1. Chapter One

Never before had Gabriel Goulding hurt so much from watching someone else suffer. It was an odd sensation that he was unfamiliar with. Living his life on firm principles, he tried to always be good to those around him. In school, he had bullied no one and tried to help those who were. He even volunteered at Mrs. Darcy's charity when he was in town. Until that point, he would have considered himself empathetic to others' suffering, and yet he had never felt the way he did at this moment.

He had come with Darcy and Miss Mary to look over Longbourn, the estate previously managed, albeit poorly, by the late Mr. Bennet. Gabriel liked Darcy and though he did not see how he could help, he was more than willing to come, especially if it meant being in the company of Miss Mary. However, he hadn't anticipated that such a simple task would be so painful.

He wandered the property, his footsteps quiet as he tried to stay close to Miss Mary without making his presence too obvious. Gabriel knew Miss Mary well enough that he could see her pain despite her attempt to remain stoic. It dawned on him that he had never seen her suffer before. He had witnessed her joy when her sister Kitty married and whenever she played with her niece and nephew. He had even seen her protective side rear its head when Kitty had been the butt of all the malicious gossip in London. Her own pain, however, was new to him and it shook him to the core.

"Careful, Miss Bennet," Gabriel said and reached out as she attempted to step over a pile of rubble. He was very careful to address her as Miss Bennet aloud, it was after all what she should be called as the oldest unmarried Bennet daughter. In his heart and mind, he knew she would remain Miss Mary no matter what was proper. It was, after all, how he addressed her the day he had begun to fall in love.

With a sad smile, Miss Mary took his offered hand to help steady her as she walked over the random bits of wreckage and broken parts of her past. "Thank you, Mr. Goulding. There seems to be rather more debris than I would have thought."

Longbourn had been her home for nineteen years and he knew on some level that those nineteen years had not been happy ones. Gabriel could tell when she recognized some broken bit of a chair or porcelain shepherdess. Her shoulders would droop, and her chin would wrinkle before she tightened her lips and moved on. His heart sank each time it happened, as if the weight of Miss Mary's memories were weighing on him as well.

Stopping to look at a wall that had been smashed through, Gabriel contemplated the sorrow he felt. He had known for some time that he loved Miss Mary, but he was unprepared for the other emotions love brought with it. Was it possible that the difference between a fleeting infatuation and true love was the pain that he now felt? Did true love mean that you would willingly take on more pain if it meant the one you loved would suffer less?

To say that he was having a morning of revelations was an understatement. What truly stymied him was the feeling of not being able to do anything about it. If they were engaged or even courting, he could try to comfort her. Instead, he had painted himself into a corner, letting himself fall so deeply in love before he could offer any kind of relationship. He was not in a place in his life where he could provide for a wife. In fact, it would be quite some time before he could.

So all he could do was watch her suffer while looking for little ways he could help her without crossing any lines. Miss Mary had quietly moved to a door at the end of the hallway on the ground floor, and despite her determined attempts to enter the room, the door would not budge. Gabriel immediately went to help her and upon further inspection, it seemed that the frame of the door had warped, and the door had become stuck. Putting his shoulder to it, he pushed against the door"s resistance, only to have it pop open unexpectedly.

Without the resistance to hold them up, he and Miss Mary both fell into the room. Moving to protect Miss Mary from the fall, Gabriel twisted and grabbed her around the waist, causing her to fall on top of him instead of against the hard floor. He lay there, momentarily stunned by the impact before slowly coming to the realization that he was clutching Miss Mary to him.

Removing his hand reluctantly from around her waist, he smiled to see a single tendril of her hair had broken free to caress her forehead. She blinked owlishly at him as he asked, "Are you all right?"

"Um, yes, I seem all right, but you saved me from hitting the floor. Are you all right?" Awkwardly, Miss Mary tried to find a way to get off his supine form.

Clasping Miss Mary to him once more, Gabriel sat up and, bringing her with him, helped her sit up as well. As soon as she was upright, Miss Mary moved to kneel in front of him, her face full of concern. Reaching out, she looked as if she wanted to check his head for damage. Smiling softly, he clasped her hand and said, "I have a hard head. Do not worry, I assure you I am fine."

