Chapter Text
Carlisle’s arrival in London was greeted with a reasonably cloudy day, as such he did not have to wait until night to take the carriage home. He had written his steward and asked him to send it if it was a cloudy day or to otherwise wait until nighttime as his skin condition was acting up. As far as his steward and rotating staff knew, Carlisle had a rare medical condition that meant that he burned far too easily in the sun. That was the story he told every human who asked about why he did not go out in the sun.
He eyed the city as he drove through it. It had grown but was still ultimately the same London that he knew and loved. It would be a shame to leave it, but he wished to act as a doctor and that would be much easier in a more northern located place, such as Canada or northern United States of America. Aside from that, the lure of building himself up as something new in the New World was too much of a temptation to resist.
Here in London, he was an arts dealer. Even when he was not here, he had a vast business that his steward ran, only occasionally writing for advice, but more often simply informing him about the successes and failures of the business. Not that there were many failures to report, he had trained his steward well.
In Italy he had trained to be a doctor and had earned the name Stregone Benefico from the Volturi. It had been enjoyable living and working there, but he missed being able to go outside during the day. More than that, he felt his time with the Volturi had come to an end. He would happily call them friends, but the fact was that they lived incredibly different lives.
They embraced everything that came with being a vampire, where he had always wished to help people. For so long, he had simply been a nighttime patron of the arts who donated vast sums to various charities. Now he could help people in a more direct manner, but only if he was able to go outside.
So, he meant only to establish more permanent control of the business. If necessary, he would sell it, but he was rather attached to what he had built up over the course of a hundred and forty years. Instead, he would prefer to simply have it run itself with him only coming to visit every twenty or thirty years.
His house was kept in spectacular condition and still remained in a fashionable part of town, even twenty years later, though he had no doubt that the fashions within the house were incredibly dated. As he did not intend to remain there for long, he would not be doing anything about that.
One part of the house that was not out of date was the library. At his instruction, the servants bought the ten top best sellers for each genre each month and rotated out the library. He should perhaps end that order given that he no longer intended to live here.
Then again, having the books for posterity’s sake was not a bad idea. He could even bring many of them with him on the trip to America. He would surely be spending a great deal of time in his cabin to hide from the sun and books would help him pass the time, as they always had.
When the day after his arrival proved to be too sunny to go out, he found himself in the library. He skimmed the shelves that were meticulously organized to his standards.
He found himself in the fiction section and was skimming the most recent section when a title popped out at him.
Terrible Choices.
Intrigued, he pulled out the book and when he saw the cover, he could not help but laugh. There on the cover was a depiction of what were unmistakably vampire fangs. Vampires did not have fangs any more than humans did, and he had no idea where that misconception had come from. Still, the fact that his staff had bought a fiction book about vampires was incredibly amusing and he decided he would see what silly nonsense the market was churning out.
Instead of finding a silly story about ridiculous misconceptions that people held about vampires, it was an in depth analysis of the moral ambiguities of vampirism wrapped up in a fictional story about Bevill Simpson.
He read the book quickly, then again, and again, and then a fourth time.
He could almost not believe what he had read. Sure, vampires had fangs and burned in the sun, but Bevill struggled with all the same things he had struggled with. He started by trying to kill himself including by starving himself, but his sire stymied him at every turn. Carlisle did not even know his own sire’s name, but he well understood the pressures of another vampire attempting to force you to become more vampiric.
The Volturi had made it a game to try to force him to feed on humans. Once, Aro had even dumped a wounded and heavily bleeding man outside the door of the library while Carlisle had been within and all Carlisle had done was come out and stich the man’s wounds, set his broken bones, and then go back into the library. He knew they had just killed the man, but he had not been able to stand having someone in desperate need of help that was pleading for mercy so close by without doing anything.
Eventually, Bevill escaped the oppressive nature of his sire but even still he struggled. He hated himself more with every day and every kill. They tortured his soul, and he would sit in his house and watch the humans live their lives through the curtains with deep longing.
