It is a curious thing, to perish in the very hour one has proven Jane Austen wrong.
But such, I suppose, is the nature of irony—unapologetic, swift, and deeply impolite. After devoting the better part of my young life to the study of English literature—particularly the romantic constructions of the early nineteenth century—I had stood before my professors, thesis in hand, and committed a kind of academic heresy.
The title of my work was: *"Reconsidering Romantic Compatibility in Austen's Canon: A Structural Critique of Darcy and Elizabeth's Relationship."* In it, I argued, with perhaps too much confidence, that Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, for all their barbed dialogue and poetic tension, were ill-suited in temperament and life view. I suggested that the story bent itself too eagerly around their romance; that Charlotte Lucas was the true tragic heroine; that Colonel Fitzwilliam had been unjustly neglected; and that Mr. Darcy required a quieter, more temperate partner—someone who might meet him with gentle understanding, rather than glorious antagonism.
I had scarcely left the university steps—degree conferred with distinction, albeit through gritted teeth from my professors—when I met my own abrupt and unceremonious end. A truck, slick with rain, failed to heed the pedestrian crossing. I recall its headlights, the sensation of weightlessness, and a final, almost amused thought: *Well, that's dramatic, even for Austen.*
Then, silence.
---
And yet, as I came to learn, death was not quite the conclusion I had presumed it to be.
---
I awoke not to sterile lights or spiritual choir, but to the scent of lavender water and wood smoke. The ceiling above me was hewn from timber and carved with care. It sloped gently, unlike the sharp lines of my modern flat. I stirred beneath a blanket of unfamiliar texture and became at once aware of my own body—small, soft-limbed, and utterly changed.
My hands, once calloused from years of notetaking and typing, were now delicate, pale, and unblemished. A child's hands.
"Ah, you're awake, my lady," came a voice—warm, brisk, and tinged with fondness.
I turned, slowly, to behold a woman dressed in cap and apron, pouring water into a ceramic basin with practiced ease.
"I—where am I?" I managed, though the voice that issued from my lips was small and high-pitched.
"Still in a bit of a daze, I see," she replied with a smile. "Doctor Jennings said you'd feel disoriented for a time. You've been terribly ill, but the fever has broken at last. Spring fevers can be frightful, but you're strong, my lady."
She called me *my lady*.
I sat upright. Painfully slow. The room was unlit by any electricity, warmed only by the crackling hearth in the corner. Every object—the wooden dresser, the basin stand, the faintly floral quilt—spoke of a time long before mine.
My gaze landed on a thick-bound book atop the nightstand. I squinted and read: *A Treatise on the Manners of the Present Age by Rev. Thomas Ashworth.*
The name struck no chord, but the style—gold-leafed title, rough-cut pages—was unmistakably Regency.
I felt a cold ripple of realization. This was no hospital. This was no year I had ever known.
The woman, whose name I would soon learn was Martha, told me gently that I was **Lady Clara Ashworth**, only daughter of **Baron Edmund Ashworth** and **Lady Helena**, residing in the countryside just outside **Meryton, Hertfordshire**.
*Meryton.*
The very village where, in *Pride and Prejudice*, the militia had once stirred scandal and romance in equal measure. The village of the Bennets, the Lucases, and the storied Netherfield Park.
No, this was no dream.
I had not simply woken in the past—I had been reborn *inside* the world I had studied and critiqued.
---
The weeks that followed were slow and thoughtful, filled with quiet recovery and quieter observation. Lady Helena, my mother, was elegant but emotionally distant, her affection more performative than heartfelt. My father, the Baron, possessed the mild, intellectual manner of a man more wedded to his library than his household. They were both kind enough, in their way, and left me largely to my own devices.
I watched them, and the world, carefully.
The newspapers bore the date: **March, 1810**.
I was, it seemed, *nine years old*. The age was confirmed when a maid brought me a small embroidered cushion with the date of my birth stitched onto the corner: **1801**.