Finding herself sprawled on top of Mr. Goulding had wiped Mary's mind of all thought. The first thought that finally coalesced into being was surprise at his unexpected strength when he effortlessly caught her to soften her fall. The next thought was how green his eyes were up close. Their vibrant color resembled fresh spring leaves, full of energy and strength. Had she never been close enough to spot the flecks of gold hidden among the green?

She managed to respond to Mr. Goulding despite trying to find a way to crawl out of sight and die of embarrassment. Realizing that he might be hurt, Mary said, "Um, yes, I seem all right, but you saved me from hitting the floor. Are you all right?"

Somehow she found herself sitting next to him as he continued to reassure her that he was fine before helping her to her feet. Clearing her throat, Mary struggled to get rid of the tightness that gripped her. She offered a shaky, "Thank you," and stepped away from him, forcing herself to look around the room. There was no way she could dwell on what had happened and still maintain her composure. She would think of it later when she had the chance to be alone.

Focusing on her father's room was difficult, but she managed. She had wondered halfheartedly if her father would leave his room free from destruction. Her father had loved his books more than anything else in the world and yet it seemed that when he left Longbourn, he had not been able to bring them all. He had, however, not left those remaining in good stead. The remnants of an untold number of books lay in torn and shredded remains around the room. Piles of ripped pages were scattered, the worlds they contained unceremoniously discarded.

It looked as if a large fire had once roared in the fireplace, fed by any number of books. The ashes long cold were piled high, and it hurt Mary to see them. Her father had loved his books to such an extent, but he had cast them aside with as much cruelty as he had his family. Reaching out, she ran her hand along the dust-coated shelf nearest to her. The shelf had once held so many tomes, a testament to mankind and the power of the written word, and her father had destroyed them all because he could not get his way.

Once the Bennet ladies had been freed of his tyranny, the servants and tenants who had stayed due to the hardworking women abandoned Longbourn. No one would put up with Mr. Bennet for any length of time. Without rents to fill his coffers, Mr. Bennet had quickly gone bankrupt. That is when the clause in the entail had allowed Mr. Collins to have Mr. Bennet evicted and took possession of the property. Only Mr. Bennet had so utterly ruined it all that Longbourn was unlivable. Mr. Collins did not have the money to do anything with Longbourn and for a time, he left it to ruin.

Eventually, Mr. Collins was approached by a buyer. The entail allowed him to sell the home as it ended with him. What he did not know or understand was that the man who approached him represented the husbands of Elizabeth, Jane and Catherine. They had come up with the idea of returning the property to the Bennet ladies as it should have been. So Mary was there, fighting the demons of her past and facing the devastation her father left behind.

Did it make her a terrible daughter and a bad Christian to not regret the fact that her father had passed not long after abandoning Longbourn? Whatever her label, she could be nothing but relieved to know that she would never have to face the man again. Though she had rarely cowered before her father as Kitty had, she had allowed him to assume she was moralizing and simple in order to avoid the worst of his barbs. She never had the fortitude to confront him, as Elizabeth did in so many ways.

Shaking her head, Mary walked over to the desk that her father had relished sitting behind. Having rarely been allowed into his study, she had few memories of seeing him there at his desk, though the few memories she had still made her shudder. It was only as she drew closer that she spotted the knife. It was an eerie sight that left Mary feeling unsettled. There on the table lay a book splayed open in surrender with a knife plunged through its pages and into the hard wood of the desk below.

Creeping closer, she looked at the book, trying to decipher what tome her father had found so enraging. It was a book on floriography—the language of flowers with illustrations and descriptions all in French. If you did not know her family, it might have been startling and confusing, but knowing what she did, Mary somehow found it hilarious.

Unlikely as it seemed, Mary burst out laughing. Her father, it appeared, had finally deciphered why his youngest daughter was constantly gifting him flowers. His reaction had been rather extreme. How hard had it been to stab straight through the book and into the table? Her laugh was a great hysterical thing that got the attention of not only Mr. Goulding who looked at her with worry, but also William who had been in the next room.

"Are you all right, Mary?" Fitzwilliam Darcy approached her, his wide eyes full of concern as he entered the study through the open door.

