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  A Witch For Mr. Darcy

  Jessica L. Jackson

  Miss Lizzy Bennet realizes one early autumn morning that a change has occurred in their Hertfordshire neighborhood. Sure knowledge—a magical gift—tells her that someone is coming. Or something? Or…both? Something sinister…something good. Which is it? Could it be Mr. Darcy, their new neighbor’s enigmatic guest? He has his own gift, one that is haunting and painful. Will she be able to help him, even though so many other events are affecting life at Longbourn House?

  Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy can hardly take his gaze off of Miss Elizabeth’s charming countenance. He has heard through the servants’ grapevine that she is a witch. An honest-to-God witch, not just an herbalist. He needs a wife. He knows he does. But, will Miss Elizabeth be the best option for someone like himself? Someone troubled? He needs to find out.

  Copyright © 2019 by Jessica L. Jackson

  Published by Bru E-books

  Word Count: 109,514

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-926467-19-1

  Cover Art by Trifle Ink Design

  [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  A Witch For Mr. Darcy

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Author’s Note

  In this alternate world of the Bennet’s, witches were never persecuted and murdered. The famous witches of Pendle Hill in Lancashire, 1612, were never tried. Reason prevailed. Witchcraft, instead, is viewed with tolerance and some degree of scepticism. Thank you for reading my book.

  Cheers,

  Jessica L. Jackson.

  Chapter One

  Hertfordshire, England,1813

  “Lizzy!”

  At the sound of her mother’s call, Miss Elizabeth Bennet sighed and set aside her book of spells and potions. She positioned it on its wooden stand and, with a flick of her wrist, covered the leather-bound volume with the blue, embroidered silk square Jane had made her for Christmas the year before.

  “Lizzy! Come here at once! You know how I hate to enter your workroom, do you not?”

  “Yes, Mama,” Lizzy called out.

  She untied her apron and hung it on a peg next to the door to the orangery. Her workroom was a rectangular, cosy chamber with its own little cast-iron stove. To all practical purposes, the workroom extended into the orangery where her hobby included the growing and keeping of exotic and domestic herbs amongst the citrus trees planted there by her grandfather. The aroma of damp, fertile earth caressed her senses and calmed her nerves, an essential condition to allow her the composure she required when engaging in conversation with her mother.

  Mrs. Bennet stood at the indoor threshold of the orangery. The sunlight streaming through the tall windows revealed that not even the tips of her toes extended beyond the line between the wood floors of the house and the brick paths of what she considered Lizzy’s domain.

  A plump, lively woman with an excess of sensibility, Mrs. Bennet appeared to be bursting with impatient energy. She flapped her hands at her second-eldest daughter.

  “Do make haste, do make haste!” she commanded in a loud, urgent whisper. Mrs. Bennet glanced over her shoulder several times.

  “Mama, what is it?” Lizzy asked, hurrying along the brick path. A chill pinched her spine and she frowned.

  Someone is coming—or is already here? But not at Longbourn. Where?

  When she reached her mother’s side, Mrs. Bennett grabbed her arm and dragged her unceremoniously into the small morning room set next to the orangery. The brightly lit and favored chamber, papered in rose silk and hung with cream-colored draperies, stood empty—an odd enough occurrence to make Lizzy think her mother must have shooed at least some of her four sisters away from it. Mrs. Bennet firmly shut the door and released Lizzy’s arm.

  “Mama, do sit down,” she said, indicating one of the comfortable chairs set about a round polished table in the center of the room. “You are agitated.”

  “I will not sit,” Mrs. Bennet snapped. Clasping her hands before her waist and tucking her elbows in, she entreated her daughter with a sharp, urgent voice. “Lizzy, I must insist that you force your father to call on our new neighbors.”

  “The Bingleys? At Netherfield House? I had heard that Mr. Morris had let it, of course, but—”

  “But nothing, Lizzy. Your father claims he will not call on Mr. Bingley even though I expressly informed him that our newest neighbor has five thousand a year.” She threw up her hands. “Five thousand! Lizzy, I do not scruple to tell you that an income of that figure will make you or Jane very comfortable indeed. Your father’s income is less than half of that and though it does not command all the elegancies of life—like that Norwich silk shawl your father refused to permit me to purchase…” Mrs. Bennet paused to heave a sigh of regret. “Still, at twenty pounds, it was a trifle dear, and so I will not repine too much upon it. Even so, we are quite comfortable.” She pursed her lips before continuing. “But, we are not very comfortable. If you or Jane are to help your other sisters find husbands, you must be very comfortable. Marriage to Bingley will make you so. However, that rosy future will not come to pass unless you make your father call at Netherfield House.”

  Lizzy listened to her mother’s long-winded discourse without surprise. Marrying her five daughters off to gentlemen of comfortable circumstances had been her mother’s dearest wish since their births.

  “But, Mama—” Lizzy began.

  “Lizzy.”

  Mrs. Bennet’s single word of warning would have daunted a less resolute daughter. However, Lizzy was made of stern stuff and she fixed her mother with a minatory glare. Mrs. Bennet’s shoulders slumped. Her gaze slid away from her daughter’s.

