The Exile: The Countess Visits Longbourn: A Pride & Prejudice Variation (The Bennet Wardrobe #5)

“The world is a nasty place full of awful persons, Mr. Wickham, and does not get any lighter through complaining or blaming. ’Tis only if you confront evil with fierce resolve that you have any hopes of prevailing. — The Dowager Countess of Deauville

The countess: an enigma? A mystery? Or a young girl all grown up? Kitty Bennet, the fourth child of Longbourn, spent far too long as the shadow of her younger sister. The all-knowing Meryton chinwags suggested that young Miss Bennet needed education—and quickly—especially after the irregular circumstances that forced the Wickham wedding.

How right they were, but the type of instruction Kitty received—and the where/when in which she matriculated—is far beyond their ken. The town’s busybodies know nothing of the remarkable piece of furniture that has been part of the Bennet’s lives since the 1690s: The Bennet Wardrobe.

After spending half a life in a future straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Kitty, now the eleventh Dowager Countess of Matlock, returns to Longbourn’s book room in 1811. However, Lady Kate Matlock is now sixty-three—thirteen years her father’s senior. Time can deal funny cards in the universe created by Jane Austen and the Wardrobe.

The Countess Visits Longbourn offers a “fly on the wall” perspective of the touching reunion between Kitty and Thomas Bennet. Readers will also learn how the mysterious Founder’s Letters were created along with the purpose behind the Bennet Family Trust. In the process, Lady Kate will help her youngest sister find the love she craves with the unexpected hero who, as the duke said, “saved us all.”

This book is the fifth volume in the Bennet Wardrobe Series. The 89,000-word novel concludes the chronicle of Kitty Bennet’s life in the Wardrobe’s Universe (begun in The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque and continued in Lizzy Bennet Meets the Countess).

As Joana Starnes, author of The Falmouth Connection noted after reading The Countess Visits Longbourn:

“Who can resist the magic of time-travel? Pages of history rustle back and forth between Regency grand salons, Napoleonic battlefields, and more recent conflicts. Guided by Don Jacobson’s masterful pen, the Bennet sisters grow as people and come into their own. ‘The Countess Visits Longbourn’ is a wonderful new installment, and we cannot fail to revel in the excellent writing and the abundance of detail as the mysteries of the Wardrobe continue to unfold. This captivating series, that brings together real and much-loved fictional characters from all walks of life, is one to savour, and I will revisit it again and again.”