This is a story I had a great deal of fun writing because it gives Darcy and Elizabeth different pre-story lives and therefore a very different starting point.

Darcy is unexpectedly pulled away from his carefully planned military career when he inherits an estate and a fortune he never expected to receive. Suddenly, he has to figure out how to be a landowner—and he’s not entirely sure he knows what he’s doing.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, has grown up very differently from the typical country miss. As the daughter of a general, she’s a lot less sheltered and her judgement is pretty sound. She’s also had a taste of freedom and adventure, and she isn’t quite ready to give that up just because her family has settled into a genteel country life.

Then Darcy meets Elizabeth, and neither of them is particularly prepared for what happens next.

There’s a little bit of romance, a little bit of family drama, some military connections, and eventually a rather serious problem at Longbourn to solve together.

I’ve included a short excerpt from the book below, along with a sample from the audiobook, so you can get a taste of the story—and hear how An Unexpected Inheritance sounds in audio.

I hope you enjoy it--I’d love to know what you think!

August 1811

“Is this it?” Darcy asked, pulling up to study a narrow path heading away from the little market town of Meryton.

“It astonishes me,” replied Fitzwilliam, “that you never once lost your way in Spain or Portugal but cannot seem to navigate good English roads.”

“Yes,” Darcy said drily, “there is nothing like being shot at to sharpen one’s directional senses.”

Fitzwilliam ignored him. “The blacksmith said that there were two paths. Netherfield to the east, Longbourn to the west. This must be it.”

“Very well,” Darcy replied, still rather dubious. He gazed through the trees at an opening wide enough for two horses to ride abreast. He guided his mount along the path, and they rode silently for a time. Not far along, the path opened onto a proper road, and Darcy shot Fitzwilliam a dirty look. “We turned off too soon.”

Fitzwilliam grinned. “As long as we arrive in good time, does it matter?”

Darcy plucked a twig from his hat and let it fall to the ground. “It does not matter to you. You are short enough to ride through an entire forest untouched.”

“That you are the size of a giant is not my fault.”

Fitzwilliam was short only in comparison to him, and Darcy knew it. Fitzwilliam might be the elder, but Darcy was the taller by four inches, a constant source of irritation for his cousin.

They meandered through the village that surrounded the estate and up through the gates to the manor, where they handed off their horses to a groom. An older gentleman was waiting for them in the portico.

“Welcome to Longbourn, Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel,” he said.

“Lieutenant General Bennet, sir,” Darcy said by way of greeting. Fitzwilliam snapped off a salute, and Darcy looked at him askance.

Bennet returned the salute with less sharpness and a good deal of humour. “Now that we have the ranks out of the way,” Lieutenant General Bennet remarked, his eyes twinkling, “call me Bennet. I am no longer in command of thousands of soldiers but a dozen or so stubbornly independent farmers of barley and corn.”

“It suits you, sir,” Darcy replied.

“And you are hoping it will suit you?” Bennet responded with a smile. “Come in, boys, come in.” He slapped each of them once on the back before he led them into the house.

The general appeared healthier than he had after being wounded and suffering through the infection that followed. He was stouter, and all traces of the limp that had finally persuaded the man to relinquish his command appeared to have vanished. He walked them back to his study, a decent-sized room lined with bookshelves that fairly groaned with the weight of the tomes they held. Darcy smiled. “A pleasant room, Bennet.”

Bennet laughed, as did Fitzwilliam. “I think you might be content all your life if you could but spend it with your nose in a book,” Fitzwilliam said.

They had returned to Hatchards more than once before removing from town.

“I have a taste for books myself,” Bennet replied, “but on an estate, there is always more to be done. I am pleased you arrived for the harvest. There is much to learn in observing it.” He lifted a decanter in question, and they both nodded. “This inheritance was something of a surprise, your letter said?”

“I do not believe I have ever seen anyone more shocked. It was a full quarter of an hour before I could persuade him to speak of it,” Fitzwilliam said.

Darcy’s face grew hot. It had not been a quarter of an hour, but his inability to speak had certainly made Fitzwilliam anxious.

“I have inherited Pemberley, the family’s country estate,” Darcy confirmed. “And a townhouse in London.”

Fitzwilliam nodded. “We toured the townhouse with the solicitor. Very fine.”

“There are a number of repairs to be made, however,” Darcy added. “My great-uncle had remained in the country for his health the past few years. The work should be largely completed by the time we return near Christmas.”

“When you wrote, I sent out some inquiries about Pemberley.” Bennet motioned for them to sit and handed them each a glass of port. “Nearly three times the size of Longbourn, and I expect four or five times the income. You shall have your work cut out for you. But then, I presume that is why you have brought your cousin home?”

Darcy nodded. “One of many reasons. I could not do it without him.” He accepted a glass from Bennet.

“He could, as he is well aware,” Fitzwilliam mumbled, embarrassed. “He is the clever one with books and accounts. I am here because he needs me to talk to women on his behalf.”

Darcy sighed and addressed Bennet. “Obviously, I regret my decision already.”

Fitzwilliam grinned, clearly pleased to have irritated him at last.

Darcy was tall, physically strong, and an excellent man on the field of battle. Fitzwilliam had often told him so, usually begrudgingly. The problem was that it was the fashion to be slender, and his size intimidated women. A gentleman did not wish to appear as though he had to labour for his livelihood. It was all nonsense, but the women of his aunt Matlock’s acquaintance were not used to men who looked like him. He tried to be gentle, but his manners were those of a soldier. Along with everything else, that would have to change now, he supposed. He might not wish to dance in London, but he would be in company with women nonetheless. Beginning with the general’s daughters.

Bennet was watching him quietly, but Darcy was fully aware that the man’s mind was always active.

“Perhaps you ought to practice with my girls,” he remarked. “They are used to the manners of men like us and not easily frightened.” Bennet’s slow smile made Darcy uneasy. “As a gentleman, you know, you shall have to learn to dance.”

How had the man guessed precisely what he was thinking? “I know how to dance,” he said uneasily.

Fitzwilliam burst out laughing. “Is that what you call it?”

“I had a master in to teach the girls, and they are each of them beautiful dancers now. I wish Fanny could see them.” He gestured at the room. “She would have loved being the mistress of an estate. Clucking over her chicks, dressing them in fine clothes.” He cleared his throat and produced a handkerchief to swipe at his eyes.

The two younger men were silent out of respect for Bennet’s departed wife. Darcy had thought Mrs. Bennet a bit flighty and at times a little crass, but he could hardly blame her, given that she lived all her married life among soldiers. More to the point, she had a good heart. She had treated the men under her husband’s command as sons and brothers, nursing them when they were ill or injured. She set a bountiful table for the officers and had likely sent more food out for the enlisted men. With her three eldest daughters trailing behind, she had delivered baskets of food to the needy. The general’s wife had always been busy. It was on one of her missions of mercy that she had contracted influenza and died shortly after the general’s own recovery.

The mourning had been difficult for them all. Mrs. Bennet had been universally beloved.

“Elizabeth would be a suitable partner for you, Darcy,” Bennet said abruptly, shoving the handkerchief back in his pocket. “Her feet are as quick as her tongue, and she will not be cowed by you.” Bennet lifted one craggy eyebrow at Fitzwilliam. “And neither Jane nor Elizabeth will put up with any of your foolish games.”

“Games?” Fitzwilliam cried, placing one hand over his heart. “My dear Bennet, I do not have the pleasure of understanding you.”

Bennet tipped his head slightly to one side. “Do you not?”

In all his life, Darcy had never seen his cousin blush. It was worth everything to witness it now.

The older man sighed. “Five daughters.” He shook his head ruefully. “Would that they had come out into a society where men still feared me.”

There was a soft knock. “Come,” Bennet called.

Darcy blinked as a young woman entered. Great God, she was stunning. Eyes the colour of mahogany, dark curls touched with gold framing her face, a light and pleasing figure tall enough that he would not appear an ogre in comparison. She was looking at her father and not at him, thank heavens. It would be a disaster to be caught ogling the general’s . . . Bennet’s daughter. He glanced away and spied Fitzwilliam wearing a lopsided grin.

Damnation. Fitzwilliam had noticed. He would never hear the end of it now.

“We shall join you in the drawing room, my dear,” Bennet said, rising from his chair. “Come, gentlemen,” he said as the woman curtseyed and left them. “It is time for you to meet my daughters.”

Reader Question:

If you listen to audio, what are you doing while you listen?

Driving? Doing chores? Falling asleep at night?

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So the question this week is in the title. What if you had to trust someone in P&P with a secret?

Caveat before we begin—Darcy and Elizabeth are both disqualified.

Darcy is the king of restraint. He’d just tuck away your secret in the deep recesses of his soul and never mention it again (see: Lydia). Elizabeth would handle the whole thing with sense and discretion (see: Georgiana’s near elopement, though she does consult Jane). She might judge you for it, but she wouldn’t tell.

Choosing either of them is a no-brainer.

The rest of the cast is a more interesting problem.

Jane Bennet

Okay, hear me out. Jane would never betray you on purpose. She would listen, tell you it would all come right in the end, and assume your motives had been good ones.

BUT.

Her goodness is the difficulty.

Suppose you had confessed to insulting Lady Catherine, or to accepting a proposal you were not supposed to have accepted. Jane would keep your confidence. She would also look so troubled whenever the subject came up that an observant would totally guess that something was fishy. (Yes, I am making that joke. The Slipper Scandal, IYKYK).

I imagine it would go something like this:

“Jane, is something wrong?”

“No, not at all.”

“Then why are you suddenly so pale?”

“I am not . . . I do not . . . Um . . .”

Jane would carry your secret faithfully. But I don’t know that she could carry it forever. She DOES keep the first proposal secret. But no one ever asks about Mr. Darcy in her presence, either.

Bingley

Bingley would mean every word of his promise. He would swear not to tell a soul, and he would believe himself entirely.

Three hours later he would open a conversation with Darcy. “I cannot say why, of course, but suppose a person we both know had done something rather unexpected . . .”

Yeah, he’s the king of “asking for a friend.”

Darcy would have the person, the deed and the likely consequences before Bingley reached the end of his hypothetical situation.

“How could you possibly know?” Bingley would ask.

Darcy would just look at him and say, “You told me.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You described Miss Bennet’s situation in considerable detail.”

“I never said it was Miss Bennet.”

“You called her a young lady with four sisters whose mother speaks very freely.”

Bingley doesn’t gossip to be cruel. He simply enjoys sharing his thoughts, and a secret is a particularly interesting thought. Fortunately, his “very steady friendship” is with Darcy, who is discreet.

Charlotte Lucas

Charlotte is practical and observant, and she is well accustomed to managing information and people. She waited for Mr. Collins to run his course with Lizzy, but then made sure to secure him and, by extension, a home for herself. Then she built a tolerable life half a mile from Rosings. A woman who can do all that can probably keep your secret.

BUT.

There is one qualification. Charlotte is also ambitious (she’s already thinking about additional livings for her husband and making certain decisions based on who has more to offer). If your secret put her home or her position at risk, what would she do?

Colonel Fitzwilliam

This is the man who flat out told Elizabeth that Darcy had lately saved a friend from an imprudent marriage. Darcy didn’t say who, but the colonel names Bingley, only to pull it back and say he only suspected it was Bingley, from knowing that the two of them had been together the whole of the previous autumn.

So we know he’s fully capable of spilling the beans IF he thinks he’s doing you a favor. Does that mean he can’t keep a secret if you specifically ask him to?

Georgiana Darcy

Georgiana doesn’t have a single line of dialogue in canon. But we can try to extrapolate.

Knowing that she has a secret of her own to keep, perhaps she would be good about keeping yours.

But she’s also very young and just short of idolizes her brother. She might confess everything to him at once, just to be sure that she’s not wrong to keep your confidence.

Mr. Bennet

Mr. Bennet can keep a secret, I think. The real question is whether he could resist making humorous, well-timed remarks about it.

He would not expose you outright. He would say something at dinner that only you understood—which would make you choke on your wine and alert everyone to the fact that there’s something being hidden.

If the business turned serious, he might just retreat to his library and leave you to handle things.

Mary

Mary might keep your secret—if she didn’t think it was morally corrupt to do so. But you would get a lecture about lies by omission. And about the behavior that required keeping a secret in the first place. But if your secret was something that she judged sound—maybe?

Lady Catherine or Mr. Collins

Don’t make me laugh.

Mrs. Bennet, Lydia, and Kitty

No. Just no.

Reader question: Okay, so what do you think? Darcy and Elizabeth excepted, which Pride and Prejudice character would you trust with your secret — and what sort of secret would you dare tell them?

All hypothetical, of course.

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Grab the audiobook!

Not much in Fitzwilliam Darcy’s life has been unexpected. Until now.

As an officer in His Majesty’s service, Darcy’s life is completely mapped out before a letter from home sets him on a new path. He has inherited his family’s fortune, but as the former master’s great-nephew, he is not certain why. With his cousin Richard Fitzwilliam in tow, Darcy visits his former commanding officer to learn what it takes to run an estate. He is quickly captivated by one of Bennet’s many daughters, but he fights the attraction. His new duties require his full attention.

Elizabeth Bennet has grown up as a general’s daughter, not a pampered country miss. Though her family has lived as gentry for several years, a part of her still longs for the freedoms her former life afforded. Despite his insulting speech and gruff manners, Elizabeth suspects that the clever, handsome Mr. Darcy is as anxious to find his place in the world as she. Yet she must be reasonable. With his wealth and family connections to the peerage, Mr. Darcy would never consider her.

When trouble comes to Longbourn, can Darcy and Elizabeth conquer their reservations and fight this battle--together?

In the novel, there’s a moment when one of my characters describes two gentlemen kneeling on the window seat at Brooks’s. A hundred guineas is riding on which of two raindrops would reach the bottom of the pane first. Each man had sworn on his honor to touch nothing. One of them was disqualified for breathing on the glass to warm it and make the raindrop run faster.

I invented that story, but it’s based on some other stories that still circulate about betting in the gentleman’s clubs.

White’s, the club that was known for its Tory membership, began keeping a betting book in 1743. Brooks’s (generally, more Whigs belonged here) followed in 1771. Now, these wagers weren’t just verbal, nor were they formally written out and exchanged between the involved parties. These books were leather-bound volumes that recorded what the man wagered, against whom he was wagering, and the terms of that wager. They also recorded the date by which the wager was to be finally settled. Some of those entries are marked “paid.” Some are struck through. A great many were simply left in the book.

I would think that perhaps the bets were left to moulder, but once written in the books, each wager was treated like a debt of honor, which meant it outranked other sorts of bills (tailor, chandler, saddler). Some of these untouched wagers were probably settled and just not struck out. Others might have been dissolved by mutual agreement without declaring a winner. But I suspect that very few of them would just have been left unresolved.

What did they bet on? Everything. Absolutely everything. It was almost a mania during the time period in which most Austen variations are set.

There was a lot of betting on cards, for one. One favorite entry of mine is from 1812, when Mr. Howard put down five guineas on whether Mr. Talbot would play whist for anything more than guinea points over the next six weeks.

