Prologue
Meryton Summer 1788
Frances Gardiner—called Fanny by all, who would turn seventeen in a month —was by far the most beautiful girl in Meryton. As such, thanks to the lessons her late mother, Jane, had taught her, she believed that whatever she desired would be hers just because it was what she wanted.
The late Mrs Gardiner had told her daughter that all she needed was to be beautiful and agreeable to a man to catch a husband, and as she was so very pretty, her daughter deserved to marry into the landed gentry. Fanny could not understand why she had not been able to attract any of the sons of landowners in the neighbourhood. She was formulating a plan, and she was aware that her sister would be the only one she could work on to assist her.
Elias Gardiner, Fanny’s father, was the local solicitor. He had three children of whom Fanny was the youngest. Hattie, who was the oldest at four and twenty, was engaged to Frank Phillips, Gardiner’s head clerk. The middle Gardiner was a son, Edward, who at almost one and twenty had just graduated from Oxford. Unfortunately for Gardiner, his son had no interest in the law and had chosen to go work for a man in London whose company imported and exported goods. As such, Gardiner was grooming his soon-to-be son-in-law to take over his practise.
As she was seven years her sister’s senior, Hattie had stepped into the role ofde factomother. Although she was not intelligent, Fanny was unfortunately very cunning and was very good at manipulating Hattie into agreeing to do anything she desired.
Fanny had set her cap at Thomas Bennet, the new master of Longbourn, the second largest estate in the area. The largest one was Netherfield Park, but the Devon family, who owned it and had purchased it in the last year, did not reside in the area. Hence, she had settled on second best. The problem was that no matter how much she attempted to put herself into Mr Bennet’s path, regardless of the level of coquettish behaviour on her part, the Bennet heir hardly looked at her.
If she tried to ask him a question, or engage him in conversation, the best she would get was a one-word answer or a returned greeting before he would excuse himself from her company.
Hattie had told her the man was not interested in her, as had Sarah Lucas, who had married Mr William Lucas some three years previously. Mr Lucas was the owner of the general mercantile in Meryton. The fact that Sarah, who always flaunted the fact she was married and already a mother, had expressed such an opinion only made Fanny that much more determined to catch Thomas Bennet and become the mistress of an estate. Sarah Lucas and her tradesman husband would see!
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“Mother, what else can I do to show Miss Fanny that I have absolutely no interest in her?” asked a frustrated Thomas Bennet. Bennet had been master of the estate for just over a year since his father’s passing.
“Other than what you are doing, I know not,” Elizabeth Rose Bennet, called Beth by her friends and family, replied. Afterlosing her beloved Henry just over a year past, she had only recently transitioned to the muted colours of half mourning. “Just make sure she does not manage to compromise you. With this being a small, closely knit community, I do not see a way you would be able to escape her clutches if she entraps you, especially if there are witnesses. My suggestion is that you forgo the summer assembly, just in case. You are not fond of dancing, so you will not miss too much.”
“I will not allow that empty-headed, vapid, vain, mean of understanding gossip monger drive me from events in the community,” Bennet responded with some asperity.
It rubbed him the wrong way that because of Miss Fanny’s desire to have him, he should have to keep out of the public eye. He had turned five and twenty at the beginning of the year, and even if there were not all of the issues he had just mentioned with the woman, she was not yet seventeen. That would not have been a problem had she been an intelligent woman with a decent level of maturity to whom he was actually attracted, but Miss Fanny was anything but.
Bennet had been educated first at Eton and then at Cambridge. At the latter institution, he had graduated with honours and as an undefeated chess champion. The only one who had come close to beating him was a man who was in his first year when Bennet was in his last. His name was Lord William Cavendish, the Marquess of Hartington. The young Marquess had not treated Bennet in a way that had made him feel that he was disdained for being the son of a lowly country squire. It was sure that had they been in the same year, the young noble would have managed to beat Bennet before he graduated.
Even more than chess, Bennet loved the written word. To call him a bibliophile was an understatement. His late fatherhad also revered books and reading, and hence, although not the largest library, the library at Longbourn was as full as the groaning shelves could accommodate.
