Title: A Haunting at Pemberley
Rating: T (PG-13) – for spooky good fun and hints of sexuality (non-explicit).
Disclaimer: Though I write stories based on the novels and characters of Jane Austen, this work belongs to ME and no one else. Unless given express permission, no one besides myself has the right to distribute or profit from my intellectual property. All rights reserved.
Setting: Regency

Summary: Trapped at Pemberley during a storm, a nervous Elizabeth can't help but wonder – are the stories true? Is the great house haunted? When she ventures out into the hallway in a fright, she bumps into Mr Darcy...

Who ya gonna call?

Chapter One

"Oh, my, but that smells wonderful," Elizabeth praised as the hearty beef stew she and the Gardiners had ordered was brought into their private quarters. After a long day on the road, she was eager for something substantial to eat, even if it was simplistic inn fare.

"Indeed, it does," agreed her uncle Gardiner as the dish was placed in the center of the table between them. He leaned forward and inhaled deeply, appreciating the aroma of cooked beef, potatoes and carrots. "Though anything would seem more appetizing than our breakfast."

Elizabeth and her aunt laughingly agreed; that morning's repast had been so entirely inedible that they had departed from their previous lodgings without partaking of any of it, leaving them all ravenous at tea time later. Now, they were prepared to eat voraciously to make up for their earlier lack of nourishment.

"Thank you, Hannah," Mrs Gardiner said to the maid as the lid was lifted from the stew pot, revealing the contents to their eyes as well as their noses. She dipped the provided ladle into their meal and began dividing it up amongst the three of them.

Hannah bobbed a polite curtsy before inquiring, "Will you be needin' anythin' more, Ma'am?"

"Perhaps some bread?" suggested Mr Gardiner, who accepted his portion from his wife as he spoke his request. Elizabeth gratefully received hers next.

"Yes, Sir," replied Hannah, dipping another curtsey before withdrawing from the room.

Once Hannah had departed to fetch the bread to accompany their stew, Mrs Gardiner settled herself back into her chair and addressed both of her dining companions. "So, what shall we do tomorrow? I know we had previously discussed paying a visit to Pemberley, but no decision has yet been made. What say you?"

"I have no aversion to the scheme," said Mr Gardiner as he tucked his linen napkin into the collar of his shirt.

Elizabeth, who had been blowing gently on a steaming spoonful of beef and potato, lowered her utensil back into her dish as her stomach began to squirm uncomfortably. She had rather hoped that her relations might forget about visiting that particular estate after she had made a point of showing a lack of enthusiasm for it before, but that had been apparently too much to hope for. "To be perfectly honest, Aunt, I have no inclination for touring another fine house. We have seen so many of late and I really have no pleasure in fine carpets or satin curtains."

"My love, should you not like to see a place of which you have heard so much?" Mrs Gardiner asked between bites. "A place, too, with which so many of your acquaintance are connected. Wickham passed all his youth there, you know."

How could she forget? Elizabeth fought the urge to grimace at the mention of that particular man – for gentleman he was not – considering her more recent knowledge of his past behavior. She was sure that the past associations with Pemberley were very pleasing to him, but rather doubted that anyone else who lived there shared that opinion of his residency. Coughing a little, Elizabeth replied, "I should feel awkward to go there without an invitation."

"An invitation, indeed!" cried Mr Gardiner, guffawing at her reasoning. He dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, clearing away a dribble of gravy from his chin, before pressing on, "We had no such thing at Chatsworth or Blenheim and there was no awkwardness there."

'True enough,' Elizabeth admitted silently, 'but then the proprietors of those great estates had not proposed marriage to me and been rejected soundly.' However, she could say no such thing aloud and so she contented herself with silence as a response.

"If it were merely a fine house richly furnished," persisted Mrs Gardiner, picking up where her husband had left off, "I should not care about it myself, but the grounds are delightful. They have some of the finest woods in the country. Is that not so?" She posed this last question to the maid who was returning just then with their requested loaf of bread.