So this was a gentleman placing a bet about how another man was betting, recorded in the betting book.

There was so much betting on cards, in fact, that sometimes gentlemen made wagers to stop the wagers.

This entry is from well before the regency, but I think it would easily be imagined there. In 1758, Mr. Fanshawe and Captain Rodney entered an agreement. Whenever they cut the cards at whist (to decide partners) and wound up on playing against one another, one of them could offer a fifty-guinea side bet to the other. However, when he did, all the other man had to do was decline, and the man who initiated the wager would have to pay the man who said “no thanks,” a forfeit of a hundred guineas.

This was a fool’s bet, of course, to be sure that neither of them ever challenged the other. I have to wonder how much money was won or lost between them before this wager wound up in the book.

I also can’t help but wonder if either of them ever asked . . .

Then there were the lives of other people to bet on. In 1817, Mr Bouverie wagered Lord Yarmouth a hundred and fifty guineas that the Duke of Clarence would not produce a legitimate child within the next two years. Someone else wrote in the book to wager on which baronet would be the first one to hang—and helpfully nominated a candidate.

I love a snarky wager.

There’s another story (also retold, but too good to pass up) that teaches you to be careful who you bet against.

According to Robinson’s 1895 memoir, the Earl of March—later the fourth Duke of Queensberry—took a large stake in a 1753 wager to convey a letter fifty miles in a single hour. That was a losing proposition on any horse in England.

So he didn’t use a horse.

Instead, he hired twenty expert cricketers, “famed for their skill in throwing and catching,” enclosed the letter in a cricket ball, worked out how far apart the men needed to stand, and set them in a circle.

No one had specified that the miles had to be covered in a straight line.

When the hour was up and the ground was measured, the letter had travelled many miles more than fifty. Because you didn’t need fifty miles of good road to win this wager.

Which brings me back to the raindrops.

I’ve heard that story many times—I used it in a different aside for Bingley in A Gentleman’s Honor—but when I went looking for an actual period, primary source, I couldn’t find one. The story shows up everywhere as a wager for three thousand pounds, but it may have been a later invention and just accepted as truth. Perhaps it’s simply that I can’t find it—and I will say that it’s not all that wild a tale, given some of the entries in these books.

There are other wagers in The Matchmaker’s Mistake—Georgian London is full of them, after all. And some of the real ones were a lot darker than those I’ve listed above. Let’s just say that life was cheaper then.

But unlike most gamblers in Las Vegas today, in the Georgian and Regency eras, many wagers weren’t really about winning the money. They were about bragging rights and proving that you were wealthy enough to throw an absurd sum at something utterly ridiculous without feeling the loss. The more outrageous the wager, the better the story afterward.

Perhaps that’s why Lady Anne doesn’t gamble. She’s throwing money at candles instead.

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Lady Anne Darcy is the most formidable matchmaker in London.

She has arranged brilliant marriages, engineered seemingly impossible engagements, and guided nearly half the ton--the happy half—to the altar.

Her greatest challenge? Her own son.

Fitzwilliam Darcy has no intention of being managed into marriage—by his mother or anyone else. Unfortunately for him, Lady Anne has decided it is time he settled, and has no intention of delaying the campaign.

Elizabeth Bennet, meanwhile, has recently refused a second proposal and has no desire to encourage a third. A winter in London offers freedom, amusement, and—she hopes—escape from the relentless matchmaking that follows unmarried women everywhere.

She certainly does not expect to attract the attention of Lady Anne Darcy.

Featuring matchmaking gone wrong, , London house parties, ballroom encounters, forced proximity, family meddling, slow-burn romance, and a Darcy who falls first, The Matchmaker’s Mistake is a cozy closed-door Pride and Prejudice rom-com filled with sparkling banter, emotional tension, and a hard-won happily ever after.

Pre-order your copy today

References

Capdeville, V. (n.d.). Betting book. DIGITENS: The Digital Encyclopedia of British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century. ISSN 2803-2845. https://www.digitens.org/en/notices/betting-book.html

Hatton, J. (1890). Clubland London and provincial. J. S. Vertie. (Excerpted in The Victorian Web.) https://victorianweb.org/art/architecture/clubs/22.html

Murden, S. (2018, March 13). Wagers at White’s. All Things Georgian. https://georgianera.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/wagers-at-whites/

Pitt, A. (2012). A study of gamblers and gaming culture in London, c. 1780–1844: Emerging strategic reasoning in a culture of conspicuous consumption [Master’s dissertation]. White Rose eTheses Online. https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/3291/2/Pitt_Arthur_MA_Dissertation_Final.pdf

Robinson, J. R. (1895). ‘Old Q’: A memoir of William Douglas, fourth Duke of Queensberry, K.T., one of “the fathers of the turf,” with a full account of his celebrated matches and wagers, etc. (pp. 39–41). S. Low, Marston. https://archive.org/details/cu31924028559189/page/n67/mode/2up

“There must be three hundred candles burning in this house, Mother.”

“Wax is cheap this winter.”

“Wax is never cheap. This is at least fifteen pounds worth of candles.”

So let’s talk about candles, and the research required to write that throwaway line.

Beeswax or tallow

Regency candles came in two kinds.

Tallow was rendered animal fat. It was cheap. It smoked, it smelled, and despite that it was what most people used because it was more affordable. Even wealthy families did not use beeswax for everyday lighting (though they may have had one or two Argand lamps, which very bright, and used oil).

The tallow candle’s wick often charred and bent over into the melted fat, so somebody had to keep trimming it with a scissor snuffer or the flame guttered. Self-consuming plaited wicks, the early version of the ones we use, were not invented until 1825, so in 1811-12 every tallow candle in the house required attention, much like the fires in the hearth.

Beeswax, on the other hand, burned steadily and smelled faintly of honey. A properly made beeswax candle needed almost no trimming at all. That is why the good rooms (read: public rooms) used wax candles. So when Lady Anne has a party, she’s going to use beeswax candles to light it. It might cost three to four times what a tallow candle cost, but demonstrating that you could spend that amount of money without causing yourself any financial difficulty was an important reason for the display.

There was also something called a Spermaceti candle that used wax from a sperm whale, which was even better, rarer, and more expensive than beeswax. The candle burned so long, so steadily, and so brightly that it became the standard for all other candles. But it was rare and prohibitively pricey.

So, Lady Anne purchases roughly three hundred wax candles at four to the pound is about seventy-five pounds of wax. Darcy’s fifteen pounds works out to roughly four shillings a pound. He calculates the cost in his head while standing there, tallying them all up.

He’s clever like that.

And just so you know—I couldn’t find the actual cost of those candles in 1811, so I used author Allison Goodman’s figure from The Guardian, where she says

It cost at least £15–an average working man’s yearly wage—to light a ballroom with wax candles for one night. Candles were sold in four-hour or six-hour burn lengths, and they dictated the length of the ball. One can imagine the delight of walking into a ballroom and finding the room ablaze with six-hour candles, and the disappointment of finding only the four-hour kind in the candelabra.

I figured Lady Anne has purchased enough candles for a ball, even though she’s throwing a party and there’s no dancing.

If you want a sense of what lighting a great big ballroom cost, the Bath Assembly Rooms paid £999 for their chandeliers, and then their candle and oil bill for their first season was £556. That was 1777, and so the actual bill in 1811 would likely have been more.

As a comparison, the Dashwood women only had £500 to live on for a year. And Lizzy’s £1000 fortune (after her mother dies) would have given her only £50 a year. Maybe even £40, because I’m not sure how much you needed to deposit for the five percents. (Another thing to go check—if you know, please drop it in the comments).

The tax

We’re back to taxes again!

Candles were taxed in Britain from 1709 until 1831.

Not lightly, either. Beeswax carried a duty of fourpence a pound, versus only a penny on tallow. And it’s also important to know that you could not lawfully make candles yourself without a license, which is why, when Lord Althorp finally moved to repeal the tax in 1831, he pitched it to the House of Commons as letting laborers and small farmers “make their own candles without any restriction.”

Of course, wherever there’s a tax, there’s going to be a black market of sorts (we’ll talk about the tea tax sometime), and candles were no different. Illicit candle-making was a real trade and there was a lot of money to be made from it. The Treasury papers include a report from 1755 in which the Excise Commissioners consider a complaint from the tallow chandlers of London and Westminster about clandestine manufacture eating into their business.

That business was an incredibly profitable one, both for the chandlers and the government. In 1823 the candle duty/tax brought in £375,000 gross from England alone. A truly staggering sum.

Yes, this is how far authors go down the research rabbit hole sometimes. HOURS spent on the accuracy of a single line.

Please send coffee.

The favor

Which brings us to Lady Anne’s answer to her son in my story.

“Martin Whish owed me a favor, for I matched his daughter with her husband. Go and dress, Fitzwilliam.”

Martin Whish was one of the chairmen of His Majesty’s Excise. Darcy shook his head. If his mother had some sort of arrangement where she was not paying the full tax, it was best he know nothing of it.

Martin Whish was a real man. We don’t know a ton about him, but here’s what we do: he lived from 1743 to 1826, he fathered eighteen children (18!) across three marriages, and he was a Commissioner of Excise. The detail survives primarily because one of his many children, Charles, grew up to be a well-known mathematician, and his father is mentioned in his biography.

I gave Lady Anne one of Whish’s daughters to match, and Martin Whish may or may not have done Lady Anne a favor by discounting the excise tax on her candles for her evening party.

Darcy wisely decides not to inquire.

In real life, it wasn’t funny

The candle tax fell hardest on the people who could least afford it. A gentleman’s house would likely never feel the pinch of it. Servants in the great houses were given the nubs of burnt down candles as a bonus of sorts. But a laboring family burned tallow and didn’t always have much of that.

When the Commons debated the tax in the 1820s, one member put it plainly—the rich had wax lights, spermaceti lights, and gas lights. The poor man had only his farthing candle.

Reader Question: Fifteen pounds of candles for one evening! What’s the most absurd hospitality expense you’ve ever seen justified—Regency or otherwise?

**Okay—where did I get all of this? I do this research on the fly, so I don’t always keep the urls and so on (can’t promise all future posts will have them). I know, it’s not very scholarly of me.

But . . . here’s what I do still have in my notes.

The tax ran 1709–1831
https://www.soane.org/exhibitions/georgian-illuminations/lighting

Fourpence a pound on beeswax
https://www.waxchandlers.org.uk/origins/chronology-of-the-wax-chandlers-history/

A penny a pound on tallow
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1825/jun/07/duty-on-soap-and-tallow

£375,000 gross revenue, and the “farthing candle” line
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1823/may/21/tax-on-tallow-candles

Licences, and Althorp’s “without any restriction”
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1831/feb/16/tax-on-candles

The 1755 chandlers’ complaint about clandestine manufacture
https://beta.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/id/C7605271

Fours, sixes, eights, twelves to the pound
https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/DigitalLibrary/view/index.cfm?doc=ResearchReports%5CRR0033.xml

Plaited self-consuming wicks date from 1825
https://janeaustensworld.com/tag/candles-in-the-regency-era/

Bath Assembly Rooms: £999 chandeliers, £556 candles and oil
https://www.countrylife.co.uk/property/guides-advice/georgian-lighting-the-romance-of-candles-16922

Martin Whish
https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Whish/

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You also mentioned that you would like to hear about the tidbits of history I stumble across as I write JAFF variations, so I’ll be sharing some of them as I work on the editing for The Matchmaker’s Mistake, due out September 10th.

(Caveat—I am an amateur, a history enthusiast, not a professional historian. I research carefully, but your mileage may vary—feel free to tell me so in the comments).

--Melanie

In every one of her books, Austen gives us a wonderfully detailed picture of her characters and their society. In Pride and Prejudice, we know how Elizabeth Bennet thinks, how Mr. Darcy behaves when uncomfortable, and precisely how long Mr. Collins can talk without ever noticing that no one is listening.

What did Austen not explain? Every detail of daily life. Her readers were her contemporaries, so they already knew how much it cost to enter an exhibition, when a gentleman might call upon a lady, or had an idea of how long a carriage journey from Gracechurch Street to Pall Mall might take.

Austen wasn’t writing historical fiction. To her it was simply fiction. But the history part is something today’s authors must contend with, because the world in which her stories are set has largely vanished.

Researching a variation involves more than checking whether a gown, meal, or form of address existed in 1812. (Don’t get me started on having to look up every word’s etymology—etymonline.com and google book’s n-gram viewer are some of my hardest working tools).

The harder question is often how to use the history to propel the story. Could Elizabeth visit a public exhibition without a formal invitation? Would the Gardiners feel comfortable there? Might Georgiana Darcy discuss a certain painting with enthusiasm or disdain? Would Darcy invite his cousin the colonel to attend an exhibit because he loved the art—or because Richard was needed to act as Darcy’s wingman?

That final possibility proved particularly useful in The Matchmaker’s Mistake.

In the last third of the story, Elizabeth, Jane, and the Gardiners visit the British Institution in Pall Mall, where Darcy tries to get Elizabeth to talk to him.

Founded in 1805, the British Institution held its first exhibition the following year and became one of the Royal Academy’s principal London rivals—a rivalry between more commercial and professional artistic institutions rather than the artists themselves, who cheerfully exhibited at both. Art for its own sake was all well and good, but even artists had to eat, right?

The British Institution displayed works by living British artists, many of them offered for sale. Later exhibitions (1813 and after) also presented paintings by Old Masters borrowed from private collections.

Unlike a private ball or dinner, an exhibition did not require the Gardiners to receive an invitation from the Darcys or the Fitzwilliams. Visitors simply paid at the door. And when I need a place to have characters from different classes gather, my favorite phrase is “open to the public.”

The artist mentioned in The Matchmaker’s Mistake is Philip Reinagle, (sometimes spelled Phillip in period references). Reinagle began his career as an assistant to the celebrated portrait painter Allan Ramsay, whose studio produced portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte. He is now best known not for portraits, however, but for nearly everything else, including landscapes, sporting scenes, animals, birds, and botanical subjects.

On February 10th, 1812, Mr. Philip Reinagle was elected as a full Royal Academician. Our party meets at The British Institution on February 18th. The timing could not have been better, and so Georgiana is invited to join Mrs. Gardiner and the Bennet sisters to view the Institution’s landscapes and Reinagle’s flower studies.

Reinagle’s flower paintings were not typical pretty decorative arrangements in vases. He contributed botanical images to Robert John Thornton’s lavish Temple of Flora, in which the plants were painted as a botanical study and were set against atmospheric backgrounds which were painted by a different artist. Richard, whose artistic understanding is not his best quality, pronounces The Night-Blowing Cereus “ferocious.”

But fortuitous timing can only get you so far. I also needed paintings of a region that Darcy knew so that he could comment on them to Elizabeth. Thus, the Derbyshire landscapes Richard teases Darcy about are my own invention, though they are grounded in history.

