Unfounded

UNFOUNDED A PRIDE & PREJUDICE VARIATION JESSIE LEWIS Copyright © 2023 by Jessie Lewis This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Ebooks are for the personal use of the purchaser. You may not share or distribute this ebook in any way, to any other person. To do so is infringing on the copyright of the author, which is against the law. Edited by Kristi Rawley and Julie Cooper Cover design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design ISBN 978-1-956613-59-9 (ebook) and 978-1-956613-60-5 (paperback) For anyone who ever yearned to spend a little more time with Darcy and Elizabeth. CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Epilogue Get a free ebook! Acknowledgments About the Author Also By Jessie Lewis CHAPTER ONE CLARABELLE Pemberley was hers. Every chamber, every passageway, every stair; each and every nook—from the attic rafters to the cellar floor—were embossed upon her mind. The house was in her blood. Indeed, there was no small quantity of her blood in the house, for one could not scrub properly without scraped knuckles to show for it, and not even the lofty rank of housekeeper had exempted Mrs Reynolds from scouring her share of grates and flagstones over the years. Her home, her livelihood, her world for the last quarter of a century—Pemberley had earned an unassailable place in her heart. There was but one entity to which she was more devoted, and he was arriving on the morrow, bringing a large party of friends and his younger sister with him. It was vastly inconvenient, therefore, that visitors had chosen this day to apply to see the house. Rooms were aswarm with servants; labourers climbed like ants up and down ladders; deliveries of fresh produce poured into the bowels of the house by the cartful—all in preparation for the master’s first return in many months. Interruptions were undesirable. The footman who had brought her the vexatious news shifted awkwardly on his feet. “Should you prefer that I ask Mr Matthis to show them around?” “No, there is no need for that. I shall come directly. But you had better let everybody know to stay out of the way until they are gone. And alert Mr Howes, for they will likely wish to see the gardens after the house.” With a quick nod, James left to deliver the instructions. Of course, Mr Matthis was perfectly capable of giving a tour of the house, but he considered it beneath him and preferred Mrs Reynolds to attend to all comers. It was an arrangement that suited her well. She was paid handsomely for her dedication to Pemberley, but she could never match the butler’s chief qualification of being a man, nor, by the same token, ever receive equal remuneration, thus she felt no compunction in taking all visitors’ tips for herself. Indeed, having no family to whom she might send funds, she had saved quite a sum by precisely those means for such a time as she was no longer able to work. A time which, of late, seemed to be accelerating towards her with disconcerting haste. A party of three awaited her in the hall. Two were of middling years and married, if their linked arms were any indication. His brown coat, thickset stature, and sun-flushed complexion gave him all the appearance of a highly polished tea caddy. Her pale-yellow bonnet, protruding from her head like a trumpet, made her the picture of a daffodil. A younger lady accompanied them, and the eyes with which she unblinkingly surveyed her surroundings were so dark and so wide, and framed with such startlingly long lashes, as instantly put Mrs Reynolds in mind of Clarabelle the dairy cow. She curtseyed to all three and invited them to follow her into the dining-parlour. It had long been her habit to name those who came seeking a tour of Pemberley. Such people rarely introduced themselves—something she had always considered a false conceit, since anyone whose only method of crossing the threshold of such a fine house was as a tourist could generally be but a warehouse door removed from the position of respectable upper servant themselves. Name them she must, however, for she required some method of identifying them in her letters to dear Eleanor, who never ceased to be delighted by the peculiarities of so many strangers. “This is a fine room,” Tea Caddy remarked. “Sizeable without forfeiting the acoustics. Not like the dining hall at Chatsworth that echoed every drop of a pin.” His manner pleased Mrs Reynolds. He seemed not unduly awed, only genuinely pleased. He listened with keen interest as she detailed the provenance of the vast dining table and the dinner served upon it to the king in 1764. Daffodil nodded appreciatively as she wandered the length of the room, admiring this sideboard and that ornament. Clarabelle only slightly surveyed it all before drifting to a window and staring out over the grounds. Mrs Reynolds was pleased to have a keener audience in Tea Caddy