"The finest anywhere, Ma'am," Hannah agreed as she laid the additional fare on the table and began portioning it out to her patrons. A young lad of about twelve years entered the room behind her with logs cradled in his arms for the fire. He got to his work against the far wall while the conversation continued around him. "My eldest brother is an undergardner there."

"And is the family home for the summer?" Elizabeth asked, lowering her eyes to her plate in the hopes that the earnestness of her query would go unnoticed. She could hear as well as feel the rapid thudding of her pulse as she awaited an answer.

Hannah shook her head in the negative fashion. "No, Miss. Last I heard, Mr Darcy were off to London."

Elizabeth felt the muscles in her shoulders relax at this welcome news. Her throbbing heart slowed its pace and she could feel the flush in her cheeks subside. She picked up her spoon and dished up a portion, suddenly hungry again.

"Yew don' want to go to Pemberley, Missus," cried the boy from across the room. He stood next to the fireplace, dusted with ash, and stared at them with wide eyes. "Haunted, it is!"

"Hush, you!" chided Hannah, turning back to apologize. "I am so sorry, Sir, Ma'am, Miss. Sam is full of fanciful notions, he is. Always goin' on about somethin' or other."

Mr Gardiner, leaning back in his chair with his hands spread across his happily full stomach, dismissed her contrition with a chuckle. "No need to apologize, Lass, the boy meant no harm. Haunted you say?"

The child nodded vigorously and stepped forward, his hands gesticulating out the open window in what Elizabeth assumed must be the direction to Pemberley. He was warming to his topic and spoke with the kind of excitement that only the youthful can project. "Aye, haunted! I seen it fer myself when I worked in the stables last summer. That place be full 'o spirits."

Mrs Gardiner looked to Elizabeth with a smile curling at the corners of her lips. She had much practice in indulging her own fanciful children and had shared many of their more outlandish stories with her elder nieces. Elizabeth returned her merriment in kind as her uncle continued to dig the particulars out of their storyteller.

Mr Gardiner leaned forward again, propping his elbows upon the table and his chin upon the interlaced fingers of his hands. A crooked grin was growing as he further humored the young man. "Indeed? Are they very frightening, Lad?"

The boy arched his back so that his spine stood straight at attention. "I ain't afraid of no ghosts, sir."

"Certainly not, I would not have suspected it of you," placated Mr Gardiner. "But are there many ghosts? Shall we see one if we visit?"

"Aye, there's one that's said to come up out of the lake if you – "

"That's quite enough out of you! There's plenty 'o work to be done 'round here and never enough time to do it in. Leave off telling your wild stories and get off with you," Hannah scolded, shooing the boy toward the door with a double wave of her hands. "Off with you, Sam! Go see to the Millers' fire."

The boy scowled at her for interrupting, but bowed at the table full of patrons and left. The way he held his nose aloft in the air reminded Elizabeth strongly of a young lady she'd met the previous autumn and the comparison was most amusing. She held a knuckle to her lips, pressed against her growing smile, and fought strongly the urge to laugh aloud.

Once the boy's footsteps could be heard clomping down the staircase, Hannah turned back to the Gardiners and offered another apology. "Sorry again, Sir, Ma'am. Sam is full of tall tales."

"Do not worry yourself about it one bit," said Mr Gardiner, leaning back to sit more comfortably in his chair. "We have a boy at home about his age and he's always telling us the most entertaining stories. Can't believe a single thing he tells you, but he keeps us all laughing."

"Thank you, sir. Please ring the bell if there's anythin' more you be needin'." The maid dropped a quick curtsy and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Once she was gone, Mrs Gardiner turned back to Elizabeth and asked, "So, what do you say to seeing Pemberley tomorrow? It's not directly in our way, but no more than a mile or two out of it. If we are very lucky, perhaps we shall see some of the former residents while we are there." The lady's smile grew incrementally as she told her little joke. Her niece laughed at the notion.