Here’s how that works. Views of Dovedale and Matlock were a staple of British landscape painting. Artists and visitors alike had been sketching the Peak for decades, and paintings of Matlock, for example, appeared regularly on exhibition walls in London. Whether any were hanging at the British Institution in February of 1812 I couldn’t say, because the catalogue for 1812 isn’t available (they have earlier ones and then a gap, and pick up in 1813. (Not good timing there). But because of the other catalogues, I do know Derbyshire landscapes did hang on the walls at The British Institution at other times.

So that one I had to fudge a little. Yes, the landscapes were the sort of thing that would be there. No, I can’t say that they were there in February of 1812.

But this is the fun of researching for a story—you get to mix fictional characters and their story with the historical Regency London around them. A real exhibition provides Darcy with an excuse to stand beside Elizabeth. A shilling admission and a mutual love of culture helps me place the Gardiners and the Darcys beneath the same roof. And once they are there, surrounded by landscapes, flowers, catalogues, and fashionable spectators, a few of whom are rather loud, the research has done its work, and Darcy and Elizabeth can take over.

Reader Question: Are there bits of history you love that you have learned of from a JAFF story (or other historical novels)? Or is there a piece of history you haven’t but would like to?

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But in the Regency era, it was more complicated.

Jane Austen knew exactly what to do with a picnic. In Emma, the Box Hill outing begins with every outward promise of success—fine weather, good arrangements, mostly punctual guests—and yet “nothing was wanting but to be happy.” This is Austen’s way of gently lighting a social fuse. The result is not bliss but awkwardness, boredom, wounded feelings, and one of Emma’s most important lessons in character.

That is why I could not resist a picnic for a summertime novella, though I’m taking the social awkwardness in another direction.

A Regency picnic is the perfect setting for a rom-com. People are outside, but still trapped together. There is food, but also weather, uneven ground, small children getting into things, and the alarming possibility that someone might finally say what they mean.

Or maybe that will have to wait until they get all the lemonade out of their clothes.

The word “picnic” had appeared in English by the mid-eighteenth century and meant something more like what we would call a potluck, with everyone bringing a dish to share. By the Regency period, however, it had become associated with genteel outdoor dining, especially among the wealthy (Lee, 2019).

In practice, a picnic was not just “let us eat outside.” It was an undertaking. Food, linens, plates, cutlery, cushions, servants, amusements, and any other article that might prevent one’s guests from experiencing even the mildest inconvenience had to be packed and transported.

In The Pemberley Picnic, which is OUT ON THURSDAY, Darcy’s servants only have to move things out to the lawn. This is a very good thing since Darcy has impulsively invited Elizabeth and the Gardiners to a picnic that he’s not planned.

He invites them on Thursday. The picnic he invites them to—the one his servants know nothing about?

Friday.

Darcy knows this is an enormous ask—but Mrs. Reynolds takes it all in stride. At least, in Darcy’s presence. Picnics might have been rustic and romantic, but their execution depended largely on someone else’s back. He’s going to owe a lot of his servants some pretty nice bonuses.

The Pemberley Picnic can be found here: https://readerlinks.com/l/5513588

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Lee, A. (2019, July). The history of the picnic. History Today, 69(7). https://www.historytoday.com/archive/historians-cookbook/history-picnic

Yes, it is happening again: on July 1st, 2026, the JAFF Bonanza Giveaway returns for one day only!

Alix James and I started the JAFF Bonanza in 2024 because we wanted something like a “stuff your Kindle” day that was specifically for JAFF readers. There are other, broader romance freebie events out there, and they are wonderful. But JAFF is its own delightful little corner of the reading world, with its own pleasures, habits, arguments, and highly specific tropes.

Some of us enjoy angst. Some of us prefer fluff. Some of us want Darcy to suffer, but only in a manner that is emotionally productive, preferably followed by serious groveling and a very satisfying apology (see “highly specific tropes”). Most of us want Elizabeth to be witty, resourceful, and kind, even if she’s also headstrong and obstinate.

Then there are readers whose tastes change by the day. Perhaps a secret engagement, a rescued reputation, or a second chance romance is what they want. Sometimes wealthier Bennets, better-connected Bennets, meddling relations, snowbound inns, ballroom disasters, and proposals that go badly in entirely new ways is the plot that satisfies.

Of course, some of us simply want Mr. Collins to be elsewhere. (Raising my hand).

If you recognize yourself here, or are just now dipping your toes into the Jane Austen variations universe, the JAFF BONANZA is for you.

The point of variations is simple. Most books have lots of places where the story could have spun a different way (Pride and Prejudice, for example, is full of coincidences upon which the entire book rests). Variation authors and readers realize how many doors one story can open, and they lean in to the “what-ifs.” What if Darcy says something different at the ball? What if Elizabeth never heard the insult? What if Mr. Bingley has an accident on his way to London and has to return to Netherfield (or Longbourn)? What if Jane is less serene, Mr. Bennet more attentive, Lady Catherine more dangerous, Wickham more quickly exposed, or Colonel Fitzwilliam hangs around longer? What if the insult at the assembly happens differently or never happens at all? What if Hunsford never happens—or happens much, much worse?

The bones of the story are familiar, but the possibilities are endless. That is part of the fun. JAFF readers know the dance, but we still love seeing where a new author will change the steps.

And that is exactly why this event is so useful. It is a way to try variation authors you have not read before, catch up with authors you already love, and add enough books to your Kindle to alarm any sensible person.

Fortunately, sensible people are not the target audience for book giveaways like the Bonanza!

This year, more than forty JAFF authors are taking part in the Bonanza, and each author is offering one free eBook. Because these are eBooks, the giveaway is international. You do not need to be in the United States to take part, though you may need to check your own retailer page and time zone carefully. The safest plan is to visit the website on July 1st and click through to the books you want to download.

The official site is:

https://jaffbonanza.com

That is where you will be able to see the participating authors and click the buttons to find their free books.

The event begins at 12:01 a.m. Pacific time on July 1st, which is morning in Europe—about 8:01 a.m. in the UK and Ireland and 9:01 a.m. in Central Europe. Some authors may keep their books free the day before or the day after, but July 1st is the only day to be sure. In other words, if you are the sort of person who says, “I will remember,” and then immediately forget because someone in a waistcoat has appeared on the telly, perhaps make yourself a note, set an alarm, or go old-school and tie a piece of string around your finger.

(I promise I’m not judging. I AM that person—calendar notifications run my life.)

Alix and I are delighted to see this event growing, and we hope it brings you a ridiculous amount of readerly happiness.

Melanie

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But that was only half the bill.

Because in 1811, every wealthy household was also paying a second column of expenses—a stack of luxury taxes levied by the Crown to fund the long, expensive war with Napoleon. Male servants were taxed. Carriages were taxed. Horses were taxed. The coat of arms on Darcy’s coach door was taxed. The powdered hair on his footmen was taxed.

And then there is the small matter of feeding nineteen people three meals a day, which by the Adamses’ own estimate roughly doubles the annual cost of their wages all by itself.

Let’s add it up.

Why All These Taxes Existed (or: How Britain Paid for Napoleon)

The British state in 1811 was deep into the longest and most expensive war it had fought in a century. Pitt the Younger introduced income tax in 1799 to help fund it. But income tax was unpopular, complicated, and difficult to enforce, so the Crown relied heavily on a much simpler tool—he levied taxes on the visible markers of wealth.

If you had a male servant in livery, you paid for him.

If you had a carriage, you paid for it.

If you had a horse for anything but agriculture, you paid for it. (Maybe why Mr. Bennet uses farm horses to pull his carriage?)

If you displayed a coat of arms, you paid for it.

If your servant’s hair was powdered, you paid for that too.

The system was simple, almost impossible to evade, and explicitly designed to fall hardest on the people most able to pay. A man with one carriage paid less than a man with two. A household with two male servants paid much less per head than a household with eleven. The Treasury was running a progressive luxury tax two hundred years before the term existed.

Here is Darcy’s bill, item by item, as near as I can figure.

The Male Servant Tax (1777–1852)

Originally introduced by Lord North in 1777 to help fund the war against the American colonies. (Yes — this means both the tax and Anders the coachman’s family came from England’s losses in the same conflict. The colonies didn’t stay in England, but the taxes did). By 1808, with Britain deep in the Peninsular War, Parliament had ratcheted the rate up sharply.

The structure was progressive. The more male servants a household employed, the more you paid per servant. By 1808 the top rate had reached “a little over £7 per year for each male servant if there were eleven or more in the household.”

But it wasn’t just the footmen who wore livery—the tax applied not just to indoor servants but to “butlers, footmen, valets, grooms, coachmen, gardeners, park-keepers, gamekeepers, masters-of-the-horse, whippers-in and other huntsmen.” Any male servant employed in a luxury capacity, anywhere on the property, was taxable. The only exemptions were agricultural laborers, tradesmen’s servants, factory workers, and the servants of royals (of course), ambassadors, and colleges.

Darcy’s male servants: Tracy, two footmen, Franks (indoors), plus Anders, the head groom, two grooms, the stable boy, the tiger, the boot-boy, and the gardener (outdoors). That is eleven — exactly at the top of the progressive bracket.

Estimated annual cost: ~£77

So Darcy pays the Crown about £77 a year just for the privilege of being grand enough to need a butler, a valet, two footmen, and a properly staffed mews. Every one of his male servants is, in tax terms, a documented luxury.

The Hair Powder Tax (1795–1869)

A flat £1 3s 6d per powdered head per year. The license was effectively a tax on the wig—because by the 1790s, powdered hair was almost exclusively a marker of the wealthy and their liveried servants.

Yes. The Crown was taxing the wig powder. Which was, by the by, why most men had long stopped wearing them.

Estimated annual cost: ~£3–5

The Carriage Tax (Schedule D)

Want to own more than one carriage? You’re going to pay a lot for the privilege. The 1811 rates:

Vehicle

Annual tax

• First four-wheeled carriage (town coach)

  £11 5s

• Second four-wheeled carriage (barouche)

  £13 10s

• Two-wheeled carriage drawn by two horses (curricle)

  £9

Carriage tax total

~£34

Yes — the second four-wheeled carriage costs more in tax than the first. The Treasury was perfectly happy to grant a man one carriage (though it still taxed him for it). A second was vanity, and vanity is even more taxable! A third would be even more punitive. Conspicuous consumption: penalized line item by line item, by an actual statute, in 1811.

No wonder so many people rented horses and coaches in town.

The Horse Tax (Schedule E)

Riding and carriage horses were taxed progressively, beginning at about £2 13s 6d for the first horse and climbing from there. Donkeys, by the way, were exempt—which is probably why Jane Austen rode around in a donkey cart in her last years.

Across Darcy’s six horses, the bill comes to roughly £17 a year.

(Imagine being the Austens, calculating that a donkey would save them £8 11s a year over the most basic horse and gig. Then imagine being Darcy and not having to care.)

The Armorial Bearings Tax

Two guineas—£2 2s—per year for arms displayed on a carriage. Since Darcy likely has a coat of arms on his coach door, he’s going to pay it.

The Tax Bill, Tallied

Tax

Annual cost

• Male Servant Tax (11 men)

  £77

• Carriage Tax (3 vehicles)

  £34

• Horse Tax (6 horses)

  £17

• Armorial Bearings

  £2 2s

• Hair Powder (3–4 heads)

  £3–5

TAX TOTAL

~£130

That is £130 a year just in luxury taxes—a sum greater than the entire annual wages of three of Darcy’s housemaids combined—paid quietly to the Crown for the privilege of being grand.

A separate set of property-based taxes—the famous window tax (a four-story London house with thirty-odd windows could cost £20–£25) and inhabited house duty (assessed on rental value)—would push the household tax bill closer to £180. But those are house taxes, not servant taxes, so they live in their own column.

The Crown was paying for a war. They obviously felt no need to be subtle about it.

Food and Board: Another £300–£400 a Year

The Adamses note that servants’ food and lodging “essentially doubled the cost of their wages.” Nineteen people—twelve indoor, six in or around the mews, plus the part-time gardener occasionally fed at midday—need feeding three times a day (breakfast, dinner, supper), every day, plus the customary daily beer ration. Bereford House’s kitchen is feeding a small inn’s worth of people, all paid for by the master.

A rough estimate: £300–£400 a year, depending on how generous Mrs. Carroll is being with the butter.

The Bill, All In

So adding what we counted last time (wages and livery) to what we’ve counted today (taxes and food):

Category

Annual cost

• Wages (12 indoor + 7 outdoor)

  £417

• Livery for the visible six

  £85

• Servant + carriage + horse + coat of arms + powder taxes

  £130

• Food and board for ~19 people

  £300–£400

TOTAL

~£930–£1,030/year

Add window tax and inhabited house duty (~£40–£50) plus the occasional Christmas box, retirement gratuity, apothecary’s call for an ill maid, and the inevitable replacement of broken china, and you can comfortably round the full domestic-establishment cost to £1,000–£1,100 a year.

For perspective: Darcy’s £10,000-a-year income makes this about 10% of his total income — just on staffing the London house.

That is genuinely a lot of money. Most people in 1811 did not earn a tenth as much in their entire working lives.

What This Means in Context

A skilled tradesman in 1811—a blacksmith, a carpenter, a mason—earned about £50–£80 a year. Anders the coachman is comfortably in skilled-tradesman territory and almost certainly proud of it.

Mr. Bennet, on his £2,000 a year, could not begin to support an establishment like the Darcys’. He employs perhaps four female servants and one or two male, with a total wage bill of £40–£80 and almost no carriage tax to speak of. The Darcys spend more on liveries alone than the Bennets spend on their entire staff. Mr. Bennet pays roughly £2 a year in male servant tax. Darcy pays £77.

This is one of the biggest reasons a marriage between Elizabeth and Darcy was so socially seismic—not because Darcy is rich and Elizabeth is poor. No, Mr. Bennet was rich by society’s standards—he didn’t have to work for his money, he just collected from the tenants who worked his land—but because Darcy’s household operates at a scale of expenditure the Bennet household couldn’t even meaningfully approach.

Elizabeth doesn’t just become Mrs. Darcy—she becomes mistress of a vast establishment.

Final Takeaway: Wealth Is People, and People Cost Money

So the next time Darcy’s town coach pulls up at a townhouse on Upper Brook Street and a powdered footman hands Elizabeth down: that footman cost £25 in wages, £15 in livery, £7 in male-servant tax, and £1 3s 6d in hair powder. That coach cost £11 5s in carriage tax. The horses pulling it cost about £2 13s 6d each in horse tax. The arms on the door cost £2 2s. And the small boy in tailored velvet standing on the back step of the curricle is somewhere on the books too.

A quietly enormous human infrastructure, all working all day just so that one couple can move through London looking perfectly turned out without ever appearing to try.

This is what wealth looked like in 1811. Not jewels and gowns (though those too)—but a thousand pounds a year, paid out in wages, liveries, food, and taxes, to make a single house function as it should.

(I still want to hire all three housemaids. I still want to thank the tiger. And after writing these last four posts, I have an entirely new respect for whoever was keeping Darcy’s household accounts.)

Reader question: Of all the line items above, which one surprised you the most? Mine was that even the coat of arms was taxed. (Want to brag about your family? You have to pay to do it).

