Elizabeth 'Ellie' Bennet goes to sleep in 2017 a twenty-eight-year-old psychiatrist, the youngest daughter of a long divorced couple, known best for her specialisation in counselling juvenile delinquents. She goes to sleep thinking of the last time she had talked to her mother, ten years ago when the former Mrs Bennet had berated her for being a prude and not sleeping with her then boyfriend who had pushed her head into a table when she didn't 'put out'.
She wakes up as Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Bennet, but in the Regency era, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Mr and Mrs Bennet, a genteel couple in Hertfordshire, the second of five daughters, her father's favourite, and a lady most accomplished for her wit and laughter.
Suffice it to say that Fate took a violent turn
She doesn't deal with it very well in the beginning. She cries, she yells, she break things. She rages and when she finds no answer as to how it happened, she isolates herself, claiming the depths of the room she shares with Jane as her sanctuary.
And the Bennets, well, Mrs Bennet in particular, make her excuses. They tell their neighbours of the ghastly tumble little Elizabeth took, always running off into the country with no thought to her poor mother's nerves! Such a wild child and of course her silly little walks have their consequences.
And Elizabeth Bennet says nothing about it at all. Her father worries about her, her sister cries for the lack of the wit that usually makes her day and Charlotte Lucas wonders why her best friend refuses to see her. Refusing to see everyone else made sense but to not see her? Doesn't she know that Charlotte wouldn't judge, no matter what?
Elizabeth Bennet wallows.
Until one day she doesn't.
It happens by coincidence. Elizabeth doesn't like taking meals with her 'family' anymore and makes her way to kitchen often to fill up so she may excuse herself from the fine table her mother sets as soon as possible.
And she overhears a conversation that breaks her heart.
The cad taking up residence in Meryton inn had very nearly compromised one of their maids. The poor girl was terrified of returning to that place for her other jobs but had no choice, not with her ill mother to support. And she had nowhere else to go, no one else she could talk to but kind Mrs Hill who was the very soul of discretion, this much she knew.
(Mrs Hill, who had seen too many reputations fall prey to Mrs Bennet's tongue and refused to follow her mistress' example.)
And Liz thinks back to a time when she had been saved from something like that through sheer luck. Not through her own efforts, but luck.
And how it had haunted her even though it had been stopped before it could happen. She remembers how weak it made her feel, how many nights she didn't sleep for fear of nightmares.
How could she possibly let the same happen to this girl, then?
"The world is not kind to us women," She says to the bewildered maid, Shirley, that she had asked to talk to. They were in the stables, where neither horses nor grooms were to be found, they had been lent out for Mr Bennet's reluctant rounds to visit his tenants.
"Begging your pardon ma'am but you're a lady and I am only a servant." The girl says softly.
"Being a lady wouldn't stop some man from compromising me." Elizabeth sneers. "And it wouldn't change the ruination of my reputation, or that even at its best all I could do is end up married to my attacker."
"Miss Bennet?" Shirley says when Elizabeth is lost in thought and she is jerked away from bad memories.
"You shouldn't feel unsafe, you shouldn't feel afraid to sleep." Shirley blushes as Elizabeth's eyes rove over the circles under her eyes. "So I'm going to teach you to fight. Now then," She shifted into the position her instructor had taught her when she'd gone to her first ever self-defence class. "If he makes a pass at you from the front, you go like this."
Two hours later, a much more lively Elizabeth Bennet joins her family for dinner willingly for the first time in weeks. She smiles a bit easier now, her answers regaining the sharpness she was known for. Jane rejoices in her sister's return, Lydia and Kitty grumble when that sparkling with turns to them and Mary is glad that she isn't forced to take part in conversations as Elizabeth's replacement.
Mrs Bennet twists her mouth, unhappy. A delicate, shy lady would find it much easier to find suitors than a charming and droll one.
Four days later when shopping for ribbons in Meryton, the Bennet girls come across a subdued looking man with a black eye. He flinches and pulls his hand in front of his groin in a defensive position when he catches sight of Shirley trailing behind Elizabeth with a gleam in her eye.
Three weeks later, most of the serving girls in Hertfordshire have been taught of ways to defend themselves by Shirley and sleep a little safer at nights. Elizabeth does eventually figure out why all the girls in Meryton seem to curtsy deeper when greeting her than anyone else, but it is a good few days before it strikes her.
At which point she moves on to teach a few of the more advanced manoeuvres to Shirley, with tips on how to teach it to others.
Suffice it to say, that any bad rumours of the second Bennet daughter were viciously suppressed below stairs.
Elizabeth Bennet, Lydia, Kitty and Mary's elder sister, had quite despaired of the lot as being difficult, wilful, and improper and in Mary's case, a bore.
Elizabeth Bennet, the psychiatrist, saw different things. She saw a lack of discipline in the younger lot combined with a thorough inferiority complex as beautiful Jane and charming Elizabeth's unremarkable sisters. And Mary, the bore was the shy middle child who turned to the scriptures for consolation, not her mother's favourite with her lack of enthusiasm and not her father's either for he had no hopes of any daughter of his that he could be quite as fond of as Elizabeth.
She also saw something else. They were incredibly lucky to have her there.
Left to their own instruments these children would have been ruined. Mr Bennet was lovely as Elizabeth and Jane's papa but Lydia, Kitty and Mary had a very different father. If Mrs Bennet continued to compare them to Jane and find them lacking they would turn to horrid ways to distinguish themselves.
Charity, after all, begins at home. And that was where she started.
