New Story!

I have a new book coming out! Say hello to The Peculiar Talent of Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

In this story, Elizabeth is a little bit… special. You’ll see why. Here is the prologue and first chapter. I hope you enjoy it!

Look for the pre-order next week!

Prologue

September 1798
Longbourn, Hertfordshire

“Come sit by me, Elizabeth.”

“Yes, Granny.”

At seven years of age, Elizabeth was a precocious little thing with curling brown hair and bright sparkling eyes. Cora Bennet smiled at her great-granddaughter and leaned down to whisper in her ear.
“Have you had any interesting dreams of late?”

Elizabeth scrunched up her face in thought. “I dreamt I fell into Mr. Wallace’s pond and got all wet.”

“Hmm. Perhaps I shall ask your father to teach you to swim,” she said absently. “Best be careful around that pond in future. Anything else?”

“No, I do not think so. Have you had any interesting dreams, Granny?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. I had a dream about you.”

Elizabeth’s eyes lit up and she looked at her expectantly. “What was I doing?”

“You were preparing for your coming out. You were very beautiful, though your dress had entirely too much lace.”

Elizabeth scrunched up her nose. “I do not like lace on my dresses. It itches.”

“That it does.” Cora smiled. She did not tell her granddaughter that in the dream, Elizabeth looked full young to be coming out and was not pleased at all. Anxiety was written all over her face as Mrs. Bennet clucked about her daughter, claiming she would never be as beautiful as Jane, but she should make the most of what attractions she possessed. A stranger would not have recognized it, but her grandmother saw the hurt in young Elizabeth’s eyes.

“I want you to remember something for me, child.”

“What is that?”

“Remember that you are beautiful, every bit as lovely as Jane, in your own way, and do not allow anyone to sway your opinion on that.”

Elizabeth looked at her grandmother in confusion. She was more interested in running outside than looking pretty. “Very well, Granny.”

“Have you written in your journal lately?”

Elizabeth sighed. Her great-grandmother had given her a journal for her seventh birthday and told her to use it to write her dreams in, as well as interesting conversations she had with her grandmother. She had yet to crack the binding. She had mastered reading, but her penmanship was atrocious and writing was so tedious. She had not taken the trouble to work on it.

Cora Bennet looked at her sternly. “Elizabeth, you must write more or you shall never improve. Go and fetch your paper. You may practice your letters at my desk, then we will write an entry in your journal together.”
Elizabeth sighed and did as she was told, though she did not like it.

***

At least once per fortnight, Cora Bennet would bring Elizabeth into her private parlor and ask her the same questions. Had she had any interesting dreams lately? Had she been writing in her journal? Had she practiced her letters?

Eventually, Elizabeth realized she would not get out of the task and decided that having a fair hand would be a useful thing, and so she put her considerable determination into mastering the art of handwriting. Progress was slow, but soon she was writing notes to her friends at neighboring estates and making journal entries about the things her grandmother told her.

“I had a dream about you last night,” said her grandmother one spring day in 1800.

“Oh? What was I doing?” Elizabeth answered the same way she always did.

“You were dancing at a ball. You were very talented and hardly sat out a set. All the gentlemen wished to dance with you.”

Elizabeth smiled. “I like to dance.”

“I know, child. And you have a considerable gift for it.”

Elizabeth had never taken a single dancing lesson and her current version of dancing looked more like cavorting wildly through the garden, but she did not question her grandmother’s pronouncement.

***

When Elizabeth was eleven years old, she came to sit next to her grandmother in the parlor. She did not say anything, but Cora could tell she was upset. They sat side by side in silence for several minutes, Elizabeth looking ahead blankly and sighing every few minutes, and Cora knitting patiently beside her.

“Jonathon Blackwell tried to push me into the pond,” Elizabeth finally said.

“Did he?”

Elizabeth nodded. “I thought we were friends. When I said as much to him, he said he could never be friends with a skinny little girl.”

