Interview and "A Debt Inherited" by Barry Richman

carolinecartieraut

2 days ago

13 min read

Welcome, Dear Readers!

One of my favourite things about JAFF is discovering what an author does with the familiar pieces of Austen's story. We know the characters, we know the original ending, and yet a good variation can make us wonder what might have happened if Austen had taken a different road. Today, Barry Richman joins me to talk about "A Debt Inherited," his writing, and the inspiration behind his version of Elizabeth and Darcy's story.

CC: Welcome, Barry!

BR: Thanks for inviting me, Caroline!

CC: I have questions about your methods, so I will get right to it... You have a background in the armed forces. Does that include an interest in military history? What country’s military history interests you the most?

BR: Absolutely. I spent much of my life in the military—first enlisted and later as an officer—so military history has always interested me. What interests me most is early American military history, particularly how separate militias, regional forces, volunteers, and regular troops gradually became something resembling a unified national fighting force.

I am also fascinated by the technological changes war tends to accelerate. Weapons, transport, communications, logistics, medicine—war has an unfortunate habit of forcing innovation very quickly. I find that evolution almost as interesting as the campaigns themselves.

Because I write in the Georgian and Regency periods, I naturally spend a great deal of time with British military history as well, but my strongest personal interest remains the early military development of the United States.

CC: The Regency Era was a time when military service was a very real part of life for many gentlemen, and it had an effect on most of the British population. Does your own military experience give you an enlightened perspective on characters such as Colonel Fitzwilliam or Captain Wentworth?

BR: I would hesitate to call it an enlightened perspective, but my experience certainly gives me a different way of looking at Austen’s military characters. Military service changes the way you look at responsibility, authority, discipline, and the people around you. Those habits do not simply disappear when the uniform comes off.

My version of Colonel Fitzwilliam is a man who felt the calling very young. The army was never simply a respectable profession for a younger son; it was what he wanted. That changes the way I write him. He does not merely wear the uniform well. He has built himself around the demands of the profession—the discipline, the responsibility, the acceptance that other men may depend upon his judgement.

Wickham is the antithesis of Fitzwilliam. The Darcy family gave him social and educational advantages early in life, and he squandered them. By the time he appears in uniform, he has already established a pattern of wasting opportunity and avoiding responsibility. The militia gives him another respectable surface, but it does not change the man underneath it.

CC: If you could sit down with Colonel Fitzwilliam for an hour, what would you ask him?

BR: I would begin by asking whether he ever truly believed he could have been anything other than a soldier. In the way I have written him, the army is not simply a profession. It is the place where his need for order, discipline, purpose, and service all come together.

I would ask him about faith as well, because that is part of him I think readers sometimes overlook. And finally, I would ask the question I suspect he would find the most difficult: when the wars are over and nobody is giving him orders, who is Richard Fitzwilliam then?

I imagine an hour would disappear rather quickly.

CC: “A Debt Inherited” sounds like it is high-stakes, and filled with action! Does it also have a military vibe?

BR: Yes, but not in the sense that A Debt Inherited is a military novel. The military influence shows up more in how the characters think and act under pressure. Bennet has a military past, Colonel Fitzwilliam becomes central to the search, and Darcy relies upon him with absolute confidence. At one point, when Elizabeth questions whether a relation can truly amount to a rescue, Darcy’s answer is simply, “This one is."

The story also has a military rhythm: quiet movement, messages carried by hand, following a trail, assessing risk, working with limited information, and making decisions quickly because hesitation has consequences. Darcy even leaves a trail for Fitzwilliam to follow, knowing his cousin will understand exactly what he is doing.

But I would still call it a suspense story first. The military element supports the action rather than defining it. The real stakes are personal: Elizabeth has been taken, Darcy is drawn into a debt that began before he was born, and several families are forced to answer for decisions made a generation earlier.

CC: What Austen character do you most enjoy writing and why?

BR: Colonel Fitzwilliam, without hesitation. By now, I have spent so much time with Richard that I know him from childhood, through war, command, injury, friendship, faith, family, and love. I know what steadies him, what unsettles him, what he finds funny, what he will tolerate, and what he absolutely will not.