Marry, he must. Thanks to a profligate relative, Longbourn had an entail on it. It was in favour of heirs male, and unless Bennet was blessed with a son, his illiterate, nasty, bully of a distant cousin, Clem Collins—whose wife had recently birthed him a son—would inherit the estate. Bennet lamented the fact that the entail ended not with him, but with the generation after him. It was critical that he have a son because he could not imagine one like Collins being steward over the Bennet legacy.
His hope had been that Father would have lived for many more years so he would have time before taking the reins of the estate, but God had other plans. As much as Bennet lamented the fact he was already the master, he knew there was nought he could do about it. Hence, he threw himself into the management of his estate, determined not to be less successful than his late sire.
Although he needed to marry, his mother was still the very capable mistress of Longbourn, which gave him the luxury of being careful in his choice.
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“Anna, when are you and William going to visit that estate he purchased in Hertfordshire?” Lady Elaine Fitzwilliam, the Countess of Matlock, asked her identical twin sister, the Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Georgiana Cavendish, called Anna. “Being only twenty miles from London, it is much closer than any of your other estates.”
“Which is why William purchased it a little over a year ago,” Lady Georgiana responded. “I have not told you this yet, but when we go to that estate, we intend to remain incognito.”
“Are you and William tired of beingyour gracedto death,” Lady Elaine smiled.
“That, and now that William, the younger, has married Marie Rhys-Davies, and they no longer have theirbigbrother at home, the girls will be able to make some friends who want to know them for themselves, and not because they are daughters of a duke,” Lady Georgiana explained. “Becca is almost two and twenty and Connie is only sixteen, and they are tired of all of the false friends. My older daughter wants nothing more than to be away from the men of theTonwho pursue her purely for her dowry and connections. I am afraid that she will wait to get married as long as you did, or longer if she does not find a man who she will accept.”
While the younger twin—by half an hour—married the Duke of Devonshire before she was seventeen, her older sister had married Lord Reginald Fitzwilliam, the Earl of Matlock, when she was almost thirty. Like her niece, she refused to settle for a man unless she was in love with him and could respect him.
It was the reason the Duchess’s children were so much older than her sister’s offspring. Lady Georgiana’s son, named William for his father, was four and twenty, and recently married to the daughter of the Duke of Bedford. Lady Rebecca—Becca—was almost two and twenty, and looked very much like her mother and Aunt Elaine, and Lady Constance—Connie—was sixteen. Lady Elaine had two sons, Andrew, who was eight, and Richard, who was six. As she had been well past the age of thirty when her youngest was born, the slightly older sister was not surprised she had not become with child again.
While the Duke of Devonshire had no siblings living, the Earl of Matlock had two. The eldest was Lady Catherine de Bourgh, married to a knight, Sir Lewis, master of Rosings Park in Kent. They had one daughter, Anne, who was two. Theother was the youngest of the three, Lady Anne Darcy, married to Robert Darcy, the master of Pemberley. Pemberley was a very large estate, second only to Chatsworth in Derbyshire. The Darcys had a son, Fitzwilliam, who was five. His older Fitzwilliam cousins called him Fitz. The Fitzwilliams’ estate, Snowhaven, was the next largest after Pemberley in Derbyshire.
“I think we will visit Netherfield Park during the season next year. When we need to escape London for a period of time, to Hertfordshire we will go using the older coaches, which do not have the Devonshire coat of arms on the doors,” Lady Georgiana stated.
“If we are in Town, Reggie and I may join you; that is, if we are allowed to intrude on your retreat,” Lady Elaine smiled. She was well aware that thanks to standing reciprocal invitations to any of their houses, there was no question of being welcomed.
That was not true of Reggie’s officious, know-it-all older sister, Catherine. The eldest Fitzwilliam had set her sights on the Dukes of Bedford, Hertfordshire, and Devonshire. She had gone as far as to attempt a compromise of the latter when he had still been the Marquess. The late Duke told the late Lord Matlock that he would never allow his son to marry such a termagant, and if she attempted to entrap another in society, she would be well and truly ruined. The late Earl had brokered a marriage between her and Sir Lewis, ignoring his daughter’s vociferous complaints about being betrothed to a lowly knight.