  “I have been attempting to explain, Mama,” Lizzy said, keeping her voice calm. “There is no need for me to make my father—a highly improper activity for you to ask me to engage in—as though I could make my father do anything—”

  “You could if you chose to,” her mother muttered.

  “I do not choose to,” Lizzy said with more sharpness than she had intended. She took a deep breath, released it slowly, and continued. “My father waited upon the Bingley household yesterday morning—and without any interference from me.”

  Mrs. Bennet started, and sudden smiles wreathed her countenance. She reached out impulsively as though to hug her daughter but she caught herself before she touched Lizzy.

  “I had no hand in my father’s decision to do his neighborly duty,” Lizzy emphasized, since her mother appeared not to have heard her previous denials. She casually took a small
step backwards.

  “No, no,” Mrs. Bennet said, still grinning widely. “‘Tis his little joke—and a fine one it is, too, I must say. I shall tease your father over it, I assure you.” She clapped her hands together in evident glee. “Now, Mr. Bingley must return the visit and you will all have the opportunity to meet him.”

  “We would all have met him at the assembly Friday next, regardless,” Lizzy pointed out. She turned toward the door and paused. “Is there more you wish of me, Mama? I am happy to give any service you require but I am in the midst of preparing Lydia’s calming draft.”

  Mrs. Bennet waved Lizzy off. “I do not need you, my dear. I go to Jane to tell her the news.”

  Lizzy opened the door and stood to one side for her bustling mother to pass and then she sighed. She banished a frown and resisted the impulse to permit disappointment to overcome her spirits. Her mother had insufficient pliancy of character to fully accept her daughter’s “little hobby”, as she was fond of calling Lizzy’s talent. Though willing to make use of her on occasion, Mrs. Bennet refused to even touch her most of the time. Lizzy sometimes wondered if her mother had latent talent that she had buried many years before. However, she had no evidence other than her own intuition.

  Upon returning to her workshop, Lizzy continued her preparation of her youngest sister’s calming draft. Lydia needed to drink the solution twice a day for her to feel the effects. Excitable and a little wild in her behavior, Lydia had nearly driven her family mad when she advanced from her childhood into her girlhood. Lizzy discovered the recipe for the calming draft quite by accident three years before and Lydia had been taking it ever since. Lizzy shivered to think what her sister’s behavior might be like without the medicine.

  A shadow fell across the long stone table where Lizzy worked. She glanced up and discovered her father in the open doorway.

  “Papa,” Lizzy said, smiling warmly. “Do come in.”

  The middle-aged, middle-sized gentleman entered. He waved at the pot on the wood stove.

  “For Lydia?” he asked, a wry smile twisting his lips. “Are you certain this draft does her any good? Did I not hear her laughing animatedly and crying out loudly over the news that the militia is soon to be quartered in Meryton? She has not become a quiet, biddable girl like Jane.”

  Lizzy laughed. “No, Papa. I would have to dose Lydia with an opiate to make her quiet and biddable.”

  In a falsely pensive tone of voice, he responded, “Are you certain we would not wish to follow that course? I do not mean to suggest anything that might harm her health, of course, but…?”

  Lizzy shook her head, removed the pot from the stove, and poured the contents into a conical metal sieve lined with cheesecloth. The sieve sat in a frame and the mixture drained through into a clear glass pouring bowl. Lizzy set the empty pot to one side and faced her father, folding her hands together before her. “No opiates, Papa. This draft is sufficient. It merely keeps her more lively impulses in check.”

  Mr. Bennet gave a half-nod and a half-shrug before he waved a hand negligently. “I bow to your expertise, my dear. I…uh…I thought I heard your mother just now.”

  Lizzy caught his keen twinkle and supressed an involuntary giggle. “She has discovered that you visited Mr. Bingley yesterday.”

  “How disappointing,” her father said, pressing his lips together. “I was so looking forward to hearing her complain and berate me during our afternoon repast. Now I shall need to fortify myself for her praises and her congratulations on my cleverness. Lizzy, I know you, you revealed my secret to her, did you not?”

  Lizzy bowed her head in mock submission. “I confess I did.”

  “If I did not love you so much, my dear, I would find a switch and take it to your backside,” he grumbled. “I need some tea,” he muttered fiercely, swung on his heel and left.

  The only other door in the workshop led to the garden and it opened a few minutes later, admitting a tall, trim woman not in the first blush of youth, nor even in the second. Her iron-gray hair had been done up in her usual way, forming a neat bun at the nape of a rather long neck. She wore a serviceable dark-brown gown adorned with no flourishes or furbelows, over which she had tied a voluminous tan apron. She carried a basket over her arm.

  Lizzy looked up at Mrs. Jergen’s entrance and smiled. She had come to work for Lizzy a year before, after Mr. Jergen, the apothacarist in Meryton, had died unexpectedly. The widow sold their shop and the rooms behind it where they lived and bought a small cottage in Longbourn Village, as she did not wish to move north to live with her daughter and son-in-law. However, she abhorred idleness and had presented herself one morning at Longbourn House as a potential assistant for Lizzy, whose hobby was well known in the region. Though a woman of no unusual talent, she knew her herbs, tinctures, remedies, and how to prepare them.

