A House of Daughters - Chapter 5

A Pride and Prejudice Variation

With my first novella, Letter to Georgiana, now available for pre-order on Amazon, I’m excited to begin sharing a brand-new project.

A House of Daughters is a Pride and Prejudice variation that asks: what if Elizabeth Bennet, just after returning from Hunsford, didn’t simply accept her family’s flaws in silence? What if, in a moment of frustration, she spoke her mind in front of everyone?

This story begins with that outburst—and traces its ripple effects. The Bennet sisters are forced to reckon with how they’re perceived, both within and beyond Longbourn, and what that perception might cost them.

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What to Expect

• Multiple POVs – Follow Lydia, Kitty, Mary, and Jane as they navigate change, reflection, and responsibility.

• Romance – Darcy and Elizabeth’s story unfolds in the background, witnessed (and sometimes misinterpreted) by the people around them.

• Emotional depth – Introspection, character growth, and sisterly bonds take center stage.

I’ll be publishing two chapters per week, right here.

These posts will remain available until one month after the final chapter is released, at which point the complete and edited version will be published on Kindle and enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. (Expect a few refinements in the final draft.)

Thank you for reading, I hope this story brings something new and a little surprising to your love of Jane Austen.

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Chapter 5: They Discourse Like Angels

Mary Bennet had always believed herself content with solitude.

She told herself as much each morning as she laced her boots and took her usual seat at the pianoforte. She repeated it silently when the conversation at breakfast swirled around her and left her contributions trailing like leaves caught in a current. Solitude was dignified. Reflective. A mark of seriousness.

But lately, since Elizabeth’s sharp, shocking outburst in the dining room and the strange hush that followed, solitude had begun to feel like something else. Less a virtue, more a condition. Less dignity, more distance.

Not quite loneliness. Not yet.

Still, the house had shifted.

Elizabeth, whose sharp tongue had so often excluded Mary’s earnest observations, had taken to sitting beside her at the pianoforte in the late afternoons. At first, Mary had braced for sarcasm or correction, but Elizabeth’s suggestions were offered without mockery, and always with a patient kind of curiosity. Try this passage slower, she would say. Let the melody breathe before it ascends.

And Jane—sweet, unflappable Jane—had started inviting her to walk out with her and Lizzy, as though Mary’s company were as natural and welcome as the birdsong.

At first, Mary did not know what to do with their warmth. She had responded stiffly, almost awkwardly, as though waiting for the punchline. But it never came. Just shared smiles, gentle teasing, quiet companionship.

It was… nice.

Nice in a way she had not realized she wanted.

She still played Gluck, still read Fordyce, still practiced her French verbs before bed, but something in her had softened. Perhaps it was simply the feeling of being included. Of no longer needing to prove her worth in footnotes and moral quotations. When she did speak now, they listened. Not always raptly, but with interest. As though she mattered.

The change was subtle, but to Mary, it felt monumental.

Only Lydia seemed untouched by the new tranquility at Longbourn. She was restless. Petulant. Prone to sudden flares of temper or sulks that sent her drifting from room to room like a storm cloud searching for a sky. Without Kitty, and with their mother uncharacteristically subdued, Lydia had no echo chamber left. Her noise fell flat.

Mary watched her from the drawing room window one morning, pacing the garden paths as though daring the roses to bloom faster. When she came in, wet-footed and shivering, she flung her bonnet onto the side table.

Mary looked up from her practice, hands poised over the keys. She had heard the door creak, had felt Lydia's presence even before the comment arrived.

"That piece sounds like a funeral march for someone no one liked," Lydia said flatly, kicking off her shoes and sinking into the nearest chair.

Mary exhaled quietly through her nose. “It is a lament. Not a march.”

Lydia snorted. “Well, it is doing a very good job of lamenting.”

Mary did not rise to it. Instead, she lifted her hands from the keys and turned slightly in her seat. “If you prefer something else, I could play something lighter.”

