Blurb: Devious ideas lurk beneath the genteel surface of Longbourn. A family secret is born.

Mr. Bennet had talked of having the road repaired for months now. The strong spring rains had washed away clay and gravel and left the lane that wound up to Longbourn House riddled with holes, and so he would talk, very often, of the necessity of hiring some men to come and fill them. But as with so many of Mr. Bennet’s plans, it never came to anything, and the Bennets’ driver became adept at navigating the worst of the difficulties, until they had nearly forgotten they had not always been a part of the road. Then, scarcely more than a week ago, it had rained again, and still more soil washed away around the edges, and water sat inside the holes, undermining the gravel surface for several feet around the most cavernous opening, until finally, inevitably, a section gave way.

The hired gig that was coming down the road bucked and heaved, and a body sailed gracefully through the air, landing recumbent in the ditch, while another tumbled off the seat, to lie beneath the hooves of the plunging horse.

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Six female forms gathered around the man’s body.

“Do you think he’s dead?” asked one.

“It would be good for us if he was.”

“Well that’s not polite to say.”

“But it would be. Then Jane could inherit.”

“We would all inherit. That is what the law says--unless Papa decided to leave it to one of us only.”

All faces turned in one direction.

“What? I do not know why you would suppose it would be me.”

“You’re Papa’s favorite, everyone knows that, Lizzy. He would definitely leave you Longbourn, but you would not turn us out, would you?”

“Your sister is far too loyal to her family to do any such thing, girls. She knows her duty to her mother.”

“Mama--”

“I am the mistress of Longbourn, Lizzy, and shall be until I die! Do not forget that!”

“I shall have no cause to forget it, because he is not dead. Look, see, he is breathing.”

“Odious man! Why could he not oblige us by dying? Now I suppose we will have to take care of him.”

“Maybe if we are kind to him now, he will be kind to us later.”

“Kind? How can you call him kind, when he is to take our home away from us?”

“We could hit him over the head again.”

“Lydia!”

“Jane could do it. She is very good with a cricket bat.”

“Or there is that brass figurine of an Chinaman on the mantle. It is very heavy!”

“Yes, that is true. Mary, do you remember when you had it fall on your foot that time?”

“This is absurd.”

“Of course I remember it. It caused me pain for days. According to my estimates, the Chinaman weighs as much as five pounds, and it is very compact, so it delivers a lot of force to a small area.”

“See! Much better than a cricket bat.”

“We cannot hit Mr. Collins over the head!”

“Well, why not? Do you want him to inherit Longbourn and leave poor Mama in the hedge-rows?”

“Of course not, but--”

“And let’s not forget poor Mary. She will probably never marry; where is she supposed to live?”

“My dear sister, I am sure that--”

“You have nothing to say in the matter, Jane; you have Mr. Bingley.”

“You know--” Lydia leaned forward to whisper in Jane’s ear. “If Mr. Collins does live, that means Mama will have to come live with you and Mr. Bingley for the rest of her life.” Jane’s eyes widened.

Just then, two men carried another body through the front door, and down the hall. Mr. Bennet came into the parlor.

“Papa, Papa! Who is that other one? Is he dead?”

“No, not yet. He is the man Mr. Collins appears to have hired to drive him from the next town. He woke up enough to tell us that his name is Jim Pacer, but no one seems to know anything else about him. One of these vagrants, who moves from town to town, looking for work. They are taking him downstairs.”

“Oh, Mr. Bennet! Is my house to be overrun with invalids? Must I be forced to care for the man who will someday steal the roof from over my head?”

“It is very hard, Mrs. Bennet, I know. But Mr. Collins cannot help being my heir.”

“We were all wishing he had died, Papa.”

“A very natural wish, I am sure. However, he is alive, and it is looks like he is waking up.”

Everyone turned their attention back to the man in clerical black who lay inelegantly sprawled on the sofa. He twitched, stirred, moved his head and mumbled something.

“What’s that?” asked Mrs. Bennet, too loudly. “What’s that you say, sir?”

He twitched again, opened a bruised eye blearily, shut it again, and mumbled. The family all looked at each other. When this happened once more, Elizabeth leaned on with great intrepidity, and held her ear near his mouth. “He said, ‘Lady Catherine,’” she announced.

“Lady Catherine?”

“Ah, yes, his patroness he wrote me of. Her influence must be even greater than I thought. Beyond question, he is a fool.” Mr. Bennet looked down on him with contempt.

Mr. Collins mumbled again, and squinted at the light. “Lady Catherine?” repeated Mrs. Bennet, again loudly, leaning toward him. “Do you speak of Lady Catherine? She is not here!”

