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“Writing already, Darcy? It is so early! Have you even broken your fast?”
“I have, Bingley. This, however, could not wait.”
“Good morning, gentlemen.”
Bingley’s head twitched. “Mr. Ferrars? Colonel Brandon? You’re here as well?”
“We were invited,” explained Colonel Brandon.
Bingley’s attention snapped back to Darcy. “Did you invite them here?”
“I did. And several others as well.”
“Is this the first sign of the apocalypse? You, inviting guests over, early in the day?”
Darcy ignored him, but Edward Ferrars hid a smile behind his hand.
“Am I late?” asked a breathless Edmund Bertram, upon entering the room.
“Not at all,” replied Brandon. “We were a little early. You appear to be right on time.”
“How now, am I late again?” rang the cheerful voice of Henry Tilney. “And here I thought I was right on time for a change.”
“You are,” Edward assured him. “I believe we’re now only missing two…”
“Apologies for my tardiness,” came the commanding voice of Captain Wentworth. “I was detained.”
“You are not all that late,” Darcy assured him. “I believe we are ready to begin.”
Brandon shook his head. “I do not see Knightley.”
“We’ll simply leave him for last,” Darcy assured him. “Would you like to go first, Colonel? Or do you wish to defer to Mr. Ferrars?”
Edward and the Colonel looked at each other. “I believe you have the stronger case,” Brandon said.
“Oh, I don’t know… I believe she did you a particularly bad turn. Insinuating that you are so terribly old and dull!”
“But you were the one she forced into a secret engagement!”
Edward winced. “Yes, well…”
Darcy shook his head and dipped his pen into his ink well. “Perhaps I shall simply present you both together. You,” he inclined his head toward Edward, “were secretly engaged to one of the more obnoxious women in England.”
Edward sighed.
“And, to hear many tell of it, flirting shamelessly with a single woman and raising her hopes.” Brandon huffed angrily.
“You did what, now?” Bingley shot Edward a glare.
“He did no such thing,” Brandon assured Bingley. “The only ones who believed he had designs on her were…”
“… her mother and sister,” Edward admitted, gazing down at the floor.
“How dreadful!” Bingley exclaimed.
“Do you really have room to talk, my good man?” asked Edmund in a low voice, an eyebrow raised toward Bingley.
“I do not know what you mean,” Bingley said, confused.
“Never mind that for now,” Darcy said quickly. “Let us move on to the Colonel. Who was depicted in a flannel waistcoat.”
Henry cringed. “Now that is unsporting,” he murmured.
“In addition, when a young woman who reminded him of his long lost love was told that the Colonel might fancy her, she complained about how old and infirm he was,” Edward added, rubbing his forehead.
“In her defense, she was only 16,” the Colonel spoke up, looking somewhat affronted.
“You make a habit of pursuing 16-year-olds?” Edmund asked, frowning.
“I most certainly do not. I honestly did not have any thought of considering her in such a way for… another few years. I knew she would not consider a man like me,” the Colonel protested.
“Not when she would persist in presenting you in such a way,” Darcy muttered, his pen flying across the paper.
“I think the difference between 19 and eight-and-thirty did not do the good Colonel any favors in the eyes of many,” Edward admitted. “Although they love one another dearly!”
Darcy nodded.
“Who is this she you keep referring to, and what do you mean by her ‘presenting you in such a way?’” Bingley demanded.
“Why, I am referring to Miss Austen, of course,” Darcy said dismissively, dipping his pen once more.
“Miss Austen? What do you have against her?”
“Rather a lot, to be quite honest,” Darcy muttered. “She has a terrible habit of depicting gentlemen like us in the worst possible light.”
“I do not know what you mean. She has always been quite generous to me.”
“I should say so.” Henry cleared his throat before reciting, “‘He is just what a young man ought to be… sensible, good-humoured, lively; and I never saw such happy manners! -- so much ease, with such perfect good-breeding!’ ‘He is also handsome… which a young man ought likewise to be, if he possibly can.’”
All the other gentlemen, save Darcy, laughed. Bingley turned faintly pink but also seemed rather pleased.
“Were that we were all so charmingly depicted,” muttered Edmund, heaving a great sigh. “Meanwhile, it was not enough for Miss Austen to describe me as a moralistic prig—”
“I would call you principled,” Edward protested. “And there is nothing wrong with that. Did she not also show you befriending your poor cousin as a young girl in a strange home?”
“Yes, and then she had me falling in love with a selfish, materialistic woman for the rest of the story!”
“Ouch,” Edward muttered. “That might be nearly as bad as a secret engagement.”
“I thought she took great pains to say that at exactly the right time, you fell in love with the woman who had been in love with you for the entire story?” Bingley commented.
“Oh, yes, that certainly has helped centuries of Miss Austen’s devotees see me as a great romantic hero,” Edmund said sarcastically.
Darcy, shaking his head in solidarity, wrote furiously, his pen flying across the page.
“Are you all here to complain about how Miss Austen revealed your character in your stories?” Bingley exclaimed.
The gentlemen all murmured their agreement.
“What the devil do you have to complain about?” Bingley asked Henry, who looked rather uncomfortable.
“Well…” he said slowly. “I might be a little… irreverent. Some might even call me impertinent.”
Darcy’s pen stilled above his paper, and he appeared to be listening closely.
“That is unlikely to be a problem,” Edmund insisted. “Miss Austen’s devotees love charming men.”
“Then there was the time when the young woman who befriended my sister and stayed in my family’s house may have, erm, been run away with her fancies a bit and… insinuated that my father may have killed my mother.”
Eyebrows raised all around the room.
“How, precisely, is that a problem for you?” Brandon asked slowly.
“I was not… gentle. I rather lost my temper with her. And she is such a sweet and gentle young lady… she was terribly hurt.”
