The sentiment was echoed by all the Bennets in the room, as all present, except for the two companions, would soon be family in truth not just by choice. As Anne sat and wondered at being so easily accepted by all, she thought about how things would have been different for her had she spoken sooner.
‘Is it not enough she was trying to steal Rosings Park from me, to harm me physically is one thing. However, I fear she has cost me the man that I love! Ian Ashby. We loved each other for so long and she chased him away; I hope now that I am free you are still free as well. I pray it is not too late for us and she has not irrevocably broken my heart as well. You are the love of my life my Ian!’ Anne was brought out of her reverie as she heard Mrs. Bennet speak.
“Can we please return to the celebration for Edward, Maddie, and the children who will be leaving for Portman Square after they break their fast on the morrow? That is far more pleasant than thinking about what we just witnessed,” Fanny opined.
Luckily for all, the coal cellar was so far distant none of the occupants of the drawing room were required to endure the invective and expletives emanating from the temporary resident within. The goodbye celebration for the Gardiners carried on with no further interruptions.
The Earl, as the titular head of the Fitzwilliam family, decided that on the morrow he would go to Town to meet with the solicitors and make the arrangements for Lady Catherine’s transport to her new home at Bedlam.
He would make sure she would be placed in a private room, not one of the cells where the public used to be able to view and abuse the inmates. Even though she had never shown any kindness to anyone, this small but long-lasting kindness was shown to her.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
A very much in his cups Wickham stumbled out of the tavern at the Running Bull Inn of Meryton, supported on either side by an officer. Lieutenant Denny held one arm and Captain Carter the other.
Things were not going as Wickham expected for a town so insulated from London. Normally his charm would get him anything he desired, but for some reason in this little nowhere town of Meryton, nothing he tried was working. He had to pay for what he wanted with his own money, something that he had never done before. And his funds were about to run out until he received his pittance of an excuse for pay from the militia in another sennight.
“Dennish,” he slurred, “in town whenth you recruitmentedas me, you told me there was funsh to be hadded in the malisha! There is nonsh funsh here! No young maidensh, no nymphsss for me to hash. This is no funsh,” Wickham complained as profusely as he could manage in his current state.
Denny and Carter were disgusted by the sorry excuse of a man they half carried half dragged back to barracks. Denny was mortified and embarrassed he had recruited this wastrel with his dissolute ways and fake charm.
He and seven other officers were tasked to keep Wickham under observation four and twenty hours a day or risk the considerable wrath of Colonel Jackson Forster. One did not want to face his wrath. Ever!
With disgust, they unceremoniously dumped Wickham on his cot as the libertine urinated on himself, and with a glance at one another decided not to deal with that as they took themselves off to bed.
Chapter 13
Lady Catherine did not sleep very well on the dark, dirty floor of the coal cellar. No amount of yelling her displeasure, demanding release, or banging on the door produced any results other than hurting her own hand. How dare they so ignore one such as she?
She was the great Lady Catherine de Bourgh! She had the power to arrange things as, and whenever she desired. In her deepening mania, she imagined how she would revenge herself on all for this affront. With glee and cackling like a witch, she planned how she would dispatch the baggage that had the temerity to interfere in her plans for her nephew and daughter.
And no one could or would ever dare take her out of her domain! Rosings Park was hers and she had the will she changed to prove it. As she descended further and further into her own reality, which others knew as insanity, she believed all of her schemes were succeeding and she was an all-powerful ruler of her desires, one that could have all her wishes granted.
There was a chamber pot in one corner, and she determined it must be morning as there was light that was coming in from a crack in the door where the coal was loaded, and a very high slit of a window. Other than the chamber pot, there was nothing else in this cellar but coal and herself.
Unable to accept the truth of her situation, she built the delusion around her that she was in the master suite at Pemberley, finally ruling over it as was her right and about to go determine what jewels she would choose for the day. She had seen a sapphire necklace she often wanted to rip off her sister’s neck and claim as her own, and that was the first thing she would wear this day.
If she had not been insane, or at least observant of her reality even as she daydreamed, she would have seen further proof of the Bennet’s wealth. There were very few who could afford the reserves of coal that surrounded her in the cellar.
At some point, the door opened, and a tray of food and a carafe of water were unceremoniously deposited on the floor. It confused her the new mistress of Pemberley was not served at the grand table downstairs, but she would make do for the moment, then would make changes to the staff.
In an unpleasant moment of lucidity that came as she was drinking the water, she remembered where she was and she saw even if she had attempted to escape, there were two massive footmen standing just beyond the servant that deposited the tray. There was of course no knife on the tray, not even a butter knife, because there was no butter.
‘How has it come to this?’she asked herself in her thoughts. ‘If only I had never heard the name Bennet,’ she wished silently to herself. She ignored the inconvenience of her daughter’s determination to claim her inheritance and would have even had she not met the Bennets.
It was always easier to blame someone else rather than accept she alone was responsible for her predicament. Her mind unwilling to comprehend the truth of her situation, she slipped back into her make-believe world.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
The Gardiners, after wishing their family and soon-to-be family goodbye, set off in two carriages for their home at Portman Square once they had broken their fasts.
Gardiner’s meeting with Sir William Lucas, Mr. Spencer Goulding, and Mr. Jonathan Long had gone as Thomas intimated, and all three had asked to be allowed to invest with Gardiner and Associates. Edward Gardiner no longer took on investors with so little to initially offer, but they were his brother’s good friends and they had looked out for and cared for his nieces and nephews since they had been born. Also, Bennet had started with a small or even smaller investment all those years ago and look at what he had accomplished.
In his inside coat pocket was a bank draft from each of the three men, and what he knew was the maximum amount each had available. As Bennet had before them, they would send all their profits to Gardiner each year.
The Earl of Matlock too had set out for town after he broke his fast, in fact shortly after the Gardiners departed. He was accompanied by his heir, Andrew, and the solicitor that had brought the documents for Anne to sign now she was finally taking control of her birthright.
The Earl was appreciative of the fact that his late friend and Anne’s father, Sir Lewis de Bourgh, had secured Anne’s dowry of fifty thousand pounds as well as an additional twenty thousand pounds in a way Catherine neither knew about, though even if she had she never could have touched either, no matter how many demands she may have made.