All at once, his eyes flew open, and he stared at her. “Lady Catherine!” he said clearly.

She drew back, offended. “Not me! I am Mrs. Bennet!”

He blinked.

“Mrs. Bennet! ”

“Bennet.” He repeated the world clumsily, and looked confused.

“Do you know where you are?” asked Mr. Bennet, frowning at him.

“Where--where I am?” He struggled to sit up, but fell back with a whimper. “Where am I?”

“You are at Longbourn.”

“Long-bourn?” He looked around the room, an almost frightened expression on his broad and bloodied countenance.

“Yes, Longbourn. You were coming to see us, Mr….” Mr. Bennet suddenly paused, his face inscrutable. Coming closer, he fixed the invalid with a penetrating eye. “Do you know what your name is?”

“My--my name?”

“Yes.” He stepped even a little closer, and all the girls drew back, eyes wide. “Tell me, who are you? What is your name?”

“I--” the man swallowed. “I am--that is, my most noble… I am--” he began to breathe more quickly. “Lady C-Catherine is…”

“Yes, who is Lady Catherine?”

“Beneficent… she is... uhmm, I don’t…” he looked at Mrs. Bennet. “Lady Catherine?”

“This is Mrs. Bennet. There is no Lady Catherine here. But what about you? What is your name?”

“I--my name is…” he wet his lips. “Can I not have something to drink?”

“No. First you will tell me your name.”

“I think… that is, I--I don’t know.” He looked up at them with wide eyes. “I cannot remember.”

Everyone let out a collective breath.

“Are you certain? Search your memory. You must have some knowledge of who you are.”

But he had begun shaking his head. “No, no, no! There is nothing!”

“Nothing at all? Who was your father? Where are you from?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” He started hyperventilating. “I am no one! I am no one!”

“Mama!” Elizabeth spoke in a forceful undertone. “Laudanum. Quick! Get a lot of it.”

“Laudanum?” said Mrs. Bennet. She was staring at Mr. Collins in a kind of horrified fascination.

“I will call Mrs. Hill,” said Mary, rising, but both Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet spoke together.

“ No! ”

“No servants,” said Mr. Bennet.

At that moment, a curious tension filled the air, as all of the Bennets but one eyed each other.

“I know where the laudanum is,” said Kitty at last.

“Bring all of it, there’s a good girl.”

“He will need something to drink it with,” said Mary.

“Wine will be best. Quietly, now.”

“I do not understand,” said Mrs. Bennet.

Lydia, quiet for once, sat by her mother and patted her hand, and promised in whispers to explain everything later. Lizzy paced the room, and Jane busied herself in soothing Mr. Collins with a dampened handkerchief to his forehead, refusing to look up. Once, a servant came to the door to inquire what they might need, but Elizabeth turned him away.

In a few minutes, the girls were back from their errands, and the hapless Mr. Collins, still babbling his confusion, was quickly--but kindly, thanks to Jane--drugged into unconsciousness.

“Well!” said Mrs. Bennet, “I am glad that he is asleep now, for he wore dreadfully on my nerves, and I hope he shall not bleed onto the settee. But I still do not understand what you meant when you said no servants. Why should we not call a servant?”

“Because, Mrs. Bennet,” said her husband, “he does not remember who he is.”

“Yes, it seems very strange, but …” Five pairs of eyes bore into her. “Oh,” she whispered. “ He does not remember who he is .”

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Late that night, after all the servants were in bed, the Bennets held a hushed, dimly lit conference in Mrs. Bennet’s upstairs sitting room.

“What will we do if his memory returns?”

“We will deal with that when we come to it,” said Lizzy.

“There’s always the cricket bat,” said Kitty.

“Well, I say we should just poison his tea and get it over with.”

“No, Lydia, we promised Jane no murder, remember?”

Mary pushed her spectacles up her nose. “I do not approve of murder. It has been called one of the seven deadly sins for a reason; and all my studies have convinced me that there are few acts as repugnant to the human spirit as the deliberate distinguishing of the same. It is my opinion that it should be used only as a very last resort.”

“Girls, girls!” Mr. Bennet was pacing the room. “Much as I admire your cold-bloodedness, I must ask you to delay your discussion on the propriety of patruelicide until later. Right now we must determine how to proceed without murder. As long as his memory remains lost we should be safe. Fortunately, no one here knows him.”

“There is one difficulty,” said Elizabeth. “Lady Catherine will want to know what has become of her parson.”

“We will write to her that he has died, of course.”

“That may possibly satisfy her, but what about the law courts? We will need a death certificate, will we not, if we are to overturn to entail?”