What I enjoy most is that he is never only one thing. He can be severe, disciplined, and frighteningly efficient, but he can also be dryly funny, deeply loyal, protective of the people he loves, and surprisingly gentle when the moment allows it. In "Before the Storm," I built the boy who would become the officer; in "Follow the Drum," I explored the soldier, the commander, the legend others had made of him, and the man beneath it all.

I also enjoy writing him because he is so completely himself. He does not bend easily for society, rank, expectation, or even family. He understands duty, order, loyalty, and purpose in very clear terms, and that gives him a strong centre in almost any scene. Put him on a battlefield, in a drawing room, in a family argument, or in the middle of a rescue, and I always know where Richard stands.

CC: Is there a favourite scene in P&P you particularly enjoy rewriting and putting your own spin on?

BR: I am not sure it is one particular scene so much as a part of Austen’s world that I enjoy changing. I like rewriting Mr and Mrs Bennet.

In Pride and Prejudice, they often function for me more as a distraction than a true plot thread. Mr Bennet retreats into his library and his sarcasm, which can sometimes be quite caustic, while Mrs Bennet creates chaos around everyone else. I understand what Austen is doing with them, but when I write them, I usually want something different.

I like writing them as caring parents who are invested in their daughters and conscious of their responsibilities to their family and their place in society. They can still have their faults, argue with one another, embarrass their children, and make mistakes, but they are present. When something threatens one of their daughters, they act.

CC: Your stories tend to favour high drama and peril. Do you have a favourite style of JAFF to read, such as low-angst fluff, mash-ups, or off-canon characters?

BR: I have enjoyed creating my own AU, and that tends to shape what I enjoy reading as well. I like strong, honour-bound, protective men and intelligent, responsible women. I like fathers who lead their families until their daughters marry, and women who are capable without having to be written as if they are modern people dropped into Regency dress.

I also prefer moral clarity. Bad men are bad. Good men may be flawed, but they are still men of honour. And when I write men such as Reeves and Leggett, who are dangerous by profession, I do not soften that danger. They are deadly because the world they inhabit sometimes requires them to be.

So I suppose my taste is fairly traditional. I enjoy JAFF that takes the period, family structure, duty, honour, and consequence seriously, even when the plot itself goes far beyond canon.

CC: What are your three favourite JAFFs?

BR: I honestly could not name only three. I have probably a hundred JAFF stories that I return to again and again, and choosing three would do a disservice to the others.

What I tend to love most are deep back-story sagas that build out the families, histories, and relationships around Austen’s characters. I also enjoy tongue-in-cheek retellings that clearly know the original well enough to have fun with it.

And I especially like risky variations—stories that put Darcy and Elizabeth in very different, sometimes genuinely difficult circumstances and make them work much harder for their HEA. For me, the fun is often in seeing just how far a writer can move from canon while still making the characters feel recognisably themselves.

CC: Thanks for talking to us about your Austen-AU, Barry! Now, let's take a peek at the description of "A Debt Inherited."

Synopsis:

Hertfordshire, July 1812

Elizabeth Bennet has been kidnapped.

Fitzwilliam Darcy has one day left to find her.

He must save a woman he has never met.

Her captors demand £10,000 and give her father three days to pay. Two days are already gone. Mr Bennet possesses neither the money nor the influence to secure her return. His only hope lies in a letter written thirty years before—and in the nephew of the man who wrote it.

Fitzwilliam Darcy arrives at Longbourn expecting to settle an old debt of honour. Instead, he is drawn into a bargain with George Wickham and a second man whose grievance reaches far beyond money.

To save Elizabeth, Darcy must place himself in the hands of men who have every reason to despise him. Elizabeth, imprisoned and unable to see the stranger negotiating for her life, must decide whether his promises can be trusted.

As a buried scandal binds the Bennets, Darcys, and Fitzwilliams together, the ransom becomes something far more dangerous than an exchange of money.

Some debts pass through generations.

Men of honour do not leave them unpaid.

I do not know about you, Dear Readers, but I am all anticipation for this sneak peek provided by the author!

Excerpt:

Chapter 43

Darcy House, that evening

Fitzwilliam Darcy had spent the evening refusing company.