And so, the truth became undeniable. I had been given a second life, a chance to walk the lanes I had once studied in books, among the very people whose lives had been dissected in lecture halls and dissertations.
By the time I was ten, I had devoured my father's library. What it lacked in scope, I made up for in persistence. Martha, ever faithful, fetched volumes from London at my request, bewildered but amused by my appetite for reading. I took little interest in embroidery or pianoforte, though I practised enough to satisfy expectation. I focused instead on law, land, and lineage.
I mapped the world of Hertfordshire in my mind: **Longbourn**, home of the Bennets, lay but a few miles away. The **Lucas Lodge** stood nearby, and soon, if the narrative held, **Netherfield Park** would be let at last.
Time was a luxury in this new life. *I had three full years before Elizabeth Bennet would first lay eyes upon Fitzwilliam Darcy.*
Three years to observe. To position myself. To decide what kind of story I wished to inhabit.
---
When I was **ten**, I met **Miss Georgiana Darcy**.
It was at a musicale hosted by the Huntingtons of Derbyshire. My family had travelled for the occasion, as did many others of the county. Georgiana, still a few years my senior, sat awkwardly amidst the splendour, her shyness made more evident by the opulence around her.
I found myself seated beside her.
"I am Clara," I said gently, offering my hand in the way young girls do when trying to be brave.
She looked at me, startled. Then, slowly, she smiled. "Georgiana."
Thus began a friendship—tentative at first, then warm. I knew her future trials—the almost-elopement with Wickham, the shadow cast by her brother's pride. I resolved, then and there, that she should not face such loneliness in this lifetime.
---
It was at the same gathering that I first saw **Fitzwilliam Darcy**.
He arrived a day later than the rest, tall and grave in manner. He bore all the signs of a man already burdened by expectation: measured steps, guarded expression, a coolness that bordered on haughtiness. His gaze passed over me without pause, as was to be expected. I was, after all, a child.
And yet, I felt the air shift in his presence.
Not attraction—no, I was far too young for that—but recognition. A sense that here was a man bound tightly to his role, whose future I had once believed irrevocably fixed.
But perhaps not.
---
By **twelve**, I had become a familiar presence at local gatherings. Children, it turns out, are often invisible to the gentry. I listened. I watched. I learned.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh was preparing Rosings for her daughter's long-awaited debut. The Bingley family, rich in trade but desperate for polish, had begun their inquiries into available estates.
And Elizabeth Bennet—clever, spirited, radiant Elizabeth—had begun scribbling short tales in secret, tucked beneath her bed.
I had not yet met her, but I knew her as surely as I knew myself.
And I knew this much: I would not steal her story.
But I would not be a silent shadow within it, either.
---
There came a day, unremarkable to most, that remains etched in my memory.
I had wandered the gardens at the Huntington estate, enjoying the solitude, when I came upon Georgiana and her brother in quiet conversation.
"She's strange," Georgiana said, not unkindly. "Clara Ashworth. She reads things even my tutors avoid. And she remembers everything."
"She is a child," Darcy replied.
"She listens. She never gossips. And she notices when others are sad."
There was a pause.
"She is… peculiar," he said at last. "But not disagreeable."
From Fitzwilliam Darcy, it was nearly a sonnet.
---
That night, beneath the canopy of my bed, I turned over his words again and again.
In the novel, he would meet Elizabeth and fall for her despite himself—through misunderstanding, injury, and pride. But what if his story changed? What if someone met him earlier, someone who saw the man behind the marble before the world had hardened him?
Could it be me?
And if so, what would that mean—for him, for Elizabeth, for myself?
---
So I made a vow.
I would not seize another's ending. I would not rob Elizabeth of her trials or triumphs.
But neither would I leave my fate to the whims of narrative convenience.
Time, after all, when given twice, is not merely a gift.
It is a responsibility.