An Unexpected Path in Austenesque Literature

Using Tropes to Establish Twists

Many variations rooted in Canon rise above JAFF into the realm of Austenesque fiction. Austen becomes the starting point rather than a stonewall-surrounded field limiting an author’s imagination. Truly, that is what separates imitation from creation. That is my own personal inclination. I seek to use Austen to express truths that interest me and, I hope, readers.

In my search for norm-breaking Austenesque stories, I recently encountered a novella that is the epitome of Frost’s The Road Less Taken.

Violet King’s novella Love Potion, Darcy’s Mine begins Canonically with the ever-on-the-hunt Caroline Bingley trying to secure Darcy by hook or by crook. (I am not sure which it is, hook or crook, that is). Ms King writes for an Austen-familiar audience. Readers are assumed to know already Austen’s character stylings, crux points, and plot drivers. Characters refer to off-stage events that have shaped perceptions earlier, and Ms King thankfully spares us the thousandth replay of the Meryton Assembly or Collins’s bumbling proposal.

Ms King brings her readers up to the mark at the Netherfield Ball, where the action begins. The actual Variation starts with a compromise that is nothing like the “clumsy Collins falls into Elizabeth” or the “Wickham was lurking in the garden for a tryst with Lydia but see Elizabeth as a target of opportunity” variety so popular in JAFF but fading into Austenesque’s rearview.

No, dear friends, our good author gives a positively toe-curling compromise of our impertinent miss by the usually staid Derbyshire gentleman in front of the assembled multitude in the middle of the dance floor! The typical Darcy scenario involves him doing the right thing even though nobody saw him—or perhaps Mrs. Bennet with Aunt Philips coming out onto the terrace for some air. Here, compelled by a magical elixir or not, he does the right thing in front of the entire community.

That is the beginning. There is nothing accidental here except for the events that led up to it. Ah, as Bobbie Burns wrote: The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley…Oh, Caroline!

Yes, it is a forced marriage in the making, but then Ms King pushes past where most would stop—or end up having the couple stuck in wintertime Pemberley when the potion wears off. Then Darcy would jump to the conclusion that Elizabeth somehow dosed him. He despises her and locks her out of his life. Then, “something” happens to force him to rethink. Perhaps Elizabeth flees, and he sees that even without the concoction, he loves her. See where I am headed?

Wuhl, sorry, pard, Ms King didn’t take us there.

LPDM is an inspired romantic mystery where a betrothed ODC team up to peel back the layers of the onion that led to Darcy’s unexpected behavior: magic mushrooms? They find each other in the process, but not before an unexpected ally helps them.

A level of nuance in Ms King’s style makes this 50,000-word-long novella read like something more substantial. Her pace is perfect for this type of story, and I read through it in one sitting, scraping the bowl to get the last of the caramel. The lack of so many tropes made this a satisfying tale that will, I am convinced, advance our genre.

Please use this link if you are interested in Love Potion Darcy’s Mine.

https://geni.us/vk-lpdm-nl

About Violet King

Violet King is a Pennsylvania native who loves reading and writing Regency romance. She had some Pride and Prejudice plot bunnies that wouldn’t leave her be, so she started writing her Austenesque Fiction in 2018. Her first book, Mr. Darcy’s Cipher, was inspired by her interest in history and the desire to write about a savvy heroine who saves her country while falling in love.

Violet’s other interests include drawing and painting, trying specialty teas (she lived in Japan for a few years and is especially picky about Jasmines and Greens,) cuddling her cats, karaoke, and reading, reading, reading! You can learn more about her books and sign up for her newsletter at violetkingauthor.com.

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To visit my Amazon author page, and see all of my books, please use this link.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Jacobson/author/B001IQZ7GC

As many of you know, I am nearing the end of the remastering of my entire catalog. I am about halfway through the final book, the 2023 remaster of In Plain Sight. This book is another of my experiments. So often the plot in Pride and Prejudice variations revolves around Darcy’s elevated social status and how his behavior is shaped by his social superiority vis the Bennets and Elizabeth. Enterprising authors play with the idea of “mistaken superiority” where Darcy is still the master of Pemberley, but Elizabeth is a hidden royal, a kidnapped daughter of a duke, or, in one of my favorites, when Mr. Bennet discovers the family elevated into the aristocracy. Whimsical all.

However, I wondered how the characters would act if Darcy was stripped of everything. How would Elizabeth respond if she was now the social superior? Would their hearts still yearn for each other? Thus, In Plain Sight was born.

I hope to release the book in the next three weeks.

Until then, please enjoy this excerpt from the Netherfield Ball. Richard Fitzwilliam is the trustee of Pemberley. William Smith remains at the Longbourn Dower House. Elizabeth has found her heart touched by the man. Caroline Bingley is, well, Caroline Bingley.

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This excerpt from the 2023 remaster of In Plain Sight is © 2020 by Donald P. Jacobson. Reproduction is prohibited.

