Page 1 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

Chapter One

Jane had a system for packing a trunk, and Elizabeth had a system for sitting on one.

The trunk in question belonged to their uncle and was built for documents, not dresses. Books had claimed Elizabeth's own trunk — a quantity Jane had already declined to count — leaving this one for everything else. She had noted the dimensions with optimism, rolled stockings into corners, pressed chemises flat with the heel of her hand, and laid her second-best muslin on top. The lid would not close. She was sitting on it now. Jane appeared in the doorway of the guest room with a length of ribbon in one hand.

“You are sitting on your luggage, Lizzy.”

“I am conquering it. There is a distinction.”

“Is that so?”

“The distinction is that I am winning.”

At that precise moment, the lid sprang open, depositing Elizabeth sideways onto the floor with a thump she felt in her dignity more than in her hip. Jane did not laugh. She stood with her lips pressed together, her eyes bright, her whole face doing the work of a laugh without committing to one.

“The trunk appears to disagree,” Jane said.

Elizabeth picked herself up. “The trunk is French.”

“It is Uncle Gardiner's.”

“Uncle Gardiner bought it in Calais. It has inherited a Continental stubbornness.” She brushed her skirts and eyed the open trunk. “There are too many petticoats. That is the difficulty.”

“The difficulty,” Jane said, kneeling beside the trunk and removing its contents, “is that you have packed three shawls, a parasol, two bonnets you do not like, and a volume of sermons from Mary that you will never read.”

“I might read them.”

“You will not read them.” Jane refolded a chemise with two efficient movements, set the parasol aside, removed one bonnet, relocated a pair of gloves, and slid Mary's sermons upright along the side where they served as a buttress rather than an occupant. The lid closed. The latch caught on the first attempt.

Elizabeth regarded her sister with sincere admiration. “You have a gift.”

“I have patience with fabric. It is not a gift one puts on a headstone, but it has its uses.”

Jane smiled. It was the smile of someone who had been practising.

Jane's collarbones were sharper. Her wrists were narrower. She was holding herself together so competently that no one asked if she needed holding.

She did not mention Mr Bingley. She had not mentioned him since January.

Elizabeth wanted to say his name. She wanted to say, “He was manipulated.” You were lied to. The fault is not yours, and it is not his, and I know exactly whose it is because a man I despise told me so in a letter I have read forty times.

She said none of this. It required explaining everything, including her own spectacular wrongness. She was not yet prepared to be that honest aloud.

“You could still come,” Elizabeth said instead. She had said it twice before. “Uncle Gardiner would be delighted. Sicily is warm. The ship has room.”

Jane folded the rejected bonnet in her lap, looking at the fabric to avoid looking anywhere else. “Mama needs me at Longbourn.”

“Mama needs an audience. That is not the same thing.”

“Lizzy.”

“She needs someone to listen while she catalogues her nerves. You are too kind to interrupt. By September, you will be thinner still, and I shall have to write to you from Sicily about the sunshine while you turn to paper in Hertfordshire.”

The speech was too much. The knowledge arrived a moment after the words left her mouth.

Jane looked at her with that steady, unreadable gaze that could mean forgiveness or reproach or simply that she was tired. “I am well, Lizzy.”

“You are not well. You are performing it with extraordinary conviction, and I love you too much to applaud.”