Elizabeth, feeling it would be churlish to protest further and comforted by the sure knowledge that Mr Darcy would not be in residence during their visit, allowed that she should very much like to see what lurked in the depths of Pemberley's lake. "If not a ghost, perhaps a sea monster?" She earned a deep guffaw from her uncle and a more ladylike chuckle from her aunt for this quip.

With no further objections to the scheme, to Pemberley they were to go.

000

"And here is my master!" announced Mrs Reynolds, stopping in front of a large, life-sized portrait of Mr Darcy. She waved her hand toward the painting and added, "And very like him, too."

The gallery at Pemberley was a long hallway on the second level of the great house with a row of tall windows on one side and various pieces of artwork displayed against the wall on the other. There were numerous portraits, most of which were Darcys of yesteryear, but there were also a few landscapes and still lifes sprinkled into the line for variety in addition to assorted works of pottery and sculpture. One particular bust of some ancestor had a nose that had looked familiar, but Elizabeth felt that the current master wore it better.

Now, at the very center of the corridor, the group was stopped before a life-sized rendition of the Mr Darcy she was acquainted with, flanked by wall sconces that would illuminate it even in darkness. He looked every bit as powerful as his forebears and his abominable pride, suddenly, seemed completely reasonable.

Elizabeth was forced to agree with the housekeeper, who proceeded to enthuse over what a remarkable likeness the painting conveyed. The painter, whomever he was, had done a magnificent job of capturing the essence of the strong, masculine Master of Pemberley. He stood, tall and proud, with one hand at his lapel and the other propped against the mantlepiece that their guide had presented to them in the library down below. His boot rested against the hearth at the bottom before a roaring blaze, the leather reflecting the orange light in a sheen that indicated a high polish. She had seen him display himself in just such a way on several occasions during his stay in Hertfordshire and she smiled in appreciation of how very like him it was. The only other position in which he was more familiar would be with his back turned as he stared out of a window, but she supposed that would hardly make a very good portrait. After all, his face would be what future generations would be most interested to see and, though he had quite a habit of hiding it from others, it was well worth looking at.

Mrs Reynolds continued to expound upon the painting – when it had been commissioned, what occasion it had been done for, and so on – and Elizabeth kept her eyes trained upon it. The face that should not be hidden was so very handsome and the artist had managed to capture Mr Darcy in one of his gentler moments. She knew it wasn't creative liberty because he wore a smile that, in retrospect, she recognized as one he had used to turn upon her on occasion. She rather wondered what he had been smiling about at the time his image had been taken, but the housekeeper either had no such knowledge to impart or was disinclined to do so. Whatever it had been at the time, Elizabeth now strangely felt that it was for her benefit, no matter how ridiculous that seemed.

The Gardiners and Mrs Reynolds moved on to another painting and Elizabeth could vaguely hear them commenting upon it, but she remained where she was, staring at the man she had so scornfully rejected back in the spring. That enigmatic smile seemed to be just for her, showering her with benevolence that she didn't deserve. Oh, how she had misjudged him! And for a man such as Mr Wickham. She, who had been so proud of her discernment and ability to study characters, had made the mistake of believing that a person's goodness was necessarily linked to his amiability in society. Had she not spent much of her lifetime controlling her impulses in company to show good manners to others? Was that not some form of mask used to beguile others into seeing only the best parts of herself? Mr Wickham had done much the same, but with nefarious motives for doing so.

Mr Darcy, in contrast, had failed to be polite and had even occasionally given offense, but there had been no cause to doubt his honesty. Considering the wild behavior of some of her own family, how could she condemn a man for poor manners? Her prejudice against him had been born the night of the assembly when he had wounded her vanity, cracked that veneer she wore to put her best self forward, and made her feel as unworthy as her mother told her she was. Elizabeth hadn't been as angry with Mr Darcy as she had been with the realization that she was nothing special to this handsome stranger. Of course, he had apparently changed his mind later, but the shame of being somehow defective had persisted.

