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Lucy Steele
Lucy Steele, five years old, was already a forceful personality. Her young age and her possession of an elder sister might have usually led to the natural cultivation of a trusting and deferential character; one might have supposed that the little girl was easily guided by the twelve-year-old Miss Steele. That was certainly not the case. Nancy was only too happy to let Lucy be the leader, to hide behind Lucy’s innocent face, to go wherever Lucy wished them to go.
At five years old, Lucy did not understand this rare power she held, but she did know what such influence brought her: she got what she wanted, when she wanted it, and now that she had tasted the fruits of such a gift, she would not relinquish them lightly.
***
Lucy Steele, nineteen years old, knew well the art of flattery and influence, and she deployed it eagerly around those who could benefit her. It was an infinitely more useful accomplishment than drawing or playing the pianoforte. Let other young ladies exhibit their little tricks; Lucy had the skill that really counted.
Thus, when a wealthy young man fell into her lap, she was ready.
It did not matter that Mr. Ferrars was not handsome or charming or interesting. He could provide Lucy with a better, easier life, and that was all she required in a potential husband. A few smiles, a few flutters of her eyelashes; some flirting and a gentle, daring brush of her hand on his arm; she would have Mr. Ferrars right where she wanted him.
***
Lucy Steele, twenty-three years old, remained outwardly serene, though inwardly she simmered with a rage that threatened to boil over. She breathed deeply, her smile still fixed in place; she dared not allow it to slip.
It had not escaped her notice that Mr. Ferrars had been speaking of a young lady of his acquaintance, a certain Miss Dashwood, with a suspicious degree of esteem.
What right did he have to look at another woman, much less speak of her with warmth in his eyes and admiration in his voice? He was engaged to Lucy! He was bound to her in word and honor!
Well, he had best be careful, she thought acidly. He was tiptoeing perilously close to breach of promise. And if Mr. Ferrars thought that Lucy would not fight tooth and nail to keep what was rightfully hers, then he would be wise to think again, and quickly.
***
Lucy Ferrars, twenty-five years old, had had to do some shrewd calculating when she'd decided to loosen her clutch on Mr. Ferrars and to join hands with his younger brother instead, but she was satisfied that she had made the right choice. Her life with Robert might not be a particularly peaceful one, but it was much better than being the wife of a simple country clergyman, looking after chickens and worrying about cows, forever making visits to poor and decrepit parishioners, pretending to care about their tedious little problems. Robert had spirit, at least; Lucy could appreciate that, and she had more than enough of her own to counter it.
Moreover, she had wormed her way into her mother-in-law's heart, and Mrs. Ferrars's affection was worth far more than either of her sons'. Lucy was safe and taken care of; she had no reason to worry; she was secure. If it had taken a hasty marriage to Robert to achieve that, it was a very small price to pay.
Isabella Thorpe
Isabella Thorpe, seven years old, knew she was a pretty child. Everyone told her so and she had no reason not to believe them. What was more, she was beginning to learn the universal truth that beauty was a virtue, that it unlocked doors that the plain could never open. Hadn't Isabella seen for herself how her pleasant appearance won her favor, brought her treats, got her out of punishment in a way her more ordinary sisters could only dream of?
She would never trouble herself much, thinking about the flukes of fate that had blessed her beyond the rest of her family. She merely reaped the rewards of her good fortune, happy that she had been the one singled out by providence.
***
Isabella Thorpe, sixteen years old, knew what she was looking for in a husband: she wanted him tall, handsome, charming, important, connected, well-bred, and rich. The first six qualities were negotiable; the last was not.
Isabella was sick of being stuck where she was. She was pretty; men were already drawn to her. She was meant for a grander life - a life like the ones she read about - she just knew it. Even the most destitute heroines from the novels were rescued by their faces, in the end. Oh, they had all that goodness and virtue thrown in, she supposed, but Isabella understood enough of the opposite sex to know that it was the faces they were really after. Besides, Isabella had her lively brand of coquettishness on her side, far more alluring than the saintly portraits of perfection in the books.
***
Isabella Thorpe, twenty-one years old, watched as her schemes and plans crumbled around her; as the hopes that had sparkled brightly just a few weeks before lost their shine.
