The Neighbour: A Pride and Prejudice Variation

He bought the estate. She kept walking. Fitzwilliam Darcy purchases the neglected Aldwick Park as a restoration project: something to occupy his attention after a winter he would rather not examine too closely. What he does not anticipate is the gap in his eastern boundary wall, worn smooth by twenty years of use, or the woman on the other side of it who has no intention of changing her route to Meryton.
Elizabeth Bennet has been walking this path since she was eight. A new owner is not a sufficient reason to stop. What follows is six weeks of drainage disputes, boundary arguments, and a notice that gets removed rather than obeyed. Neither of them invokes the legal fact that would end it. Neither of them wants to end it. They are both, in their own way, restoring something. For readers who know that the longest route to honesty is sometimes a footpath dispute.