Their daughter had her mother’s golden blonde hair and deep blue eyes.
By the second half of 1789 Fanny was again in the family way and told everyone who cared to hear—and those who did not—she was carrying the heir who would end the entail.
His wife was very frightened of the entail once she understood if her husband died without male issue she would lose her home—in her words, be thrown into the hedgerows. Bennet had to admit, if only to himself the idea of Fanny cast out without a home was not unattractive to him.
Her prediction was disproved when another daughter was born on the fifth day of March 1790. She was smaller than Jane had been as a babe and had a head full of dark hair, just like her Grandmother Elizabeth’s.
Fanny had berated thedisobliginggirl for not being born a son. She had wanted nothing to do with thewilfulgirl. As her colouring was similar to his mother’s, Bennet named her Elizabeth Rose, who he and Jane would call Lizzy. His mother had always been disgusted with his wife, and now more so than ever with her son’s wife’s attitude towards an innocent babe.
Elizabeth Bennet took on the care of her namesake and with funds from her own jointure, made sure a wetnurse was employed.
Bennet had started to value peace and quiet in his home, something his sly wife was well aware of. If he ever tried to assert his authority and deny her something she desired, she would make the home a living nightmare with caterwauling and remonstrations so Bennet learnt to simply give in, like he had with her treatment of Lizzy. By the time little Lizzy turned six months of age, she had the same striking emerald-green eyes as her paternal grandmother.
Next to be born was Mary in April 1792. She too had blonde hair, but not golden like her mother and eldest sister, rather it was a sandy blonde. She started off with blue eyes, but by her fifth month she had hazel eyes with some flecks of green and gold in them.
Fanny pronounced her plain because Mary did not have the colour hair and eyes she herself did.
The next lying in resulted in the fourth Bennet daughter in November 1793. This daughter was named Catherine after her mother’s late aunt. Strangely enough, for her own inexplicablereason, Fanny did not hold the daughters after Lizzy to blame for not being sons as she still did her second born.
The year 1794, had been a year of great losses. In the early part of the year, Elias Gardiner succumbed to a heart ailment. He was followed three months later by his wife, Lydia Gardiner who had fallen in front of a carriage.
The greatest loss to both Bennet and Lizzy, who was then four, was when Grandmama Beth—as she had been called by her granddaughters—slipped away in her sleep the first week of December of the same year.
By February 1795, Fanny Bennet felt the quickening for the fifth time. Again she was positive she would finally have a son. It was not to be. In early July, another Bennet daughter arrived. Before Fanny could reject her like she had Elizabeth, she saw how much like a Gardiner the mite looked. She even had the same birthmark below her left shoulder as Fanny’s late mother.
The new babe was named Lydia after the late Mrs. Gardiner and became her mother’s instant favourite. The fact she was told she would never bear another child due to the damage wrought by Lydia’s enormity at birth did not dim Fanny’s enthusiasm for her newest daughter.
As she grew, Lydia looked more and more like her namesake only endearing her to her mother that much more.
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Although he believed being out at fifteen was far too early, Bennet had not had the wherewithal to stand up to his wife who proclaimed a match to a wealthy man was the only way to secure her and any unmarried daughters’ futures.
Hence, when first Jane and then Lizzy had been pushed into society he had not objected much. In April of the coming year, it would be Mary’s turn.
Being aware he should be standing up to his hated wife, and doing it were two different things. He remained silent as she spent all of their available remaining profits. Regardless of how many times Edward Gardiner, his wife’s brother, had begged him to save and invest for his daughters’ futures, Bennet had done nothing.
Peace was better than telling his wife her spending habits would be restricted.
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The Darcys of Pemberley were an old and very wealthy family. The first Darcy had in fact been a D’Arcy and had joined William, the Duke of Normandy in his invasion of England during the war of 1066.
As a reward, Pierre D’Arcy had been granted a huge swath of land in Derbyshire. When William became king, the monarch had offered his loyal subject Pierre a noble title. Pierre wanted nothing more than to be a farmer as he had been in Normandy; he politely refused, and the King had not insisted, increasing his grant of gold instead. Over the centuries successive Darcys had also refused titles.
Pierre embraced his new country with open arms and as such married a native Englishwoman and anglicised his name to Peter Darcy in 1089. As much as he loved farming, Peter was enamoured with the written word.
Once there was peace, he had sent some men to his old home in Normandy to bring his large collection of books to him and made sure that his library had a place of prominence in his house.
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Over the years the wealth and holdings of the Darcys increased significantly. By 1806, they were second only to twoother residents of the county in wealth. One, the wealthiest was the absentee landlord who owned the estate Castlemere which had a common fence along Pemberley’s western border, the Duke of Hertfordshire. The Duke resided all of the year either at his primary estate Falconwood or at one of his London homes. Given the Duke’s dissipated and cruel behaviour, there was no friendship between him and the Darcys.
The next wealthiest was the Duke of Devonshire whose estate of Chatsworth, while a little smaller than the Darcys’, boasted a much larger mansion.
The current master of Pemberley was Robert Darcy. He was an only son and had two younger sisters. Edith Portnoy was four years her brother’s junior and had married Mr. Ernest Portnoy in 1778. They lived on a large estate in Nottinghamshire. The youngest sister, Leticia, was married in 1780, to Hubert Barrington, a very successful barrister in London who lived at a Darcy estate—Rivington—in Surrey when they were not in Town.
Over her older sister’s objections because he was not titled, Robert married the love of his life, Lady Anne Fitzwilliam, the daughter of the Earl of Matlock, sister to the current Lord Matlock. For some reason Lady Catherine Fitzwilliam, eight years Anne’s senior, thought she had the power to command all to her will—all evidence to the contrary.