  “Ah, Mrs. Jergen. You have returned in good time. I am ready for the black currant leaves. How do they look today?”

  “Very fine, miss,” her assistant replied briskly. She stalked over to the stone workbench and set the basket down. “No rust spots or brown edges. Nicely green and healthy, they are, though the season is past. Three, miss?”

  “That is correct.”

  Mrs. Jergen chose three bright green palmate leaves for Lizzy and presented them to her. Lizzy took them, rolled them into a fat cigarillo shape, and began cutting the leaves into slivers.

  “I’ll bundle the rest into threes for dryin’, if it pleases you, miss?” Mrs. Jergen asked.

  “Yes, indeed.” Lizzy glanced at the drying racks above her head, each already nearly full, with drying bunches of herbs wrapped in white muslin like so many oddly-shaped giant cocoons and labelled with squares of dangling parchment. “I believe we shall be able to begin placing our crop in jars soon.”

  “Yes, miss.” Mrs. Jergen took a ball of fine twine down from a shelf and returned to the bench. “We’ve had another chicken, miss. A hen.”

  Lizzy moaned.

  “Now, miss, you can’t say as yer surprised, can you? That babe of Mr. and Mrs. Hall has been born hail and hearty thanks to yer tincture. A boy, it is, too.”

  “I wish Mr. Hall would take back his gift, though. I was happy to be of assistance and he cannot afford to lose a hen.”

  “Yer’ll never get ‘im to do that, miss, and that’s fer sure.” Mrs. Jergen tied off one bundle of three leaves and moved to the next. “He’s got ‘is pride, he does.”

  “And a man’s pride is a delicate thing,” Lizzy murmured with a sigh.

  “That it is, miss. That it is. Why, I remember me poor dead ‘enry…”

  Lizzy only half-listened to one of her assistant’s remembrances while she concentrated her energies on Lydia’s calming draft. The black currant leaves had been the final ingredient. She sprinkled the finely slivered leaves over the top of the still-hot liquid, then took a glass rod and stirred the leaves into the pot, breathing in on a clockwise stir and out with a counter-clockwise stir. Not too fast. Not too slow. Twenty times. She could smell the black currant leaves beginning to give off their properties. Now the draft had to steep for sixty breaths, and then be strained again before being poured into twelve eight-ounce bottles. Each bottle already contained four ounces of gin.

  Lydia, the tallest and youngest of her four sisters, skipped into the workroom, Kitty at her heels. Lizzy removed the funnel from the last of the twelve brown bottles sitting on the bench. Both girls were pretty, though Lydia was the most vivacious. Each girl also had the advantage of youth to give them an added glow that men found most attractive.

  Mrs. Jergen held out the twelfth cork and when Lizzy took it, returned to dipping the tops of the other eleven bottles into melted wax to seal them.

  “Oh, famous, you are finished!” Lydia cried, clapping her hands together once. “Is that for me?”

  “Eventually. This batch needs to cure for two weeks,” Lizzy reminded her. “Until the full moon is over.”

  “Oh, fiddle, I knew that,” Lydia
said, waving a hand and then leaning both hands on the stone bench and rocking her body forward eagerly. “We want to walk into Meryton to see if the militia has returned. Do you care to come with us? Jane is coming.”

  “And what of Mary?” Lizzy asked, tilting her head to one side. “Is she not to enjoy the opportunity to attend this expedition?”

  “You know Mary, Lizzy,” Kitty said, shrugging. “She has no interest in the militia.”

  Lizzy raised an eyebrow. “Nevertheless, the exercise will do her good. We will stop in and see our aunt and perhaps she will give us tea. I will take some of these black currant leaves with us. A nice green tea will do us all some good after our walk.”

  Kitty nodded. “I will go and enquire if she wishes to join us.” She turned and ran from the workroom.

  “Hurry, Lizzy, I want to set out before the weather turns,” Lydia said while twisting this way and that in the room as though she were a child in need of entertainment instead of a fifteen-year-old young woman who should have a degree of decorum.

  This came from a lack of a governess, Lizzy believed. A good-hearted, but firm, woman might have been able to keep Lydia’s natural exuberance in check long enough to teach her to stand gracefully and wait with patience.

  Perhaps.

  “Mrs. Jergen,” Lizzy said, untying her apron. “Will you finish up here?”

  “Yes, miss. I’ll label the bottles and put them in the cupboard,” Mrs. Jergen said, nodding her head forcefully. “Then I’ll hang the remainin’ black currant leaves, wipe down and sweep up. Will that do fer the day, miss? Y’see, I promised Cook I’d search for mushrooms in the home wood if you left me time to do the task, I did. She said she’s hopin’ to do a mushroom fritter fer yer tea.”

  “Mmm,” Lydia hummed with obvious relish. “Mushrooms for our supper. Do give our dear Mrs. Jergen the time to pick them, Lizzy.”

  “There is no need to beg, Lydia dear,” Lizzy said, laughing softly. “Mrs. Jergen may do as she pleases once she is done here.”