He spent his days painting and then passed them off to be sold by others, only leaving at night to feed on helpless humans when the thirst was fogging his mind so much he could not think of anything else. As far as humans were concerned, he was an eccentric artist who insisted on changing who sold his paintings every few years to hide that he was not aging.
He began to donate money to charities to help women and children when he heard a neighbor beating his wife. That was the first kill that Bevill did not hate himself for.
He fell in love with a human woman who was set to sell his paintings, so much so that he began to churn out even more paintings simply to be able to see her more often. He loved her more with every day and she seemed to return his regard.
He struggled with himself though. By this point he was a hundred and fifty and he was able to feed only once every week and a half. That did not change that he was a demon of the night whose own name, Bevill, urged him to be evil. How could he love a human when he was vile in every way?
He eventually decided that he was too close to Miss. Emma Gifford, and he ran from the town in the dark of night with only a short note explaining that he had left to protect her.
He ended up living in a nearby forest, constructing himself a small house out of the supplies on hand.
The author changed perspectives then to Emma’s perspective. Emma was hopelessly in love with the tortured artist, and she had even guessed his nature, but did not care. All she wanted was Bevill. She spent months hunting down every lead she could on him until finally she found him in the forest.
She professed her knowledge of his nature and her deep unending love while Bevill stared at her in shock. Though the reader could no longer hear Bevill’s internal monologue, after having spent half the book reading it, it was easy to guess that he was beyond shock and horror at her having found him.
When he urged her to leave him to his cursed existence, she refused and stubbornly insisted that she would hunt him down to the ends of the earth if necessary. She made an impassioned speech about his true nature, not that of an evil vampire, but of a kind, caring man who only sought to do good in the world. She insisted that there had to be a spot in heaven for him because he was the best person to have ever walked the earth.
Bevill broke down in tears and Emma all but ordered him to transform her so that they could spend eternity together. Unable to refuse the love of his life anything, he had done so while begging her to forgive him for giving in. They kissed for the first time before he bit her.
It ended with Emma reflecting that, despite the pain of the transformation, she would now have an unending love with her soulmate, and she would not trade anything in the world for it.
After the fourth time of reading it, he sat back in shock.
He had never, in all of his hundred sixty years imagined that anyone could have such an opinion on vampires. The skilled author, Miss. Elizabeth Bennet, had delicately and masterfully crafted a story that almost completely represented how he felt about himself.
Bevill was lonely and tortured. Every run in he had with other vampires filled him with even greater self-loathing. He did everything he could to help people with the limitations inherent in being a vampire. Every drink of a human made it worse and while Carlisle had never fed on a human, he could only imagine that he would feel precisely the same as Bevill had.
He certainly hated himself with everything within him every time he smelled blood and craved it, though he had managed to develop his self-control such that he scarcely even noticed a bleeding human. Poor Bevill had never had the opportunity to do the same and it had tortured him completely.
He had never felt so understood in his entire undead life, nor even when he was a human.
More than that, he found himself longing for his own Emma Gifford. Someone who saw him for what he was and accepted him completely. He found himself daydreaming of such a woman. Somehow, this book had given him hope for a future where he may be able to find such a thing. The understanding, compassion, and love Emma had for Bevill when the man could not feel such things for himself was beyond enticing.
He traced the letters of Elizabeth Bennet’s name with reverence.
This woman understood. How she did, he had no idea. He had never met a vampire who felt the same way he did, and he wondered if she was a vampire herself. Perhaps she understood because she was the same as he was.
The thought of another vampire feeling the same as him made him shiver in excitement. He had been searching for that very thing for over a century and a half with no success.
After a long time thinking over the book again and again, running in circles in his mind, many of which wondered if Elizabeth Bennet could be correct in her assertion that it was a person’s choices not their nature that guaranteed a spot in heaven, he went in search of more books by her. Surely, an author of such skill had more books.