From Chapter Twenty-eight

…

Caroline let Collins’s drone recede into the background as she caught sight of Richard Fitzwilliam with Eliza Bennet moving across the parquet floor. His attention to that country chit curdled her insides. Although her sights had shifted recently, Miss Bingley refused to concede any suitor to another woman. Miss Bingley’s manner became increasingly brittle, and she ground her teeth behind thinned lips. Collins’s prattle softly buffeted against her subconscious and continued to do so until he said something that immediately caught her attention.

“…and I am frustrated that Mr. Bennet refuses to heed my counsel. After all, I am to be Longbourn’s master! One would think that he would be more concerned about the behavior of one of his older daughters. I can understand if he chooses to ignore the hoydenish attitudes of the infants—”

The behavior of one of his older daughters? “Of what and whom are you speaking, Mr. Collins?”

Collins preened. While the man condemned gossip as uncharitable and skirting the limits of proper Christian manners, he loved being able to inform the world at large about the weaknesses of others.

His voice strengthened as if he were in his Hunsford pulpit. “Why, thank you for your interest, Miss Bingley, in knowing which of your neighbors, in this case, your nearest, are acting in ways contrary to good social order. As Lady Catherine has said time and again—”

“Thank you, Mr. Collins; however, please stick to the facts of the tale about…”

Collins paused and collected himself. “You are correct. Perhaps you could provide this young lady the sort of guidance her father refuses to give. I am speaking of Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

“I had planned to bring her back to Kent as my wife. Lady Catherine insisted that I extend an olive branch of peace to my cousins and marry one of them to heal the rift in our family brought on by the Longbourn entail”—he sped up at Caroline’s growl—“but she proved herself thoroughly unsuitable. I could not countenance a fallen woman as my helpmeet.

“I came upon her at the Longbourn Dower House consorting with a servant!

“She told me all that she had meant to do was chastise him, but her laying of hands upon the man beggared the truth!

“’Twas Eve and the serpent all over again!”

Urged on by Caroline’s continued prodding, the story, as perceived by William Collins, tumbled out. At some point, she stopped looking at his greasy countenance and again focused on the dancers.

There was something more to Collins’s dissertation, though—something that gleamed like a diamond buried in a coal pile. Miss Bingley had seen the posters outside of Meryton’s shops. The description, while rudimentary, seemed remarkably similar to that which she drew from the unsuspecting bumbling fool of a vicar.

She scrutinized Lizzy dancing and laughing with Fitzwilliam. At some point, the germ of an idea closely held since the day of the invitation exploded into malevolent bloom. Caroline would ruin her and win her baronet at the same time.

As her resolve hardened, Caroline noticed that Collins had wound down. She thanked the man for his care and concern about propriety within his family. Miss Bingley excused herself by saying she needed to attend the upcoming meal.

She worked through the crowd, searching out her next target: Sir Thaddeus.

Caroline spotted him in a small group just outside the card room. The man held court with some minor landowners who hung on his every word. The more senior men like Mr. Bennet and Mr. Goulding were nowhere to be found. The younger masters were still on the dance floor, although the dinner break was fast approaching.

Bestowing her best smile upon every one of the gentlemen, she reserved its brilliant focus for only one man. He responded as all men had done ever since she had discovered her own tigress’s power: his chest puffed out a little fuller, his shoulders squared, and his chin jutted ever so much more.

Miss Bingley crossed through the group until she stood directly before Soames. Then she shifted her gaze to John Lucas standing on the baronet’s right. She held that stare until the young man mumbled something about needing to escort his sister into dinner, nervously bowed, and left the group. Caroline floated into the notch ripped in the group’s circumference and waited for Sir Thaddeus to shift so that he was facing her.

After receiving the gentleman’s cordial greetings, Caroline went to work. She widened her emerald orbs so they bored deeply into Soames’s eyes. She took a moment to allow him to become mesmerized.

Then she began her campaign in a slightly infantilized, poor little me, but my life is now complete in the sunshine of your attention voice that never failed to melt even the hardest of men. “I cannot tell you how happy I was to be led out by you in tonight’s first set. I shall own to being surprised that you would find the time for these sorts of social events, given the demands on your time, especially now since your elevation.”

At this, she stopped and waited for Sir Thaddeus to fill in the conversational gap with the appropriate protestations about how he could not have missed such a stellar event. Once the man had accomplished that small feat, Caroline continued. “I have been, I fear, rather nervous. I nearly asked my brother, Mr. Bingley, to close up Netherfield and return to town. The entire neighborhood has been in an uproar since that convict escaped into the forest.”

Soames’s face darkened that this fine lady was so frightened over something that could not—should not—be. Wadkins had assured him that everything was in hand, and no corpse would appear until spring, if ever. While Soames was displeased at his man’s excesses, what was one convict more or less?

Yet, his heart was sorely taxed to see the quiver in Miss Bingley’s lip and the hint of diamonds upon her lashes. He ached to ease her worries.

The baronet spoke fervently. “I promise you, dear lady, I have teams of men scouring the entire area. If that convict is still in the vicinity, we shall find him. However, he would be a fool to stay around here. Based upon that thought, I have been making inquiries as far south as Portsmouth and off to Liverpool in the west. He is either on one of our frigates heading to the blockade or a merchant bringing goods to Cousin Jonathan.”

