It is a truth universally acknowledged that a house long shuttered and locally reputed to be cursed must, upon acquiring a wealthy new tenant, shed its reputation entirely and become at once the most desirable address in the county.
Thornfield Abbey had stood empty for eleven years. In that time, the village of Meryton had furnished it with a comprehensive mythology: a previous owner found dead under circumstances the coroner had described, with notable circumspection, as *irregular*; lights observed in the upper windows on moonless nights by witnesses whose credibility varied in inverse proportion to the hour at which they had been abroad; and a general atmosphere of Gothic misfortune that the local children found thrilling and their mothers found convenient for keeping them from the grounds. The Abbey itself did nothing to discourage these impressions. It was very old, very large, and oriented in such a manner that even on the brightest mornings its eastern facade remained in shadow — an architectural peculiarity that the previous owner had either failed to notice or, the neighbourhood darkly suspected, had chosen for reasons he had not survived to explain.
On the fourteenth of October, however, the Abbey's curse was understood to have reached its natural terminus, because Mrs. Long had it from the solicitor's clerk, who had it from the solicitor himself, that Thornfield Abbey had been purchased by a Count Vordescu of Wallachia, a gentleman of vast fortune, no traceable English connexions, and — she added, in the tone of one producing a trump card — *no wife*.
The neighbourhood received this information with the enthusiasm of a community that has been patient long enough.
By Thursday morning, it had reached Longbourn.
"My dear Mr. Hartwell," said Mrs. Hartwell, addressing her husband across the breakfast table with the particular urgency she reserved for news she had been holding since before he came downstairs, "have you heard that Thornfield Abbey is taken at last?"
Mr. Hartwell, who was reading Suetonius and eating toast with the methodical calm of a man who has learned to construct small fortifications against the day, turned a page. "I had not."
"But it is. Mrs. Long had it from Mr. Philips, who had it from the solicitor directly — or very nearly directly, which answers just as well. A foreign nobleman. A Count, no less. He has taken the Abbey entire and intends to be in residence before the month is out." She paused for effect, which in Mrs. Hartwell's rhetorical practice generally preceded the point. "He is unmarried."
"You astonish me," said Mr. Hartwell, in the tone of a man who was not astonished.
"And enormously rich. Mrs. Long says — though she has her information second-hand, which one must allow for — that he is worth at least eight thousand a year. Though she cannot be certain, as the money is all from abroad and one never quite knows how these things are reckoned on the Continent. Still. Eight thousand. And unattached." She looked at her husband with the bright, significant expression of a woman delivering a mathematical proof. "We have five daughters, Mr. Hartwell."
"I have not forgotten."
"Lydia," Mrs. Hartwell continued, gaining momentum, "is very handsome this season. Everyone says so. Even Mrs. Goulding, who is not generous on principle. And Cecilia, though she will not make the effort she ought — Cecilia has very fine eyes, which even she cannot do much to disguise, however she tries. If we were to call at the Abbey — or arrange an introduction at the next assembly — "
"He may be hideous," Mr. Hartwell offered.
"The very rich are rarely hideous. Or if they are, it matters considerably less." She reached for the marmalade with the brisk purposefulness of a general confirming a troop deployment. "I shall speak to Mrs. Philips. She knows Mrs. Long better than I do, and Mrs. Long, I believe, is already in communication with the steward's wife, who — "
The door opened.
Cecilia Hartwell came in from the direction of her father's library, which occupied the east wing of Longbourn in a state of cheerful disorder that her mother had long since given up contesting. She was carrying Tacitus under one arm, a cup of cooling tea she had forgotten she'd poured some twenty minutes ago, and the particular expression of a woman who has spent the early morning agreeably and expects the afternoon to be less so. Her dark hair was not entirely arranged. She had not noticed.
"Good morning," she said, depositing Tacitus on the sideboard and herself in the chair across from her father. "Has something happened, or is it a general emergency?"
"A Count," said her mother, "has taken Thornfield Abbey."
Cecilia looked at her father.
"A Count," Mr. Hartwell confirmed, with the faint elevation of an eyebrow that between them constituted a complete editorial.
"Good heavens," said Cecilia pleasantly. "And here I thought the place was cursed."
"It is not cursed," Mrs. Hartwell said, with the firmness of a woman who has decided that a certain category of neighbourhood rumour is inconvenient and has therefore reclassified it. "It is merely old. A great many very good houses are old. Thornfield Abbey has twenty rooms, excellent grounds, and a southern aspect — or nearly southern — and has been allowed to go to rack and ruin for no better reason than that Colonel Ashworth was a poor manager and died untidily. That has nothing to do with curses."
"It has rather to do with the lights in the upper windows," said Cecilia.
"Poachers," said Mrs. Hartwell. "Or foxes."
"Foxes carrying candles is a new theory. I confess I hadn't considered it."
"Cecilia," her mother said, in the tone that meant she was being tiresome, "I wish you would attend. A Count — a *very* wealthy Count — has arrived in this neighbourhood, and there is no reason whatsoever that he should not notice that this family contains two extremely eligible young women, one of whom has fine eyes and the other of whom is the prettiest girl in Meryton and has been for three seasons. This is not the occasion for being clever."
