~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
“How dare you send my Lydia away!” Fanny screeched as soon as she pushed the study door open.
The door slammed against the bookcase for the second time that day and Bennet flinched thinking Gardiner was returning to beat him again. He was almost relieved it was his wife instead.
“It is done and done for the best,” Bennet stated as he returned to his book.
“You tell them you have changed your mind,NOW!” Fanny screamed.
“Yet I will not, as I have not,” Bennet averred evenly. “You may caterwaul all you want; it will not change the facts. We will have an estate with no entail one day, but no children.”
Bennet did not explain anything to his wife who stood staring at him as if he was mad.
Fanny screamed at him for so long that by the time she tried to stop her brother from removing her children, she was in time to see the retreating Gardiner carriage.
Chapter 8
“You brought this on yourself,” Hattie Philips told her younger sister. “How did you think the rest of us would react when it became known you sold one of your daughters to a man so very old, and even worse, from all accounts, an absolute reprobate.”
Fanny had been convinced her easily led sister, the same one who had assisted in her compromise of Thomas Bennet all those years ago, would never stand up to her in this way.
“How can you be so disloyal to your sister?” Fanny demanded with asperity. She did not enjoy Hattie having her own opinions.
“My first loyalty is to my husband, who I married without any subterfuge, unlike you who with all of your beauty and charm had to entrap a man into marriage,” Hattie shot back.
Her husband had informed her about her brother’s removal of her nieces from Longbourn. At first, she had felt sympathy for her sister, but the more her husband revealed regarding Thomas and Fanny’s callous and mercenary behaviour, the more she had come to opine it was no more than her sister and brother-in-law deserved.
A look of outrage was returned by Fanny, but unlike in the past where a display of anger would make her sister waiver, there was no effect now.
There was one thing Fanny knew her sister would not be able to resist, tears. “You have cut me to the quick,” Fanny moaned as she squeezed out some crocodile tears. “How can you be so heartless when I suffer so?” She dabbed her eyes with her delicate lace handkerchief.
“If you think I will be swayed by your fake crying any longer, you are sorely mistaken, Sister!” Hattie stated firmly. “It has been some time now since I realised I should never have participated in any of your dishonourable schemes, not the least of which was your entrapment of your husband.”
Fanny Bennet was reeling. Not only had she lost her children, but now her sister’s support—something she had counted upon all these years without question. At least she still had her friends in the neighbourhood. She would enjoy boasting of how she would soon be the mother of a duchess.
“I take no leave of you, Fanny, you deserve no such compliments. My husband and I will not admit you or Bennet to visit us socially any longer. My Frank will continue to act as Thomas’s solicitor for the good of your children. That is the only contact we will allow.” With that, Hattie turned on her heel and marched out of her younger sister’s drawing room without a look back at Fanny.
She stood frozen to the spot. Hattie had just broken all connection with her, and then cut her. Fanny was reeling.
“You are just jealous!” Fanny screeched at the spot where her sister had stood. “Regardless of what Miss Lizzy says, Iwillbe in the Duke’s company and he will get my children back for me. Him a brute! What stuff and nonsense! Other than not having the good sense to choose my Jane over Miss Lizzy, he is a very proper gentleman.”
Pushing the visit out of her head, Fanny ordered the butler to have the carriage readied. It was time to go lord herdaughter’s soon-to-be rank over those in the neighbourhood, starting with Lady Lucas.
How jealous that lady would be. Her husband was only a lowly knight while she would soon be the mother of the Duchess of Hertfordshire!
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
“I know it is not ideal as we only have two chambers for the five of you,” Gardiner told his nieces the next morning.
Jane and Lizzy had shared the bed in the smaller room while Mary, Kitty, and Lydia shared the one in the larger bedchamber. None but Lydia had raised a word of complaint regarding the sleeping arrangements.
From the day Lydia had been moved from the nursery, at eight rather than ten, or in Elizabeth’s case twelve, she had been given a large bedchamber which she did not have to share. At Longbourn, Jane and Elizabeth always shared, as did Mary and Kitty. Their mother had never hidden her favouritism of the youngest Bennet.
“I still do not see why I have been taken away from Longbourn and Mama,” Lydia whined.
“Lyddie, we will address this later, let us hear what Uncle Edward has to say first,” Jane suggested.
She pouted, but Lydia clamped her mouth shut.