She had been mistaken in James Morland - and without the wealth she’d been misled into believing he possessed, his simple sweetness seemed boyish and undesirable - but she would be more than happy to marry him now, if he would see her again.
If only she had never met Captain Tilney, she thought, taking out a new sheet of paper to replace the one she had crumpled up a moment ago. Men should not toy with young ladies’ affections; they should not flirt if it meant nothing; they should not pay any attention to an engaged woman if they had no intention of making her a better offer.
She had been seduced; she had been preyed upon; she was the wronged party here. Tilney was a villain and she was a damsel in distress. Where was her champion, ready to rescue her, filled with compassion and forgiveness?
Well, James Morland would never find anyone better than her, she was sure of that. If she could only arrange a meeting with him, she was certain she could convince him that the whole affair had been a tragic misunderstanding.
She dipped her pen in her ink and started a letter to his sister.
***
Isabella Horton, twenty-four years old, was happily married. Or, at any rate, she was happy and she was married; the two facts even occasionally coincided.
Her husband had been a wealthy widower, lonely and looking for a pretty young wife. It hadn’t been difficult to turn on the charm, to laugh at his stories and his jokes, to pretend that he was the most fascinating person she had ever laid eyes on. Men were eager to believe in their own desirability - Isabella did not mind playing along, if the conditions were right.
Her husband was of medium height and average appearance; his charm was minimal; his importance was dubious but his connections were good; she could not quibble with his manners. And though his wealth might be considered modest, when compared with the Tilneys’, he was rich enough. Isabella was satisfied.
Beauty could still win the day, after all.
Mary Crawford
Mary Crawford, five years old, loved her brother, Henry, more than anyone else in the world. He was her companion and confidante - keeper of childish secrets and soother of silly fears. His antics and jokes kept her laughing; it was Henry who taught her to be clever and amusing herself. She observed him closely, watching him, learning from him. As they both grew older, she tried to emulate his ease and assurance; they were the seeds of the feminine poise she would develop later. Much of what she would ever learn about fashionable young gentlemen, she learned from Henry.
It would be many years before Mary moved beyond the image she'd held of her brother since the age of five, one where he was elevated to an almost kingly status, benevolent and infallible.
***
Mary Crawford, nineteen years old, had a decidedly jaded view of marriage. She had seen firsthand the effects of matrimony on her aunt. Now that her friends were starting to marry, she saw how each of them had been taken in: the luckiest merely disappointed in their husbands, the more unfortunate ones actively suffering at the hands of unfeeling and negligent men.
Mary herself was not romantic. She did not expect to be swept off her feet. But she fully intended to marry well, and she was not one to settle for anything that would make her miserable in any way. She knew how to wield her influence; she would find a rich man who could keep her happy, even if she had to mold him herself.
After all, love and marriage were merely games; her friends had played their hands poorly, but that did not mean that Mary would not have greater success.
***
Mary Crawford, twenty-one years old, was experiencing something very much like regret. She did not like it.
She hadn't expected to fall in love with Edmund Bertram. He was nothing like the sort of man she’d pictured as her husband. His manners were neither lively nor playful; he had no wit to speak of; he was not particularly entertaining in any way; and if all of that wasn't bad enough, he was a younger son and a clergyman.
And yet Mary had been drawn to him anyway. There was something earnest and sincere in his uprightness; it was new, and Mary had always appreciated novelty.
Less agreeable was his steadfast refusal to bend to her will. He should have desired to please her; to change and become the sort of man that Mary wanted.
But it was all over now. There was no use even thinking about him anymore.
This was all Henry's fault, she thought furiously. If only Henry had not run off with Mrs. Rushworth and created a scandal; if only Mary had not spoken a little too freely, forgetting for a moment how stiff and strict Edmund Bertram's morals were. If only Henry had been more patient, wearing Fanny Price down with charm and kindness; if only Mary was not so quick to come to his defense, the impulse so entrenched that she hadn't even paused to consider her audience.
Edmund Bertram would almost certainly have been hers, had Henry only behaved himself. Mary had never felt such anger towards her brother before.