He frowned. “Yes, that does pose a challenge. Mr. Jones is an old friend of mine, and he has cared for each of you since you were born. I do not think he would ask too many questions, but even he will require a dead body in order to issue a death certificate.”

“What I want to know,” interjected Mrs. Bennet fretfully, “is what we are going to do with him? He cannot stay locked up in the spare bedroom forever.”

“Poison,” said Lydia.

“No!” exclaimed Lizzy and Jane together.

“Well, she does have a point,” said Kitty. “It is very inconvenient for him to be alive, memory or no.”

“We will give him a new identity, of course. That is what we agreed on, right?”

“Yes, but who?”

“Who can we trust?” asked Jane. Everyone turned to look at her in surprise.

“What did you say?”

“I said who can we trust? Besides ourselves?”

Mr. Bennet considered. “Mrs. Hill’s husband. He was born at Longbourn, and he has been serving Bennets his entire life. He himself has told me more than once how much he dreads the day it should pass out of our hands. I believe he would do almost anything, if he believed it was in the interests of Longbourn.”

“So we have one devoted retainer, one sympathetic doctor, an unconscious amnesiac, and no dead body,” said Lizzy. “That does not seem like a lot to work with.”

Just then there was a knock on the door. Everyone jumped guiltily. After a moment, Mr. Bennet went to answer the door.

It was John Hill. Although his wife, as the housekeeper, was afforded the respect of being called Mrs. Hill, he had always been known as merely John. “Beggin’ your pardon, master,” he said, glancing with surprise at the gathering. “I thought you would want to know--it’s about Jim Pacer.”

He frowned. “Jim Pacer?”

“Yessir. He’s the man that were taken up injured earlier today, along with the parson your cousin. I’m afraid he’s died, just a few minutes ago.”

Tick-tick-tick went the clock on Mrs. Bennet’s mantle. Finally, Mr. Bennet spoke. “Died? I did not know he was so badly injured.”

“No more did anyone. Must have been some injury on the inside, which killed him so sudden.”

“And who else have you told?”

“No one, sir. I was sitting with him myself when it happened. I thought to let you know first thing.”

The Bennets looked at each other. “Come inside, John,” said Mr. Bennet.

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They did it together, John Hill and Mr. Bennet--carried the heavy, still-warm body up the stairs, first from the servant’s quarters, then to the second floor, and down the hall to Mrs. Bennet’s best guest bedchamber. Elizabeth went with them, holding doors open and carrying a single candle for them to see by.

That candle cast lurid shadows on the wall as the men laid Jim Pacer alongside William Collins on the brocaded bed and, once Elizabeth had left, undressed first one and then the other. Every article of clothing was exchanged--trousers, shirt, drawers, stockings. There was some difference in size, Mr. Collins being the larger of the two, but it was nothing that the women’s needles and the men’s efforts could not overcome. They even shaved the corpse’s face, styled his hair with pomade from Mr. Collins’s luggage.

“It’s fortunate they’re both so bruised,” said John. “The house maids’ll never notice the difference, belike.”

“Not if they want to keep their positions they won’t,” muttered Mr. Bennet.

And then it was back through the halls and down the stairs again, panting and groaning, this time lugging the still-unconscious Mr. Collins. Mr. Bennet feared their ultimate goal would be gained faster than desired by his own expiration, but at last it was done. Upstairs, a dead man in a cleric’s collar. Belowstairs, a living man in very tight moleskin breeches.

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Mr. Collins awoke in a darkened room, his head swimming. “Lady Catherine?” he mumbled, before he remembered that he could not remember who she was.

Turning his head, he could make out a single candle, and beyond it, an older woman sitting by his bed. She had pale blue eyes and features that had once been pretty, now hardened into an expression of great severity. Fair hair was tucked beneath a cap, and on top of it, a very fearsome bonnet. She looked vaguely familiar. She leaned forward, and the candlelight threw her features into terrible relief.

“I am Lady Catherine,” she said impressively.

“L-lady Catherine?”

“I am Lady Catherine, and you will obey me. Do you understand?”

Fearfully, he turned his head away. On the other side of the bed stood a dark-haired girl with spectacles, and in her hands was a long golden chain, and suspended from it, something that flashed as it spun.

“You will forget everything you think you remember,” the stern voice went on. “You will forget everything. Your name is Jim Pacer, do you understand?”

The flashing thing seemed to spin faster and faster; he could not look away from it.

“Your name is Jim Pacer.”

“Jim Pacer,” he murmured.

“It is the only thing you remember. I am Lady Catherine, and you will obey me.”

“I will obey you,” he murmured.

