Page 71 of The Longbourn Bloodline

“All in various states of decay,” Elizabeth said. “I have only ever been allowed the lower shelves where he stores the philosophical treatises and the classics. We get most of our novels from the lending library, but Mary has free rein over the sermons.”

“Oh, but I believe I have found his system,” Georgiana said, pulling down volumes and checking their flyleaves for inscriptions while Elizabeth took the middle rows and Darcy examined the spaces above the shelves. “He places the books based on the heights of his wife and daughters. Fairy tales and nursery stories on the bottom shelf, histories and geographies on the middle shelf, and classics and philosophy at shoulder level. The improvement tracts and sermons are higher than Lizzy can reach but within Mary and Lydia’s height. Brother, pray tell what he is hiding on the uppermost shelves.”

Darcy made a wry face as if he feared finding literature of the most unsuitable kind. “I do not suppose your father would appreciate us reorganizing his books. I would not wish to find a slim French volume wedged between two dictionaries or behind a stack of agricultural tracts.”

“I’m tall. Let me reach for them.” Georgiana rose to her tiptoes atop the stepstool. “I see an unmarked leather volume.”

“A man may regret having his valuable first editions fingered,” Darcy warned. “I should still wish for Mr. Bennet’s good regard.” And here, he shot a glance at Elizabeth, which heated her cheeks. “I believe I will respect your father’s organization and ask him if any Darcy has left their books behind.”

“His first editions are locked away,” Elizabeth said, remembering the glove with Darcy’s blood on it shoved in the back of one of the locked doors. “Georgie, are you able to reach that slim, pink volume? It looks particularly diverting.”

“Pink is such an unusual color for a book, isn’t it?” Darcy’s gaze swept over Elizabeth’s pink improvement journal—one she had been scribbling in when the brother and sister pair arrived.

“I got it!” Georgiana pulled it down. The volume was slim, hand-bound in faded rose cloth with a ribbon closure, and its cover bore—in a clear, bold hand with more confidence than penmanship—the following inscription:

The True and Compleat Historie of the Most Illustrious Bennet Family, Being a Chronicle of Their Noble Deeds, Terrible Misfortunes, and Remarkably Poor Choices in Husbandry.

By Miss Alice Bennet, Aged Fifteen.

Dedicated to Any Future Bennet Who Finds This on the Shelf and Has the Good Sense to Read It Instead of Another Sermon.

Elizabeth accepted the little volume as one might cradle a newborn kitten: gently, with a breath caught sharp and a sense of discovery so vivid it seemed to prickle along her skin.

“Open it,” Georgiana urged, pressing closer. “And read it aloud, please.”

Elizabeth untied the ribbon, turned to the first page, and read.

The Bennets have dwelt at Longbourn since Time Immemorial, which is to say since nobody alive can remember when they were not here, and nobody has bothered to find out. This is, in my considered judgment, because the question itself is not very interesting, and the Bennets have always preferred interesting questions.

The first Bennet of note was Sir Thomas Bennet, who fought at Agincourt, or possibly at a place that sounded like Agincourt but was in fact a tavern near Canterbury. The family records are unclear on the matter, owing to a fire in 1608 that destroyed everything except the Bible, which was rescued by Great-Great-Uncle Edwin, who was motivated less by piety than by the fact that the Bible was propping open the door through which he intended to escape.

Elizabeth laughed, and—though he would surely deny it—so did Darcy. The sound startled Cleo from her perch, but Darcy remained, standing so near she could feel the warmth of his coat at her arm. His face, for once, was entirely unguarded, amusement written plainly there.

The Bennets have traditionally distinguished themselves in three pursuits: agriculture, argument, and the production of daughters. Of these, the daughters have proved the most durable, as fields may be flooded and arguments resolved, but a Bennet daughter, once formed, is permanent.

“I adore her,” Georgiana declared.

My mother, Philippa Wycliffe of Steventon, Hampshire, married Mr. Thomas Bennet (the fourth of that name, as the Bennets show as little imagination in naming their sons as in varying their crop rotation) and immediately produced another Thomas. I came a few years later, and my parents, like most Bennets, birthed more girls. My brother, Thomas, is sickly, so my mother keeps him bundled up in wool and rubs him with tinctures and ointments, making his bedchamber too warm and smelling of goose grease and medicinal herbs. They leave me to roam the fields of Longbourn, and as my sisters are too young, I have mapped our entire estate from the northern fields to the boundary stream, and every wall and stile in between.

She wrote of aunts whose beauty attracted proposals, and one who refused them all, eloping with a horse trader because he made her laugh. There was her father’s friend, who set fire to the dovecote in pursuit of a theory about gunpowder, and the cousin dispatched to Gray’s Inn to study law, who returned two years later with no knowledge but a talent for the fiddle.

“This Alice,” Darcy said. “She writes like you.”

“I do not write half as well as she does,” Elizabeth said. “I only jest, but I rarely write.”

“Does she say anything about any visitors?” Georgiana asked, peering at the pages.

Elizabeth turned the page after the story about a mule braying at her brother’s coughs and found the page blank. “It looks like she stopped. The last entry is dated 1711 and speaks about her beehive.”

“1711 was the last year George visited,” Darcy observed. “He said he never noticed Alice until the summer he turned seventeen.”

“May we see his journal?” Georgiana asked. “To see what he said?”

Darcy glanced at Elizabeth, his hand going to Cleo, as if seeking the comfort of her purrs. “It is rather private. I do not believe a man’s inner thoughts are⁠—”

“But he was my great-grandfather too,” Georgiana argued, and Elizabeth wished she could agree, except Darcy was right. A young man’s untethered thoughts about a woman would not be appropriate for Georgiana or for her to peruse.

“He was honorable, and I do not believe he ever forgot her,” Darcy was saying as the library door opened and Mr. Bennet stepped through it. He had a pipe in hand, with Bingley grinning at his heels.