*Sources for the numbers above include Samuel and Sarah Adams’s The Complete Servant (1825). Wage figures are middle-of-the-bracket estimates; exact rates varied by household, region, and year. Income tax (on income over £60) was instituted in 1799, repealed in 1816, and reinstated for good in 1842.

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Today we ask the obvious follow-up question: what did Darcy actually pay all of them?

The answer comes in two parts. First, wages—what he paid each of them annually for doing their jobs. Second, livery—what he paid on top of that to dress the visible ones in his colors. Together: about £500 a year.

Which is a lot. And which is also, as we’ll see in the next post, not even half the bill.

Let’s start with the wages.

Wages: Roughly £417 a Year

The figures below are drawn from period sources: Samuel and Sarah Adams’s The Complete Servant (the standard working manual of the era), a published 1816 household breakdown for a country gentleman with £16,000–18,000 a year, and Georgian-era newspaper advertisements for servant positions. Wages varied by household, region, and negotiation; these are middle-of-the-bracket estimates for a wealthy London establishment. (It may be slightly less if we’re talking about 1811-13, but it’s likely not significantly so).

Indoor staff

Role

Annual wage

• Tracy (butler)

  £40

• Mrs. Aldworth (housekeeper)

  £25

• Mrs. Carroll (cook)

  £30

• Upper housemaid

  £15

• Two under housemaids (£14 each)

  £28

• Kitchen maid

  £14

• Scullery maid

  £9

• Two footmen (£25 each)

  £50

• Lady’s maid

  £20

• Franks (valet)

  £40

Indoor subtotal

£271

Outdoor staff

Role

Annual wage

• Anders (coachman)

  £30

• Head groom

  £25

• Two grooms (£22 each)

  £44

• Stable boy

  £10

• Tiger

  £10

• Boot-boy

  £7

• Gardener (part-time)

  £20

Outdoor subtotal

£146

WAGES TOTAL: ~£417/year

A few things worth knowing about these numbers.

A French male cook would earn £80 or more—two or three times what an English female cook earned. (When the French Revolution scattered the aristocracy, their cooks scattered with them, and London was a major beneficiary). Mrs. Carroll is English and excellent and Darcy is sensible, so we’re firmly in the £30 range.

A footman’s wage was famously based as much on his height as on his skill. The taller and more impressive, the higher the pay. (Yes. Really. There are advertisements specifying minimum heights and offering better rates for taller candidates). £25 is a respectable middle figure for a tall handsome footman in Darcy’s livery.

The lady’s maid at £20 looks low until you remember her food, lodging, and most of her clothing are free, and she typically receives her mistress’s cast-off gowns—which, when the mistress is Mrs. Darcy, is not a trivial benefit. A clever lady’s maid resold or refashioned the gowns and built up a small savings that her listed salary doesn’t begin to capture.

And Mrs. Aldworth at £25 a year is making roughly half what a skilled blacksmith or carpenter earned in the same period, but with food, lodging, fuel, candles, beer, and laundry all covered. By the standards of 1811, she is doing very well. The visible salary tells you almost nothing about the actual economic position of an upper servant in a wealthy house.

Livery: About £85 a Year on Top

Most of the staff are paid in wages plus food and a bed. But the liveried servants — the ones the public sees — come dressed in Darcy’s colors, at Darcy’s expense.

Item

Annual cost

• Two footmen, full livery

  £30

• Anders: livery, box coat, hats, boots, stable dress

  £15

• Two grooms, livery + stable dress

  £20

• Head groom, livery + stable dress

  £10

• Tiger, tailored small livery

  £10

LIVERY TOTAL

~£85

Liveries weren’t just suits—they were a kit, replaced on a rolling cycle. The Adamses specify that a coachman receives “two suits of livery, a box coat once in two or three years, two hats, and two pairs of boots; also one or two stable dresses, consisting of overall, jackets, waistcoats and underdress.” Footmen had similar entitlements. The tiger’s livery was tailored small but to the same quality standard, because the entire point of the tiger was to be visibly expensive.

If you want to track Regency wealth signaling at its most concentrated, this is where to look: not in the master’s coat, which is tailored once and worn for years, but in the constant rolling expense of dressing five or six visible servants in matching colors, replacing pieces every season, and ensuring nothing looks worn.

The Labor Bill, Tallied

Category

Annual cost

• Wages (12 indoor + 7 outdoor)

  £417

• Livery for the visible six

  £85

LABOR SUBTOTAL

~£500/year

So Darcy pays roughly £500 a year to nineteen people directly to do their jobs and to look exactly as expected while doing them.

That is already a substantial amount. It is more than the entire annual income of most working families in 1811. It is enough to buy a modest house in a country town.

And it is, in the context of running Bereford House (let’s not get into Pemberly), not even half the bill.

Because in 1811, every wealthy household was also paying a second column of expenses—a stack of luxury taxes, levied by the Crown to fund the long expensive war with Napoleon, on the visible markers of wealth. Male servants were taxed. Carriages were taxed. Horses were taxed. The coat of arms on Darcy’s coach door was taxed. The powdered hair on his footmen (which he may or may not have required) was taxed.

Plus, the small matter of feeding nineteen people three meals a day, which roughly doubles the cost of their wages all by itself.

That’s the next post.

Bring snacks.

Reader question: Which of these wage details did you not expect? Mine is the fact that Mrs. Aldworth, made only £25 a year as housekeeper, but is actually doing better economically than a skilled tradesman earning £60–£80 because her food, lodging, fuel, and clothing are all covered. It didn’t seem like enough to me until I figured all the rest out.

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She never wanted a fairy tale prince—but he showed up anyway.

Nursing her sister at Netherfield should have been Elizabeth Bennet’s only concern. Instead, she must endure Mr. Darcy’s intense scrutiny and Miss Bingley’s pointed barbs. And after relentless rain turns the road home into a river, Elizabeth is forced to make a daring rescue. Now she’s sick, stranded, and at the mercy of Mr. Darcy’s unsettling concern.

Fitzwilliam Darcy lives his life by the rules: stay composed, stay detached, and never, ever fall for a woman outside his sphere. But Elizabeth Bennet, with her mud-streaked hem, sharp tongue, and fearless heart, unravels him.

As Miss Bingley’s schemes grow increasingly desperate, Elizabeth insists on returning to Longbourn—even if it means walking ten miles through treacherous conditions. Alarmed, Darcy offers her a truce: stay until she’s well, and he’ll shield her from every insult.

As Elizabeth discovers that accepting help can be its own kind of strength, and Darcy learns that yielding doesn’t make him weak, another kind of tempest begins to gather—one neither of them expected.

Sometimes love means standing firm in the storm. And sometimes, it means surrendering.

Grab your copy!

This week, we’re walking outside.

Because while Mrs. Aldworth is upstairs in the linen closet and Mrs. Carroll is downstairs deciding which sauce Darcy doesn’t get to refuse, there is an entire second establishment behind the house, across the cobbles, in the mews—where the horses live, the carriages wait, and a small army of men and boys keep Darcy’s wheels turning.

Today we count them.

(And yes, there is a tiger. We will get there.)

A Quick Note on the London Mews

If you haven’t encountered the term: a mews is the back lane behind a row of London houses, lined with stables and coach houses. Picture a quiet cobbled street where horses come out to be hitched up, grooms shout at each other in a friendly way, and the smell of hay, leather, and horse is constant and not particularly . . . subtle.

The mews is its own world. Coachmen live above the coach houses. Grooms sleep in lofts over the stalls. The household above-stairs may never set foot back there. (Darcy would. Elizabeth might. Caroline Bingley? Not on your life).

In our 1811/12 setup for The Marriage Trap, the mews behind Bereford House supports Darcy’s entire London transportation system—and that system is more elaborate than you might think.

What the Darcys Actually Need to Move Around London

Darcy needs:

• A town coach for formal occasions, calls, the theatre, evening engagements

• A lighter carriage for daytime errands and the park (a barouche or perhaps a landau)

• A sporting carriage — Darcy would, in fact, own a curricle, because Darcy. (Hey, he’s a single, wealthy young man in London . . . he’s gonna have a curricule).

• Saddle horses for himself and Georgiana (Elizabeth is a work in progress)

• Carriage horses—usually a pair, sometimes four for the town coach if he’s feeling formal

That is a lot of horses, but probably fewer than you’d expect. Darcy keeps six in town: four to handle the carriages (shared across vehicles, because he is sensible) and a saddle horse each for himself and Georgiana. He’ll add a seventh the day Elizabeth agrees to ride in the park, which she has not yet, but he is working on. (Pemberley, where the hunters, work horses, and additional carriage teams live, is its own civilization.)

Every horse requires daily feeding, watering, mucking out, grooming, exercising, and—at least weekly—someone deciding whether it’s lame, off its food, or developing an illness.

This is why many families simply rented horses while in town. But Darcy has his own property for them, so in TMT it’s cheaper for him to keep his own.

Now—who does all this work?

The Outdoor Roster

1) The Coachman

At Bereford House, this is Anders—Darcy’s coachman in all my stories (even when he’s not mentioned) since A Gentleman’s Honor, and the holder of Strong Opinions on every horse, carriage, and pedestrian within a half-mile radius. Also, his head holds the maps of all roads in and around London (just see The Princess Problem). He truly is, as Darcy says in AGH, “the best coachman in London.”

Anders’ backstory: he’s the only person in his family in service, and it’s because he chose it. His father is one of four brothers who came over from America after the Revolution (his father had been enslaved but was freed by the British, then set about working until he could pay for the next brother’s freedom, then the two of them set about earning money for brother three, and so on). The brothers settled in and around Lambeth and have spawned a family of artisans, tradesmen, soldiers, and sailors—and Anders could easily have moved into any of those fields. Instead he loves horses and flashy carriages and cannot, on his own, afford either, so he attached himself to a gentleman who could. The gentleman turned out to be Darcy, which is the best mutual decision either of them ever made.

So what would Anders actually do?

He wouldn’t just drive the carriage. He runs the stable—hires and oversees grooms, manages the horses, supervises the carriages and tack, and answers only to Darcy himself. He sits high on the box in livery (Darcy’s colors), gloves on, hat brushed, expression neutral, and he can take a turn into a crowded London street at speed without clipping a flower seller. This is harder than it sounds, and the streets were full of evidence of coachmen who couldn’t.

He is, in many ways, responsible for the family’s safety on the roads.

Anders would live in a small flat above the coach house and run the mews with roughly the same authority Mrs. Aldworth runs the linen. And on his day off—he’d cross the river to Lambeth and visit with his family.

2) The Head Groom

If the coachman is the general, the head groom is the lieutenant in charge of the horses themselves. He oversees feeding, watering, grooming, exercising, and the medical care of the stable. He knows each horse by every quirk: which one bites if you reach for the off-side, which one refuses a puddle, which one is a diva.

3) Grooms (two)

Below the head groom, the working hands. They muck out, brush, walk the horses, harness up the carriage, and ride out with the master when he goes for a gallop in the park.

One of them is probably also Darcy’s personal groom—the one who rides behind him, holds his horse outside Brooks’s, and knows exactly how much sugar each horse will accept as a bribe.

4) Stable boy

Young, energetic, occasionally underfoot. He does the worst of the work—pitchforks, water buckets, scrubbing, removing—well, you know—and learns the trade by being yelled at (affectionately, in my stories, but not always in reality).

A bright stable boy may rise to groom, and a very bright groom may one day rise to coachman, which is roughly the career ladder of the Regency mews.

5) The Tiger

I promised a tiger. Here he is.

A “tiger” was a very small boy in smart livery whose job was to ride on the back of a sporting carriage—a curricle or phaeton—and hold the horses when the gentleman dismounts. He is partly functional and partly for show. The smaller and more impeccably dressed, the better.

(Some real tigers were nine or ten years old. Some were even smaller. This was considered charming. We can have THOUGHTS about that.)

A gentleman who keeps a tiger is announcing two things: I drive my own sporting carriage, and I have the means to dress a child in tailored velvet just to stand at the back of it.

I’m not sure Darcy would keep a tiger, unless it was to give one of Anders’ small relatives a job. What do you think?

6) The Boot-boy

A small boy who lives somewhere between the kitchen and the back yard, scrubbing boots before dawn, sharpening knives, hauling whatever needs hauling. Sometimes classed as indoor, sometimes as outdoor, but honestly, he can be found wherever the dirtiest task is.

The boot-boy is possibly the most invisible person in the entire household, but he probably knows where every bell-pull leads.

7) The Gardener

A London townhouse like Bereford has, at most, a modest back garden which is itself a sign of wealth, but nothing like Pemberley’s grounds. A gardener might come in two or three times a week to keep the herbs alive, the flower beds presentable, and the climbing rose from eating the kitchen window.

The Outdoor Roster, Tallied

For Bereford House in residence, a believable count is:

• Coachman (1)

• Head groom (1)

• Grooms (2)

• Stable boy (1)

• Tiger (1)

• Boot-boy (1)

• Gardener (part-time)

That’s roughly seven outdoor staff, plus the part-time gardener.

Combine that with twelve indoors and you get an establishment of close to twenty people.

For one couple and their sister. In one house.

This is what wealth looked like in 1811. Not jewels and gowns (though those too)—but a quietly enormous human infrastructure, organized into two parallel kingdoms divided by a baize door and a cobbled lane, both working all day so that a carriage can pull up at the front door and someone, anyone, can murmur, “The master is home, Mrs. Darcy.”

Final Takeaway: It Takes a Village

Indoor servants make sure a house runs. Outdoor servants make sure a household moves—and in Regency London, a household that cannot move is not really part of society. The carriage at the door isn’t just transportation. It’s a small rolling announcement of who you are, where you’re going, and approximately how much you can afford.

So when Darcy’s town coach rolls up to a house on Berkeley Square and a footman hands Elizabeth out, please remember: the coachman who drove them, the grooms who harnessed the pair, the stable boy who walked the off-horse that morning, and maybe, somewhere, a tiger in a tiny coat?

They are all part of the answer to the question, “How did people live like that?”

And the answer is: with help. Astonishing amounts of help.

Reader question: Be honest—did you already know about tigers, or is this the first time you’re meeting one?

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You’re in London. It’s 1811. A carriage rattles to a stop, the front door opens, and the ritual begins. Cloaks vanish. Gloves disappear. Someone produces hot water. The house is so spotless that you suspect either (a) magic or (b) a small invisible army.

Some readers swoon over the hero.

I swoon over the maids.

Because while the hero is broodily sending heated looks at his lady love, someone else is hauling coal up endless flights of stairs, airing bedrooms, polishing mirrors, and making everything look like it requires no effort whatsoever.

So today we’re answering the question every Regency reader secretly wonders:

How many servants does it take to run Darcy’s London house in 1811–12?

Let’s use The Marriage Trap‘s Bereford House as our model: four floors, about 4,000 square feet total (including kitchens, servants’ rooms, and family spaces).

The answer is: fewer than Pemberley . . . but more than you might think.

Because the goal in town isn’t just comfort. It’s effortless comfort. And “effortless” is actually extremely labor-intensive.

