CHAPTER I: FIRST IMPRESSIONS
It is a truth universally acknowledged that — as a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, and a single woman, regardless of wealth or status, must need a husband — a wealthy single man and a wealthier single woman who spend a great quantity of their time together must surely include at least one party angling for an engagement.
The manner in which Mr Bingley came to rent Netherfield, and Mrs Bennet's subsequent efforts to ensure her husband paid him a visit, will not be recounted here. They are unchanged in any major detail beyond Mrs Bennet's being, if remotely possible, even more anxious and excited. After all, this Mr Bingley brought with him a younger brother, Mr John, who by virtue of being a younger brother was far more attainable, yet who still brought great connections and wealth considerably more than sufficient.
Let us instead skip ahead slightly, to the Meryton Assembly. More precisely, to the time at which our Mr Bingley entered it, accompanied by his brother, his sister, her husband and, of course, Miss Darcy. They made a fine group — Mr Bingley well formed, better dressed, and with an obvious affability that made him exceedingly approachable; Mr and Mrs Hurst the very pictures of respectability, every bit the gentleman and every bit the fine young lady; Mr John well groomed in a way that perhaps suggested he had something to prove, but well groomed nonetheless; and Miss Darcy statuesque, both in terms of remarkably symmetrical features and a height that would have been somewhat impressive even on a man, and in the lack of almost any expression whatsoever.
She was not shy in the way that is sometimes romanticised in women, always looking at her shoes, talking in soft tones and blushing scarlet at almost anything. Rather, her social insecurities presented themselves in the form of perpetually pursed lips, a rather stiff posture, and a habit of staring fixedly at the nose bridge of whoever she happened to be talking to to a point that seemed vaguely aggressive. She had been told as a child that avoiding eye contact made it look as though she wasn't interested in the conversation, and that if she actually wasn't it was nonetheless not permissible to show it, and so rather thought that this was a way she was being polite.
When applied to her introduction to Elizabeth Bennet — whose nose had been broken once when she was twelve, had never been quite straight since, and was by far her biggest physical insecurity — it quite definitively was not.
Had Elizabeth been introduced second, and noticed before her feelings were hurt Miss Darcy looking quite as determinedly at Jane's perfectly unremarkable nose, she might have recalled that her own trick for eye contact was to look between the eyebrows, that Mary dealt with it by sticking her nose in a book and never glancing at a face if she could help it, and that her father never made much effort towards it at all.
Alas, this is not the story of two people immediately both trying and succeeding in understanding one another.
Miss Darcy danced once with each Mr Bingley, and once with Mr Hurst, then not again with anyone. Given the scarcity of gentlemen, this was hardly to be remarked upon, except that Mr John also neglected dancing in favour of hanging around and trying without success to tempt her into another set.
Regardless of misunderstandings or the seeds of opinion, however, the assembly went on. Elizabeth was obliged to sit out two sets, but was relatively well-stocked with partners for the sex-gap in the room, and sitting out was not so great an evil to her as it might have seemed to Kitty or Lydia. It allowed her to rest her feet and enjoy what dancing she did more, to listen to the music more for its own sake than to stay in time, to catch up a little with Charlotte, and to observe with some satisfaction the fun Jane seemed to have in dancing with Mr Bingley.
Eventually, the party drew to a close, as all such things must, but it was not half so over as the dark, empty, locked hall might have implied. Bingley seemed almost still to be dancing, and while Jane was more subtle about it, someone who knew her as well as Elizabeth did could quite easily say the same. Darcy was quite in need of a good amount of time alone in her room to stare at a wall without risk of suddenly being asked to dance by some man she had never met (or one she had. Honestly John was getting annoying about it). And Elizabeth, reading far more into where Miss Darcy's eyes had sat than had at all been meant by it, had by now decided that it was an active insult she had been intended to pick up on, and that Darcy was mocking her.
In point of fact, she had not noticed Elizabeth's nose, for all that she'd been looking at it. Very little got through to her head during parties, busy as she always was with trying to block out as much as she could of the too many moving parts and disjointed noises of them without bringing her hands to her ears and her knees to her eyes and hiding under a table somewhere.
It would be several days yet before she noticed anything much about Elizabeth Bennet at all.
A/N: Honestly, I thought it was going to be quite a while before this chapter was out, given how long my chapters usually are, and how long it takes me to be happy with them, so I was very surprised to discover last night that I was pretty sure it was done. No idea if future chapters will go anywhere near so quickly, but I do have specific scenes to map this to, especially to start with, so maybe I'll be able to get it out more regularly than my other ongoing projects. Absolutely zero promises, though.
So, I will get it out of the way that this is my first attempt at writing a romantic story arc since I was nine years old, and that I'm not really sure how to do it. Luckily, I have a solid scaffold to work from, and you guys are coming in primed to want to see these lovely ladies get together, so let's hope that we'll be fine!
I also don't know much about how lesbians (such as Darcy) and bisexual women (such as Lizzy) were viewed or treated in the Regency period specifically, though I am looking into it. I'm confident enough in the 'not well' assertion to have put in the tags I did and sketched out some of the plot beats I have, but will alter as necessary whatever needs altering when I have a better understanding of the topic.
Anyway, let's get into the non-spoilery gender changes I've made to start with:
Miss Wilhelmina Darcy. I'm not sure if 'Wilhelmina' is at all a reasonable Regency name, but it's the closest I could get to 'Fitzwilliam', it's more common in England than in Germany, and I think it sounds stately.
Mr George Darcy. He's still fifteen, still under Darcy and Col. Fitzwilliam's guardianship, but is also technically the owner of Pemberley and if characters refer to 'Mr Darcy's in this fic they'll mean him. Or his dead dad. Or I made a typo. I considered just swapping the Darcy kids' names, since presumably their parents picked out more "name for first boy, name for first girl" than "names for first child, names for second child, zero overlap in the ideas", but that would have been really confusing to write and to read so I decided not to do that.
Mr John Bingley. I couldn't think of a masculine form of 'Caroline' that wasn't way too close to 'Charles', so he gets the first Biblical men's name that popped into my head. Oddly possibly the character whose gender swap changes the most right off the bat, since it lets him be more active with Darcy, puts most of the early friendship with Jane onto Mrs Hurst, and creates the possibility of Mrs Bennet trying to set a daughter up with him.
Mr ? DeBourgh. Obviously needs to be gender swapped so that Lady Catherine can still be aiming at a marriage between the cousins, but it's still a while until he should up and I've yet to name him. 'Andrew' is kinda like 'Anne', I'll have to check if that's Regency appropriate.