A/N: I promised myself I wouldn't upload another story until I had it fully written, but sometimes you just have to go with it.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a warlock possessing a decent fortune and a powerful family gaes must be in want of a witch. Specifically, a witch of surpassing compatibility that will enhance his powers and provide him with powerful children.
It is a truth, somewhat universally hushed up, that a witch has needs too.
In the gently rolling land of Hertfordshire, it was just such a witch who strolled through the man-marked woods with her stockings in hand. The grass was crushed so gently by her light feet that she barely left any trace of her passing. The sun shone down on her auburn hair, bringing out the red.
Elizabeth Bennet swung at a low-hanging branch overhead, grinning to herself. Her power thrummed through this land, reverberating with mature life and satisfaction so close to the harvest. Her time at Longbourn was near its end. Soon it would be winter, she would be 21, and she would join her mother's family, the Fitzgeralds, at their house in London for a brief time before returning to Ireland for good.
That is, if she survived that long.
"Elizabeth!" Jane called from somewhere behind her. Elizabeth paused to put on her stockings as her step-sister caught up with her. "Oh, Elizabeth, the news! You won't believe it!"
Elizabeth smiled indulgently. Jane was so much like her mother, though much sweeter. "I dare say I shall, for I have never known you to tell a lie, Miss Oakley."
Jane smacked her arm playfully. "Lizzy! You say such things."
"What is the news then?"
"Netherfield has been let at last!"
"And this is good because…?"
"It was let to a young man with five thousand pounds per year!"
Ah, well, sometimes Jane was not so different from her mother after all. Elizabeth laughed. "Let us hope he is better looking and better mannered than Mr. Thompson!"
"Pshaw!" Jane said with a wave of her hand, as if she hadn't been in 'love' with Mr. Thompson for most of last spring.
"What says Mrs. Bennet?"
"I do wish you would call her Mama," Jane started, but was silenced with a glare from Elizabeth. Jane shrugged and proceed to imitate her mother in a shrill, overdone voice. "Oh Jane!" she warbled, "You could not be so beautiful for nothing!."
Cackling, the girls returned to Longbourn to gauge the family's reactions for themselves.
Mrs. Bennet was holding court with Mrs. Long and Lady Lucas, trading gossip and speculation like merchants on a wharf.
"I expect the party will join us first at the next Assembly," Lady Lucas observed as Jane and Lizzy entered the parlor. "It is only a few days away, surely that is enough time for anyone to settle into a newly leased home whose occupants only vacated earlier this year." Most of the room sent sidelong glances at Jane as this was said, but she was too busy adjusting her skirt to notice.
The Thompsons had been a well-to-do family from the south of England, newly risen to the gentry but better mannered than some of the nouveau riche. As any sensible man would, the eldest son, Mr. Henry Thompson, had fallen in love with Jane at first sight. The imminent poverty of her circumstances, and relative lack of dowry, soon lifted the veil from his eyes and the family left Hertfordshire for more, ahem, fertile pastures.
"But I have heard their party is so large!" exclaimed Mrs. Long. "Seven ladies and three gentlemen in all!"
"Too many ladies," Elizabeth observed with a smirk. Her wit was met with fervent nods from their guests but a quelling look from her stepmother.
"That's enough from you, Miss Elizabeth. Don't you have business to attend to with my husband?"
Elizabeth knew a dismissal when she heard one. She rose from her barely warmed seat and dropped an ironic curtsy. "I live to serve," she said dryly.
"Not for long," Lydia giggled. Elizabeth shot her a glare as she left, to which Lydia responded with a coy wave and giggle. It hurt that she was probably right.
Elizabeth made her way to Mr. Bennet's bookroom, which was as far from the sitting room as could be reasonably managed in the family's part of the house. She found him immersed in De Anima, the timeless Latin classic crisscrossed with many notes and underlines from his previous readings.
"Ah, Elizabeth," he said when he noticed her standing before his desk. "I was just thinking that we should have a discussion. How fortuitous that you have come to see me."
She chose not to correct him. He rose with difficulty from his seat and made his way to the barren fireplace. With a wave of his hand, it filled with his signature forest green magefire. The room filled with the pleasant scent of fresh earth as Mr. Bennet poured himself a brandy from the decanter on the shelf. He swirled the amber liquid in the manner meant to bring on visions, but the tenor of the air in the room did not change so Elizabeth concluded the fates had neglected to heed his call.
"As you know," he began, "the contract your mother had with me is near its expiration. There remains only your duty to renew the fertility of this land, and then you can hie you back to Ireland."
"Yes sir," Elizabeth said. "Though I do have some concerns-"
"Which we have discussed at length," he said harshly. "I maintain that if you were to wed, the renewal ritual would be less trying on your abilities."
"And I refuse to marry where I do not love," she rejoined, a well-worn response in an already threadbare discussion.
"Who is to say you won't fall in love between now and Samhain?"
"Your wife, who keeps me from every eligible man in the vicinity so that I might not damage the chances of your offspring or Jane."
"Ah, well," Mr. Bennet said laconically, "when have you ever let her stop you before?"
He went over to his desk, setting the half-drunk brandy on the writing surface as he did so. The afternoon light glimmered through the liquid, throwing amber light on the floor beneath. The light tugged at her vision, but Elizabeth refused to look. She did not wish to see her own death. Instead, she gazed at her father as he rummaged through the lower drawers of his desk.
An older gentleman in the twilight of his life, Thomas Bennet had once been a formidable warlock. In the secret circles that underpinned rural society, he was famed for his academic approach to natural problems. If you needed a river redirected or an orchard arranged in such a way as to promote nature's magic, he was the man to turn to. Until he met Elizabeth's mother, his spells had to be performed by others. After their union, when their power became shared, he was able to perform such magics as would frighten the Fae.
"Ah hah!" Mr. Bennet exclaimed in triumph, producing a small leather-bound journal with a large, ornate 'F' stamped on the cover. "I have been searching for this ever since you returned last year, and just the other day it appeared." He ran his finger down the spine fondly. "Your mother was such a clever woman."
Elizabeth bit her tongue until she felt it would bleed.
If she was so clever, why is she dead?
"This journal contains your mother's original spellwork. I expect you to read it and incorporate her findings into your casting." He held it out to her, but she hesitated to take it.
"Can you not tell me what it says?" she asked, twisting her hands together nervously. Mr. Bennet frowned.
"I find myself unable to do more than hold it. Your mother placed a family binding on it so that-."
"Only her blood can open it," Elizabeth finished in unison with her father. He grunted, and still she hesitated. Touching this book would be like holding her mother again, something she had not done since she was a toddler. Would she even remember what that felt like?
"This could be your salvation, child," Mr. Bennet said. "All you need do is take it."
Reluctantly, Elizabeth took the book from her father. Her fingers went numb as her mother's long-forgotten signature called to her blood. With a gasp she dropped the book from her dulled hands, spilling her father's brandy all over his desk.
"Clumsy girl!" he exclaimed, before lapsing into Greek curses and searching for a handkerchief.
Elizabeth paid him little mind. In the spilled liquid, shining with the sunlight, she glimpsed moody blue eyes before the sun hid behind a cloud and the vision dissipated.
She turned to leave.
"What do you say, Elizabeth?" her father barked, brandishing a newly found handkerchief at her.
She sighed. "Thank you sir."
He harrumphed and she relented.
"Thank you, Father."