Cora dropped her knitting and looked at her granddaughter’s bent head. “You listen to me, Elizabeth Rose Bennet. That boy has no idea what he is talking about, and he is mean besides. You are better off without a false friend like him, though I know it hurts to realize it.”

Elizabeth sniffled and raised her head. Cora passed her a handkerchief and said gently, “It is sad when we realize people are not who we thought they were, and it is all right to cry about it. But you mustn’t let it keep your spirits down. Boys like Jonathon Blackwell are not worth more than a few minutes of your time. Do you understand?”

Elizabeth took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I do, Granny.”

“Good. I am glad to hear it.”

***

Two years later, Elizabeth was having tea in her grandmother’s parlor, discussing Jane’s coming out preparations, when Cora abruptly changed the subject.

“You will be a grand lady someday, Elizabeth.”

“Mama says I must stop climbing trees or no man will take me.”

Grandmother Bennet guffawed. “Your great-grandfather fell in love with me while I was climbing a tree.”

It took a moment for Elizabeth to realize her grandmother was teasing her, then she smiled widely.

“You must always be as you truly are, sweet child. Do not allow your mother to change you.”

Elizabeth furrowed her brow. Grasping onto something that made sense, she asked, “How do you know I will be a grand lady?”

“I have seen it in my dreams.” Her grandmother smiled and patted her cheek, ignoring the confused look on her granddaughter’s face.

***

Cora Bennet lived to be ninety-two years of age, much to Mrs. Frances Bennet’s chagrin, when she died peacefully in her sleep, a mysterious smile on her face. Elizabeth had remained her favorite granddaughter. At barely fifteen, Elizabeth was the most affected by her grandmother’s passing. She had only just come out, and her grandmother’s death granted her a reprieve from social obligations for a few months, though Mrs. Bennet did not like it.

Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth’s sisters went through all the motions of grieving, but aside from one tearful afternoon, Mr. Bennet and Jane moved on easily enough. Elizabeth, however, was truly aggrieved. Every year for her birthday, her grandmother had gifted her with a new journal. The books held the secrets the two shared between them, Elizabeth’s girlish imaginings and the childish slights she suffered, and her grandmother’s dreams.

When Elizabeth had turned fourteen the year before, Cora had told her that the dreams were not merely dreams, but visions of what would come to pass in the future. Elizabeth did not believe her. Her grandmother was old and terribly fond of her. Of course she would say Elizabeth would live in a grand house and have a great love. She wanted what was best for her beloved grandchild. But wishing did not make it so and Elizabeth was more cynical than most—likely the product of being the daughter of parents so wholly unsuited to one another.

Her grandmother had also said that Elizabeth possessed the gift of dreams, but in fifteen years, she had never had a single vision of the future. When her grandmother had been laid to rest and the stone was set, Elizabeth had placed flowers on her grave and prayed desperately for a dream. Just one dream when her grandmother would appear and hug her once more, and tell her she was every bit as lovely as Jane, no matter what her mother said, and assure her that everything would be well.

But the dream never came.

Until the morning of her sixteenth birthday, when she awoke in a cold sweat.

Chapter 1
Sweet Dreams

7th of July, 1811
Hertfordshire

Elizabeth woke with a start. It had happened again. The details of the dream changed, but the heart of it was the same. She walked alongside a small lake holding the hand of a little boy with brown hair and brilliant blue eyes. She loved his eyes, for they reminded her of his father’s. Dream Elizabeth listened to the boy chatter on about the lessons he was attending with his tutor and the frog he had seen by the stream. He was mastering a new skill with his pony and he could not wait to tell her of it.

She loved this boy, though she had never met him outside her dreams. Somehow, she knew he was her son. He smiled at her with her own grin and laughed just as she had done when she was small. He was precocious, as she had been. But he was tall and strong, like his father. She somehow knew this was a devastating combination—his father’s good looks and her charm, in addition to being the firstborn and heir. The young ladies of London would be beside themselves.

