To Have and to Hold

A Pride and Prejudice Variation

The hour the Bennet family has long dreaded arrives without mercy. Mr Bennet’s heart is failing, and with it vanishes the last assurance of their future.
Jane and Elizabeth must become, almost overnight, the guardians of a household unprepared for such responsibility. Their mother, consumed by terror and grief, can scarcely be comforted. Longbourn itself seems to tremble upon the brink of loss.

Elizabeth goes to Hunsford not in hope, but in resignation—prepared to consider an alliance with Mr Collins should necessity demand it.
Instead, fate confronts her with Mr Darcy.

His proposal is not the fulfilment of a dream, but a sentence she does not yet know how to escape. Honour, duty, and circumstance press upon her with a force that leaves no room for youthful illusion. Love, she believes, has no voice in such a moment.

She accepts him to save her family…not her heart.
Darcy, once so distant, becomes her family’s shield—defying the entail, opposing Mr Collins, and standing between the Bennets and ruin with a devotion that unsettles her more than resentment ever could. Yet every kindness deepens her torment, for gratitude is not love, and duty is not desire.

Or is it?

As Longbourn is slowly restored, Elizabeth must face a truth more painful than sacrifice: that a heart may awaken only after it has sworn itself away.

Is this marriage a prison of honour…or the last fragile chance for a love born too late?

To Have and to Hold is a Pride and Prejudice variation of wounded pride, quiet endurance, and love discovered in the very moment it seems most cruelly denied.