New Tenants

“Indeed, my dear,” Mrs. Bonnet declared with delight, “Mrs. ____ informs me that That One Place has acquired a new tenant.”

Mr. Bonnet reclined in his armchair, fingers steepled, and murmured, “Pray tell why this concerns me?”

“My sweetest husband, we must attend the forthcoming ball!”

“Dear,” he began with gentle firmness, “I am absolutely disinclined, Mr. ____ and I have long planned to while away the evening on our Sony PlayStation™s that day.”

Unbeknownst to his wife, Mr. Bonnet was simply amusing himself and had intended to visit the new tenant the entire time; as everyone knows the Sony PlayStation™ has no games

Later that week…

Elizabeth was in a corner of the grand drawing room trying to observe the social gathering with a detached, sardonic eye. She was trying to maintain a stoic face, but the odor of beeswax candles and general Human Smell of all the confined bodies made her want to retch, so her face compromised on an unnatural grimace.

Young women politely spoke to gentlemen who appraised them with barely-concealed economic scrutiny—

“Heh, normies, am I right?”

—Elizabeth spun around, in shock that a moid was actually speaking to her. Even more shocking was that this moid was 6 foot 5 by-the-way and wearing a fedora.

“I can’t dance,” she blurted—before adding, “er, scoliosis”.

The mysterious gentleman completely ignored her, continuing, “The music is but a thin veil over the ruthless, transactional nature of the marriage mart, is it not?”

Elizabeth stared blankly.

He continued, “Aren’t you tired of this… tiring… charade? The absolute suppression of one’s genuine character? Why not date a nice guy like me for a change?”

Elizabeth ultimately chose not to date a nice guy like him for a change.

Unexpected Guests

Lydia Bonnet looked out the window wistfully. “Oh, that Mr. Lickham would return soon. I just know we’d make a perfect pair. Et cetera et cetera…”

Mrs. Bonnet burst into the room, catching her petticoat on a chair and knocking it off-balance. “I just saw—” (the chair slammed into the floor with a tremendously loud bang, scaring the half-deaf Pomeranian half-dead; and scaring the butler——Mr. Skiles, a kind-hearted old man who served the family despite their financial woes—who was at the time cleaning the room directly above them——fully dead as a result of his heart skipping a beat (his body would not be found for a whole week)) “—Mr. Lickham’s carriage! Everyone, quick, get ready!”

Mr. Bonnet folded his newspaper, put on his glasses fancifully, uncrossed his legs, and took a fanciful sip of tea from the fanciful china Mrs. Bonnet had bought from a yard sale.

Unbeknownst to Mr. Bonnet, a crumb of a petite madeleine had fallen into the tea; but due to the abnormal sharpness and density of this specific crumb, rather than flood his mind with childhood memories, it slid down his throat and gave the sensation of swallowing a double-sided push-pin tack (pointy bits pointing outwards).

Mr. Bonnet wheezed and choked and sputtered tea all over himself, but everyone was too preoccupied with themselves to notice that they had nearly lost the entailed estate then-and-there.

Mr. Bonnet sighed and stood up from his chair, preparing to greet the new visitors, who would surely dry-mog the poor wet-maxxing man.

Elizabeth was hiding in the other room (she didn’t want the visitors to see her) when she overheard her father’s courteous greeting—

“I trust you gentlemen endured no discomfort upon the road?”

—“Gentlemen?” she thought, “surely not both!”

Mr. Barcy, who is 6 foot 5 by-the-way, at that moment ducked beneath the doorway and emerged, his fedora barely touching the wood. He was inexplicably flanked by two foreign dignitaries who I’ll discuss right after the next two sentences.