Yet, despite looking at every book in the library and then in the book storage, he found none. He could not believe she had never written anything else, and he sent his servants out to find more at once.
It took days of combing through the bookstores before they found them. Two books in a used bookstore were by Elizabeth Bennet.
Do Not Open That Door was compelling in a sort of awful way. As though he were watching two carriages crash, he could not look away as he watched Mr. Robert Moore and Miss. Felicity Gale torture each other and make terrible choice after terrible choice. They tormented each other with mind games, dragging innocents into their sick games and discarding them at a moment’s notice without even a thought about their wellbeing.
It ended on what could only be a terrible note as Robert and Felicity married, with Robert transforming Felicity so that they could play their sick games for all time. The book never tried to make the reader feel bad for them, nor did it ever apologize for their behavior. There were no tragic backstories to be found to explain their motivations. They were simply terrible people and being vampires had almost nothing to do with it.
They were the worst example of vampires, but Elizabeth Bennet seemed to understand that. She challenged the reader to question if it really had to do with Robert’s vampiric nature, because Felicity was exactly the same long before she was transformed. She toyed with the reader at the start by not making it clear how bad Felicity was, but slowly hints were dropped, and things began to come to light to reveal that no, she truly was one of the villains of the piece.
By the end he was disgusted completely with both characters. They were absolutely awful people, but they had brought up many interesting questions about how a person’s behavior and their exterior could be completely at odds, not to mention what actually caused the terribleness of a person’s behavior. Was it their nature or did they make the choice to be such, even when other options were available?
By ending on that terrible note, she made it clear that the two would never face consequences for their actions as was so often the case in situations such as these.
It was fascinating in a sick way, and he spent nearly two hours pondering the questions that the book brought up.
Once more, he found himself questioning whether it was his nature that decided who he was or whether he could be a good person if that was what his choices led to. Could it be possible that he was not damned?
The next book was of a similar nature. The Vampire’s Ball discussed the moral implications inherent in their class based society. Mr. Piers Woodward owned a vast estate and was one of the richest men in the country. Mr. Raphe Lenox was a poor vampire who lived on the outskirts of society, farming vegetables and animals to sell for a pittance. He had been born into poverty and had not been able to drag himself out of it no matter how hard he tried. Every so often he had to leave town and find another estate to live on so that no one would realize his condition.
Miss. Helen Heale was the arbiter of their fates. Her father was a rich tradesman that managed to buy an estate near both Piers Woodward’s estate and Raphe Lenox’s small farm that was on the Heale estate.
Helen met Raphe while performing charity for the poor, which he refused, wishing for others who were in greater need than him to reap the benefits, even pointing out who they were. Thus began their quiet, unassuming romance.
She met Piers at a ball he hosted. He fell in love with her based on her looks alone and began to pursue her with determination and deceit.
Helen was torn between the man she was slowly falling in love with and the man everyone around her was urging her to marry.
Naturally, when Piers found out that she was interested in a poor farmer, he tried to have Raphe arrested. Being a vampire, he was able to flee but then he was left even more destitute than he had already been. With nothing to recommend him, Raphe gave up his suit of Helen and told her to marry Piers.
She accepted Piers’ proposal, but she was heartsick. It was the day of her wedding day that she decided that she could not do it. She packed her bags full of valuables, money, and a few clothes, and ran away to the forest Raphe was living in. Raphe was horrified at the life she was giving up, but he respected her enough to not question her choice other than to explain his nature and that he survived by killing the lowlifes that the story had quietly been hinting at being murdered throughout the story.
She happily chose to become a vampire and live the rest of her life in near poverty rather than a life of wealth with no love.
It was almost scandalous in what it said. It was completely contrary to the modern view that the upper class were above reproach, and the lower class were less than worthless. Elizabeth Bennet made no attempt to hide that Raphe and Helen would live a hard life. She was unrelenting in her depiction of poverty as a horrid affliction and wealth as a desirable way of life. Yet still, Helen chose poverty over wealth.