There was a long pause.

Lydia toyed with a ribbon loose from her sleeve. “You have gotten very calm lately, have you not? Since Lizzy started patting you on the head.”

Mary tilted her head. “No one has patted me. They have just... made room.”

Lydia blinked at that.

Mary offered the faintest smile. “I would make room, too. If you wanted.”

Lydia’s face flickered—something quick and uncertain. Then she scoffed, though it came out softer than intended. “Well. I do not.”

Mary nodded once. “All right.”

She returned to the keys, let her fingers find the melody again.

“I saw the music sheets,” she said finally. “The ones you left in my room.”

Mary nodded. “I thought you might like them.”

“I did not say that.”

“No. But you did not throw them out.”

Lydia shifted. “I did not know what to do with them.”

Mary hesitated, then spoke gently. “We could try it. If you like. I would play and you could sing.”

Lydia gave her a sidelong glance. “You really think we would sound good together? Me yowling over your moody chords?”

“I think,” Mary said, keeping her tone even, “that your voice is quite pretty when you are not pretending it is not. And I think you miss being heard.”

Lydia looked away sharply, jaw tight. “You are not usually this sentimental.”

“I am not usually asked to be,” Mary replied.

A long silence stretched between them.

Then Lydia stood abruptly. “I am not singing today. So do not get your hopes up.”

Mary turned back to the keys. “All right.”

After a moment’s thought, she began something lighter, Clementi this time, the Sonatina in G Major. The first notes rang out like a breeze through an open window: bright, clean, unassuming. A melody without sorrow, without weight. Just music for the sake of it.

Behind her, she heard Lydia pause at the door.

“I did not say never,” Lydia muttered.

Mary kept her gaze on the sheet music but allowed herself the smallest smile. “I will be here,” she said softly.

She did not look back. She only kept playing, steady and unbothered.

Lydia did not reply. But she did not leave the room right away, either.

And that, Mary thought, was something.

✦ ✦ ✦

Later that afternoon, she was summoned to the library.

Her father rarely called for her directly, and certainly not alone. She knocked once and stepped inside, her hands clasped.

Mr. Bennet looked up from his desk, spectacles perched halfway down his nose. For a moment, he simply studied her—not with his usual sardonic assessment, but with something closer to curiosity.

“Ah, Mary,” he said finally, gesturing toward the armchair opposite. “Sit.”

She obeyed, perching at the edge of the chair like a girl in a schoolroom. But instead of immediately speaking, Mr. Bennet continued his examination, his fingers steepled beneath his chin.

“You know,” he said, “I have been observing something rather remarkable this past week. You have begun to listen more than you lecture.”

Mary blinked, uncertain whether this was praise or gentle mockery.

“I do not mean to tease,” he continued, as if reading her thoughts. “I mean it as a compliment. There was a time when I could predict your contributions to any conversation with uncomfortable accuracy. 'As Mr. Fordyce observes’ and always...” He paused, searching for the word. “Always at a distance from the matter at hand.”

He rose then and turned to the shelf, his fingers trailing along the spines with practiced familiarity.

“But lately, you have been present. Not performing your learning but actually thinking with it.” He selected a slim, leather-bound volume, the spine worn smooth with age. “Which brings me to this.”

He set it carefully in her lap.

“Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson,” he said. “A little philosophy, a little fable. A great deal of sense.”

Mary glanced down at the title. “I have heard the name,” she said cautiously. “Is it… satirical?”

Mr. Bennet’s mouth twitched. “Oh, in his way. Johnson was never without a sharp edge, but it was always in service of something deeper. He was a man of faith. A devout Christian. And a melancholic by nature, which I daresay gives his moral reasoning a bit more weight than the cheerful sort.”

Mary turned the book over in her hands.

“He believed in God,” her father continued, “but also in doubt. In work. In kindness, where it could be managed. And he knew, perhaps better than any man of his century, that piety is no shield against sorrow, nor is intellect a guarantee of wisdom.”