***
Mary Crawford, twenty-six years old, was starting to feel the bitterness seep in. The old careless cynicism had hardened into something sharper and more biting; something more difficult to laugh away with her amusing little witticisms.
She was rich and pretty and clever and charming; she was supposed to be rewarded for it. She wasn't supposed to be passed by, languishing with her widowed sister, her youth slipping away.
The right man had still not shown up. Mary had never imagined that eventuality. She had never guessed that she would compare every new acquaintance with Edmund Bertram; could not fathom why none of them ever seemed to measure up.
She wanted a home and a life of her own. She wanted wealth and comfort and elegance. But apparently she wanted substance, too, and her new ideal man was a difficult one to find.
She wondered how things would have been different, if she had been the woman Edmund Bertram had thought her to be. She wondered whether she should be altering her course now, in the hopes of meeting someone like him.
Somehow, she didn't think it would be worth the effort.
Elizabeth Elliot
Elizabeth Elliot, ten years old, was her father's favorite. Not that the competition was fierce: her younger sisters were dull little things and Elizabeth shone brightly beside them.
Oh, she knew, even at her young age, that her father would have preferred her to have been born a boy - a son and heir to carry on the name and inherit Kellynch Hall - but of his three daughters, Elizabeth was easily the one who pleased him most.
She resembled him, in looks and manner. She had his flashing eyes, his straight nose, his thick, shiny curls. When she spoke, she had his lofty air. She shared his fascination with the Baronetage.
Sir Walter's love was not easily given; his children had no great advantage over anyone else, for one could not earn his esteem by virtue of relation. Elizabeth, however, had won his affection by being herself; it was fortunate that she had inherited so much from him.
***
Elizabeth Elliot, twenty-five years old, felt hot, furious tears welling in her eyes as she sat in church, watching her youngest sister become Charles Musgrove’s wife.
She did not covet Mary her chosen husband, of course - imagine being married to Charles Musgrove; even Anne had had more taste than that - but jealousy constricted Elizabeth’s throat, making it impossible to speak, to do anything other than sit in her uncomfortably hard pew and glower.
She should have been the first Elliot sister to marry. She was the oldest, the most elegant, the most beautiful. She had had such hopes that Mr. Elliot was the right man for her; that he would see her and fall instantly in love, that her future would be secured, that Kellynch Hall would remain hers forever. She would take her place as Lady Elliot: her mother’s best and most natural successor.
And yet here she sat, watching Charles Musgrove fidget and listening as Mary interrupted her own wedding by sneezing loudly in the middle of the ceremony.
Elizabeth would give anything for this to be her wedding instead; for Charles Musgrove to be replaced with the future baronet; for her life to be going the way she had pictured it as a young girl. It was all so terribly, terribly unfair.
***
Elizabeth Elliot, twenty-nine years old, could not believe it was happening again. Here she was, in another uncomfortable pew; there were the tears, frustrated and mortified, filling her eyes. It was regrettably similar to that other agonizing wedding ceremony, only now she was almost five years older, her bloom a little more faded, those horrifying little lines beginning to crop up on her face, faint and fine but there.
It was Anne’s turn to be married, to the very same man she had rejected as a girl. Elizabeth had not envied her sister eight and a half years ago - Wentworth had been nothing then - but she certainly envied her now. Anne, quiet and small and meek, only a little less pale and haggard than she had been a few months ago, scarcely younger than Elizabeth herself, was now somebody’s wife.
It was intolerable. How could Anne have caught a man such as Captain Wentworth, tall, handsome, and dashing? How had Anne received three proposals when Elizabeth had received none at all? How had Anne beaten her to the altar, when Elizabeth tried so much harder to be the attractive and elegant woman that important men wanted to wed?
She could barely stand it; she wanted to leap up and scream, to release some of the resentment that had made a home in her chest.
She slipped away quickly once the Wentworths were pronounced man and wife.
***
Elizabeth Elliot, thirty-two years old, refused to give in. Hadn’t she learned at her father’s feet? Didn’t she know that with proper care and attention - a little effort, a little rouge, a little help from Gowland - one could prolong one’s youth, maintain one’s looks, surpass one’s less-motivated friends and acquaintances?