She had been dreaming of this boy since she was sixteen years old. Sometimes he was a babe, sometimes he was a young lad of eight. He was always sweet, a little gangly, and he looked at her with such adoration in his eyes. She lay next to him on the grass to watch a trail of ants march by. She helped him catch a frog in the stream and tripped over her skirts, laughing hysterically when he fell in beside her as he tried to rescue her.

He was the child of her heart.

Sometimes, there was another child. A little girl. She had dark sparkling eyes, like her own, and a bashful smile. Elizabeth knew this one was more like her father. Quiet, a little shy, observant. She had to be cajoled into games, but she always enjoyed herself once she began. She was much shorter than her brother, and there was a man nearby who teased Elizabeth about being so short, and that they were lucky it was the daughter who had taken after her less than towering stature and not the son. The man was blonde and cheerful, and somehow she knew he was her brother. Her sister Jane was often beside him, smiling gently and telling him to be kind to Lizzy. He would laugh and kiss Jane’s hand, saying they were only teasing. Lizzy was his favorite sister, after all.

This happy family scene was sometimes completed by another man. He was the most mysterious character of all. She never saw his face, only the set of his shoulders, the straight line of his back as he walked away. There was one dream that she particularly favored. She was sitting next to Jane on a terrace, both of their bellies swollen with child, and there were two men on the lawn. One of them was Jane’s cheerful blonde husband, cavorting with the children chasing him. The other was Elizabeth’s husband. She could not see his face from this distance, but she somehow knew that his countenance was very dear to her. She felt a great affection for him welling up in her chest.

She loved this man, with all her heart.

As small children ran by chasing their uncle, her husband reached down and swooped one up, lifting him over his head with a roar of laughter as the child squealed and squealed. They repeated the move more than once, her husband doing the same for his nephew as his son. They were a happy party on the lawn, and she smiled at Jane beside her.

“I am so happy we are to spend the summer together, Lizzy.”

“As am I,” Dream Elizabeth would say.

She thought for a moment that she and her husband, whoever he was, were visiting Jane and her family.
But when she was walking along the stream, she sometimes saw a house in the distance. It was made of light-colored stones, grand but not ostentatious, and somehow, she knew this was her home. She was mistress of all of this.

The first time she had the dream, she had thought it merely a passing fancy. The hopeful wishes of a young girl. It had felt real and been clearer than any dream she’d ever had, but visions of the future were not real. They simply were not! No matter what her granny had said. But as the dreams became more detailed and occurred with more frequency, she was forced to admit perhaps something else was afoot.

Her great-grandmother Bennet had been a Scottish woman of uncommon wisdom. She used to have young Elizabeth sit next to her and read her stories, even though Elizabeth was not a very good reader at the time. One day, Elizabeth asked her grandmother why she was the only one who read to her. Mary was still learning, but she could get by, and Jane was the eldest of them all and had a lovely speaking voice. Her grandmother had looked at her with searching eyes, staring unblinking until Elizabeth squirmed in her chair.

“Because you are like me, Little Lizzy,” she had said.

Elizabeth did not know why, but gooseflesh had broken out on her arms and her heart had sped up.

As Elizabeth sat up in her bed in 1811, she thought about what her grandmother had said.
Her grandmother had enjoyed teasing her, saying in the mornings, “I had a dream about you last night. You were learning to ride a horse. You did not like it at all.”

Or, “You will become quite the dancer, young Lizzy. You will never want for a partner.”

Or, “My, what a grand house you will live in! I only wish I would see it one day.”

Elizabeth had smiled at her grandmother’s eccentricity, thinking her words had been good-natured teasing. But when she woke on her sixteenth birthday, nearly a year after Granny Bennet had died, with a dream of the future so clear she had almost thought it real, she felt the first prickling of doubt.

Now, she was nearly twenty years of age, and the dreams had only become clearer and more frequent. Oh, how she wished her grandmother was there to tell her what to make of them!

She rose and put on her oldest walking dress. She would gather flowers for her grandmother’s grave today.