He paused.

“In short, he thought deeply, and with difficulty, and never pretended otherwise. I suspect you would understand him.”

Mary blinked. “Why me?”

“You are earnest,” he said simply. “You want to be good. And that, my dear, is more dangerous than wanting to be clever. Most clever people are content to seem so. But those who chase virtue… often mistake the path.”

She frowned faintly. “You think I have mistaken it?”

“I think,” he said gently, “You have been left to find your way with only Fordyce's lectures and your own earnest silence for company. I confess I have been remiss in offering better guidance. Johnson may not show you a straight path, but he might help you ask better questions.”

Mary looked down at the book again. “It is not light reading.”

“No,” he said. “But it is the sort of company worth keeping. Especially for someone like you.”

She looked up sharply at that. There was no irony in his voice, only sincerity.

It was, perhaps, the kindest thing he had ever said to her.

She rose slowly, the book clutched to her chest like a treasure. As she reached the door, he added, not unkindly:

“Oh, and Mary?”

She turned.

“If you start quoting it at dinner, do try to limit yourself to one passage per course.”

She allowed herself a small smile. “I will try.”

And then she was gone, the book warm in her hands, and her father’s words warmer still.

That night, Mary read long past the hour she usually extinguished her lamp. The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia was unlike anything she had ever attempted. The prose was stately, dense, and thick with references—some of which she did not understand at all—but it was not dull. It sparkled, quietly, like something just out of reach urging her forward.

This was not a collection of moral maxims to quote at table. This was something deeper, something that asked questions and left them open. The book did not hand her answers. It asked her to wrestle.

She turned another page and stopped on a line that made her breath catch.

“Be not too hasty,” said Imlac, “to trust or to admire the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men.”

Mary blinked.

She read it again. Slowly. Carefully. Then once more, just to be sure it had said what she thought.

They discourse like angels, but they live like men.

She stared at the words, unsettled.

She had always thought the goal of moral study was to become like those teachers, wise, upright, instructive. But what if even they failed? What if their lectures were only polished versions of flawed lives?

She swallowed.

Had she been speaking like an angel, too, without ever quite living the part? Quoting sermons while resenting her sisters? Repeating proverbs when what was needed was presence?

She underlined the line, slowly. Then wrote in the margin: How do I live, not just instruct?

She turned another page and paused again.

“Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”

Mary sat back. That line made her feel seen, and uneasy. She had pursued knowledge, certainly, but had she ever thought about what kind of person she was becoming through it? Was she becoming more generous? More compassionate? Or merely more precise?

She remembered Lydia’s sharp, almost defensive glance that morning, when Mary had said she would make room.

Was that knowledge with integrity? Or just... superiority with better vocabulary?

She picked up her pencil again and scribbled: Which do I have? Do I want both?

It was not an answer. But it felt closer to the right kind of question.

She kept reading, slower now, and then stopped again at a line that left her strangely breathless.

“Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may properly be charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.”

Her heart gave a small thump.

She thought of Lydia. Of how easy it had been to ignore her wildness, to dismiss it as folly instead of danger. How quick she had been to scold, and how slow to reach. Had she been… complicit, somehow? Not in Lydia’s choices, but in failing to notice what might have changed them?

She had believed herself separated from her sisters, more serious, more sensible. But what if that separation had been a kind of voluntary ignorance? A refusal to look closely at what was right beside her?

She wrote, this time slowly: Knowing matters. But so does noticing.

Then she closed the book, not because she was weary, but because her thoughts were full.

The candle sputtered low, and she snuffed it gently. In the darkness, the words she had read stayed lit behind her eyes. They were not comfortable. But they felt like something alive.

✦ ✦ ✦

The morning light was soft through the drawing room windows, a muted gold that settled gently on the floorboards and shimmered faintly on the polished wood of the pianoforte. Mary’s fingers moved slowly through a Clementi prelude, her touch light but deliberate, her thoughts trailing somewhere far from the keys.