It began small. Where Lydia went, Katherine followed. So, that was where she began.
It took baby steps. Complaining about being out in society when Lydia could hear. Talk about how it would lessen her worth to have everyone see her all the time. There would be no grandness, no quelle surprise if everyone always saw her.
And Lydia eventually stopped begging to debut.
When news of the militia arrived and the request began again Elizabeth handled it as well.
"Such a mixed bag though, why almost every day you hear of soldiers abandoning the army and shaming their families forever. And even when they don't such horrid rumours follow them about, of children being born bearing a resemblance to soldiers rather than their fathers and worse!"
Luckily, Mr Bennet was around when this happened and for a moment took interest in schooling his younger girls in the behaviour of young soldiers. La, some had manners and many had honour and bravery, of course, but it was not always good. He bid his children to be cautious and told a tale of a vicious lad he once knew who rose up the ranks in the militia only to be eventually brought to court martial and then hung for reasons that were so vile that he would not dare repeat them.
And then, there was Mary. Mary who came out of her shell once her sister Elizabeth began begging her to turn the little tunes stuck into her head into notes to be played on the pianoforte. She hummed and hummed and Mary, who wanted the attention desperately although she did not know how to go about asking for it, came out of her shell slowly.
Then came Jane, ever so steady, ever so serene finally cried over her suitors and their desertions over her dowry and began to smile properly instead of the polite ones she was used to bestowing in society.
Mrs Bennet, Elizabeth thought, was to be handled much the same way that Lydia was. Drop a few hints of her brash gossiping putting off suitors and she would learn she thought.
She did not.
Fanny Bennet was still the same shrill, loud woman intent on airing her dirty laundry in public.
Therefore, she took a different approach to her. Now, Mrs Bennet's loud mouth was dealt with differently.
Elizabeth clapped her hand over her ears, "Dear me, mother, is there something wrong with your hearing?!"
The concern was fake but Mrs Bennet was convinced of its sincerity. Especially once sweet, kind Jane joined in, just as planned.
"Mama, are you quite sure you haven't taken ill? You seem to be talking ever so loudly!" Jane said, and Lydia and Kitty tittered but joined in, wanting to be in on the joke.
"Yes, yes, are you alright?" they chorused and Fanny Bennet clutched a hand to her throat, confounded.
"Well, perhaps I have been-"
"Mama, please stop yelling!" Elizabeth said, and chastised and confused, Mrs Bennet pouted. "Why our farthest tenant might be able to hear you!"
The whisper that next came out of Mrs Bennet's voice had Mr Bennet shaking in relief. He hadn't heard the woman that soft spoken in decades. "Well, perhaps there is something wrong with my ears, perhaps we should send for the apothecary?" She said, sotto voce but still alarmed.
(After all, if something was wrong with her hearing then it would severely limit her ability to eavesdrop.)
Just their wonderful luck then, that the apothecary was one of many that had felt the loud barb of Mrs Bennet's sharp tongue pierce his own hide a few too many times to be magnanimous. Especially when prompted to go along with it by the woman's husband himself.
"I am afraid there is no remedy for your affliction Mrs Bennet. The best thing to do would be to conserve your voice and keep from flying into fits of nerves."
Elizabeth chimed in eager to get the last little problem in their house fixed. "Ah, yes, I have heard it many a time that too much excitement can cause blood to flow into the ears, damaging them, even causing people to hear noises when there are none."
She was talking of stress induced tinnitus of course, and it was real enough that the apothecary had did not feel at all as if he was lying.
"You must not indulge in too much excitement Mrs Bennet," He said sternly and Mrs Bennet could only wail quietly and pout.
And so peace returned to Longbourn at long last
Hertfordshire was changed. Oh, in many ways it was still the same, certainly the relatives who visited once a year would notice no difference. But the residents knew how it had all changed and they lay it at the feet of one child.
Elizabeth Bennet had always been a favoured confidante. Unlike her mother she was no gossip, unlike her elder sister, she did not appeal to people's better natures, unlike Mary she did not chide and scold, unlike her father she did not merely pretend to listen.
Her wit meant that people always wanted to tell her things, if only to hear that sharp tongue fly in private. Her prejudice was annoying, yes, but she was just good natured enough that enough good deed would take it away.
She was safe.
And she was still safe. People still told her secrets. But now with the sharp barbs came a calm advisor as well. They could amuse themselves well over what she said, titter and giggle about it but her barbs now held weight. They weren't mere witticisms.
They were something to consider seriously.
It started quietly enough. Charlotte confessed her fears of being a spinster forever, passed over for her plainness and found laughter in dear Lizzie's grievances of Jane's beauty intimidating men, of her own impertinence turning them off, of poor Mary King being hunted for her new settlement and consoled her friend with these little things. After all, there was always some reason, some fault that people would find, that was just what people did.
And the happy thought reiterated by Elizabeth's words had Charlotte content. She did not now seek out suitors. She did not sit like a wallflower intent on disappearing because she felt forgotten.
No, when she wasn't asked for dances she still laughed and smiled. She rebuked her mother's disparaging comments with an honest smile and Mrs Lucas quite stopped dropping them.
And it was noticed. Charlotte was soon engaged and married to one of the lawyers who had come over on behalf of a gentleman looking at Netherfield Park. They were married in spring a month after Elizabeth turned twenty.
Hertfordshire was changed. And at long last Fate deemed them ready. So it was that one fine day Mrs Bennet turned to her husband and whispered, softly but determinedly, "My dear Mr Bennet, have you heard that Netherfield park is let at last?"