8th of August, 1811
Hertfordshire

Elizabeth woke in the middle of the night, her heart thundering in her chest. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. She crept out of bed and tied on her wrapper, then crept down the hall to Jane’s room. Her sister was asleep in her bed, her room undisturbed. She found the same in Mary’s room, and in Kitty and Lydia’s chamber. What had woken her? Her parents’ rooms were silent, though she could not enter in the middle of the night to check on them. She thought of the servants and tiptoed down to the kitchen. Mrs. Hill had a room and office not far down the corridor and Elizabeth could hear her snoring from a distance. Cook and the kitchen maids had rooms on the opposite side of the hall. She listened at each door and heard no sounds of distress, only the deep breathing of sleep. She could not bring herself to check the butler’s quarters, so she sighed, said a quick prayer, and made her way to the bookroom. She was too anxious to sleep; perhaps reading would help.

She quickly found a volume and settled into a chair by the empty fireplace. It was warm this time of year, so she was perfectly comfortable with only her father’s light blanket draped over her knees. She read for perhaps an hour, then slowly drifted off to sleep.

“Pardon me, Miss.”

Elizabeth woke to see Molly, one of the maids, had come into her father’s study to clean before the master occupied it. “Good morning, Molly. I must have fallen asleep while reading. I will get out of your way.”

She smiled and left the room, leaving a befuddled maid in her wake. She closed the door to her chamber and sat at the desk to write down her dreams. Her husband was in trouble. Well, her dream husband. She had dreamt of him as she slept in her father’s bookroom, and she knew without a doubt that his distress had woken her, not her family’s. She did not know what was wrong, or where he was, but she instinctively felt that he needed her. In her dream, she had held him to her chest, running her fingers through his soft hair, as he released his anguish to her. She had whispered soothing words and rocked slightly, and he had been utterly bereft. Heartbroken like she had never seen him in four years of dreaming.

Not knowing what else to do, she prayed. She prayed fervently that wherever he was, whoever he was, he would find comfort through this trial. That he would not be alone. And maybe, if it was not too strange, that he would be comforted by a dream of her, as she had learned to find comfort in her dreams of him.

September 1811
Hertfordshire

It was happening more frequently now. She was dreaming nearly every night. Dreams of children, dreams of a large sandstone house by a small lake, dreams of a grey speckled mare she had begrudgingly learned to ride, the voice of a man behind her as she rode along, calling out encouragements.

“You’re doing beautifully, Elizabeth.” Or, “I knew you would be wonderful.”

Her husband was in the dreams as well, but his face remained elusive. She felt held in his arms, her face pressed to his chest. She woke beside him, the dark obscuring his features. She heard his voice in the distance, always kind, always strong. She saw the set of his shoulders and the stride of his walk. She knew she teased him, she knew he liked it and that she thought him in dire need of it. He was more real than he had ever been, yet she had no idea who he was.

She sighed and walked into breakfast. There was nothing she could do about it now. She had only turned twenty last week. There was time to meet him. She was not a spinster yet.

“I heard he is bringing nine ladies and seven gentlemen.”

“I heard it was twelve ladies!”

“What are they talking of?” Elizabeth asked Jane.

“Mr. Bingley, the man who has let Netherfield Park.”

“Ah.” Inexplicably, Elizabeth felt a shiver run down her arm. She knew that name. She could not remember where she had heard it before, but somehow, she knew it.

“Are you well, Lizzy?” asked Jane quietly.

“Yes, only…”

“Did you have another dream?”

“Nearly every night now,” answered Elizabeth quietly.

Jane had been the first person she had told of the dreams when they began four years ago. Her sister had been kind and sympathetic, and as the dreams began to foretell more about their lives, Jane had enjoyed listening as if it were a fairy tale. She did not truly think anything would come of it, but it was amusing.
Though there was one thing Elizabeth had not told her sister. In the dreams where she had seen Jane and her husband, Jane had assumed the man was like Elizabeth’s husband. Visible from a distance, or with a turned back. Always with an unclear face. But Elizabeth had not told her sister everything.

She knew exactly what Jane’s husband looked like.

*********************

Sooooo… What do you think? Tell me!