Cecilia poured fresh tea, having abandoned her cooled cup. "When would you prefer I schedule my cleverness?"
Mr. Hartwell turned another page of Suetonius and permitted himself a small smile that he directed at the paragraph describing the habits of Caligula.
"You are exactly like your father," said Mrs. Hartwell, which she intended as a reproach and which both its targets received as something considerably more agreeable. "I only ask that you do not do anything to make yourself peculiar before he has formed an impression. After an engagement is settled, you may be as clever as you like."
"A comforting prospect," Cecilia agreed. "Tell me — is the Count to be ancient and dissolute, or merely rich and dull? The neighbourhood's opinions seem divided."
"He is said to be very handsome," her mother replied, with the serene confidence of a woman reporting facts she has retrospectively confirmed. "And very distinguished. Mrs. Long says he has an air — she could not quite describe it, but it was most particular. A foreign air. One expects it, of course, from that part of the world."
"Which part of the world, precisely?"
"Wallachia. Or thereabouts. Somewhere eastern and romantic. I do not think the exact location signifies, as long as the fortune is transferable."
Cecilia opened her mouth, closed it again, and reached instead for a piece of toast. There were conversations with her mother that rewarded engagement and conversations that were better sustained, on all sides, by an attitude of benign surrender. This one had the character of the latter.
She was, she told herself, entirely indifferent to the Count. Foreign noblemen of mysterious extraction and convenient fortune appeared at intervals in the neighbourhood's social life and were invariably disappointing — either they were young and fatuous, old and more interested in their port than in the Hartwell daughters, or they were precisely what they appeared to be, which was by definition uninteresting. Wallachia, she knew from her father's library, was a principality of the Carpathian region, mountainous and historically turbulent, which had been variously contested between the Ottomans and the Hungarians for several centuries and was therefore unlikely to have produced a nobleman of uncomplicated social background. This she filed as a mildly interesting geographical footnote and nothing more.
Her mother was still speaking. Cecilia heard the words *assembly*, *new gown for Lydia*, and *not sit with your book in the corner again, Cecilia, I am in earnest* — a sequence she had encountered in varying permutations for several years and could navigate without full attention.
Through the breakfast-room window, the grounds of Longbourn looked agreeably autumnal. The elms had gone to copper and the kitchen garden was in its late-season decline, and beyond the low stone wall the Meryton road was empty and ordinary, carrying no evidence whatsoever that the world was preparing to rearrange itself.
Cecilia retrieved her Tacitus. The morning, she felt, still held some promise.
"You will come to the assembly," her mother said, having arrived at the end of her strategic summary. It was not a question.
"I come to every assembly," Cecilia said. "You know I do."
"You come and you observe," Mrs. Hartwell corrected, "which is not the same thing at all. I want you to be *seen*. There is a distinction."
"I am always seen. I am five feet and four inches. I am not easily overlooked."
"By *him*. I want you to be seen by *him*." Her mother squared her shoulders with the particular resolution of a woman who has carried the security of her family's future as a personal responsibility for twenty years and does not intend to begin delegating now. "This is not a small thing, Cecilia. A Count. At Thornfield Abbey. We may not see another like it."
Cecilia set down the Tacitus.
She looked at her mother — at the slightly heightened colour and the brightness in her eyes that was neither unkind nor foolish but was the expression of a woman who had five daughters and one entailed estate and had done the arithmetic enough times to know exactly what it required. There was something in that arithmetic that Cecilia found she could not be entirely ironic about, however she tried.
"I will come to the assembly," she said, more gently. "And I will be charming, or at least tolerable, which in a room also containing Lydia will probably be sufficient."
Her mother's expression completed itself into satisfaction. "There. That is all I ask. That is very sensible, Cecilia. You have very fine eyes when you are not using them to make people feel foolish."
Mr. Hartwell closed Suetonius. He looked at his second daughter with the slight, measuring attention that he gave to situations he found interesting in more than one register at once.
"A Count of Wallachia," he said thoughtfully, as though trying the phrase for fit. "At Thornfield Abbey." He paused. "You know, I believe I have the most extraordinary small pamphlet somewhere in the east shelves. Dutch, I think. Sixteenth century. The sort of thing that arrives in a lot of ecclesiastical volumes and is invariably more entertaining than its surroundings." He picked up his toast. "I must find it."
"If it is another religious history," Cecilia said, "I will read it. If it is another natural philosophy, I will attempt it and feel guilty for a week."
"Neither, I think." He looked out the window. Something in his expression, she noticed afterwards — or thought she had noticed, which in retrospect came to the same thing — was not quite his habitual amusement. It was more considered. More deliberate. As though he had thought of something he was not yet certain he wished to say aloud.
But the moment passed, and he reached for the marmalade her mother had left at his end of the table, and the ordinary morning reassembled itself around them, and Cecilia took up the Tacitus again.
Thornfield Abbey, she thought. A Count of Wallachia. An eastern air that Mrs. Long could not describe precisely.
She was quite sure there was nothing in this to interest her.
She turned the page, and read, and was entirely certain.