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Based on Jane’s obtaining a position so quickly, Elizabeth thought it would be easy to replicate her sister’s success. She registered at the nearest employment agency to the Gardiners’, but after checking for possible interviews, each day she came away empty-handed. After a week, Elizabeth decided the agent was either lazy or oversubscribed with applicants. She registered at three more agencies further afield, costing her a pretty penny. Another week went by during which she secured a single interview for a position teaching three small boys—not her preferred pupils, but better than nothing.

Arriving at the house in question, a tired-looking maidservant instructed Elizabeth to take a chair in the hall next to a mousy woman of about thirty. After striking up a conversation with this person, Lizzy quickly established she was speaking to the only other applicant, who had few accomplishments. Elizabeth was confident she could get the position. They were summoned in turn to a dingy wainscoted room. Inside, an old battle-axe, who introduced herself as the children’s aunt, peppered Elizabeth with obscure questions she read from a sheet of paper. Elizabeth answered them all with aplomb.

Imagine her astonishment when, after returning to the waiting room, the mousy woman was declared the victor and Elizabeth sent on her way with short shrift. She stomped all the way back to the Gardiners’, fuming over the unfairness of the world.

Elizabeth woke the next morning with renewed determination not to be thwarted. Perhaps she would do better looking in the wealthier part of town? After a discussion with her aunt and uncle over breakfast, Mr Gardiner promised to put the carriage at Lizzy’s disposal as soon as he had dealt with the morning’s business at his warehouse. Thus, around eleven, Elizabeth was conveyed from Southwark to Bond Street by John Coachman, with Mick standing up behind in his footman’s livery. After heading down Fleet Street to Temple Bar, they continued along The Strand as far as Charing Cross. They then turned into Whitcombe Street and thence onto Coventry and Piccadilly. As soon as they passed the Egyptian Hall, Elizabeth realised they were close to their destination. She then spotted a handsome bookshop called Hatchard’s, which she recognised as the one that had taken the residue of her father’s library. After wistfully watching the bookstore pass by—perhaps there would be time to have a quick peek inside on her way home—the carriage turned into Bond Street.

Although she knew its reputation as the fashion centre of London, Elizabeth had never shopped on Bond Street—the prices there were rumoured to be exorbitant. Instead, she and Jane had confined themselves to the warehouses near Cornhill on the visits to their aunt. But Lizzy knew her uncle occasionally supplied fabrics to some of the modistes on Bond Street and dreamt of becoming a contracted supplier to one of them.

As the carriage threaded its way along the street between parked vehicles, Elizabeth was gazing with appreciation at shop windows filled with expensive wares when an elegant white barouche-landau with the top down caught her eye. Although there was no snow on the ground, the use of such a carriage in the frigidity of winter seemed the height of folly and was presumably dictated by the occupants’ need to be seen in all their finery. The interior of the carriage was upholstered in what appeared to be a very impractical pale-blue silk with silver fringing. Turning her attention to the occupants who had just descended, Elizabeth thought she recognised a very distinctive plumed hat on one of the ladies. Further scrutiny revealed there could be no mistake—the lady was none other than Caroline Bingley, accompanied by her sister Louisa. As Elizabeth had heard that Mr Hurst had a townhouse on Grosvenor Street, she could only assume the sisters had not come far in a vehicle so unsuited to the weather. Clearly the Bingleys had returned from Somerset or the Continent, or wherever they claimed to have gone, leaving Elizabeth to wonder if Mr Bingley had returned to Netherfield.

Elizabeth had little time to ponder this question before her uncle’s carriage pulled up and Mick let the step down, advising Elizabeth that the agency she had chosen was upstairs, several doors along the street. After getting down, Elizabeth watched her uncle’s carriage draw back out into the traffic. John was unable to wait for Elizabeth—the carriage was required at the warehouse in the afternoon; Mr Gardiner could spare it no longer. Instead, Mick was to accompany Elizabeth on her business and bring her safely back to Gracechurch Street in a hackney.

Lizzy followed Mick along the street as he scanned the numbers above the doors before stopping in front of the correct address. Judging by the brass plate near the entrance declaring the proprietors to be Messrs Jukes and Jackson, the agency looked to be a very superior one. A bell tinkled as Mick pushed the door inwards to admit Elizabeth before closing it again behind her to stand sentry in the tiny vestibule.

As she trod up the thickly carpeted steps, running her glove over the brass rail, Elizabeth had a crisis of confidence, precipitated not by a lack of faith in her own abilities, but her unexpected encounter with the Bingleys. Although she had registered under her own name at the agencies near Cheapside, Elizabeth realised she could not bring herself to do so here. The thought that the Bingley sisters might hear that a Miss Elizabeth Bennet had been hired as a governess by an acquaintance seemed too much to bear. Thus, Elizabeth made a lightning decision to register with Messrs Jukes and Jackson using her uncle’s surname and her own middle name, which was Frances. As she would be applying under what was essentially her mother’s maiden name, Elizabeth amused herself momentarily with the picture of Mrs Bennet astounding the proprietors by walking into the agency in her best poke bonnet, offering to tutor boys in Latin and Greek. However, her mirth was short-lived when Elizabeth soon found herself received with a similar amount of incredulity to that she had imagined for her mother.