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Ten months later

Jim Pacer, the Bennet’s half-witted hired hand, was feeding the pigs. He was a great, clumsy fellow; no one had thought he was good for much, and the neighborhood all said how generous the Bennets had been to take him on like that, after the accident. Some said he was the one as ought to be blamed for the death of Mr. Collins, seeing as he had been driving, but Mr. Bennet had insisted that he be allowed to stay, and be given work. He had wanted to work in the garden, but old Mr. Coney, the gardiner, had indignantly refused him and, in the end, they taught him how to care for the pigs who supplied Longbourn with its bacon. He seemed, for the most part, entirely content.

Many changes had come to Longbourn since the death of its heir. Although the entail could not be overturned within Mr. Bennet’s lifetime, they had been assured by Mr. Philips, brother-in-law and attorney, that upon his death, and in the absence of any eligible male heir, all the usual processes of law would be followed. Mrs. Bennet would receive half of her husband’s income during her life, and all the rest would be divided equally among their daughters.

It was not such a bad dowry after all, though Mr. Bingley had been frightened off for some months by Jane’s increased array of suitors. Elizabeth had blamed it all darkly on his friend Mr. Darcy, until she met him again in Derbyshire over the summer. Very soon, and in a sequence of events not perfectly understood by anyone outside the most interested parties, Mr. Darcy returned to Netherfield, Mr. Bingley returned to Netherfield, and a double wedding was set for October. Jane was happy, Elizabeth was happier even than Jane, and Lydia and Kitty set aside the elaborate nine-step plan they had made for Mr. Bingley’s murder. Mary had eloped with Captain Carter last spring.

Today, Elizabeth and the visiting Mrs. Gardiner walked to the farm to see a new batch of kittens. Jim paid them little mind as he dumped a pail of potato peelings and porridge into the trough. He was thinking about the sow, whether she would litter again this year, and which of the spring pigs that were fattening now he could bear to part with first. He had named all of them, but his two favorites were the mean old sow, Catherine, and this one pale, delicate runt the farmer had been determined to kill before he rescued her. He had named her Anne.

It was Anne’s whiskery chin he was scratching when Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner walked by.

“I think a phaeton with a pair of ponies would be just the thing for going around that park,” said Mrs. Gardiner, as they passed. “Even you cannot walk it all, Elizabeth.”

Miss Elizabeth laughed. “Indeed, Aunt, you are right! A pony phaeton it shall certainly be.”

They passed on, but Jim was left musing over his favorite pig, with phaetons on his mind. “A phaeton and ponies, Anne,” he muttered to the elegant snout. “A little phaeton and ponies, to ride round the park in.” Suddenly an image flashed across the blank that was his memory, and he frowned. “Anne… Anne riding a pony phaeton around the park...the park…” He looked at the large sow. “Lady Catherine?… Anne … park… humble… humble … my humble abode!” He stood upright, and looked around the farmyard. “My valuable rectory! Rosings! My lady benefactress!” His eyes turned toward the manor house. “And Longbourn, I was coming to Longbourn… fair cousins… entail… overtures of good will!”

Ten minutes later, Lydia and Kitty looked up from their fashion magazines to see a red-faced man in mud-caked books and worsted trousers standing over them with a heaving chest. “How dare you, who call yourself objects of feminine virtue and grace! I have remembered everything! I know it all, the base infamy of your plan, the gross deceit perpetrated on one who came in disinterested kindness to extend an olive branch of peace to you, you wretched--”

A resounding blow sounded to his head, and he collapsed. Behind him stood a flushed and panting young woman, holding a cricket bat in both hands.

“Why, Jane,” said Lydia admiringly, “what a good stroke that was! I always knew you had it in you.”

Jane gripped her bat more tightly. “I. Will. Not. Lose. Mr. Bingley. Again!”

“No, no, of course not!”

They all surveyed the man sprawled on the carpet.

“Well, we had better get it over with. You get his feet, Kitty.”

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Mr. Collins awoke in a darkened room, his head swimming. “L-Lady Catherine?” he mumbled.

Turning his head, he could make out a single candle, and beyond it, a familiar older woman sitting by his bed. She had pale blue eyes and features that had once been pretty, now hardened into an expression of great severity. Fair hair was tucked beneath a cap, and on top of it, a very fearsome bonnet. She leaned forward, and the candlelight threw her features into terrible relief.

“I am Lady Catherine,” she said impressively.

“Lady Catherine?”

“I am Lady Catherine, and you will obey me. Do you understand?”

Fearfully, he turned his head away. On the other side of the bed stood a tall, blonde-haired girl, and in her hands was a long golden chain, and suspended from it, something that flashed as it spun.