Half-Pay

At the end of Pride and Prejudice, Kitty is improved “by proper attention and management”. Nobody thinks to ask her what she thinks.

December 1814. The peace with America comes to Pemberley at breakfast, by way of the bankrupts. On the next estate but one, Lieutenant Hayward is at home on half-pay; he calls, and asks for nothing. He has nothing, and Georgiana has thirty thousand pounds. It sits in the room between them like a third person at a call. The rector of Kympton comes on Tuesdays to speak of the weather, chiefly to Kitty, and her mother writes, in two inks, that four hundred a year will not do.

Georgiana has told nobody what she feels. “Georgiana first,” her brother once said. “It is her affair before it is ours.” Now Bonaparte has left Elba, ships will be wanted, and Darcy must judge a young man without fortune by what he does. Elizabeth sees more than she says, and it is not hers to tell.

At the stile by the ford, Georgiana asks Kitty whether she would mind being poor. Kitty finds that she has no answer at all. Not yet.

Half-Pay is the third volume of The Longbourn Years, a continuation of Pride and Prejudice in four volumes.