The fedora-clad male cast his obsidian orbs across the room (1). The shorter brunette female watched the taller brooding gentleman with annoyance (2). Beside the wealthy fedora-wearer, a brown-haired Japanese high-school student with a god complex was intensely writing names in a black notebook, while a raven-haired, insomniac detective sat next to him in an impossibly deep squat, furiously devouring an entire un-sliced strawberry cake.²³⁴

The shorter female ignored the homosexual notebook-wielding teen and cake-consuming sleuth to glare at the hat-wearing male.

Mrs. Bonnet whispered to her daughters. “Make me proud, girls.”

Mr. Lickham greeted Lydia fancifully with a kiss that started normally but quickly turned into a ferocious battle that involved an anatomically impossible amount of tongue.

This caused much discomfort to everyone except Mrs. Bonnet, who beamed with pride. “Oh, thank heavens,” she whispered to her husband, “I was terrified she would never present as a submissive Omega.”

Mr. Barcy stood in a corner, still wearing his fedora and radiating equal parts wealth, brooding, and virginity. No one dared approach him except Elizabeth.

“Mr. Barcy,” she pronounced, “you are in—tolerable.”

The corner of Mr. Barcy’s mouth twitched slightly, but he remained otherwise stoic and composed. “Nuh uh” he coolly replied, fiddling with his uncool fedora.

“Mr. Lickham said-so,” she retorted.

Mr. Barcy’s face contorted into a raisin.

“Regard his character with caution.”

Confession

The morning following Elizabeth’s rejection of Mr. Barcy broke with a crisp, unforgiving frost that gripped the Hertfordshire countryside.

Elizabeth walked through the garden and took in a deep, cold breath. On her shoulders were two halves of her conscience.

The imp spoke first, “You’re a real idiot, you know that? Why’d you turn him down?”

“Isn’t simply not wanting to enough? Not everything has to be about money,” the angel replied.

The imp pouted. “Okay; fine, you halo-wearing freak I didn’t even MENTION the money but sure, let’s go there, let’s see: An entailed estate, the looming specter of destitution should Dad die. Yeah, let’s sacrifice Mom and our sisters to homelessness instead of doing the right thing.”

Elizabeth turned to face the angry imp on her left shoulder. “Hey it’s not that simple, this Barcy guy is weird as fuck!”

“You know,” a voice on her right shoulder meekly began, “I think the imp has a point.”

Catherine looked at the concerning scene playing out in the backyard. “Wow, the elopement really did a number on her psyche hasn’t it”

“It’s our fault,” Jane said, “we should’ve spoken about it like family. Then maybe she wouldn’t have gone insane.”

Elizabeth’s sisters solemnly crowded around the tiny window.

Elizabeth felt a restored sense of intellectual clarity and decided to go back inside (where, once inside, her sisters would all awkwardly greet her and tell her that if there was anything she wanted to talk about—anything—they were all there for her, because that’s what family does).

Elizabeth stared in wonder at That One Place. A bunch of adjectives could have described it wonderfully, but her mind had no time for adjectives, for she was grimacing at the memory of turning down Mr. Barcy’s proposal.

“Wait, doesn’t this make me look like a gold digger?” she muttered, violently tamping espresso grounds into a portafilter and steaming oat milk behind the counter of the fully operational, commercial-grade coffee shop that existed within Mr. Barcy’s parlor.⁶⁷

Before she could push away her self-doubt, Mr. Barcy descended the staircase with stately precision.

Their eyes locked.

Both of their cheeks warmed.

Mr. Barcy drew a deep breath, trying to remember what the fine people on r/Seduction had advised.

“Miss Bonnet,” he began, shifting his pitch downwards awkwardly, “would you like a tour of my—I mean—Your pheromones are… agreeable today.”

He then tried to growl like the Alphas Elizabeth had been reading about on AO3, but only a pathetic “errrrrrrrrrr” came out. In trying to project a dominating Alpha aura, he had accidentally revealed that his inner wolf was no more than an anxious Shiba Inu.⁸

Silence reigned, measured by the sweep of the staircase behind him.

Later that evening, /u/PemberleyDaddy made a text post to r/Seduction.