Devotion Read online

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  a novel in two volumes by

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  MEG KERR

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  Being a sequel to Experience

  by the same author,

  and a further continuation of

  Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

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  Also by Meg Kerr

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  Experience

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  Forthcoming in the fullness of time

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  Camden-place

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  Dedicated to my parents

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  And, as always, with affection and gratitude,

  to J.

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  Copyright © 2017 by Bluebell Publishing

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

  electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

  or any information storage and retrieval system, without

  permission in writing from the publisher.

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  Published by Prism Publishers

  1253 Davenport Rd

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6H 2H2

  www.prismpublishers.com

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  ISBN 978-1-77317-002-2 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-77317-003-9 (ePUB)

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  Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Available from Library and Archives Canada

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  Cover art by Marsha Fouks and Pam Templeman

  Cover photo of author by Zdenka Darula

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  Cover design, and interior typesetting:

  Daniel Crack, Kinetics Design, kdbooks.ca

  linkedin.com/in/kdbooks

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  FOREWORD

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  With due 18th-C. novelistic decorum, two letters launch the events of Devotion: one from Lady Catherine de Bourgh to the Darcys at Pemberley, announcing her daughter Anne’s engagement to a Lord Marlowe, and the other from George Wickham to Georgiana Darcy, a deathbed scrawl from the fields of Waterloo declaring his “undying devotion” to her despite all that separated them in the past. Resolved to visit his grave, Georgiana once again relies on the ministrations of Mrs. Younge, this time travelling to Brussels only to find herself subject to the attentions of John Amaury, an equally charming and possibly unscrupulous fortune-hunter.

  Will Georgiana succumb to his charms? Or will Darcy, perhaps aided by the Gardiners or Col. Fitzwilliam, again ride to her rescue? Readers eager for more of the multiple plot-lines to learn how, beyond the boundaries of Pride and Prejudice, Georgiana, Lady Catherine and Anne, Elizabeth and Darcy, Jane and Bingley, Lydia and Kitty, Charlotte Lucas and Rev. Collins, the Bingley sisters, and even the Gardiners receive the poetic justice their respective characters as initially established by Jane Austen might demand, should skip this foreword and turn immediately to the novel.

  But a few words about its other pleasures (besides consistencies of character as those play themselves out in new or parallel “plots”) may be in order. Meg Kerr’s two novels to date offer pleasures of recognition beyond familiarities of character, plot, and even scenes (for instance, the Bennets once more arguing about new tenants at Netherfield Park, or Lady Catherine arguing with yet another young lady attempting to steal her daughter’s rightful suitor). We hear echoes of other 18th-C. authors and works: Richardson, Burney, Radcliffe, Goldsmith (even the 19th-C. George Eliot figures in Experience). We recognize the genre of 18th-C. novels themselves – French as well as English – structurally replete with letters and most of all conversations, Jane Austen’s specialty. We are pleasurably immersed in 18th-C. English diction from start to finish – in cadences and turns of phrase too often missing even from movie “reproductions” of Austen’s novels. Meg Kerr’s ear for dialogue characteristic of each particular speaker, and emphasis on “conversation” over description or plot, has been my own most unexpected pleasure in reading these books.

  This brings me to a final observation, about the probably deep divide between academic and non-academic readerships for this type of novel. Jane Austen, like Shakespeare, has always bridged the gap between popular and high-brow culture, between the “Janeites” and the academic critics who so disparagingly label them as such for their fervent and apparently undiscriminating enthusiasm for her novels. But what of the many Austen “spin-offs” – like Experience and Devotion – that her novels have spawned? Could they ever equally bridge the readership gap? As Princeton Professor Claudia Johnson points out, unlike the Janeites, we academics hold that “it is inappropriate to talk about characters as if they were real people or in any way speculate upon their lives before, after, or outside the text itself” (235); “we are confounded by the common Janeite game of imagining how a character in one novel might behave towards a character in another, or of speculating how the novels might continue after the wedding” (244). Yet she also terms such an attitude “professional dogma,” pointing out that such speculating beyond the limits of her novels was “a practice Austen herself authorized by gratifying the curiosity of her nephews and nieces” (244).