Mr. Goulding approached as well, looking almost as if he wanted to embrace her or possibly, he was simply afraid of her uninhibited laughter. "Yes, Miss Bennet, are you well?"

Sobering with effort, Mary pointed at the book and replied, "The book." Her father had never once considered that his wife and daughters were capable of finding a way to defy him. He had thought that Lydia was entirely stupid, giving him flowers all the time, instead of viewing her as a smart young woman who was cunning in her own right. Lydia was quite fond of floriography and used the flowers that she loved so much as a way of showing her spite and hatred for the man. While Mr. Bennet had thought his daughter foolishly loved him, she had been telling him on a regular basis what she truly thought.

"It seems he finally read the book that Theodore gave him before we left," William commented as he yanked the knife out of the book and set it aside to check the marred wood beneath.

"I had always wondered if he would ever decipher the hidden meanings. I know he thought that Lydia had a terrible eye for color and composition when she gave him bouquets or paintings of flowers. She spent quite a lot of time in her garden whenever he was being horrible." Accepting the handkerchief from Mr. Goulding, she wiped at her eyes that had begun to water. She would not admit to crying, not at that juncture. "She always had the perfect flower to give him and he, the man who thought he knew so much, could not understand the language she spoke."

Looking up from the desk, William asked, "Will you tell your sister of her success and his apparent understanding?"

"I think I will write to Lydia this afternoon. As much as I would like to have her here with me for this, I am glad she is with Mother back in Derbyshire." Reaching out, Mary gathered up the book and fingered its ragged scar. The hole in the book was a reminder of the damage her father had left on his family. "Mama spent too much of her life trapped here with that man and now she has finally found true happiness with her new husband and son. I am glad she is not here. And as for Lydia, I am glad to be able to protect her from the darkness of this place."

"Yes, there will be a lot of work returning Longbourn to any sort of grandeur." William tried to pick up a small table that had once held a chess set, only for it to fall to pieces in his hands.

Putting down the book with a sigh, she wiped her soiled hands against the apron she had worn to protect her dress from the grime of the home. Mary wrinkled her nose to see the gray streaks left there. "I am less concerned about the manor house than I am about all the tenant cottages and farms. While I doubt my father ransacked them as he did his home, they will still need repair."

Mr. Goulding went back to the doorway and inspected the doorframe, inspecting it for whatever sorts of things people who studied design and structure did. "I have not seen any major structural damage. There is, of course, a lot of damage to the items within the home and a few problems from the damp and broken windows."

Pushing some of the debris into a pile with his foot, William shook his head. "Mary, what say you of getting people into the house to remove the rubble and seeing what can be salvaged? We can assess the home itself and see what repairs need to be done."

Nodding her head, Mary agreed. "I am not opposed to that, though we should probably ask Lizzie if she has any other ideas. I do hope she is feeling better when we return to Netherfield."

"Yes, I do hope so." Despite William's claims, Mary noticed that he could not get rid of his smile. This helped to cement her suspicion that her sister was once again with child.

"Why don't we go and check the servants" quarters and the kitchen? We can easily leave rooms without furniture and what not, but we will need to make sure there is a way to feed everyone." Turning her back on her father"s domain, she forced herself to put it out of her mind for at least the ent. She would probably think about it in the small hours of the night when she could not sleep.

As she walked through the empty halls, she wondered if it would ever be possible to make Longbourn feel like the home it had never been. A crunch underfoot caused her to halt her steps and she looked down, spotting the remnants of a broken figurine. Leaning over, she carefully fingered the broken fragments. Part of a small, smiling face looked up at her, and she realized it was a piece of the figurine her mother had always kept on the mantel. The figurine was once a happy, dancing girl that would never dance again. Mary froze, lost in thought, remembering how her mother would smile as she turned it just so before company came. It had been a wedding gift to her mother from her parents. Unshed tears burned in her throat, but she stood and moved on down the hallway. There was too much pain in the house to focus on the loss of one small figurine.

Squaring her shoulders, Mary continued on with the echo of the heavier steps behind her. At least one of the gentlemen was behind her, following her to the kitchens. She wondered what they might think of the domain that was typically run by women. Had either of them ever spent much time in the kitchens of their childhood homes?