Still, that was absolutely no cause for later wounding him as she had. Not only had she accused him of underhanded dealings with Mr Wickham, but she had also overlooked his declaration of ardent love and stomped his heart beneath her boot before grinding it into the floor. She would never forget the expression on his face as she had dared to call him ungentlemanly; he had been stiff and pale, almost as if on the verge of tears, though he had held them back in her presence. Elizabeth had accused him of cruelty to her sister and Mr Bingley, but it had been she that was wantonly vicious. She looked away from the contentedly smiling face of Mr Darcy, too ashamed to face even his likeness.

If only she could see him one last time, or even respond to his letter, she would apologize for every awful thing that she had said. Even his self defense on the score of separating his friend from Jane had shown some merit upon second perusal. Had the situation been reversed, Elizabeth might have offered her dearest sister the same advice, though she supposed that Jane would have ascertained the feelings of her suitor from the source rather than simply disappearing. Leaving Hertfordshire was Mr Bingley's failing.

Well, she decided as she raised her eyes back up to Mr Darcy, there was no cause to fret over the past as the remembrance gave her no pleasure. If she could never see him again, she would at least wish him happy. Perhaps a message to that effect could be left with Mrs Reynolds, who was already aware of a prior acquaintance between Elizabeth and her master. Yes, she would be sure to do that. She walked up close to the painting and, without deliberation beforehand, reached out her fingers to stroke fondly at the glossy image on the canvas. A small sigh escaped her unnoticed.

Squeeeeeeeak.

Elizabeth turned at the sudden noise that had interrupted the silence. It was then that she realized that she was alone. "Hello?"

Creeeeeeeak.

Perusal of the space around her confirmed that her relations and the housekeeper were no longer in the gallery and that she had been left behind. Bother! She hoped that they were in the next room and that she could catch them up quickly.

Elizabeth inclined her head once more toward Mr Darcy's painting and returned his smile with one of hers. She wished his image well and then turned to proceed down the corridor in the direction her group had been heading upon arrival.

Squeeeeeeeak.

Elizabeth stopped in the middle of the lush carpet as the door up ahead at the end of the hallway opened, seemingly of its own accord. Based on the coincidental timing, she concluded that this was also the source of the sharp, squealing noise that had interrupted her interlude with the portrait of Mr Darcy.

She looked ahead of her. She looked behind her. There were no others in evidence, either of her own party or an unknown servant. Elizabeth was alone. Who could have opened the door?

Elizabeth felt a trill of fear climb up her spine, one vertebra at a time, like a mouse scampering up her back on tiny, prickly feet. She felt silly for even considering this, but could the boy's story have been true? Were there ghosts at Pemberley? Surely not!

The door stood perfectly still as she observed it at length, suspiciously immobile after its recent activity. Could a piece of wood mock a person?

On tentatively light feet, Elizabeth approached the open portal and craned her neck to see inside. As far as she could tell, it was a room just like many others, full of furniture and likely unused most of the time in a house so large. It had a couple of chairs, a four poster bed with rich purple velvet hangings and a luxurious carpet on the floor in emerald green. Nothing sinister. Gathering the courage that always rose with every attempt to intimidate her, Elizabeth breached the threshold and stepped inside.

As she'd perceived from outside, there was nothing noteworthy about this chamber other than the obviously high standard of furnishing, which was true of every other she had so far seen at Pemberley. Though tempted to check the handsome black and yellow Japan cabinet against the far wall and take a peek beneath the bed, Elizabeth resisted such foolishness. It would not do to be caught snooping through the contents of a room in which she did not belong; she doubted that even the most superstitious of servants would believe she was looking for ghosts and not treasures to pilfer.

When one of her own curls tickled her cheek, Elizabeth jumped as if it had been a cold, otherworldly finger stroking her face. With a pitter-pattering heart, she then turned to observe that the window directly across from her was open and letting in a lovely summer breeze. She laughed aloud at her own silliness; like almost all unexplained frightening things, it had been the wind causing mischief! 'Of all the ridiculous nonsense...Spirits, indeed!'