The top of the stairs let directly onto a small light-filled office populated with two desks. Finding herself the only client, Elizabeth was immediately ushered to a chair at the desk nearest the stairs. A wooden baton on the polished surface declared its owner to be the junior partner, Mr N. Jackson, who looked about fifty. He pulled a white card from a pile, blank save some neatly ruled pencil lines, dipped his pen in the standish and paused, ready to fill out the card with her particulars. He looked sceptical when Elizabeth declared she was applying for work as a governess and frankly incredulous when she stated her age as twenty-five. Indeed, Elizabeth had not yet attained her majority but deemed her subterfuge necessary for success.

“Are you sure, you would not wish to be considered as a companion for an old lady?” Mr Jackson asked politely, for he could see from the style of her dress that the applicant was a well-bred young lady. “We have several on our books. They can be a little cantankerous, but they pay very well.”

Elizabeth asseverated that she did not.

Mr Jackson’s eyebrows ascended further when Elizabeth quoted Latin, Greek and logic as her specialities. Questioned about her experience, she shamelessly claimed Harry Morecombe and a family of three girls as her pupils. This was true enough in its way, even if the girls were her younger sisters. She gave their addresses as her uncle’s warehouse in London and Longbourn, respectively.

“So, it is just the Bennet family in Hertfordshire and the Morecombe family of Southwark? Do you have references from those families?”

“Ah, no... Unfortunately, the lady of Longbourn could not read or write herself, and Master Morecombe was orphaned suddenly,” said Elizabeth, branching quickly into fiction, “necessitating my search for a new position. But I do have a reference from the curate of Longbourn who also provides scholarly tuition in Latin and Greek.”

Although Mr Jackson expected this missive to contain only an avowal of regular church attendance, it claimed the applicant was proficient in classic languages and well versed in philosophy. The fact that the letter referred to a ‘Miss Elizabeth’ rather than a ‘Miss Frances’ was blithely explained away by the applicant—she had been called by her second name during her stay at Longbourn due to the lady of the house bearing the same Christian name. Checking his transcription on her card, Mr Jackson immediately confirmed that the applicant’s second name was indeed Elizabeth.

“So, six years with the Bennets in Hertfordshire and one year with the Morecombes, here in London,” repeated Mr Jackson as he added it to the card.

“To the nearest year, that is correct,” said Elizabeth, deeming this true if one considered only the upper value.

“Well, Miss Gardiner, we have few requests for tuition of Latin and Greek in the city. Most of our tutors are sent to country estates where the young masters are studying for Little Go.”

Elizabeth tried to take heart in Mr Jackson’s ‘few requests’ when he might have said ‘no requests’. She had a disturbing feeling he was going to mention those cantankerous old ladies again. But before the junior partner had a chance to say anything further, the bell downstairs heralded a newcomer. Despite the dampening effects of the thick carpet, the groaning of the wooden treads of the stairs in rapid succession warned that a large person was ascending the stairs precipitately.

A cavalry officer in a dashing, well-fitted uniform burst into the room and stopped short on the threshold. He was a tall, big-boned man who, no doubt, would have looked rather fearsome had he been wearing a cuirass and waving the sword that was sheathed at his side.

“Any luck with that reader, Mr Jukes?” he called, rather loudly, to the senior partner.

“Ah, no, sir,” said Mr Jukes, picking up an ear trumpet that lay on his desk and shouting back. “But we have someone coming down from Oxfordshire next week who is well versed in Latin and Greek, although perhaps a little weak on the mathematical side of things.”

“Next week?” yelled the officer, allaying the need for the trumpet. “It seems a while! Perhaps I had better go up to Oxford myself?”

“Well, I am sure this fellow is bound to please, Colonel,” said Mr Jukes, alarmed at the prospect of losing a good client. “He comes with very high recommendations from the bishop.”

At this point, Lizzy, who could hardly have failed to overhear the conversation, decided to put her oar in.

“I can read Latin and Greek!” she declared.

Mr Jukes, who had deployed the ear trumpet in anticipation of a spirited defence of his agency to the officer, looked at her in some disbelief.

“I have only just begun interviewing this female, Colonel,” explained Mr Jackson, shooting a frown at Lizzy for her temerity. “But she does not have any mathematical knowledge.”

“I have a sound appreciation of logic,” replied Elizabeth, trying to play to her strengths.