She was not practicing so much as thinking aloud with music, the kind of circular playing one does when the heart is full and unanswered questions gather like fog.

She had slept little. Johnson’s words had stayed with her, haunting her dreams in strange half-phrases. They discourse like angels, but they live like men. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal…

She had not come to any conclusions. But the act of questioning now felt like a beginning.

The door creaked behind her.

She expected Elizabeth, perhaps—come to offer another gentle correction—or Jane, bearing her soft silences like gifts. But when Mary glanced over her shoulder, she paused.

Lydia stood in the doorway, barefoot, her hair slightly tangled from sleep. In her hands, she held the music sheets Mary had left in her room, creased now, the edges softened from being handled, folded, handled again.

Lydia hovered for a moment, then shifted her weight.

“Can I join you?” she asked, her voice quieter than usual, carrying an uncertainty Mary rarely heard from her. She looked down at the pages, then up again quickly, as if bracing for ridicule.

Mary blinked. Then, without a word, she slid to one side of the bench.

“If you like,” she said simply.

Lydia came forward, her slippers scuffing softly across the floor. She sat beside Mary—not close, but not distant either—and laid the sheets on the stand with a kind of careful reverence.

“I looked at it,” she said. “This one… The Soldier’s Adieu.” She touched the corner of the page. “It is about a soldier saying goodbye, is it not?”

“It is,” Mary said. “It is one of those songs that pretends to be cheerful. But listen to the lyrics, and you will find it is not about glory, it is about parting. Fear. Maybe even regret.”

Lydia gave a faint scoff. “I am surprised you chose it.”

Mary’s fingers hovered over the keys. “You said you wanted something lighter. I thought… you might find this a different sort of soldier song.”

A pause.

“It is not for dancing,” Lydia said.

“No,” Mary agreed. “It is for when you stay in one place. When you want to feel something, not escape it.”

That seemed to catch Lydia off guard. She did not reply. But she did not rise, either.

Mary adjusted the sheet music slightly. “Try this part,” she said, pointing. “Just hum, if you like. We will work through it together.”

Lydia hesitated. Then nodded.

Her voice, when it came, was thin at first—tentative, barely more than breath—but it had melody. And when Mary played the accompaniment beneath it, the sound deepened. Stabilized.

Lydia’s voice wavered, then steadied.

“When on the wings of thy true love, To heaven above.”

The words caught in her throat halfway through, but she kept going. And when they reached the refrain, she glanced sideways with a crooked little smile, half amused, half uncertain.

“Dramatic,” she said softly.

“It is English,” Mary replied, managing a dry smile of her own. “We tend to say goodbye as if we are never coming back.”

Lydia looked down at the keys. Her fingers traced one softly.

“I used to think songs like this were silly. Sad for the sake of it.”

“And now?”

She shrugged. “Now… I don’t know. Maybe they just tell the truth, whether or not anyone wants to hear it.”

Mary’s hands stayed poised, resting lightly. “You sang it well.”

Lydia did not answer right away. But she did not stand. She did not tease.

After a moment, she looked at the sheet again.

“Can we try it again?” she asked. “I want to see if I can hold that one note longer.”

Mary nodded, already settling her hands again on the keys. “We will take it from the top.”

She did not look at Lydia. She did not want to break the fragile shape of the moment forming between them, this new kind of quiet, one that was not heavy or strained, but open. Shared.

The notes rose again, soft and steady.

And this time, Lydia sang the whole verse.

Mary did not look at her. She did not want to interrupt whatever had just begun to bloom.

She simply kept playing.

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Author’s Note:
I’ll admit, this chapter was more challenging than expected. Music isn’t exactly my area of expertise. It took me some time to choose a piece that felt right for Mary and Lydia: something they could play together that would help them grow not only as sisters, but also as individuals.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

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