She ventured over to the open window and looked out onto a cheerfully sunny summer day and took a moment to admire the aspect. Across the great lawn were the woods that her aunt had so praised the evening before and, admittedly, they were very fine. The trees were thick, the leaves a verdant green and she could easily imagine how vibrant they would look in the autumn. Elizabeth postulated that the landscape would almost seem as if on fire once the canopy turned red, gold and orange. They might look a touch forlorn in the wintertime, but when frosted with snow they would glisten like freshly iced cakes. And then, of course, they would bud and return to life in the springtime, continuing the cycle all over again.

Beyond the treeline, far off onto the horizon, she could see the peaks rising up in the distance. Oh, how magnificent! In Hertfordshire, rolling hills were the rule and not the exception, so such wild, craggy protrusions rising from the Earth were a novelty to Elizabeth. They stood like kings reaching up to heaven.

Closer to her location, Elizabeth smiled to see the infamous lake where the ghost supposedly resided. It was really more of a stream that had swelled to greater prominence in front of the house, but a lake was not an unfair term for it. It was wide across and, if the dark color toward the center was any indication, quite deep in places. Why a ghost would choose to live there she couldn't determine, but then perhaps the living were simply deprived of choice by their habits of breathing. Elizabeth chuckled to herself over her little joke.

"What do you think, Lizzy?"

Elizabeth, upon hearing the sound of her name, looked down below to see the Gardiners and Mrs Reynolds strolling beneath her upon the lawn. All three had turned back to, presumably, hear her opinion of whatever had been under discussion only to realize that she wasn't there! Her aunt Gardiner called out her name again with the clear intention of bringing her forth.

Elizabeth pushed the window open a little wider and, with one hand bracing herself upon the sill, leaned forward in order to make an answer. She could alert them to her presence within the house and then rush outside to meet them if they would but stay in the same spot. "Aunt – "

Creeeeeeeeak – CRASH!

Elizabeth jumped away as the window snapped back at her, shutting her off from the outside. Goodness! Had she been but a few seconds slower, her fingers would have been caught in the frame and likely injured her. Apparently, there had been a strong gust of wind that she had taken no notice of.

She walked back to the window, lifted the latch and pushed against the pane to open it again, but it was stuck. She pressed harder against the frame, but the stubborn thing wouldn't budge at all. Perhaps the wind had been so strong that it had wedged it shut? 'How strange...'

Elizabeth looked through the glass and down to see that her relatives and Mrs Reynolds were moving on to other locations, spreading out in different directions in an apparent attempt to find her. "Wonderful," she groused aloud even though there was no one around to hear her. Well, she didn't think there was...

Shaking off the most ridiculous notion she had ever entertained before in her life, Elizabeth made the practical decision to simply descend to the lower floor and venture out onto the grounds to intercept her party. She had a decent idea of their location and would hopefully be back in their company very soon.

Thus decided, Elizabeth exited the way she had come in, glancing suspiciously at the door as she passed through it, and headed in the direction that she remembered the staircase to be in.

She found her way to the ground floor easily enough, but discovering a door through which to make her exit onto the grounds proved to be more difficult than she had anticipated. Elizabeth, finding an alarming lack of servants on the ground floor to direct her, had instead let herself tentatively into several different rooms in hopes of either discovering a way out or someone to inquire assistance from, but had been stymied at every turn.

In the first two rooms, unused parlors papered with elegant designs, there had been only windows and she was not about to get caught letting herself out of one of those. There was no ladylike explanation for such an action when Pemberley (presumably) had many more appropriate exits. She left these without even bothering to cross the threshold inside.

The next room had turned out to be a closet. She had moved on quickly from that.