Two Rules for Servants of Wealthy Houses

Rule #1: The house must look like nobody lives there

It must be always appear warm, bright, clean, quiet, and stocked—without any visible evidence of cleaning, carrying, scrubbing, or someone muttering “why do she keep leaving her shawl everywhere???”

Rule #2: The house must be ready for the season it’s in

London is seasonal. Some months you’re basically a quiet private residence; other months you’re a social machine. The servants must be prepared for the change—because society will not wait for you to catch up.

What “4,000 Square Feet” Really Means in Regency Terms

In The Marriage Trap, Bereford House’s 4,000 square feet includes:

• Basement: kitchen, scullery, pantry/stores, (maybe) servants’ hall, coal/wine/beer storage

• Ground floor: dining room, breakfast/parlor spaces, entry and passage flow

• First floor: drawing room(s) — the show floor

• Upper floors: bedrooms, dressing rooms, possible nursery rooms

• Attic/top: servants’ sleeping rooms, storage

So yes, it’s “only” 4,000 square feet—small compared to Pemberley in Derbyshire—but it’s also four floors (stairs = work, and lots of exercise) and lots of rooms (17!) with different functions (more fires, more polishing, more linen, more everything).

The Practical Answer: 8–10 Servants

For a four-story, 4,000 sq ft London townhouse in 1811/12, a believable “wealthy but not ducal” staffing level is 8–10 indoor servants.

That’s enough to keep the house running smoothly, keep the public rooms pristine, and provide proper service.

And yes: you can run it with fewer. But then the house starts showing strain—dust in corners, fewer fires lit, meals simplified, and somebody always sprinting up the stairs like they’re fleeing a murder.

(Hmm. Plot bunny.)

The Essential Roles: The House Doesn’t Function Without Them

Here’s the core lineup—Bereford House’s actual nervous system.

1) The Butler (or senior manservant)

In The Marriage Trap, this is Tracy, who quietly manages and protects.

Even a small wealthy household likes a capable male head of front-of-house. He handles the door, organizes service, manages plate and wine, supervises footmen (if any), and generally makes the home feel solid.

If you’ve ever wondered how a house can feel both welcoming and slightly intimidating at the same time, the answer is “a good butler.”

2) The Housekeeper

She runs the domestic universe: linens, stores, cleaning schedules, supplies, repairs, and supervision of the maids.

And if she’s anything like Mrs. Aldworth, she might also threaten to brain house-breakers with her chatelaine. (She doesn’t. But she wants to.)

The housekeeper knows everything that happens in the house. Everything.

3) The Cook

In London, a good cook is a social asset. A bad cook is an embarrassment.

And if you are Mrs. Carroll, you are thrilled the new mistress has arrived and encouraged you to make more than the same seven meals the master always eats—so your cooking becomes a minor emotional subplot.

As it does.

Mrs. Carroll also has access to a lot of weapons in the kitchen (rolling pin, cast iron skillets), so a certain character whose last name begins with a W had better steer clear.

4) Housemaids (typically 2, but I gave Beresford 3, because Darcy likes a very clean house)

The maids are the backbone. Fires, sweeping, dusting, beds, chamber pots, polishing, upstairs-downstairs logistics. So the answer to “How is this house always clean?” is: it’s the maids.

Some readers swoon over the hero, but I swoon over the maids.

For 4,000 sq ft, two housemaids is the sensible minimum. If there are frequent guests or heavy entertaining, three is comfortable.

5) Kitchen maid

Assists the cook with prep, washing vegetables, helping with service, and the general kitchen labor that prevents the cook from losing her mind. In the season—especially Elizabeth’s first season in town—the Darcys would probably hire a little extra help for Mrs. Carroll.

6) Scullery maid

The one in the trenches: pots, pans, knives, grease, endless hot water, endless scrubbing.

If the staff is smaller, the kitchen maid and scullery maid might be the same overworked girl. A wealthy household often had one of each.

The “Wealth Shows” Add-Ons

Footman (+1)

A footman is partly labor, partly display. He answers the bell, serves meals, runs messages, and stands behind chairs during dinners looking elegantly blank. (Also: male servants were taxed by the Crown, which made having one a small public announcement that you could afford the tax.) One footman is very plausible for a wealthy house with any ambition to entertain.

Second footman (optional in general, required for Bereford House energy)

Two footmen isn’t required for square footage, but it was required for the vibe. And Bereford House has at least two, who, when necessary, listen for the squeaky stair and guard rear exits when they’re told to—sort of like highly polished domestic bouncers.

Lady’s maid (Elizabeth’s—unnamed)

If there is a fashionable mistress in residence, a lady’s maid is essential. Hair. Gowns. Mending. Packing. The mysterious art of making someone appear to the world as if she simply wakes up looking like that.

If you’ve read The Marriage Trap closely, you may have noticed that Elizabeth’s lady’s maid isn’t mentioned much. I already had Franks and Tracy and Mrs. Ashworth, so I’m saving the lady’s maid character for a future book.

But she does exist. She does her job. She has feelings about it. We just didn’t visit with her to hear them.

Valet (Franks, who belongs to Darcy rather than to the house)

A gentleman of Darcy’s caliber does not dress himself. He has Franks for that.

A bachelor might skip a valet altogether and lean on the butler or a footman. A particularly fastidious gentleman wants his own man. And we all know which category Darcy falls into.

The important structural note: Franks belongs to Darcy, not to Bereford House. He travels between Pemberley and London with his master, because a valet—at least this valet—is not a house servant. He’s a personal servant, and therefore outside the normal hierarchy of the house. He almost certainly knows things Darcy will never say aloud, and he will never say them either, because confidentiality is the point.

Some great households kept separate valets at each property, but it is extremely Darcy to want his own man, his own way, every day, in either house.

So Franks travels.

The Bereford House Twelve

Here’s your off-season roster—twelve, which reads as wealthy, competent, and “ready to scale up.”

House staff (10):

• Butler (Tracy)

• Housekeeper (Mrs. Aldworth)

• Cook (Mrs. Carroll)

• 3 housemaids

• Kitchen maid

• Scullery maid

• 2 footmen

Personal to the master (1):

• Valet (Franks)

Personal to the mistress (1)

• Lady’s maid (Elizabeth’s, unnamed)

This is exactly the kind of establishment where the house feels like a sanctuary because somewhere behind a baize door, a dozen people are working furiously.

Bonus: Who Appears in the Hall to Welcome Someone Important?

Not everyone. The house is not a musical number.

The formal “welcome line” would be:

• Butler (front and center)

• Housekeeper (present, authoritative)

• Footman (to take wraps/luggage and look impressive)

As a visitor, you might glimpse:

• a housemaid hovering at the passage

• a cook “coincidentally” near a doorway

• the faint sense that the entire below-stairs population is listening

Which is accurate. Because they are.

Reader question: Which of the Bereford House twelve would you most want to read about in a story?

If you want to read more about these characters, they are all in The Marriage Trap, which is available on Amazon (and in KU) now.

Read The Marriage Trap

Release Day: May 14^th

There are many excellent qualities one might wish for in a husband.

Kindness. Reliability. Emotional intelligence. The ability to express affection in a clear and comprehensible manner.

Unfortunately for Elizabeth Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy begins this book with only one out of three of these qualities—and his reliability is used against him.

He has money, competence, and a powerful, protective sense of responsibility. What he does not have is any practical understanding of how to behave in a marriage to a woman who did not intend to marry him, argues professionally, notices everything, and refuses to be managed.

Which means that The Marriage Trap is, among other things, a story about two people who marry before they fall in love and then have to figure out everything else—including how to communicate—afterward.

Including:

• how to set rules

• how to live in the same house

• how to trust each other

• how to let someone else take care of them for once

• and whether Darcy can successfully give his wife a compliment before the end of the book

(The answer is: he does. But it takes a while).

Underneath all the banter and marital chaos, this story is really about communication. Elizabeth is very good with words. Darcy is not. He says the wrong thing, or too little, or nothing at all. Meanwhile, he is quietly rearranging his entire life around her comfort without expecting credit for it.

So Elizabeth has to learn to pay attention not only to what he says, but to what he does.

Because Darcy speaks with actions long before he finds the words. Even if he’s also holding something back. . .

This story began because I kept thinking about how strange it would be for Darcy and Elizabeth to skip directly past courtship and land immediately in marriage. No gradual realization. No slow admiration from afar. Just: well, society says you must marry now, so good luck with that.

And it turns out I really enjoy doing a forced marriage scenario in the rom com context.

There is also forced proximity, sharp banter, a compromise that is entirely Darcy’s fault, and what may genuinely be the cutest bookshop scene I have ever written.

So in honor of release week, I thought I would share the opening chapter with you below.

I hope you enjoy it.

The Marriage Trap

The Marriage Trap Chapter One

Elizabeth Bennet had not come to Ramsgate to die, whatever her mother’s most recent letter might suggest.

She had come to breathe, properly breathe, without the rattling wheeze that had plagued her since June. It was the last week of August now, and she could finally stroll along the seafront without always requiring a steadying arm. If she were very fortunate, she would soon be able to pass an entire day without someone telling her she ought to be resting.

Just now, she was pleasantly cool, sitting on a bench overlooking the harbour with a wool shawl wrapped around her shoulders and a second shawl draped across her lap. The wind off the water carried the smell of salt, and Elizabeth took deep, greedy lungfuls of it simply because she could.

“You are smiling,” Mrs. Morgan observed from her position at the opposite end of the bench. “I am not certain I trust it.”

“I am merely enjoying the view.”

Mrs. Morgan looked out at the horizon. “The view is grey.”

“Gloriously grey,” Elizabeth agreed. “Grey sky, grey sea, grey stones. After weeks of staring at my bedroom ceiling, I find I have developed an appreciation for grey.”

Mrs. Morgan made a sound that might have been agreement. It might, however, have meant any number of things, as Elizabeth had not yet learned to decipher them all.

Mrs. Morgan was an unsentimental woman of about forty with dark hair and a sceptical expression, who was currently serving as Elizabeth’s companion. She was not truly a companion but a distant cousin of Aunt Gardiner, an officer’s widow who conveniently lived near the sea in Ramsgate.

“The physician said fresh air,” Mrs. Morgan continued, as though reading Elizabeth’s thoughts. “He did not say sitting on a damp bench in weather that would discourage a seal.”

“Seals thrive in this weather. I have read about it.”

“You have read about everything. It is one of your less endearing qualities.” Mrs. Morgan lifted her brows, but Elizabeth could hear the teasing in her words.

She laughed, a brief but proper laugh. The sound—and the fact that it did not end in coughing—surprised her.

“There,” she said, when the laugh had subsided. “You see? I am much better. The sea air and saltwater baths are healing my lungs.”

“The sea air is making your nose red. Your mother will blame me.”

Elizabeth pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders, though in truth she was not cold. The wind was bracing but not cutting, and after so many days confined to sickrooms and sitting rooms, she found it delightful. “My mother is three counties away. She cannot see my nose.”

“She will hear of it. Mothers always hear of these things.”

Elizabeth had contrived to hide her own illness from not only her mother but her entire family—someone had to nurse the others, and who else was there? Eventually her body had exacted its price, and she had collapsed before them all like a meringue.

“You are thinking again,” Mrs. Morgan said. “I can see it in your face.”

“I am thinking about pride,” Elizabeth said.

“A worthy subject for contemplation. Most people should think more carefully about their pride.”

“Including you?”

This was met with a tiny smile. “I have no pride. Only standards.”

Mrs. Morgan rose from the bench with a decisive movement. “Though I will say this: pride is a luxury for those who can afford it. A woman without fortune would do better to trade it for something more practical.”

Elizabeth suspected the answer was a husband, and she did not feel recovered enough to argue about husbands this early in the day.

“Come,” Mrs. Morgan said. “We shall walk to the end of the promenade and back. The physician said exercise is beneficial.”

The end of the promenade was at least a mile away, and Elizabeth was not certain she could make the entire distance without rest. “The physician said gentle exercise. He specifically emphasised the word ‘gentle.’”

“Walking is gentle. I am not proposing we scale the cliffs.”

Elizabeth allowed herself to be helped to her feet, suppressing the automatic protest that she did not need assistance. Although she was vastly improved, the galling truth was that she did still need it.

“Are you out of breath?” Mrs. Morgan asked, as they began their slow progress along the promenade.

She was not; it was a hopeful sign. “I am only thinking about how tired I am of being tired.”

“That is at least a productive thought. The more you walk, the less tired you shall become.”

But not today, Elizabeth thought. Today walking would make her very tired indeed.

They strolled in comfortable silence for several minutes, past the tall lodging houses that faced the water and the bathing machines that stood ready for hardier souls than Elizabeth. A few figures dotted the Parade even at this early hour. An elderly gentleman was taking his constitutional, a pair of sailors turned their collars up against the wind, a maidservant hurried in the opposite direction with a covered basket, and a nurse held the hands of two sleepy children as they walked past.

Crowds required energy and conversation required wit, neither of which Elizabeth could reliably summon just now. But here, in this grey and quiet morning, she could breathe, walk, and watch the waves without anyone expecting anything more from her.

It was, she reflected, both wonderful and a little dull.

The houses further along the seafront were quite grand, tall, pale structures with iron railings and wide windows designed to capture the sea light. Some were clearly let lodgings for the summer, houses for people with means to escape the heat and smells of London. Papa had incurred significant expense to send Elizabeth here to recover and to engage Mrs. Morgan. He had not even complained about it, which she knew indicated the depth of his concern.

“You are quiet,” Mrs. Morgan said. “Are you still musing upon your pride?”

“I did not say it was my pride, and no. I am thinking about money. It is a vulgar subject, but illness makes one practical.”

“Illness makes one honest.” Mrs. Morgan walked several paces in silence, her gaze fixed on some point far out to sea, and Elizabeth had the distinct impression she was deciding how much of herself to give away. “My husband came home from the war with a cough that never left him, and we had one year before he died. We spoke of money, among other things, for he wished to see me provided for. It was, in an odd way, a good year. I would not trade it, for we fell in love all over again.” She paused.

When she resumed, her voice had lost its usual tartness.

“Life as an officer’s wife was difficult, but we were happy, and that is more than most wives of my acquaintance can claim.” She adjusted her bonnet with a brisk tug.

Elizabeth recalled the easy way in which Uncle Gardiner handed her aunt into a carriage, the private smiles or glances they often exchanged. That was the kind of marriage she wanted, if she married at all. She would rather remain a spinster aunt to her eldest sister Jane’s future children than sell her freedom for the sake of a comfortable settlement.

One house at the far end of the terrace stood slightly apart from its neighbours, set back from the Parade behind a low stone wall—likely leased for the summer at an expense Elizabeth could not comfortably imagine. Its blinds were down, giving it a shuttered, secretive look. Elizabeth might have thought no more of it had her attention not been caught by her companion.

“There,” Mrs. Morgan said, nodding towards a figure ahead of them on the promenade. “That girl again.”