And, of course, she did not mind being a little deceitful about her true age. What wealthy men didn’t know could not hurt them.
She and Sir Walter had remained in Bath. It suited them better, or so they told themselves. It certainly kept them out of the worst of their financial trouble. And there were many more chances to meet a husband in Bath than there were in Somersetshire. The limited society at home had likely been the reason why Elizabeth had made it to this age without a single proposal of marriage.
It did concern her that the offers were not flowing steadily now, after several years in Bath, but she could be patient. Some rich old fool would come along eventually, and she would be ready when she found him.
Augusta Elton
Augusta Hawkins, eight years old, could not wait to grow up. She wanted to be a fine lady, grand and sophisticated, not a clumsy little girl, chubby-cheeked and knock-kneed. She wanted to wear lovely, elaborate gowns, arrange her hair in glossy curls piled up to the sky, dance gracefully with a handsome young man who was secretly a knight or a lord or a prince. She wanted to have a group of envious and less-beautiful friends who hung on her every word, who thought her the very height of fashion. She wanted to be the guest of honor at every party, the queen of every room, the belle of every ball.
At eight years old, she believed all of it to be inevitable.
***
Augusta Hawkins, seventeen years old, spent hours dreaming of her future life: of the riches she would have, the jewels and the carriages; of her noble acquaintances, all titled and important; of the estate she was destined to be mistress of and the husband who would worship the ground she walked on and the air she breathed.
Her sister, Selina, had recently secured a very advantageous marriage indeed. Augusta knew that she could make an even better one. She was young and attractive and now had quite a rich brother-in-law. She would be thrown in the way of equally rich men - or richer! She would move in a different set now, be in the society she deserved. She wanted people to know her name, to seek her presence, to desire her attention and her company. She wanted to be adored.
At seventeen years old, she thought it was only a matter of time.
***
Augusta Hawkins, twenty-one years old, was engaged to be married. She had been silly, she thought, when she had dreamt of princes and riches and estates. There were fewer great men in the world than one imagined there to be when one was young. Augusta had learned that the hard way, growing more and more disenchanted with every passing year, as she went to assemblies and parties and mixed with the gentlemen in attendance. It was difficult enough to find a reasonably well-looking, agreeable man; adding wealth and grandeur made the search nigh on impossible.
She had, therefore, been perfectly eager to be introduced to a handsome young clergyman named Mr. Elton, and even more anxious to make him fall in love with her. She wanted to be married and settled; she wanted a home of her own. She had hoped for a Maple Grove, but a country vicarage would suffice. If she could not be a queen of society, she could certainly be the queen of a village; she would gleam all the more brilliantly in a place so backward.
At twenty-one years old, she may have lost some of her romance, but she would gain a husband.
***
Augusta Elton, twenty-four years old, was adjusting to a life that was falling far below expectations. It turned out that, no matter what Miss Augusta Hawkins had told herself at twenty-one, she still wanted the prince; she wanted fancy parties and elegant society; she wanted gowns and jewels and finery; she wanted the barouche-landau.
She loved her Mr. E., of course, but she still wished he was a little greater. Or a lot greater. She wouldn't be displeased by a sudden elevation.
She chafed against the confines of Highbury; she needed more variety, more space to move around in. She needed culture and fashion. She needed better help with the children. She needed to not be forever second to Emma Knightley.
Augusta was not entirely unhappy. She just wasn’t as happy as she imagined she’d be.
At twenty-four years old, it was a disheartening thought to live with.
Caroline Bingley
Caroline Bingley, four years old, had not yet learned to be sensitive about her family’s beginnings. It did not matter that the Bingleys’ fortune had been acquired by trade. She did not understand such things; it would be years before they’d bother her.
She knew only her happy home life: her loving parents, attentive and warm; an older sister and brother she adored; the comfortable position she held as the youngest and the smallest, coddled and cossetted by the rest of the family.
She wanted for nothing. Caroline was one of the lucky ones - a little girl experiencing a truly idyllic childhood.