Finally, she let herself into what she had initially believed to be the library – though she had no notion of how she had gotten to that particular part of the house again – but had turned out to be a private study. A large, heavy-looking desk built from a dark mahogany was placed at one end of the room, partially surrounded by loaded bookshelves at its back and sides, and an empty hearth was carved into the wall at the other. In between, there was a cozy sitting area of four green leather chairs surrounding a fur rug, clearly a place a man would find comfortable. To Elizabeth's horror, she had stumbled into Mr Darcy's inner sanctum.

As Elizabeth placed one foot behind her, ready to flee and pretend she had never been there, the flicker of warm sunlight caught her attention. She refocused and raised her eyes to the far wall where the source could be found; a bank of nearly floor-to-ceiling windows surrounding a pair of french doors! Considering the view of the lake through the glass, she knew that these would lead her out onto the grounds.

Elizabeth only hesitated a moment before reversing course and stepping fully into the study, gently and quietly closing the door to the hallway behind her. She had no intention of disturbing anything, she reminded herself as anxiety tightened in her stomach, but she needed to get outside! Had she accepted the position of Mistress of Pemberley in the spring, she would have insisted that someone make her a map of this confusing place to carry around with her.

Elizabeth crossed the room on eagerly quick feet, dodging around one of the green leather chairs toward her destination, intent on escape. Perhaps because her pace was so fast, she stumbled over nothing and had to pause and right herself, arms flailing out around her for purchase on any available surface. She was saved from ignominy by the edge of Mr Darcy's desk and, thankfully, her balance was regained without injuring any of the (presumably valuable) contents of the room.

As Elizabeth righted herself, she noticed another family portrait hung behind the desk which hadn't been noticeable from the hallway entrance because of the way it was sunk within the wall of bookshelves surrounding it. She at first thought that it was another likeness of Mr Darcy and his sister, but the pair in the painting, upon second consideration, were a touch too old to be the current master and the young Georgiana. The man, however, bore a striking resemblance to the Mr Darcy she knew, so she supposed that he must be the elder Mr George Darcy, Fitzwilliam's father. It was easy to deduce from there that the woman then must be his mother, the late Lady Anne Darcy.

The couple was posed together in a very traditional way, he standing behind with his hand on her shoulder while his lady sat on a piece of furniture, and they looked very united as Master and Mistress of Pemberley. There was no sign of their children, so she supposed it must be a wedding portrait, an assumption which was borne out by how youthful Lady Anne looked and the outdated cut of their clothing. They looked very elegant together, smiling benignly at future generations.

Mr George Darcy was very handsome, just like his son, with a touch of gray at his temples that was nothing if not distinguished. He hardly looked ancient, though there was a certain air of wisdom that the current Mr Darcy, for all of his abilities, still lacked. Elizabeth supposed he would have it one day, but considering his fumbling courtship of herself and his inability to socialize without offending, she felt that he was still some ways off yet. She was sure that Mr George Darcy, with the crinkles at the corners of his eyes and the gentle smile he had also passed down to his progeny, would have known better than to offer an insulting proposal and expect acceptance.

Lady Anne Darcy, seated by her husband's side on an embroidered sofa with a pug lounging on her lap, was much younger by comparison, perhaps no older than Elizabeth herself. It wasn't terribly uncommon for older grooms to marry younger brides, but it certainly was unusual for the pairings in such unions to look so content with one another. Still, Lady Anne showed no signs of strain for her position, her own hand resting upon her husband's as he touched her shoulder, and her eyes showed a certain merriment that seemed unfeigned to Elizabeth. She supposed that the artist could have put it there rather than copying it from life, but the signature in the bottom corner confirmed it to be the same one commissioned to create the portrait of the current Mr Darcy upstairs in the gallery, so his accuracy was perhaps not to be questioned. He had certainly copied that cryptic smile of the younger master from life.

"Would they have approved of their son's choice?" Elizabeth wondered aloud to the painting as much as to herself, gazing upon the faces of what could have been her in-laws. "Or would they have shared Mr Darcy's opinion? That I was beneath them all?"