He wondered what the reception of this book had been. It surely could not have been good with the wealthy class, but had it become popular with the lower class?
He spent time ruminating on everything the book had challenged him to think about, including his own pursuit of wealth. He had spent a hundred and forty years trying to distance himself from the poor pastor’s son he had been when he was alive while not searching for love at all. Yes, he had sought out companionship, but not love. He had not even thought of himself as deserving of love.
After his servants’ struggles to find those two books, he wrote to the publishing company and requested any other books by Elizabeth Bennet.
It took a week for him to receive the last two books from the author.
Campbell’s Secret was the first book to depict a woman as a vampire right from the start. It showed an in depth analysis of what society expected of women and how it would affect a vampire. Society expected them to have children and run a household, neither of which a vampire woman could do. Sarah Campbell longed for such a thing, though. She spent her first two hundred years bouncing around being a governess and nanny for various families until she met Laurence Fredrick.
Laurence fell in love with Sarah from the moment he had laid eyes on her, calling her an angel come down from heaven. Though she was resistant at first, he wooed her such that she finally consented to marriage.
Right from the start there was trouble. She needed blood to survive and that was not easy to come by, especially for a housewife. Further than that, she struggled to fit into high society and even going outside was often a challenge with her being forced to cancel many plans due to the sun, thus giving her a reputation of being a flake.
Laurence quickly figured out that she was hiding something from him, but she refused to tell him. Between all of those troubles and the fact that she failed to conceive even five years into their marriage, the marriage slowly disintegrated. All of Sarah’s dreams were falling apart in the worst way possible.
In a moment of desperation, she finally admitted her secret to Laurence who was horrified and cast her from the home at once.
Now in a deep depression, she lived in the nearby forest, hunting only when necessary and even trying not to do that much because she struggled with the idea that she deserved life after the harsh words of her husband.
It was not until five years later that she came across Laurence. He was drinking in a bar which she was scoping out for potential food. As she listened, Laurence lamented his idiocy to the bartender and anyone who would listen that he had lost the love of his life with his foolish actions. As he claimed, he could have had her forever, but he had been an idiot.
When she presented herself to him, he almost did not believe it was her, but he took her home with him nonetheless. Once he was sober, he begged her to forgive him and transform him so that he might be her husband forever.
Despite her doing so and the story ending, Elizabeth Bennet had no qualms about informing the reader that they had a long road ahead of them to recover their love to the point it had once been. Beyond even that, Sarah still felt incomplete without children, something she would never be able to have without doing the unthinkable. It hinted that the thought haunted her at night such that she was considering it.
He had never considered the plight of vampiric women in much detail. Ultimately, he thought of them as having the same troubles as vampiric men. He had never considered whether they might be horrified at the thought of not being able to marry or have children.
He had heard of immortal children, the Volturi had kept a few in the dungeons of the castle for a few centuries before completely outlawing them and destroying every such example. Yet, he had never considered the rational behind their creation. He had never thought about how desperate a woman must be to have a child to do such a horrific thing to a child.
He had only ever been disgusted at the thought and now, though he still knew it was inherently a terrible thing to do to a child, he also could not fault the people who had done so. To want a child that badly must be a terrible feeling.
The final book of Elizabeth Bennet’s was Missed Chance. He wished desperately that there were other books by her and could only hope that soon there would be more.
Missed Chance depicted Clarisse Ashby who was considered the most beautiful woman in the country by everyone who met her, yet she refused every request for marriage that was posed to her. Barlow Shore was an associate of her father’s in the textile industry. He rarely left the house, claiming a fear of doing so, but invited people to lavish parties regularly.
Clarisse was depicted as a powerless young woman. Her family treated her terribly and the only source of power she had was in refusing men, even as it would help her leave behind the family that treated her so terribly. The phrase ‘The enemy you know’ was repeated regularly in her mind.