Three cards had come before dinner, one note after it, and an invitation to a musical party had followed at an hour when no sensible host expected acceptance. Each had received the proper answer.

Regret.

Prior engagement.

Another evening.

The words had gone out in his name while he remained in the library, coat unbuttoned, cravat loosened, and the day’s business correspondence arranged in small, exact piles upon the desk.

Society called him proud because he did not chase its favour. His acquaintances called him severe because he let silence answer impertinence.

His cousin Richard laughed, calling Darcy reserved because he would not spend himself upon fools.

He had heard each judgement often enough to know its weight, and little enough to resent it. Society liked a rich man best when he courted its approval. Darcy had never seen the profit in obliging it.

London pressed at the windows with all its summer noise: wheels over stone, distant voices, a seller’s cry thinning into the dark. Within, Darcy House kept its discipline. Hudson moved belowstairs with quiet authority; Barty had brought fresh candles without asking; Georgiana’s room had gone silent above.

That silence held him more firmly than any engagement could have done.

Since Ramsgate, he had learnt to distrust quiet. It settled too neatly over what had been disturbed. Georgiana smiled, practised, dined, and answered him with sweetness; yet he saw how carefully she measured every word that might lead towards Wickham.

Darcy had removed the danger, but not its trace.

That failure sat with him long after the household withdrew.

He took up a letter from his steward, read the first sentence, and laid it down again. The business of land could wait until morning. The business of family never did.

The front door shook beneath a sudden, violent pounding. The knocker struck in uneven blows—urgent, ungoverned. Darcy looked up, listening. Footsteps crossed the hall below, and Hudson’s measured voice carried.

“You cannot call at this hour. Mr Darcy receives no visitors past—”

“I beg you, sir, I must see him. Mr Bennet said I was to lose no minute.”

Darcy rose. The urgency in the young man’s voice had cracked upon the last word.

“Admit him,” he called from the stair.

The bolts drew back. A youth stepped inside, dust-streaked, hat in hand, a canvas satchel held tight against his chest. His coat hung too large upon his shoulders, and his boots bore the road to the knee.

Hudson looked up. “Sir, he says he comes from Hertfordshire.”

Darcy descended the last stair. “Your name?”

“John Perkins, sir. Perkins of the lower fields is my father.” His breath came short, but he stood as straight as fatigue permitted. “Mr Bennet of Longbourn sent me. In his own hand.”

Darcy did not know any Mr Bennet of Longbourn.

“You have an express?”

“Yes, sir.” John held out the satchel. “Mr Bennet said I was to put it into no hand but Mr Darcy’s.”

Darcy took it. “You have done rightly.”

Barty appeared at the library door with a candle in one hand. His eyes moved over the messenger, then to Darcy.

“Barty,” Darcy said, “see that Mr Perkins has food and tea.”

“Aye, sir.” Barty stepped forward. “Come along, lad. You have done your part. Sit and eat before you fall.”

The young man smiled weakly. “Thank you, sir. I was to ride to Pemberley if Mr Darcy was not here.”

Barty drew him towards the servants’ hall, and the boy went without another word. Darcy turned back into the library, shut the door, and set the satchel upon his desk.

An express that was to travel from Hertfordshire to London, then to Pemberley. A matter of time. Of minutes.

The clasp had stiffened with dust. He opened it and drew out two letters: one recent, sealed in haste; the other older, yellowed at the folds and enclosed within a plain wrapper.

He broke the newer seal first.

To Mr Edmund Darcy

Darcy House

London

My dear Darcy,

A calamity has befallen my house, and I must call upon the obligation you once acknowledged between us. I cannot commit the particulars to paper. Come to Longbourn with all possible haste.

The bearer will wait for your answer.

T R Bennet

Fides servanda est

Darcy read the letter again.

No illness. No sum. No accusation. No explanation that might betray itself if the paper fell into another hand.

Only obligation.

But the name was wrong.

The letter had not been written to him, but to his uncle.

He laid Mr Bennet’s letter beside the candle and reached for the older paper. The wrapper bore Bennet’s name in a hand that might have been his uncle’s. Inside lay a letter already opened long ago and folded with a care that had preserved the creases.