“Everybody, Sir Thaddeus, is talking of it,” Caroline pushed. “Rumors are rife. Some have seen him at the coaching inn, waiting for a seat to the north. Others claim he is hiding out amongst the millworkers down by the river.

“I even spoke with someone who told me”—at this, she raised her voice a notch to include not just the gentlemen who had joined Soames but also women who were advancing to collect their husbands—“that a man matching the description on the poster, ‘tall, dark-haired, a claret-colored birthmark on his left forearm,’ was seen consorting with Miss Elizabeth Bennet at the Longbourn Dower House not a fortnight ago!

“Now, I never would have imagined it of a gentlewoman from such a distinguished family. My source says that Miss Eliza claimed ’twas only one of Longbourn’s servants.

“However, I have been to that estate several times and have never seen a man of that appearance. Maybe he truly was one of the workingmen on the estate. Maybe he was not someone convicted of Heaven knows what. What seems obvious is that he was not of her class. If this is the case, how can the gentry shun those who have improved ourselves from our family backgrounds in trade when their daughters do not distinguish between lessers and betters?”

By now, all conversation had ceased in that corner of the ballroom.

Caroline’s first-ever gambit, where she implicitly admitted the roots of her family’s fortune, struck an emotional chord with Sir Thaddeus. He was only half a year removed from the stench of trade. When she saw his face pale and then become suffused in the crimson rising from beneath his neckcloth, Caroline knew that her bolt had struck home.

Everything Thaddeus had fought for from his days as a child in Liverpool’s gutters was in danger simply because Wadkins had more muscle than brains. That thug could never control his instincts when it came to his lessers. Yet, that talent was what made him valuable to Soames. The newly minted aristocrat cared little about the chattel he had purchased, only about what they could deliver to his coffers. How far he had come from a man who sold blackamoors for their labor before the year nine to one who kept strings of those His Majesty classified as but one step above slaves. Nobody would care if he ended his year with one less in his “employ.” The man was a convict, utterly beneath anyone’s notice, including his mother’s, whore that she probably was.

This man, this Smith, was lucky not to have been hung outright, although Britain’s punishments had been brought into the nineteenth century, especially after the unfortunate events in France during the Terror. Soames could understand that hatred. He had felt it when a rich man’s carriage had splashed him with street grime or footmen had pushed him into the gutter when a wealthy lady moved along the walk before entering a sweet shop, the insides of which the child Soames could only hope to imagine.

Everything was imperiled. Soames could never hope to win an accomplished woman like Miss Bingley with this sword hanging over his head.

On top of his visceral fear of being tossed back into the dung heap of trade, he knew that he had to see this man at the Dower House if only to confirm that he was just a poor sod working out his days chopping weeds for Bennet.

Soames could not stop himself from plunging ahead without protecting his heart. Miss Bingley drew him, pulled by her beauty and magnetic personality that swirled him in a whirlpool centered upon those unforgettable green eyes.

Impulsively, he reached out for her hand and bowed over it. “I can never imagine you, dear lady, as ever being anything less than the nonpareil that you are. You and your family have proven that Englishmen can lift themselves from coarse backgrounds into the highest levels of society when given the opportunity. Fear not that any but the most narrow-minded will punish you because your ancestors earned their keep not by exploiting tenants but rather through the dint of their wits.

“As for your desire to amend a dangerous situation despite the elevated connections of those who may be abetting the malefactor, I can only commend you.”

His delicate speech, belying his rough exterior, caused Caroline to flush that cherry tone that was so becoming on ginger-haired ladies. She snapped open her fan to hide her crimson cheeks behind its fluttering silk and coyly turned away. She sensed Soames standing just over her left shoulder.

Together, they watched the damage Caroline’s declarations had wrought.

What had begun as a low murmur spread quickly from the epicenter made up by the couple. Plumed turbans bobbed throughout the ballroom in a queer ballet dipping first together and then spinning away to cross with other gaudy ornaments. Rumor and innuendo swept across the room like a brush fire fleeing before an autumn wind. Closer, ever closer, it came to the small grouping of Bennet women celebrating their sister and daughter’s wedding day. Caroline watched in macabre fascination as the object of her envy laughed, unaware of the approaching disaster.

Then, like a gigantic comber slamming into the rocks of Enys Dodnan, the flood broke over the Bennet party, parting around it in a massive splash before subsiding back into the roiled crowd. The ladies could not have appeared more shocked if icy seawater drenched them. Eyes were widened. “What did she say?” was silently mouthed, and bewildered looks were cast around the hall.[i]

Eventually, though, as if Caroline had willed it, Elizabeth Bennet’s dark eyes reached out across the great hall to catch upon the satisfied and triumphant glare sent her way by Miss Bingley’s emerald ones. Longbourn’s daughter blanched, and she quickly looked away. Caroline could apprehend when the young lady began to weep as her shoulders began to hike up and down spasmodically. The other five women promptly closed ranks and obscured her.

Although she had set her sights elsewhere, Caroline, savoring her victory and the annihilation of a rival, elegantly turned to speak to Sir Thaddeus, only to discover him gone.

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[i] Remarkable formations at Land’s End, Cornwall.