As she entered the kitchen, she was comforted to see that the destruction was less evident. Looking through the various cabinets and drawers, she realized that though everything would need a thorough cleaning, most of it was salvageable. Yes, there was some kind of nest in one of the cabinets that would need to have its inhabitants evicted, but despite that, it would be fairly easy to resume using the space.

The sudden skittering of something running across the floor behind her had Mary gathering her skirts closer to herself and drawing them away from the floor. Wrinkling her nose in disgust, Mary mentally upped the amount of lye she would be bringing over to clean with. It would take quite a lot before she would feel comfortable eating anything that came from this room. Everything would be thoroughly scrubbed with hot water and lye before anything else. More sounds of small, unwelcome inhabitants had Mary deciding that she would also be needing a cat—perhaps several cats—to comb through the building while they were working on repairs. Based on the unsettling noises she had heard so far, the cats would certainly eat like kings or queens.

Noticing William and Mr. Goulding looking around the kitchen with slight looks of confusion, Mary managed to smile. She expected that neither of them had spent much time at all in the kitchens of their homes in their childhoods. Beyond the need to pilfer biscuits, it seemed that men and boys left the kitchen to the woman folk of their lives. "Besides several furry tenants that I have plans of evicting with several large cats, the kitchen looks to be in a good state. Or at least a better state than the rest of the house."

Mr. Goulding nodded in agreement, though his eyes grew wide when he spotted her skirts gathered up above her ankles. Then, quickly looking away, he said, "I can ask around and see if anyone knows of any kittens in the area that need a new home, or of someone with some extra barn cats. I am sure it is something we can take care of quite easily."

Blushing at his reaction, Mary considered dropping her skirts, but then the continued sounds of mice skittering out of sight left her unable to do so. "I would be appreciative of that, thank you. We will need to scrub everything thoroughly." Looking around once more, Mary took note of the layer of grime and dust that had been interspersed with tiny footprints, showing more evidence of the pests that had made the kitchen their home. "Very thoroughly, but it will be easier to take in hand than the rest of the house."

Mr. Goulding managed to maintain eye contact with her, though this time his expression was one of concern. "We? Are you planning on helping? I am sure—"

"That I would be completely capable of rolling up my sleeves and cleaning." Looking at Mr. Goulding with raised eyebrows, Mary waited to see if he would catch his error. She knew that many men thought women of certain status should follow certain patterns of behavior, but she had long ago decided not to let someone else stop her from doing what she could—and should—do to aid others.

Looking rather chagrined, Mr. Goulding rubbed at the back of his neck while seemingly trying to formulate a response. "Yes, I am sure you will do what you wish to see the house returned to a livable state."

Mary glanced at William, who seemed to be smiling at Mr. Goulding's befuddlement. She remembered how often William had found himself in a similar situation when trying to speak with Elizabeth early on in their relationship. Was he happy to be the one not with his foot in his mouth for once? Clearing his throat and relaxing his smile with apparent difficulty, William said, "I am sure that we can round up several willing maids from Netherfield to help get the kitchen in order. Though I will be trying to keep Elizabeth at home with her health being so unreliable at the moment."

"Yes, I will encourage her to stay at Netherfield as well." Mary smiled to herself, thinking of the possibility of having another niece or nephew in the coming summer. Until she had her own children, she was happy to spoil her sister"s children and even her new little brother. She was content enough to wait, at least for now. Looking over at the still contrite Mr. Goulding, she offered him a forgiving smile.

If she could council Lizzie to be forgiving of all of Mr. Darcy's errors in speech back when she met him, then it was only fair that she would attempt to forgive Mr. Goulding. William had turned out quite well despite his propensity for misspeaking, so perhaps there was hope for Mr. Goulding. With skirts still in hand, she turned and left the room. She had no desire to stay with the mice and their friends any longer than necessary.

Once they returned to the broken sitting room, William looked around one last time in disgust at their surroundings before turning to Mary. "I think we have seen as much as we wish to this morning. Why don't we go back to Netherfield? We can discuss matters, and I would like to check on Elizabeth."

"I think that is a splendid idea." Mary smiled, grateful that someone else had suggested they leave the ruins of her childhood.