In care of the Petersford Parsonage
Worcestershire
(Allow me to preface this by saying I have edited out the profanities Mr Collins used as well as some of his more colourful wishes with regards to you and your son. M.P. Charleston, Rector)
Cousin Bennet,
How dare you conspire to cheat me and my son out of our rightful inheritance by first marrying again and now having a son?
Longbourn should have belonged to a Collins these many years if it were not for the (imprecations removed) Bennets stealing our birthright, and now you have done so again.
This is a disaster for my family because if your whelp survives to be 18, the entail will be broken! It was supposed to be me and my son to break the (words removed) thing so that a Bennet would never be able to get his grubby hands on the estate again.
I would wager you have substituted a changeling and claimed the birth of twins. As you would have bribed the midwife and other witnesses to say the bas**** was born of the body of the serving wench you married, I know I will not be able to prove what we both know is true.
(He wishes you to hell, but in much more colourful language.)
God will stand on the side of right and not allow the brat to reach the age of 18. (I almost didnot write this but thought you should see it to know your cousin’s state of mind.)
Clem Collins
Bennet did not bother to show the diatribe to Becca; he consigned it to the fire, which had been lit on the cold spring day. There was far too much to correct to bother to respond, the most ridiculous assertion being that Longbourn was somehow a birthright of the Collins line. The fact was it was the first Collins’s profligate ways—the man used to be a Bennet three generations past—that had necessitated the entail in the first place.
Now that he had a son it was moot, but in Bennet’s opinion the entail had been very badly worded if a Collins, a descendant of the man who had lost over half of Longbourn’s land, was in the line of succession.
The day Henry turned eighteen, the entail would be no more.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
For a little more than a year, Becca did not fall with child again. By the time she felt the quickening in April 1793, Jane was almost four, and according to her Uncle Edward, who called from time to time, looked exactly like her birth mother at the same age. Thankfully, Jane’s character was nothing like the woman who had birthed her.
Jane was very calm, but when she knew she was right, she would not back down, and she felt very protective of her younger siblings. Woe betide anyone who dared to hurt either of them.
The twins were already two. Henry had remained almost bald until after he and Lizzy turned one. By then he had the same coloured eyes as his mother, almost golden, and looked more like his sire every day. Lizzy looked very much like her mother,Grandmama Anna, and Aunt Elaine with her facial features, but her hair was darker, raven coloured, and she had emerald-green eyes. Both had been inherited from her Grandmama Beth.
Where Jane was a serene little girl—most of the time—who hated to get dirty, Henry and Lizzy were the opposite. They were rather rambunctious and led their nurses on a merry dance. As soon as they had begun to walk—just prior to turning one—rather than walk at a sedate pace, they had chosen to run. Both had managed to say some words before their first birthday, but by two months later they were talking, and once they started, they had no desire to stop.
In October 1792, Marie had delivered a daughter who had been named Rosemarie Georgiana. Her first name combined Marie’s mother’s and her own first name.
Due to the fact that they had a son, Becca and Bennet had agreed to use part of her dowry to purchase back as much of the lost land which used to belong to Longbourn as possible. Phillips represented them in the transactions, and the seller was not told who the buyer was. Unbeknownst to his daughter and son-in-law, Devonshire paid a portion of each land purchase, which left more of the dowry intact. Once the land, or most of it, was reacquired, Bennet and Becca planned to renovate and enlarge the manor house.
By the time their third daughter was born on the eighth day of August 1793, through Phillips, Bennet and Becca had managed to acquire more than seventy percent of the land the ancestor had gambled away, doubling Longbourn’s land, making it larger than Netherfield Park. The new arrival was named Mary Rose.
As happy as she was to be blessed with another daughter, Becca was sad she had missed Connie’s wedding, which had been celebrated less than a fortnight after Mary was born. Hermother and Aunt Elaine had left Longbourn two days after Mary’s delivery to travel to Chatsworth, the estate where the two would marry. Both wanted to remain longer with Becca, but they were consoled by the fact Beth was with her.
In almost two seasons, Lady Constance Cavendish had not found a man who she felt she could find the kind of love with which she saw so many examples of in her extended family. It seemed like her sister before her, she would find her match outside of theTon.
Then she met Lord Harry Smythe, the young Earl of Granville, who was only five and twenty. He had lost both of his parents some four years past, and like Connie, he was tired of being hunted. They had met at a dinner at Hartington House given by Will and Marie, and each had been intrigued by the other.
One thing led to another, first a courtship, then an engagement, and lastly the wedding on the twentieth day of August. Connie had understood why Becca and Thomas could not be present. After their honeymoon and spending a few weeks at Granville in Nottinghamshire—not too far from the Cavendish estates in Derbyshire—the newlyweds would spend a fortnight at Longbourn on their way to London.
As Becca sat feeding Mary, she remembered her concern from before she became with child, that she may not be blessed with more children, and now she had four, three of them, of her body.
Chapter 7
“Mama, Janey and I want a sister,” almost four-year-old Lizzy insisted. “And I am sure if Mary was older, she would agree with us. We already have one brother,” she pulled her nose up at her twin, who was playing with some toy soldiers his cousin Rich had gifted him, “and I am sure we do not need another one.”
Becca, Bennet, and Beth were seated in the drawing room. The latter had Mary on her lap as she watched her other three grandchildren.