  Programmed for decades now to do heavily theorized and “ideological” interpretation, we academics have arguably become tone-deaf to the cadences of 18th-C. speech so aptly caught in Meg Kerr’s novels. Who is more “culturally literate”: the academic who can talk about novelistic styles and techniques, or the writer who successfully emulates them? And it’s possible that, like all novels that self-consciously participate in the literary tradition that gave rise to them (Northanger Abbey most obviously leaps to mind here), as both novels and a form of literary criticism their playful speculations may well begin to extend that tradition into new genres and directions.

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  Lorraine Clark

  Emeritus Professor of English

  Trent University

  Peterborough, Ontario

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  Works Cited:

  Claudia Johnson, “Austen Cults and Cultures,” The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. 2nd ed., Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster. 232-247.

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  INTRODUCTION

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  That Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley lived happily ever after is universally acknowledged as truth. Mr. Darcy through all the vicissitudes of matrimony assuredly continued to experience a happiness such as he had never felt before, and Mrs. Darcy remained the happiest creature in the world. Nor can there be any doubt that Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bingley remained blessed in a marriage of easy tempers and affectionate hearts.

  But as they were driven away from the church door in Meryton, the quartet of joyful newlyweds left behind several young ladies with stories in a very incomplete state. Their creatrix, Miss Jane Austen, vouchsafed only that …

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  Mary Bennet remained at home and was obliged to mix more with the world as a result of her mother’s inability to sit alone.

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  Kitty Bennet to her material advantage spent the chief of her time with her two elder sisters, to her great improvement.

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  Lydia Wickham retained all the claims to reputation that her marriage had given her, as Wickham’s affection for her sank into indifference and hers soon followed.

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  Caroline Bingley was deeply mortified by Darcy’s marriage but took every necessary step to retain the right of visiting at Pemberley.

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  Georgiana Darcy now made Pemberley her home, with her brother and his wife.

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  No, no, this will not do. It is not to be tolerated that after living so intimately with the Bennets, Bingleys and de Bourghs, the reader of Pride and Prejudice should be denied any further news of their lives! And thus, Experience – to which this book, Devotion, is a companion volume.

  Pride and Prejudice took place during the year 1812. Experience picks up the story immediately and its events unfold from the beginning of 1813 to the end of 1815. Over the course of Experience:

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  Mary, believing she has found her best and highest duty by uniting herself to a clergyman older than her father, a prolific writer who must surely be in need of her multitude of accomplishments to finish his tome on The Martyrs of the Reign of Queen Mary, is very much taken aback by her new husband’s insistence that the proper role of a clergyman’s wife is to visit the poor with a basket of potatoes and teach needlework to the daughters of the local labourers. Is there any escape for her from this nightmare?

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  Kitty through a perfectly natural and credible series of coincidences, contrivances, accidents and twists of fate ascends to the peerage.

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  Lydia, a soldier’s wife, cannot avoid being swept up in the events of 1815 that culminate in the Battle of Waterloo and change her life forever.

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  Caroline Bingley’s humiliating romantic defeat at the hands of Elizabeth Bennet may be assuaged by a marriage into the aristocracy arranged by her sister Mrs. Hurst … but Miss Bingley, with her partiality for arrogant, tall, dark, handsome men finds what passes for her heart pulled in different directions.

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  As for Georgiana Darcy – Georgiana’s story is told in Devotion rather than in Experience, as she clearly needed a larger stage, all to herself, for her escapades.

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  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  IN DEVOTION

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  Each character is introduced below only once,

  but may materialize in one or more settings.

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  AT PEMBERLEY

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  Fitzwilliam Darcy, and his wife Elizabeth (née Bennet)

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  Georgiana* Darcy

  *You may pronounce Georgiana as you like, but however you pronounce it, you will almost certainly end up quarrelling with your neighbours.

  It may be pronounced JOR-JEE-ANNA; or JOR-JANNA (this author’s preference); or even JOR-JEENA.