Elizabeth followed Mrs. Morgan’s gaze. A young woman stood near the railing, looking out at the sea. She was perhaps fifteen or sixteen, fair-haired and slight, dressed in a pale blue pelisse that was too thin for the windy weather. Even at this distance, Elizabeth could see that she was shivering.

“She was here yesterday as well,” Mrs. Morgan continued. “Staring at the water, and not in a peaceful way.”

They drew closer, and Elizabeth studied the girl. There was something in her taut posture that was more than simple contemplation. She appeared to be searching for an answer to some perplexing question, though what that might be, Elizabeth could not say.

“We should not stare,” Mrs. Morgan murmured.

“You pointed her out.”

“I did not point. I merely made an observation.”

The girl must have sensed their attention, because she turned suddenly, her eyes meeting Elizabeth’s across the distance. For a moment, something like surprise or perhaps alarm flickered in her expression. Then her features smoothed into a careful blankness.

She was a pretty girl, Elizabeth noted.

“Good morning,” Elizabeth said, because it seemed wrong to simply walk past.

The girl dipped into a curtsey that was correct but somehow mechanical. “Good morning.”

Her voice was soft and cultivated, bearing the unmistakable polish of an expensive education. A gentleman’s daughter, then, or higher. But there was no maid in attendance, no companion hovering nearby, only this solitary figure, shivering in the early morning wind.

“Forgive my impertinence,” Elizabeth continued, ignoring Mrs. Morgan’s warning look, “but you appear to be cold. There is a tea shop just there.” She gestured at the place several shops ahead of them. “It has an excellent chocolate. Might we persuade you to join us?”

The girl’s eyes widened. “I—that is very kind, but I could not possibly. My companion would not like it.”

Elizabeth could not help but glance about. “Your companion?”

“Mrs. Younge.” The girl made a slight gesture at the house behind them, the one at the end of the terrace. “She does not approve of my speaking to strangers.”

“Well then.” Elizabeth smiled, hoping to coax an answering expression from that young, anxious countenance. “I am Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn in Hertfordshire, and this is Mrs. Morgan, of Ramsgate. There. Now we are not strangers.”

Mrs. Morgan gave a slight curtsey that somehow conveyed both proper respect and complete disapproval.

The girl stared at them for a long moment. Then, slowly, something that might have been the ghost of a smile touched her lips.

“Miss Darcy,” she said. “Of Pemberley.”

Elizabeth inclined her head. She had never heard of Pemberley, but from the manner in which Miss Darcy spoke the name, she suspected many people did.

“I am honoured to make your acquaintance, Miss Darcy of Pemberley. And I am doubly honoured that you have condescended to stand in a Ramsgate gale to speak with me.”

Mrs. Morgan hesitated, then said what had evidently been on her mind. “You ought to be wearing a warmer pelisse. That scrap of blue silk is fit only for sitting near a drawing room fire. Surely you have something more suitable?”

Miss Darcy did not speak. A flush crept up her neck.

“Will you not fetch Mrs. Younge and join us at the tea shop, Miss Darcy?” Elizabeth asked. “I promise we shall not talk of anything more improper than novels and seals.”

For one unguarded instant, yearning flickered nakedly across Miss Darcy’s face. “I should like that, but I ought not,” she said. “Mrs. Younge expects me back at the house. She does not approve of my lingering.”

“Mrs. Younge sounds like a woman who has never been thoroughly converted to chocolate,” Elizabeth said. “I cannot help but regard that as a moral failing.”

That earned a breath of a laugh. “She says chocolate is an unnecessary indulgence.”

“Then she has been drinking the wrong sort,” Mrs. Morgan remarked. “Good chocolate makes one steady. Bad chocolate makes one sick. Like husbands.”

“Mrs. Morgan,” Elizabeth protested, though she could not entirely suppress her own amusement.

“I shall tell my brother I met you,” Miss Darcy said, seizing upon a safer topic. “He is to arrive soon.” Her gloved hands twisted together. “He is the best brother in the whole of England, and he will be pleased to know that I have made an acquaintance.”

Elizabeth suspected that pleased might not be all that Mr. Darcy would feel when he heard his sister had struck up an acquaintance with a stranger on a public promenade. She wondered what sort of man could command such devotion from so gentle a creature, whether he was the excellent brother Miss Darcy claimed, or merely the sort who confused provision with attention. “I hope you are correct,” she said. “And if he is not pleased, you may tell him that Miss Bennet is quite determined to steal some of his sister’s morning hours, with or without his approbation.”

Miss Darcy’s eyes shone. “You are very good.”

“I am selfish,” Elizabeth corrected. “I have been given a prescription for sea air and exercise and am greedy enough to wish for company as well. It is a tedious thing, being so virtuous alone.”

“You are not alone,“ Mrs. Morgan said.

Elizabeth smiled. “Do you see the reach of my avarice, Miss Darcy? I already have the company of Mrs. Morgan, and yet still I desire more.”

“Then I shall do my best to accommodate,” Miss Darcy replied, a bit of playfulness lightening her countenance. “For I too would wish for more company.”

A sharp rap sounded against the glass of the nearest window. All three ladies turned. A woman stood inside the house, her features distorted by the pane but her displeasure unmistakable. Elizabeth could see the rigid line of Mrs. Younge’s mouth, and the imperious tilt of her head as she tossed a shawl around her shoulders and turned away.

The door to the house opened. Miss Darcy flinched, and the small, involuntary movement sent a prickle down Elizabeth’s spine.

Mrs. Younge stepped out. “Miss Darcy.” The woman’s voice was perfectly pleasant and carried beautifully in the sea air. “You will catch your death out here. Come inside at once if you please.” The words were all solicitude, but Miss Darcy seemed to hear in them something . . . less amiable.

“I must go,” she whispered. “It was very wrong of me to linger. Mrs. Younge will be . . . She does not like that I come out alone to view the sea.”

“Then we must not make you wretched on our account,” Mrs. Morgan said briskly. “Go along with you, child. We shall manage to drink chocolate without you, though it will taste the poorer for the want of your company.”

Miss Darcy hesitated. Then, with evident effort, she dipped another curtsey. “Good morning, Miss Bennet. Mrs. Morgan.”

“Tomorrow,” Elizabeth said quietly. “We stroll each morning before breakfast.”

Mrs. Morgan’s eyebrows lifted, but she said nothing to contradict Elizabeth’s statement.

Miss Darcy almost smiled. “Tomorrow,” she echoed, so softly that Elizabeth could only just hear it.

They watched her hurry back towards the house. Mrs. Younge stepped aside to allow her entrance and closed the door behind them.

“That,” Mrs. Morgan said, “is a girl in a cage.”

“Her brother has given her a summer by the sea and a companion to escort her,” Elizabeth said slowly. “He would likely be offended to hear his arrangements described as a cage.”

“Men rarely recognise cages so long as they are the ones who ordered them built.” Mrs. Morgan set off towards the town with a determined step. “Come. If we do not arrive at the tea shop soon, you will be obliged to lean upon me the whole way home, and my knees cannot bear the strain. And you will have tea, not chocolate. I do not wish to aggravate your cough.”

Elizabeth fell into step beside Mrs. Morgan. Her legs had begun to ache, and the familiar heaviness was settling into her chest. Yet for the first time in months, her mind was occupied with something other than her own recovery.

Elizabeth looked back, not to the promenade, but to the house. One of the upper blinds moved, as if a hand had released it too quickly.

Tomorrow, she thought. She would come again tomorrow.

Release Day for The Marriage Trap: May 14^th: https://readerlinks.com/l/5186464

But here’s the thing: the British had trade networks stretching across the globe, and plenty of foods we think of as “modern” were already completely at home on the regency table.

Case in point?

Muffins.

Elizabeth Bennet could absolutely sit down at Longbourn to a breakfast of tea, toast—and, on a good morning, fresh muffins. Austen even mentions them by name in Emma.

Now, there were not the cupcake kind of muffin. These weren’t sweet at all. Think English muffins: yeasted, griddled, meant to be split, toasted, and drowned in butter.

And here’s the best part:

They often didn’t come from the kitchen. They came from the street.

In Regency London (and larger towns), muffin men—yes, like the nursery rhyme—walked their routes ringing bells, selling warm muffins door to door. You could literally hear breakfast coming down the street.

In Regency London (and larger towns), muffin men walked their routes ringing bells, selling warm muffins door to door. A household like the Bennets could absolutely buy them—but it would be a small, daily expense that adds up. With £2,000 a year split across seven people, Mrs. Bennet might indulge… but not extravagantly.

At Pemberley? Different story.

Darcy’s household—with £10,000 a year and far fewer dependents—would have:

• a steady supply of fine flour

• skilled kitchen staff

• and the option to either buy muffins fresh (in London) or have them made in-house (Pemberley)

Same food. Two completely different experiences.

Somewhere in Hertfordshire, Elizabeth is listening for a bell, hoping the muffin man comes by.

And somewhere at Pemberley, Darcy is eating a perfect, buttered muffin without thinking about where it came from.

And the Muffin Man?

He was real enough to become a nursery rhyme by about 1820 (that’s the earliest I could find, anyway)—“Do you know the Muffin Man?” already circulating in London not long after Austen’s novels were published.

Do you know the muffin man,
The Muffin man, the muffin man.
Do you know the muffin man,
Who lives on Drury Lane?

Yes, I know the muffin man,
The Muffin man, the muffin man.
Yes, I know the muffin man,
Who lives on Drury Lane.

Reader Question

What other “ordinary” foods do you think might quietly reveal the difference between Elizabeth’s world and Darcy’s?

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She came to Ramsgate to recover.

He came to protect his sister.

Someone else came to ruin them both.

Pre-order your copy today!

This one will be easy. I already know the period.

Every single time, I am wrong.

Because one of the real pleasures of writing Pride and Prejudice variations set in historical periods (the British regency, mostly) is how quickly a small detail turns into something much larger. You begin with a line of dialogue, and suddenly you are reading about military campaigns, strange fevers, and seaside convalescence.

This time, it was Walcheren.

A Widow, a Regiment, and a Fever

In The Marriage Trap (preorder here), Elizabeth’s friend and companion, Mrs. Morgan, is a widow. Her husband was a major in the 50th (West Kent) Regiment of Foot.

She tells Colonel Fitzwilliam that her husband “came back from Walcheren with the fever, and I nursed him here in Ramsgate for a year before it took him.”

It sounds like a small piece of backstory.

It is, and it’s not.

The 50th (West Kent) was a real regiment, and in 1809 it took part in the Walcheren Expedition—an ambitious British campaign aimed at striking Napoleon’s naval power in the Netherlands.

Colonel Fitzwilliam replies, “A terrible business.” And he is right. The campaign was a spectacular failure.

Not because of the French, but because of disease.

Walcheren Fever

The army landed in low, marshy ground in the height of summer, and I think you can all guess what happened next.

Mosquitoes.

Within weeks, illness spread through the troops. What people at the time called “Walcheren fever” was likely a mix of malaria and other fevers that thrived in those conditions.

Men who survived the initial illness often suffered relapses. Some never recovered their health.

A great many came home alive, and then died anyway.

And “home” did not always mean a triumphant return to London or a comfortable country estate. Many of the troops were shipped back to the English coast in waves, and places like Ramsgate, where Elizabeth has come to recover, became, for a time, something closer to a convalescent station. Transports arrived carrying men who were struggling under the lingering effects of fever. Lodging houses, inns, and private homes took them in. Sea air was thought to be restorative. Sometimes it helped. Often, it did not.

He made it home, but his illness came with him.

So when Mrs. Morgan says her husband “came back from Walcheren with the fever,” it carries a deeper meaning. It also helps to explain why she is in Ramsgate. She saw her husband off to war from there, waited for him there, nursed him there—buried him there.

When Mrs. Morgan says, very briefly, that she nursed her husband for a year, it tells you two things at once. First, that she knows exactly what she is about when it comes to illness—she has the patience, the steadiness, and the experience Elizabeth requires. But it also tells you what that year must have been like—long, anxious, and marked by the slow decline of the man she loved as he slipped further out of reach.

Nursing Elizabeth is different. Elizabeth will recover. And, perhaps just as importantly, Elizabeth talks, laughs, and argues. There is something robust and restorative in that for Mrs. Morgan. She may be tending to Elizabeth’s health, but Elizabeth, without even trying, is helping to restore Mrs. Morgan too.

The Trouble With Knowing Too Much

There is, unfortunately, a catch.

Once you have learned the history, it becomes very tempting to include all of it. (Super tempting. Like, you don’t even know how much).

You begin to explain the campaign, you consider a paragraph on the illness, you briefly contemplate educating your reader on early nineteenth-century medicine.

And this is where things can easily go sideways.

My reader don’t want a lecture (correct me if I’m wrong. I can 100% do that if you want, lol). No, readers are here for Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Austen herself was pretty careful about this, although of course she wasn’t writing historical fiction. But she does lay in a lot of shortcuts that her readers would have picked up on, especially in the names of her characters, the descriptions of estates, and so on. In Pride and Prejudice, the militia appears, the officers flirt, there is movement in the world beyond Hertfordshire—but she never drags the reader to a battlefield.

That restraint is part of why the story works so well.

The Balance

Using real history well is mostly a matter of proportion.

Too little, and the world feels thin, too much, and the story disappears under it. The aim is to let the detail support the character, not overwhelm them.

In Mrs. Morgan’s case, the history stays in the background. It informs her past, her temperament, and her place in the story—but it never takes center stage.

And the Inevitable Outcome

Every book teaches me something I did not expect to learn.

This time, it was Walcheren and a fever that followed men home long after the campaign was over. Next time, it will be something else. And I will begin again, thinking:

This one will be easy.

(Reader, it will not be easy.)

And now you!

If you have a favorite bit of history that made a story feel more real—or one you went down a rabbit hole researching—I would love to hear about it!

Pre-order your copy today!

If there’s something you’d especially enjoy, I hope you’ll tell me. I’m always delighted to hear what my readers would like to see more of.

--Melanie

First to Rise

Sa…

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In contrast, Sarah, the ladies’ maid at Longbourn, has the Bennet girls.

All five of them.

Flicker Characters, here and gone again

The maids for the Bingley sisters are never assigned names, and Austen names Sarah only once near the end of Pride and Prejudice. It’s a perfect little glimpse: Mr. Bingley arrives unexpectedly, Mrs. Bennet flies into a matrimonial panic, and Sarah is summoned to get Jane into her gown at once so that she can meet him and receive her proposal.

This tells us that Sarah is not just any servant. She is the ladies’ maid, essential, trusted, and almost certainly overworked.

One fastidious gentleman is manageable. Five Miss Bennets and Mrs. Bennet as your mistress? They are not.

On any given morning, Sarah must decide who must be dressed first, who will actually be ready to be dressed, who has misplaced something essential, and who is talking about officers instead of paying any attention to their toilette.

Perhaps in all those variations where Elizabeth wakes early, it’s not because she wishes to walk but instead because she wants to avoid the daily Bennet traffic jam as all the sisters demand Sarah’s services at once.

I am unreasonably fond of these characters who appear for a blink and yet reveal a rich “other life” that supports the story but doesn’t appear much in it. They are the proof that the world Austen built had depth. After all, someone had to press the gowns.