“Oh dear,” murmured Captain Wentworth.
“To top it off, I was nowhere in sight when my father threw her out of the house.”
“That was hardly your fault!” Edmund protested.
“Did you not leap to her defense immediately?” Darcy asked, his brow furrowing. “Did you not immediately do whatever you might to address the problem?”
“Oh, well… actually, I did.”
Edmund rolled his eyes. “You have far less of an issue than many of us do. I suspect you’re the most easily forgiven of us all.”
“No, I believe that honor belongs to him.” Darcy gestured toward Captain Wentworth. “But let us hear it, man. What is your complaint?”
“I can sympathize greatly with you,” Wentworth began, nodding toward Edmund. “As I spent much of the story flirting with another woman right in front of my true love, and behaving in a sullen and cold manner toward her.”
“Whyever did you do that?” Bingley asked in horror.
“Because I had offered for her years previous, and she accepted me… but then she broke our engagement mere days later, after being so persuaded by a friend of her mother.”
“Oh dear,” Brandon murmured faintly. “That is bad.”
Wentworth nodded. “And what was worse was that I could have reunited with her far earlier, only I was too full of resentment to even make the attempt. I was convinced my only recourse was to scrub her from my memory. Not that I ever could.”
“Could you not?” Darcy murmured. “You could not simply remind yourself of how poorly suited you were for one another?”
“That did not help. Certainly we were from different spheres, but we were perfect for one another. Our personalities complemented each other in the most felicitous of ways.”
Darcy huffed a sigh and continued writing.
“So why did Darcy say that you were the most easily forgiven?” Edmund asked.
“Oh, I believe I have heard,” Bingley interjected. “Something about a… Letter?”
“Oh! You are the one who wrote The Letter?!” Henry asked eagerly. “I have heard many a swooning madam speak of The Letter!”
“Is it always capitalized like that?” asked Edward.
“Always,” Brandon replied with a nod.
“So sorry I am late, gentlemen. I swear, I am usually quite punctual.”
“Knightley, you have come at last. Welcome.” Darcy inclined his head toward the latecomer.
“I am afraid I do not truly understand why I was invited, though,” George Knightley admitted. “Something about Miss Austen? Is it because we are celebrating her 250th birthday?”
“Ah… to an extent,” Edward stammered.
“More to the point, we are offering a pointed rebuke of her depiction of us in our stories,” Brandon corrected.
“A rebuke?!” Knightley appeared stunned. “Whatever for?!”
Henry laughed. “I do not even know why you invited this fine chap, unless it is simply because we all like and respect him greatly. Miss Austen presented this fine fellow in the most glowing of terms. Let us count the ways, shall we?”
“Did you not counsel a young farmer about proposing to the woman he loved?” Edmund asked.
“Well…”
“And were you not constantly helping out the poor widowed Miss Bates, who often struggled to have enough food to get by?” Brandon added.
“I heard you always stopped by regularly and gladly listened to her endless stories about her niece,” said Edward.
“And, I believe you also offered rides to Miss Bates and her niece in your carriage when you never used it for yourself,” Darcy added with a sigh.
“We are forgetting the most heroic act of his story,” Henry said with great importance. “He rescued a poor young woman who had been cruelly snubbed at an assembly by dancing with her, when he never danced ordinarily and had even refused to dance when his good friend suggested dancing earlier.”
It was harder to tell just then who was redder at this, Knightley or Darcy.
“I believe Miss Austen has treated you even better than me, man,” Bingley noted. “Why are you here?”
“I am… not sure, to be honest,” Knightley admitted.
“There you are, Knightley! I think you must have written the address wrong, I have looked for you everywhere.”
“My dear Emma,” Knightley sighed, kissing his wife on the cheek. “I do believe you are correct.”
“Are you saying I am right? Can someone write this down?!” Emma Knightley demanded.
“On it,” Darcy announced, scribbling a note.
Knightley rolled his eyes. “Such cheek, as ever.”
“You love it,” she retorted, bestowing Knightley with a beaming smile. “Might I ask what brings so many great gentlemen to one place?” she added, gazing around the room. “Truly Austen’s finest!”
“Funny you should say that,” Edmund began.
“We’re protesting the terrible ways in which she wrote our stories, leading to generations of her devotees to be quite angered with us over the years,” Wentworth finished.
“We have not even mentioned what she did to poor Darcy!” Brandon added, clapping a hand onto Darcy’s shoulder.
Darcy heaved a long-suffering sigh.
“Oh, do let me tell it,” Henry insisted. “First, poor Darcy would not dance with a single young lady at his first assembly in Meryton. Then, he slighted the village’s favorite young lady by calling her ‘tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.’”
Emma gasped dramatically.
“Then, he kept his best friend away from the woman he loved because he had convinced himself the love was not requited.”
“Wait one moment, Darcy, you did what?” Bingley interrupted, as Emma squirmed.
“Pardon me,” Tilney declared. “I have not finished. Because after that, he then went to the woman he had inconveniently fallen in love with—given that her station was far beneath his own—and proposed to her in the most insulting way possible.”
Edward and Brandon both looked horrified, as did Wentworth.
“That is… very bad,” Edmund admitted. “You surely must be the most-hated of all of Austen’s heroes.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Emma muttered. “That is nothing. I ought to tell you all of the vicious turn Miss Austen has done me…”
Miss Jane Austen refolded the letter and sighed.
“Honestly, after all these years, you would think they would have a little more respect. I made them heroes, icons. And, apparently, enormous crybabies.” She shook her head. “No matter. I will always have the love and respect of my fanfiction community.”
She smiled mischievously as she inspected her bookmarks, trying to decide which JAFF site she would visit first this morning.
The End