this crisis. And perhaps, if we do our work well and are fortunate, we will one day look back on all of today’s fears and find they were none of them fulfilled.”
In a silence and a stillness that rested unnaturally upon him, Bingley considered these words. “Yes,” he answered, his usual optimism rekindling. “We will work, as will others, and all shall come right in the end. Thank you, Darcy. I was lost in my own fears, but I can always depend upon you to be rational!
“And thank you, also,” Bingley continued, “for agreeing to come to the aid of this community, to which you have no tie beyond our friendship. I know you have not enjoyed my new neighbours, either, and would not have blamed you had you chosen to remain safe behind these walls until you could return to your own home. You are a good man, my friend, to give of your time and efforts, to risk your own safety, for those you do not even like.”
“The risk is not so great,” he demurred, abashed to be so praised for that which he had not been entirely willing to do even after committing himself. “I have faith in the inoculation, and in the abilities of Mr Jones. And I could hardly sit here and watch you ride out alone every day.”
Even less safe than riding about an unfamiliar landscape in bad weather, he reluctantly admitted to himself, would be spending the next weeks entirely confined to the same house as Elizabeth Bennet.
A few hours later, the two men and the Hursts waited impatiently for Miss Bingley to join them for dinner. A quarter hour after the sounding of the bell, Bingley sent a maid to find his wayward sister and instructed his butler to open the dining room.
They had progressed through the soup and into the first course before they were interrupted by the butler, with one of the house maids trailing behind. Bingley spoke rather more sharply than was his usual wont. “Mr Walsh, what is it? Is my sister unwell?”
Instead of answering, the butler directed a stern look at the girl who came forward hesitantly, wringing her hands. “Mr Bingley, sir, I tried to stop her, but she said if I told anyone I’d be turned off without a character.”
Bingley set his fork down slowly. Darcy watched his friend’s expression change as he apprehended that something, perhaps worse than his initial fears, had transpired. “What is it you were not to say? If you are honest with us, you shall have your character from me, should you need it.”
The maid swallowed visibly. “Miss Bingley packed a valise and left with her abigail for London this morning, sir, not half an hour after the apothecary was here.”
“Of all the stupid, selfish—!” Bingley threw up his hands. “That is the outside of enough—I cannot allow such intransigence.” Though his words were intemperate, his expression was one of righteous anger. He looked, perhaps for the first time in his life, like a man one would not wish to cross.
Darcy, as unsurprised by Miss Bingley’s selfishness as he was by her thoughtlessness, enquired as to her means of transportation. “Surely she did not take the post?”
“She and her maid took Mr Bingley’s carriage, I believe, sir.”
Bingley’s jaw dropped. “She took my carriage? And my coachman, I presume?”
Mr Walsh appeared rather uncomfortable. “Yes, sir. And a groom. I have had words with the stablemaster about allowing this. He claims Miss Bingley stated that you had sanctioned her travels.”
“I do not doubt it.” He shook his head, then frowned and turned to his sister. “Louisa, did you know what she planned?”
“Certainly not!” Mrs Hurst seemed somewhat offended. “I understand very well the necessity of quarantine. I would have told you immediately, had I known her intentions, and I am quite sure Caroline anticipated that. I know I tend to coddle her, Charles, but there are lives at risk, including hers.”
Bingley nodded, though his expression darkened. “Certainly, her reckless behaviour must not pass without consequence, nor that of any groomsman who aided her.”
“I hope you do not mean to be very harsh?” Mrs Hurst objected mildly. “She has acted wrongly, to be sure, but she is frightened, and if word of her unchaperoned trip to London gets out, she will be ruined.”
Hurst patted his wife’s hand. “Worry not about her reputation, my dear. We do not even know if she arrived safely.” He did not seem at all troubled by the thought.