My dear Bennet,

I write only to acknowledge a debt of honour. I would not have you suppose that silence or delegation arose from indifference. There are obligations a man must own, even when he cannot name them aloud.

May Providence keep you.

Meministi, amice

Darcy held the page very still. If this was his uncle’s hand, then Edmund Darcy had written for Bennet alone.

The Latin did not require translation: Remember, my friend.

No clerk would have added it. No solicitor would have sanctioned it.

Darcy crossed to the cabinet where his uncle’s correspondence had remained since his father’s death. He drew out the folio marked E. Darcy: Private Papers, 1782–1786 and opened it upon the desk.

The papers lay in order. Receipts. Estate letters. Bank instructions. Notes from solicitors. He drew out two letters in his uncle’s hand and laid them beside the sheet from Longbourn. The likeness did not satisfy him until he found the one distinction his father had once shown him: the broken tail of the y, too slight for a stranger to note, too deliberate for family to mistake.

“Edmund uses it in sensitive correspondence,” his father had said. “A family may have enemies enough without admitting them into its letters.”

Darcy had remembered the warning. He had never expected to need it.

The letter was Edmund Darcy’s.

He turned the remaining papers until Solicitor Wray’s hand appeared, dry and severe, forbidding all further correspondence with T R Bennet upon a matter “closed in law and prudence.”

The date stood plain: August 1785.

Darcy looked from the solicitor’s letter to his uncle’s.

The lawyer had forbidden. His uncle had written.

The law had closed the door. Honour had opened it again.

Darcy set Edmund Darcy’s letter aside, then returned the folio to the cabinet.

His uncle had not written like a man indulging sentiment. The lines ran close together, as if haste had crowded restraint from the page.

Whatever this debt had been, Edmund Darcy had meant it to survive him.

He looked again at Mr Bennet’s letter.

Come to Longbourn with all possible haste.

Mr Bennet had named neither illness nor scandal, neither money nor law. He had sent an old pledge, a tenant’s son, and silence.

To a dead man.

Darcy pulled a sheet from the drawer and wrote three lines. He added his initials, then sealed it without crest.

He rose to pull the bell cord.

A moment later, Hudson knocked once and entered. “Sir?”

“The young man. Did anyone follow him to the door?”

“Not that I saw, sir. He came alone and near stumbled upon the steps.”

“Keep the household quiet. No one is to speak of Hertfordshire beyond this room and the servants’ hall.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Send Barty to me.”

Hudson bowed and withdrew.

Barty entered a minute later. “Sir?”

“Colonel Fitzwilliam is expected at Vauxhall Gardens this evening.” He extended the message. “Send James,” Darcy said. “Plain coat. Fast horse.”

“He is to receive the note into his own hand. No servant, no companion, no host.”

“At once, sir.”

“Mr Perkins is able to travel?”

“To ride hard again, no. The boy been on the road half the day, and his horse is blown.”

Darcy looked towards the hall. “Then he cannot be sent back alone.”

Barty’s brows lifted. “Begging pardon, sir, but he may be of more use atop the carriage. He bore the express; Mr Bennet will know him.”

Darcy considered it only a moment. “Very well. Feed him first. Then put him beside the coachman.”

“Aye, sir.”

Darcy folded Mr Bennet’s letter and placed it inside his coat.

“Have the carriage ready to within the hour. Quietly.”

Barty bowed and left.

Darcy looked down at the two letters. Twenty-seven years had not discharged the debt. They had only delivered it to another man.

A debt inherited.

About the Author:

Barry S. Richman combines his background in the armed forces and expertise with a passion for Pride and Prejudice retellings.

After two decades of exploring countless stories from the JAFF universe, his wife challenged him to try writing one. During a trip to Istanbul, Barry wrote four pages that wove his real-world experiences into alternate-universe stories inspired by Jane Austen’s characters. He continued from there.

He published his first novel, Doubt Not, Cousin, in 2023, followed by The Scarred Duchess in 2024. Follow The Drum continues his military-influenced alternate universe populated by characters familiar and new.

Barry and his “Jane Bennet” divide their time between Los Angeles and a seaside town in southwestern Turkey.

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