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  IN BRUSSELS

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  Mrs. Selina M. Younge

  John Amaury*

  *Pronounced AH-MOR-EE

  Molly Lyon

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  IN MERYTON

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  Mr. and Mrs. Bennet

  Penelope (Pen) Harrington

  The Delaford Family – Mrs. Delaford, the widowed mother of

  Mr. Edmund Delaford, and of Frank and Fanny Delaford

  Lord Marlowe

  IN KENT

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  Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and her daughter Anne de Bourgh

  Mr. and Mrs. William Collins

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  IN LONDONO

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  Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner

  Sir Henry and Lady Mallinger (née Caroline Bingley)

  Mr. and Mrs. Hurst

  John Thorn (later Sir John)

  Lord and Lady Metcalf

  The Earl and Countess of Tyrconnell (née Catherine Bennet)

  Mr. William Brooke, approved suitor of Georgiana Darcy

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  Volume

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  CHAPTER

  1

  Pemberley, January 1816

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  It is a breach of decorum infinitely to be deplored, that the dead should communicate with the living – and this above all when nothing so became the deceased in his life as the leaving of it.

  At Pemberley the arrival of the post was the object of each morning’s eager anticipation, and hopes for news and greetings from distant friends and family. Of a letter for Georgiana Darcy, whose author had exited this world, more shall be revealed shortly. Elizabeth Darcy, who was wishing for a few lines from her father, a most negligent correspondent, received nothing, but her husband obtained a reward in the form of an epistle from his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

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  Rosings Park

  Hunsford, Kent

  January ~, 1816

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  Dear Darcy,

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  I write to make known to you that my daughter Anne will shortly be wed to Viscount Marlowe of Ashbury Park, Surrey. Their union will completely meet every requirement of judgment, dignity and decorum, and realize the discriminating wishes of the friends of both parties. The daughter of Sir Lewis de Bourgh really could not with propriety bestow herself on anyone of lesser rank or fortune. It appears providential that a marriage between Anne and you, of which there were proposals of an indeterminate nature formulated by my sister Lady Anne Darcy in the remote past and pursued more recently by you in the face of my and Anne’s conspicuous resistance, did not come to pass, for it is now evident that destiny had marked her for something far better. The combined fortunes of husband and wife will be splendid, Lord Marlowe having recently inherited a considerable estate from his father and Anne being the heiress of very extensive property. They will make an exceptionally handsome couple for his bearing is decidedly aristocratic, and her features, as has been very justly observed, proclaim her distinguished birth.

  Lord Marlowe is already particularly attached to me, and was most flattered when I invited to stay at Rosings for a month. However he informed me very regretfully yesterday evening that he had business that would take him away earlier. I told him that there could be no occasion for leaving when he had been here scarcely a week, as business can always wait, b
ut he said he had no choice but to conquer his disappointment and go. The inclination that he and Anne show for each other is already so great that they, each acting for the other’s sake, rallied their spirits creditably at his departure this morning.

  On parting Lord Marlowe was urgent on the necessity of the engagement remaining unannounced for a brief period. I have the greatest dislike in the world to uncertain engagements; I think them most unwise, and I made my sentiments known to him; but there are few people in England, I suppose, who are possessed of greater honour than Lord Marlowe, and to oblige him I shall not object to this state of affairs for a little time. I therefore charge you not to spread any report until I send you word, which I expect to do shortly.

  ∞ Yours, etc.

  C. de Bourgh

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  Darcy and Elizabeth had just been preparing to walk, and were waiting only for the letters before they set off, leaving Georgiana to read hers in quiet. It was a frosty morning but intending a long stroll they made towards the most eminent hill on the property, gradually ascending side by side across the park and through the woods, taking pleasure from the exercise and the sunny day, and from the crisp winter landscape. Although Elizabeth stood the test of the frost and the activity very well, by the time they neared their destination she was a little weary, and Darcy, with swift perception of her fatigue, offered her his arm. She declared herself not very tired, but took it contentedly. When they gained the summit of the hill they commanded a view of Lambton some miles distant, and Elizabeth found a comfortable seat for herself on a dry stone wall, glad to sit down and enjoy the prospect.

  Darcy roamed about, poking at the frozen vegetation with his stick, and then seated himself beside her. He allowed several moments to pass and then he said, “I had a letter from William Brooke yesterday.” When Elizabeth made no answer he added, “Do you wish to hear what he wrote?”

  “You want to tell me, and I have no objection to listening to you.”

  This appeared to serve as sufficient encouragement to her husband and he commenced, “He speaks of Georgiana in terms of extraordinary praise, of how highly he admires and esteems her.”