The Mistress's Black Veil

In this new twist to Jane Austen's favorite romance, M. K. Baxley explores the road that might have been taken had one small alteration occurred in the original plot. Instead of Lydia Bennet going to Brighton while Lizzy toured the Lakes, what if she had gone instead while Elizabeth visited Charlotte in Kent?

In this tale of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth was called home immediately after receiving Mr. Darcy's letter. Her father, while searching for his youngest daughter in London, succumbed to a cold and later died of heart failure. The subsequent events that follow are told in the narrative fashion of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and within the manner of Jane Austen.

The Mistress's Black Veil begins five years after that fateful day at Hunsford Parsonage when Mr. Darcy proposed to Elizabeth Bennet. The Bennets, now reduced to poverty after the death of Mr. Bennet, are barely surviving, having been thrown into the hedgerow by their cousin, Mr. Collins, at the directive of his noble patroness Lady Catherine de Bourgh. As the situation becomes even more desperate, Elizabeth makes a difficult and irrevocable choice that will forever change her life and the lives of the ones she loves. In the end will she and Fitzwilliam Darcy find their way to their happily ever after?

The Mistress's Black Veil, influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "The Minister's Black Veil", is for mature readers only.