A reader of temper, not just a dresser of hair

This is why Sarah makes such a strong counterpart to Darcy’s valet. Everyone else sees the Bennet girls in public. Sarah sees them in private.

She knows who is calm and who is cross, who is pretending not to care, and who cares too much. She does not need drawing-room dialogue. She already knows everything.

A good ladies’ maid is not merely skilled. She is perceptive. She must know when to coax, when to hurry, when to give her opinion and when not to, and most importantly—how to fix problems before Mrs. Bennet notices.

And in a house like Longbourn, where the arrival of a single eligible man can raise Mrs. Bennet’s spirits (and volume) to dangerous levels, that skill is invaluable. Because if something goes wrong, it will not be the daughter blamed first.

Usually.

How much was poor Sarah paid for all of this?

A lady’s maid, according to The Complete Servant, laid out clothes, brought hot water, styled hair, attended dressing, cleaned brushes and combs, and spent the day altering dresses and millinery. Again—times five. Presuming, of course, that Mrs. Bennet has her own maid and Sarah doesn’t have six women to dress. (And I do presume that. I I don’t think Mrs. Bennet likes to share).

And for all this, she was paid . . . ?

Not enough.

The exact figure is uncertain because Austen doesn’t say, but context helps. Households at Longbourn’s income level might not employ a dedicated lady’s maid at all. If Sarah fills that role—and with five unmarried daughters in the house, she likely did—she is already something of a luxury.

A full lady’s maid in a grand house like Pemberley might earn as much as 20 guineas a year. In a household like Longbourn, a more realistic estimate is 12 to 16, with room, board, and the status of an upper female servant. Respectable, skilled, underpaid, and certainly earning every shilling.

When romance means more work

For the Bennet daughters (and their mother), romance is exciting, thrilling, the stuff of dreams. For Sarah, it means disruption.

If Mr. Bingley calls unexpectedly, she must produce Jane, immediately and immaculately turned out. If Elizabeth is engaged, that is a second young woman to prepare, soothe, and manage. If two daughters are priorities at once, the entire system strains.

And once all the daughters are married off, what becomes of her position?

Sarah does not witness the dances, the courtships, the proposals. She deals with what comes before and after—the gowns rejected, the ribbons reconsidered, the haste, the delay, the look in the mirror that means someone is in love and will change her mind twice more before she is ready to go downstairs.

Every romantic moment in the drawing room depends upon someone working at speed upstairs.

Sarah does not watch the love stories. She helps makes them possible.

If you read a Sarah-centered story, would you want her to witness Jane and Bingley, Lizzy and Darcy, or the entire Bennet household in full matrimonial chaos?

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She came to Ramsgate to recover. He came to protect his sister.

Someone else came to ruin them both.

❤️

Elizabeth Bennet came to Ramsgate to recover from the worst months of her life, not to be caught in a scandal with the most insufferable man in England.

Fitzwilliam Darcy came to Ramsgate to protect his sister, not to find himself honour-bound to marry a woman who would rather throw him into the sea.

But when a forged note, a convenient witness, and one catastrophic evening leave them publicly compromised, the only way to restore their reputations is a hasty engagement neither of them chose.

Now they are married, barely acquainted, and trying to build something real from the wreckage of someone else's malice. There are rules: separate chambers, shared responsibilities, honesty even when it stings.

There is also the unfortunate reality that Darcy is not as awful as Elizabeth assumed, and Elizabeth is not as manageable as Darcy expected. As well as the small problem of whoever engineered their downfall—because apparently, they're not finished yet.

They married to survive the scandal. Now they must survive the marriage.

Pre-order your copy today!

Enter: the valet.

No, Austen does not give Darcy a valet. Nor Bingley. Nor, for that matter, does she linger over the daily mechanics of gentlemen being dressed, brushed, booted, and presented to society like exceptionally well-tailored works of art. She hadn’t ever been in a man’s dressing room, so she didn’t write it.

But you cannot convince me these men were squeezing into their own rather form-fitting coats. And thus, the valet.

The Invisible Men Behind the Immaculate Cravat

In Regency England, a gentleman of Darcy’s standing would absolutely have had a valet. This was not an indulgence—it was a standard. The valet was responsible for his master’s clothing, grooming, and general presentation to the world. Which, given Darcy’s very strong feelings about propriety, must have been a job requiring both skill and nerves of steel.

Imagine it.

Darcy, brooding silently over a certain letter. The valet, holding up two coats. “Sir, the blue or the darker blue you prefer when you are in a state of moral crisis?”

Tell me that isn’t among the best narrative fun a writer can have.

Bingley, too—sunny, sociable Bingley—would have had one. Likely a valet who was equal parts long-suffering and fond, quietly ensuring his master arrived at balls properly turned out, even if his thoughts were entirely occupied with Miss Bennet’s smile.

Austen doesn’t show us these men, but their absence creates a delicious opportunity. Because if there’s one thing variation writers know, it’s this: what isn’t on the page is often where a new story begins.

Where Do They Fit in the Household Pecking Order?

Let’s situate our newly invented friend properly.

A valet was not just any servant. He was a personal attendant to the gentleman which made him one of the highest-ranking male servants in the household. Below the butler in formal hierarchy, yes, but with a unique intimacy: he worked directly with his master, day in and day out.

He had the proximity to know everything. Clothing preferences, bad moods, questionable romantic decisions.

In a large household like Pemberley, the valet would operate within a structured staff, answering (loosely) to the butler but maintaining a distinct role. In smaller establishments, however, it wasn’t uncommon for roles to overlap.

Which means . . .

Mr. Bennet’s Butler Might Also Be His Valet (And Now I Have Thoughts)

Longbourn is not Pemberley. It’s respectable and comfortable, but not grand in the same way. So it is entirely plausible that Mr. Bennet’s butler also served as his valet.

And suddenly, a whole new layer of potential plot lines unfold.

Because Mr. Bennet, who prefers books to society and irony to sincerity, is now being attended daily by a man who has seen him at his most unguarded, a man who has likely helped him dress while he muttered dry observations about his family and possibly developed opinions about the entire household dynamic.

You cannot convince me that man wouldn’t have tales to tell.

What Does a Valet Actually Do?

So what did this fictional creation (drawn from real life) actually do?

A valet’s duties included:

• Laying out and maintaining clothing (including the notoriously complex cravat)

• Assisting with dressing and undressing

• Managing a gentleman’s clothing, boots, coats, and accessories

• Ordering in new items when necessary

• Packing for travel

• Handling personal items (letters, perhaps, depending on trust)

• Acting as a quiet gatekeeper to the gentleman’s private world

In other words: part stylist, part assistant, part confidant, part invisible witness. Which makes him an exceptional storytelling tool. Because he sees everything—but says almost nothing.

Except, perhaps, to his master.

Let’s Talk Money (Because It Matters)

A valet was well-paid by servant standards. Typically, he might earn somewhere in the range of £20 to £40 per year, depending on the household, with additional perks like vails (tips), cast-off clothing (which could be really valuable), and a degree of prestige.

This wasn’t a footman running messages.

This was a skilled position, often held by men who took pride in their work and understood the delicate balance of service and discretion.

Discretion, of course, does not mean lack of personality. Which is where the writer steps in.

Austen Didn’t Use Them—But We Absolutely Can

Austen’s focus was not on servant dynamics. Her lens stayed firmly on the gentry, completely on the woman’s part of her world (because that’s what she knew). Interactions between masters and servants in her stories were typically minimal and functional.

Realistically, even if she had included a valet, the relationship would have been distant. Polite. Professional. Not the stuff of sparkling dialogue.

But we are not bound to Austen’s exact narrative lens, or even what the relationship would most likely have been, given the historical moment.

Nope, variation writers get to tilt the camera. And when you do, the valet becomes something marvelous.

He can be dryly observant, not-so-secretly amused, quietly loyal, or occasionally meddlesome (for his master’s good, obviously).

He can contrast Darcy’s rigidity, soften his edges, or silently judge his worst decisions.

He can notice the moment Darcy starts to change, perhaps even before Darcy does.

If you use him right, the valet can have a narrative voice that threads humor through the story in ways that feel both fresh and perfectly at home in the world.

The Joy of Adding One More Layer

One of the great pleasures of Pride and Prejudice variations is seeking places in the story where Austen didn’t want or didn’t think it necessary to go, and then writing a story in those gaps.

A valet is exactly that kind of addition.

He doesn’t disrupt the romance, he enriches it. He doesn’t replace canon dynamics, he reflects them at a new angle. It’s just one more way to explore character (my favorite thing).

And perhaps most importantly, he gives Darcy someone to be human around before he’s ready to be human with Elizabeth.

In Conclusion: Give the Man His Manservant

And here’s where it turns back to you, dear reader.

Because once you notice the valet, you can’t un-notice him. He’s there in every perfectly tied cravat. Every impeccably brushed coat. Every moment Darcy appears composed when we all know that he is absolutely not.

He’s part of the machinery behind the manners. The quiet spectator of the romance. The man who clocked the transformation before anyone else did.

And that’s part of the joy of reading variations, isn’t it? Discovering the hidden corners of a world we thought we already knew?

So the next time you pick up a Pride and Prejudice variation, keep an eye out. Is there a valet hovering just offstage? Is he judging? Is he helping? Is he, perhaps, quietly rooting for Darcy to get it together?

Because I promise you—once he walks onto the page, things get much more interesting.

Now I’m curious: if you could invent a valet for Darcy, what would he be like?
Dry and sarcastic? Loyal and long-suffering? Secretly romantic? Or the kind of man who sees everything and says . . . just enough?

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Elizabeth Bennet came to Ramsgate to recover from the worst months of her life, not to be caught in a scandal with the most insufferable man in England.

Fitzwilliam Darcy came to Ramsgate to protect his sister, not to find himself honour-bound to marry a woman who would rather throw him into the sea.

But when a forged note, a convenient witness, and one catastrophic evening leave them publicly compromised, the only way to restore their reputations is a hasty engagement neither of them chose.

Now they are married, barely acquainted, and trying to build something real from the wreckage of someone else's malice. There are rules: separate chambers, shared responsibilities, honesty even when it stings.

There is also the unfortunate reality that Darcy is not as awful as Elizabeth assumed, and Elizabeth is not as manageable as Darcy expected. As well as the small problem of whoever engineered their downfall—because apparently, they're not finished yet.

They married to survive the scandal. Now they must survive the marriage.

Pre-order your copy today

She reminded us that the people who run a household are not merely part of the background. They are witnesses. Interpreters. Keepers of the long view.

Given all of this, my follow up question is this. If Mrs. Reynolds knows everything at Pemberley . . . who knows everything at Netherfield?

Here and Gone Again

So, there is a moment in Pride and Prejudice that lasts about three seconds and has no business being as intriguing as it is.

Elizabeth, staying at Netherfield, receives inquiries about Jane’s health—first from Mr. Bingley, and then from “the two elegant ladies who waited on his sisters.”

And Austen just . . . moves on.

No names. No further description. No hint of personality. Just two elegant, efficient, entirely unbothered women who appear, do their duty, and vanish back into the wallpaper.

Reader, I would like to drag them firmly out of that wallpaper. Because those two women are Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst’s personal maids. And once you start thinking about what that means, they become some of the most interesting people in the entire Netherfield household.

Elegance Is Not a Natural State

Miss Bingley does not just wake up looking like Miss Bingley. That level of polish, the curls that fall just so, the gowns that flatter without seeming to try (yes, canon Caroline is an elegant dresser), the overall impression of effortless superiority? That requires effort—considerable effort. And that effort has a name.

Or rather, two names we are never given.

Somewhere, every morning, Miss Bingley’s “elegant lady” is adjusting seams, coaxing hair into obedience, selecting jewels and accessories that hit precisely the right note between fashionable and restrained, and making sure that Miss Bingley looks as though she has never in her life struggled with a ribbon.

And while she does all this, that maid is listening. Because let’s face it, Miss Bingley was not silent while being dressed. No one who says as much as she does in public is likely to be quiet in private.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Hurst presents a different sort of challenge. Her brand of elegance leans toward languor, the art of looking as though one could exert oneself but chooses not to. Maintaining that illusion is its own form of labor. Someone must smooth the effects of late nights, manage fabrics so they fall just so, and ensure that indifference reads as refinement rather than fatigue.

These women are not passive attendants.

They are the unseen hands (unseen by the readers, at least) shaping the very image their mistresses present to the world.

What They See (And Why It Matters)

Okay, this is what I’m thinking.

A lady’s maid occupies a very particular position: she is both invisible and indispensable. She is there before the performance begins and after it ends. She sees the flush that hasn’t quite faded when her mistress returns from an evening in company. The distracted silence during the brushing out of hair. The way a woman stands at a window before bed and doesn’t say what she’s thinking.

She reads the state of a returned gown like a book. If this was Elizabeth’s maid, I could say that the muddy hem tells her where her mistress walked. The torn lace tells her how quickly she moved. The sleeve that smells of horse tells her something about where she’s been.

A lady’s maid who is any good at her job synthesizes all she sees and hears, says nothing, and produces exactly the right gown for the occasion, which requires knowing what the occasion actually is and what importance her mistress is attaching to it.

And all of this is happening off-page.

We already know, thanks to Mrs. Reynolds, just how powerful a servant’s perspective can be. Darcy’s housekeeper shifts an entire narrative simply by telling the truth as she has lived it.

So just imagine the Netherfield maids comparing notes. One brushes Miss Bingley’s hair while hearing a detailed critique of Elizabeth Bennet. The other fastens Mrs. Hurst’s gown while her mistress observes, lazily but accurately, everything that happened in the drawing room after dinner. Between them, they may have a clearer picture of the emotional landscape of Netherfield than anyone sitting in the drawing room.

And I would argue this: if anyone in that house recognized Darcy’s growing interest in Elizabeth early, it was not Caroline Bingley.

It was the woman arranging her hair.

Why These Two Could be Excellent Characters for Variation Authors

Austen gives us just enough to spark the imagination and then steps politely aside.

Which is, frankly, an invitation.

Because these “elegant ladies” sit in a narrative sweet spot. They are close enough to the action to witness everything that matters, but far enough removed to move through the story without constraint. The social rules that bind them are different than those of their mistresses. In some way they are more restricted. In other ways . . .

A lady’s maid can influence a story in ways that feel both subtle and powerful. She can pass along information or withhold it. She can encourage a match, discourage one, or simply observe and let events unfold.

And crucially, she can interpret.

Miss Bingley sees Elizabeth as a rival. A maid might see her in the same way. Or she might think that Miss Bingley is never going to “land” Mr. Darcy and ought to turn her attention elsewhere. In which case, she might view Miss Elizabeth as something else entirely: a way out.

A lady’s maid might well prefer to work for a married woman. Her mistress would then have her own household, her own income, her own social position. She is not going to be sent back to her mother’s house at the end of the season, and she’s never going to be on the shelf (and thus a poor reflection upon her lady’s maid). A married mistress can provide a stable situation, a clear role, and reasonable expectations of continuity.