She sighed, unaccountably saddened by the thought that these long-dead strangers might have not liked her at all. Mr George Darcy, like his son, came from a long line of wealthy gentlemen, originating at the time of William the Conqueror, as detailed by Mrs Reynolds earlier in the afternoon. Lady Anne, of course, was the daughter of an earl and entitled to her share of pride. She hardly looked as haughty as her sister, Lady Catherine, but she surely would have considered herself above a nobody from Hertfordshire.

And what would they have thought of her refusal?

THUMP!

Elizabeth jumped several inches off the floor and spun around, looking for the source of the noise that had startled her – something that seemed to be happening to her much today. With her hands both braced upon the desk at her back, she surveyed the room but found nothing that immediately looked out of place. No servant come to chase her away. Only...a book. On the floor.

Trembling slightly from the fright, Elizabeth released her hold on the wooden desktop and crossed the room, approaching the displaced leather-bound tome that rested in front of the fireplace. It appeared to be the Darcy Family Bible and it laid splayed open along its binding, its pages spread for perusal. Its stand, from which it had apparently fallen, stood stoically to one side of the great fireplace, empty of its charge.

Elizabeth knelt down, intending to pick it up, and her eyes caught some of the words on the page.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy...

Elizabeth, who had been reaching out for the Bible, retracted her hand as if she had instead placed it in a fire. Her heart thudded against the inside of her ribcage as she stood up and backed away a pace. Of all the verses in all of Christendom, how could the tome have opened to that one? Elizabeth rubbed at her arms, still encased in the sleeves of her spencer, as goosebumps erupted across her skin.

She had to leave. Now.

Leaving the Bible where it lay, Elizabeth rushed to the french doors, wrenched one open and practically threw herself out onto the lawn.

Outside in the bright summer day, Elizabeth drew in a deep, shuddering breath of warm air. She let it out and then took in another, releasing it in the same way. After several of these calming exercises, the tremblings and flutterings began to subside and she felt more herself. She then laughed aloud at herself as the comparison that could be drawn between her current trembling condition and her mother's infamous nervous fits became apparent.

With one last glance back at the house, Elizabeth shook off the last of her jitters and began strolling forward toward the lake. Its still, shining waters drew her forth with natural eminence, soothing the anxiety she had been feeling all day in this place. Between ghost stories and the equally haunting reminders of its absent master, Pemberley had proven to be a challenge to her equilibrium.

As she walked along the banks of the lake, Elizabeth began to feel a little silly. The stories told by the boy at the inn had clearly left more of an impression than she had originally thought and that, she concluded, must be the source of her fright. Had young Sam never told her that Pemberley was haunted, she likely would never have even noticed some of the things she had counted as strange happenings since her visit to the gallery. She would have ascribed everything – the creaking doors, the recalcitrant window, the conspicuously to-the-point Bible verse – as either coincidence or the wind. No, she had spooked herself; Aunt Gardiner would be vastly amused when Elizabeth told her later over dinner how she had jumped over every little noise!

Elizabeth approached the waterline and crouched down to dip her fingers in. It was delightfully cool and soothing on a hot day full of so much stress and she trailed her digits along the surface, scattering rings in all directions. Nature was so peace –

SPLASH!

With a screech, Elizabeth fell backwards onto the grass as something emerged from the lake just before her, huge and hulking, and loomed over her while she attempted to scramble away. Her skirts tangled up her legs and hindered her escape from the dripping silhouette, increasing her mindless panic.

Then, the apparition spoke: "M-Miss Bennet?"

Author's Note: I couldn't resist at least one reference to Ghostbusters. That movie defines my generation. If you squint, you'll also see nods to the film Ghost and Northanger Abbey.

This story will be told in three parts, so curb your expectations for a lengthy work (if you had any, of course). There will, however, be an alternative "mature" chapter tacked onto the end which will simply be an expansion of the original "clean" ending. Also, an epilogue.

This is my first venture into JAFF, so please be kind. Constructive criticism is always welcome!

Next Update: September 30, 2019

Expected Completion: November 30, 2019

– MrsMarySmythe