***
Caroline Bingley, fourteen years old, was not having an easy time at school. Many of the girls were haughty and snobbish, looking down their noses at the Bingley sisters. Their families were ancient; their money was old. It was clear that though the Bingleys were among the principal residents of their own town, they were vulgar interlopers here; an unwelcome invasion into elite society.
Caroline tried to ignore the sneers and derision. She was going to be a fashionable lady; she was going to learn every lesson and pile up every accomplishment that she could; she would walk with grace and elegance, hold her head high and proud. She would shed the vestiges of a provincial accent she hadn’t known she possessed; she would scrub away all the evidence of her less-genteel origins until only style and sophistication remained. She would not be intimidated by the other girls’ disdain; it made her all the more determined to succeed.
It was not as easy to brush aside the sting that came from the loftiest of the girls. Their outright indifference to Caroline cut deeper than mere contempt; they lived at so great a height that even their condescension was too good for the Bingleys.
Well, Caroline would show them all. Some day, she would be among their number. They would have to look at her then.
***
Caroline Bingley, twenty years old, felt more wrong-footed and uncertain than she had in quite some time. She had spent years molding herself into a desirable young lady, doing everything society expected of her, becoming exactly the sort of woman that great men were supposed to want to marry. She’d even found the perfect man to flaunt it all for - Charles’s close friend, Mr. Darcy.
Mr. Darcy had everything Caroline wanted: wealth, grandeur, a beautiful estate. He was tall and handsome. His breeding was impeccable.
And she could not get him to warm up to her.
It hadn’t worried her, at first. Mr. Darcy was polite and distant to every woman Caroline ever observed him with; it had nothing to do with her.
Then came Hertfordshire and Miss Elizabeth Bennet, a vulgar interloper if ever there was one. She should not have been Caroline’s rival. She was countrified and barely pretty; her family was completely objectionable; she was so far beneath their notice.
But Mr. Darcy noticed.
Caroline did not sink into despair. The war was not lost yet. They had escaped Hertfordshire and the Bennets. There was no reason to believe that they’d ever see the family again.
It had been important to separate Charles from Elizabeth Bennet’s eldest sister; such a match would be imprudent, degrading, unthinkable. His passion would cool; it always did. Charles fell in love with every pretty face he saw.
He was still pining now, though, staring sullenly into the fire as Caroline and Louisa chatted away. He would sulk for a little while, and then Jane Bennet would be forgotten; Caroline hoped that Mr. Darcy had already forgotten the sister.
“Do cheer up, Charles,” she said. “Mr. Darcy will be back soon, and he is always good company. We will all be in much better spirits after he gets here.”
“Yes,” Charles said, his voice uncharacteristically waspish, “as long as you do not make yourself ridiculous around him, as you usually do.”
Caroline felt like she’d been slapped. Charles was never so mean-spirited; this was his despondency over Jane Bennet speaking; she should not take it to heart.
But she felt suddenly as though she were fourteen again, surrounded by haughty schoolgirls, never measuring up. How had Elizabeth Bennet defied her station in life and captured an important man’s attention? How had she so effortlessly managed what Caroline had spent years training to do?
***
Caroline Bingley, twenty-one years old, was behaving remarkably well at this wedding, considering how very vexing the whole thing was: Charles and Mr. Darcy each attaching themselves to a Bennet, elevating their ladies to a position far higher than either sister deserved.
She could tolerate having Jane Bennet for a sister, she supposed. Charles should have done better, but there was nothing truly disagreeable about Jane herself, when viewed separately from her relations.
Losing Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet was more galling.
It was not that Caroline was so very attached to the man; she certainly did not love him. But he would have been such a prize, had she been able to catch him. Truthfully, what she regretted most was the loss of what a marriage to Mr. Darcy would have brought her: security, wealth, importance, Pemberley.
Well, there was no use crying about it now. She hitched the smile back on to her face as the couples paraded by. Caroline would accept the new Mrs. Darcy because an acquaintance with the family would still benefit her; she would put a good face on things; she would be civil and pleasant; she would keep her eyes open for other opportunities.
She would find herself a rich man who would be proud to have her on his arm.