Mrs. Hurst may be bored, but her maid may like it.

The Story Beneath the Story

What I love most about these two women is that they extend what Mrs. Reynolds begins.

She gives us the long memory of a great house. These maids give us the immediate, daily read of a temporary one.

Or they could—if Austen had allowed it.

But at the least, this implies that there is always another layer to Austen’s world, one where the people we barely notice are actually pretty influential to the events of the story.

So now I’m curious—

If those two elegant ladies had compared notes at the end of the Netherfield stay, who do you think they would have backed: Miss Bingley’s careful campaign or Elizabeth Bennet walking in with muddy hems and pert opinions?

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COMING SOON!

She came to Ramsgate to recover. He came to protect his sister. Someone else came to ruin them both.

Elizabeth Bennet came to Ramsgate to recover from the worst months of her life, not to be caught in a scandal with the most insufferable man in England.

Fitzwilliam Darcy came to Ramsgate to protect his sister, not to find himself honour-bound to marry a woman who would rather throw him into the sea.

But when a forged note, a convenient witness, and one catastrophic evening leave them publicly compromised, the only way to restore their reputations is a hasty engagement neither of them chose.

Now they are married, barely acquainted, and trying to build something real from the wreckage of someone else’s malice. There are rules: separate chambers, shared responsibilities, honesty even when it stings.

There is also the unfortunate reality that Darcy is not as awful as Elizabeth assumed, and Elizabeth is not as manageable as Darcy expected. As well as the small problem of whoever engineered their downfall—because apparently, they’re not finished yet.

They married to survive the scandal. Now they must survive the marriage.

Pre-order today!

There are many people in Pride and Prejudice who say too much. Mr. Collins, obviously. But also Mrs. Bennet, Wickham, Lady Catherine . . .

Mrs. Reynolds is not one of them.

She appears, spills some truths, and quietly does more for Darcy’s case than Darcy himself (and certainly more than Colonel Fitzwilliam).

Which admittedly is not a high bar. But still.

And if you are interested in Austen’s “invisible” characters, you could hardly choose a better place to begin than with Pemberley’s long term servant and current housekeeper.

Her Timing Could Not Be Better

By the time Elizabeth reaches Pemberley, she has already been shaken by Darcy’s letter. She has had to revise some of her opinions, which is pretty humbling when you consider yourself rather clever and have been enjoying your opinions tremendously. She’s not Darcy’s champion, and she’s still glad she said no, but she’s already confessed to herself that she doesn’t know Darcy as well as she thought she did.

And she is certainly does not expect Pemberley’s housekeeper to become one of the novel’s most effective witnesses for the defense.

The delicious thing (for me, at least) is that Mrs. Reynolds does not sound rehearsed or like a servant performing family propaganda for visitors. She sounds like a woman who has known her boss a long time and is proud to work for him.

According to her, Mr. Darcy is an excellent master, a fair landlord, and a doting brother. He is, in short, a good man.

She doesn’t have to sing her master’s praises. If Darcy was less than a good man, she could simply have said she was happy with her position or she might even have said nothing at all. But she’s downright effusive with her praise.

And because she is, Elizabeth listens.

A housekeeper knows where the bodies are buried (socially speaking)

This is another one of the things I find so satisfying about Mrs. Reynolds.

She is not merely “staff,” floating politely through Pemberley holding keys and projecting respectability. In a great house, a housekeeper would be one of the central managerial forces below stairs. She would oversee the female servants, manage stores and linen, help keep accounts, supervise order, and know the rhythm of the household in a way no guest ever could.

Which means she would also know character.

Not the shiny, public kind, but the kind you see in how someone treats people when there is no audience.

A woman in Mrs. Reynolds’ position does not—cannot—depend on charm without substance. Many estates were run to ruin by such men, and she most assuredly knows that.

And that is why her praise is so essential.

Wickham talks. Mrs. Reynolds knows.

I feel for Elizabeth. She has been handed one polished version of Darcy by Wickham, who is all smiles and grievance and tragic backstory. This makes Elizabeth feel a great deal better about being insulted by Darcy before they’d even been introduced. Then she gets Darcy’s actual proposal, which is roughly the emotional equivalent of a jump scare.

Neither encounter shows Darcy at his best.

Mrs. Reynolds, however, encounters no such problems. She speaks of Darcy in matter-of-fact tones about his quiet goodness, and that turns out to be far more persuasive than anyone else’s drama.

She is the memory of Pemberley, which is a wonderful job for a variation character

Mrs. Reynolds is a rich mine for variation authors because . . .

A woman like Mrs. Reynolds would know things—not because she is snooping, but because she has been at Pemberley for at least twenty-four years. (Darcy says he is “eight and twenty” at the end of the novel and Mrs. R met Darcy when he was four). So she knew Darcy as a boy, and Georgiana since she was an infant. She knew Mr. Darcy and Lady Anne. She has lived through the old master’s rule, the transitions of mourning, the shifting atmosphere of the house as people die, grow up, turn out well or turn out badly.

She is not just keeping the house. She is keeping the memory of the house, and the family who lives in it.

And that makes her incredibly useful in a variation. If an author likes, she can recognize Darcy’s change before he articulates it. She can see when Georgiana is more animated than usual. She can notice when Elizabeth Bennet’s presence alters the whole feeling of Pemberley.

I love a character who does not need to raise her voice to be formidable.

Mrs. Reynolds is that character.

She gives Elizabeth the thing she actually needs

Darcy’s estate matters, yes.

But I do not think the deepest revelation is the beautiful grounds. Elizabeth is not won over by fine stone and Spanish chestnut trees alone. What really shifts her perspective is the moral atmosphere of the place. The house feels well-run. The people who depend on Darcy speak well of him.

Pemberley isn’t just wealth. It’s carefully managed abundance. It is, in fact, a stand-in for Darcy himself. We don’t know what he looks like, other than “tall” with a “noble mien.” But we know the kind of man he really is by seeing Pemberley and hearing Mrs. Reynold’s praise of him.

And for Elizabeth, this creates a different kind of attraction.

It’s not merely “he is rich,” but more that she’s thinking, “oh no, he may actually be good.” Which, frankly, is much worse for her peace of mind.

Mrs. Reynolds is the person who helps Elizabeth make the leap. She gives our heroine a version of Darcy rooted not in pride, awkwardness, or wounded vanity, but in his care for those who rely on him and his upstanding conduct. Repeated, daily, unshowy conduct.

And that is exactly the sort of evidence Elizabeth can trust.

She changes the whole story

That is why Mrs. Reynolds is so extraordinary. She does not attempt to interfere in the romance—she couldn’t even if she wanted to, because she is a servant, not a friend. She simply talks honestly about a man she has known almost all his life.

And because she does, both the reader and Elizabeth see him differently.

It is one of Austen’s loveliest little triumphs: the woman with the keys and the accounts becomes the woman who helps Darcy unlock Elizabeth’s heart.

Mrs. Reynolds does not need more pages. She has already done enough.

Honestly, if Darcy had any sense, he would send her flowers. Or a raise. Probably both.

Who is your favorite Mrs. Reynolds in a JAFF variation?

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She came to Ramsgate to recover. He came to protect his sister. Someone else came to ruin them both.

Elizabeth Bennet came to Ramsgate to recover from the worst months of her life, not to be caught in a scandal with the most insufferable man in England.

Fitzwilliam Darcy came to Ramsgate to protect his sister, not to find himself honour-bound to marry a woman who would rather throw him into the sea.

But when a forged note, a convenient witness, and one catastrophic evening leave them publicly compromised, the only way to restore their reputations is a hasty engagement neither of them chose.

Now they are married, barely acquainted, and trying to build something real from the wreckage of someone else's malice. There are rules: separate chambers, shared responsibilities, honesty even when it stings.

There is also the unfortunate reality that Darcy is not as awful as Elizabeth assumed, and Elizabeth is not as manageable as Darcy expected. As well as the small problem of whoever engineered their downfall—because apparently, they're not finished yet.

They married to survive the scandal. Now they must survive the marriage.

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Not magic. Not coincidence. A system.

In The Princess Problem, that system is the Great North Road—specifically the stretch between Biggleswade and Baldock—where the turnpike becomes, for Darcy, a sequence of proofs. A tollbar drops. A keeper consults a book. A coach either passed . . . or it didn’t.

That’s the fun part.

The less-fun part (the part powered by truly alarming quantities of coffee) is how much research hides inside one seemingly small decision: I’m going to use tollgates so Darcy can track Elizabeth’s coach.

The moment I make that choice, I’m not just writing a chase. I’m making a promise to readers—some of whom certainly know more about English geography and even the Great North Road than I do—that this world will hold up. That it will push back against my characters the way real roads push back against real travelers.

And nothing pushes back on an English road quite like winter and toll collectors.

Tollgates as Regency GPS, just with more frozen mud

People sometimes picture Regency travel as pure sweeping romance—windswept cloaks, moonlit inns, yearning looks through carriage windows.

(Okay, fine. I’m not arguing with that.)

But the practical side of travel is ruts, queues, cold fingers, tired horses, and a lot of human beings doing tedious jobs. One of those jobs was toll collecting—which, in fairness, isn’t the worst gig if you can get it. You’re indoors. You have authority over everyone who wants to pass. People hand you money. And every now and then you get a truly delicious piece of gossip about the quality.

Turnpikes existed to maintain roads and regulate passage. The toll houses and toll bars created predictable choke points along major routes, and those choke points are narrative gold because they do three things at once:

1. They force a stop. Even a fast coach has to slow down, pay, and pass through.

2. They create a witness. Someone is standing right there, watching traffic go by all day long.

3. They sometimes create a record. Not always exhaustive, not always neat—but credible enough to hang a scene on, especially when the question is narrow: Did that coach pass? When? Which way? How hurried were they?

For a writer building a chase that needs to run on logic rather than luck, it really doesn’t get better than that.

Why Biggleswade and Baldock

Biggleswade and Baldock sit in exactly the right spot: close enough to London for traffic to be heavy and organized, but far enough out that a carriage can still slip off into smaller roads without being swallowed by the city. I needed my villains to feel the pressure of London looming just a day’s travel away—they’re running out of time now that a winter storm has wrecked their original plans, and they have to act.

Baldock in particular has a long history as a pinch-point on north–south travel. Daniel Defoe complained about this stretch of road, about the misery of the lane and why travelers would pay good money to avoid the worst of it. It’s one of those places on the map with a reputation: this road matters, and it can eat you alive.

So when I plant Darcy at a Baldock tollbar, I’m not picking a random place on a map for atmosphere. I’m putting him somewhere the landscape has teeth—where mud, cold, fatigue, and laudanum-induced fuzziness are all working against everyone on the road, heroes and villains alike.

How the tollgates work in the story

As the chase tightens, Darcy becomes so aware of the road and everything on it that the turnpike starts to feel like a map burned into his mind. He’s not just riding—he’s calculating, measuring which turnings can take a full coach and spotting the ones that can’t.

And then come the tollbars, raising and lowering to help Darcy track his princess. Even though he still believes she’s just a regular English gentlewoman caught up in something bigger than herself. (He’s half right.)

Here’s how it plays out:

• Biggleswade has the tollbar—Darcy watches it “drop behind them.”

• Baldock has the keeper with a book—and the book is where certainty arrives.

Elizabeth’s coach is recorded as paying the toll at Biggleswade. It is not recorded at Baldock. And because Darcy has been watching every side road, he knows there are only four turnings that could handle a full coach. One of them is the road he’d pick if he were a villain trying to disappear with a young woman.

So he does what any anxious, resourceful hero would do: walks straight up to the keeper, names himself, describes the coach, and turns the tollhouse into a source of proof. The keeper’s answer is the one Darcy both expected and dreaded: no coach like that has come through.

Which means—instantly, cleanly—Elizabeth’s coach never reached Baldock. They left the road somewhere behind him.

Now the search narrows. The stakes sharpen. The tollgates become evidence. And the story doesn’t stall, it branches. Four possible roads, one missing coach, and Darcy finally has a real shot at catching up because he can think his way through the options and choose the one that makes the most sense for someone trying to vanish quickly.

The physical world fills in around him, too, with the kinds of details that sit quietly on the page while doing serious work underneath: a pollard willow marking a turning, the coachman Anders who knows every turnoff on the Great North Road within a day of London, and a grim little inn down a lane where you can easily picture a coach pulling in because there’s simply nowhere better.

The “disappearance” problem—and why it matters

Here’s the thing about a missing-coach plot: if your characters can vanish anywhere at any time, the tension just dissolves.

Turnpikes fix that. They don’t solve everything, but they give you a starting point and a boundary. If a first tollbar says you were here and the second says you weren’t, then suddenly the reader can follow the same reasoning Darcy does, narrowing the possibilities right alongside him.

That’s what makes the chase actually work: not just urgency, but the growing sense that the answer is out there if the character is sharp enough to find it.

Jane Austen wasn’t writing historical fiction . . .

I keep coming back to this idea because it’s really the heart of why scenes like this take so much work.

Jane Austen was writing contemporary fiction about the world she lived in every day, so she never had to stop and explain what a tollbar was, or why posting mattered, or how long it takes to get from one town to the next in January.

Her readers already knew.

We don’t.

So when I choose Biggleswade and Baldock, I’m trying to reconstruct a living system: who staffs the gate, what they might write down, whether they’d remember a distinctive equipage, how fast a coach could reasonably cover those miles, what winter does to the road, and how many plausible turnings exist between two points.

It’s not Darcy doing that reconstruction—he’s waiting for me to do it, behind the curtain, squinting at old maps and coach schedules and the stubbornly unromantic reality of distance. Because unlike Austen’s novels, mine has to rebuild a world that’s long since disappeared.

Tollgates sharpen character, too

A tollgate scene is never just about travel logistics. It’s about how your character treats the person holding the key to the information they require. Does Darcy throw money? Does he threaten? Does he try to charm? Does he go rigid with barely contained urgency?

(He does the last one. He is Darcy.)

And when the answer is “no coach,” you get the most satisfying kind of escalation: not louder feelings, but sharper clarity. The plot tightens because the facts tighten, and Darcy’s determination cuts harder when it has to work inside a real system with real limits.

Small detail, big research, maximum drama

So yes, using tollgates to track a missing coach is a helpful device, and honestly a lot of fun to write. But it’s also a commitment. The moment I write “the tollbar at Biggleswade dropped behind them,” I’ve promised the reader this will all work logically. The locations will be real. The distances will make sense. The system will behave the way it actually would have in 1809, or as close as I can get it.

And when Darcy says “we tracked them to Biggleswade, but not beyond,” it lands because I haven’t put Biggleswade where it doesn’t belong, or invented a tollgate that never existed, or asked the reader to take my word for it without doing the homework.

The research is invisible. The drama is not. And that’s exactly how it should be.

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“The Princess Problem is a delightful tale of Elizabeth, who knows precisely who she is and Darcy, who is confident he knows the 'truth' - that she is not a princess, both led on a merry chase by a couple of deceivers who desperately push towards their goal.” Happy reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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