The story began with a gruesome murder of a magistrate and was not the first such murder. Clarisse heard about it from her father who worried about them a great deal. It ended up being a bit of a mystery for a time as she struggled to determine who could be committing the murders. She eventually traced it to Barlow, but he was such a kind gentleman that she decided that he must have been set up.
She paid him far more attention than she had ever paid any man, as such her family began to hope that she would finally be married at they would be ‘free’ of her. So, they pushed her onto him, and a romance slowly began to blossom between them. Throughout this time, a Mr. Dartle was pursuing her, determinably proposing to her every chance he had, no matter how many times she said no.
When he learned that she was intensely interested in Barlow, he decided to truly frame him for the murders he was committing. Clarisse figured this out and declared to everyone that it had to be Mr. Dartle who was committing the murders and that she knew Barlow to be innocent. Being from a respected family of the community, she was believed, and Mr. Dartle was imprisoned, but he managed to escape, and the murders continued.
It took some time, but she eventually determined that not only was Barlow committing the murders but that he was actually a vampire as she caught him red handed, or mouthed as the case may be.
She was naturally distraught for a time, until she decided that her love trumped her desire for others’ safety, and she demanded to be turned so that she could join him forever. Elizabeth Bennet questioned this decision extensively. Did a stranger’s safety outweigh someone’s desire for love? How far would or should someone go for their own happiness?
As her first book, it was not as complex or subtle as her other books, but it still raised interesting questions that he enjoyed a great deal.
When he was done, he stared at the five books for a long time. Not all of them had spoken to him so completely as Terrible Choices but they were all incredibly interesting and engaging. He had never read a book that engaged his mind so much as these five books had and that was saying something because he was consummate reader.
He spent nearly a week contemplating what he wished to do about what he had learned. He wished to meet Elizabeth Bennet terribly badly, but he hesitated to try to do so. If she was not a vampire, then it was very much possible that she felt much the same as Sarah Campbell did. If she longed for a family and to be a housewife, how could he take that away from her?
Yet, a deep longing had been ignited inside him. He wished for love. He wished for understanding. He wished for companionship.
He felt that he could find that in Elizabeth Bennet. She understood him as no one else did or could.
Finally, he decided that he had to meet her and sound her out. If she was a vampire, then he would ask to be able to, at the very least, be her friend. If things developed beyond that, he would be pleased.
If she was not a vampire, he would sound her out and see how she felt about marriage, children, and immortality. Given that every story ended with the love interest becoming a vampire, he hoped that she wished for such a thing. If she perhaps wished to live out the life of a human woman until her children were grown and then become a vampire, he would happily indulge her.
It was not hard to decide that he would indulge her in every way possible. No matter what she wished, he would fulfil it to the best of his abilities. If that meant simply watching her life from afar as she aged and eventually died, then that was what it meant.
So, he wrote to the publishing company and requested a meeting with the one in charge of Elizabeth Bennet. It was not for another week that he was finally able to get said meeting during which time he was a wreck of nerves and doubt.
When he broached the topic, the man was naturally nervous, and it took another week until he was able to convince him to divulge the area in which she lived. As irritated as he was that it took a week, he could not help but be pleased that the man did not give out her address to just anyone. In fact, he did not even give Carlisle her address, only the county she lived in.
It took time for him to arrange to move to Hertfordshire, in part because it was sunny out, though he suspected that it was the last few days of the sun shining based on past years. Soon, it would be cloudy out again and he would be able to safely seek out Elizabeth Bennet.
As he waited and planned, he procured a second set of each book and sent them off to the Volturi. He thought Aro and Caius would enjoy them a great deal. Perhaps even Marcus, if he deigned to read them. He knew that no one else had ever captured the essence of what it meant to be a vampire as clearly as she did. Be they unrepentant murders or plagued with doubts and horror as he was, she managed to capture vampires and their problems completely.