On arriving, she requested that her father send a note to Mr Phillips inviting him to call.
Sir William looked at his eldest daughter with raised bushy eyebrows but did not ask. He wrote the missive and sent it to Phillips with the lone groom who worked at his estate.
In less than an hour, Phillips appeared at Lucas Lodge and was granted permission to call on Miss Lucas.
Sir William and Lady Lucas, who had worried that Charlotte was headed for the shelf, were beyond pleased she had a suitor. They may have preferred someone who was not closer in age to Sir William than Charlotte, but they knew Phillips was a good man and was comfortably situated. That way, Charlotte’s small dowry of seven hundred pounds would not be an issue for Phillips.
Not long after Eliza turned seventeen on the fifth day of March, Charlotte granted Mr Phillips—Frank—a courtship. She was pleased that her older brother used Franklin as his familiar name, so it would be easy to know to whom one wasspeaking.
A month later, Phillips proposed and Charlotte accepted him happily. After Sir William gave his blessing, the couple set the wedding for the first day of May.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Three weeks after, the same day the wedding breakfast for the new Mr and Mrs Phillips was celebrated at Lucas Lodge, one William Clem Collins, at the age of four and twenty finally graduated from the seminary in Westerham. He had repeated his first and last years which had led to him taking five years to finish his studies.
Due to the problems he had had with his studies, the Bishop in charge of the school decreed that Collins must serve for at least three years, two as a curate and then one as a deacon, before he could take holy orders.
Collins was not overjoyed, but he accepted the judgement of Bishop Lankershim. He knew curates earned a pittance, but that did not bother him. He still had more than two thousand pounds of his money left, so he would not suffer with not having enough money to sustain him.
The biggest expense Collins had was food. Over the five years of his studies, the more worried he became, the more he ate. When he ate he felt comforted, and when he felt comfort, it reminded him of his dear mother.
The result was that Collins was obese in the extreme. At least, the seminary had cured him of a habit he had picked up from his father which was bathing infrequently. Bishop Lankershim stressed that there were many religious texts connecting a pure spirit with cleanliness. As it caused Collins to bathe daily, the Bishop never mentioned that many of the sources were from other religions not recognised by the Church of England.
In the years since he and his Bennet cousin traded those acrimonious letters, Collins had not heard from, or about, his cousin. As long as the man obeyed him and did not remarry and beget a son, it was better this way.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
March 1810
A month before Easter, Bishop Lankershim finally felt Collins was ready to act as a fully-fledged, ordained clergyman.
Collins was not the most learned man, but in the Bishop’s mind, he would minister to his flock well and be a credit to both himself and the Church of England. On this day the Bishop had received a letter from Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the mistress of Rosings Park, in which she requested three or four men as she needed to chuse one to fill the living in the Hunsford Parish which was in her advowson. Bishop Lankershim sent three well qualified men, and as an afterthought, he added Collins to the group who would travel to Rosings Park to meet with Lady Catherine. He did not think a clergyman only recently having taken orders would be awarded the living, but he thought it would be good for Collins to gain the experience of what it was like to seek a living.
There was some critical information of which the Bishop was unaware. Collins tended to be sycophantic with those of rank, especially with women. He had kept himself in check during his studies after advice on that subject from Mr Davidson. Also, Bishop Lankershim could not have known that Lady Catherine was looking for an obsequious man who would follow her every order and worship the ground upon which she walked.
When Bishop Lankershim was advised that Lady Catherine had selected and immediately awarded the living to Collins, it had raised his eyebrows. When the other threemen reported back about what Lady Catherine was seeking, it was too late. Collins was already appointed, and unless he committed misconduct that was reported to the diocese, or was discovered by another clergyman, he would not be able to dismiss Collins from his position. All Bishop Lankershim could do was pray that Collins would be a credit to the Church of England.
For his part, Collins thought he had died and gone to heaven. Lady Catherine de Bourgh, a peer of the realm, had shone her beneficence upon him and appointed him to the living in her gift.
With the income from the glebe, tithing, and other sources of income, the living was worth four hundred pounds per annum, and all he had to do was pay half of it to Lady Catherine. Two hundred pounds was almost ten times what he had previously earned in a year. Not only that, but when he mentioned that he had the remains of his legacy in the bank, the great lady had condescended to accept the funds and invest them for him. What could have been better?
What Collins did not know was rather than claim half of his money, his patroness was supposed to add two hundred pounds per annum to it.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Frank Phillips had loved his late wife, Hattie, but it was nothing to what he felt for his new wife, Charlotte. It was not her age or looks which attracted him, but her mind.
In many ways, Charlotte was the opposite of Hattie, she was intelligent, circumspect, practical, and best of all, she was not a gossip.
The best thing Phillips had been gifted by Charlotte was a son, Lawrence William, named for his late and living grandfathers, who Charlotte had delivered on the third day ofNovember 1809. He, of course, did not hold it against the late Hattie because He made her as she was, but the fact that he had sired a child proved that whatever the issue had been, it had not been with him.
Charlotte Phillips could not have been happier, she loved her husband, had a good home, was financially far better off than she had imagined she would be when she accepted Frank, and best of all, she was a mother. She had never thought the intense love she felt for her son was possible, but it had begun the first instant she had held Lawrence. Mama had been with her for her lying-in and the birthing. Charlotte could not but smile when she thought how happy Mama and Papa were to be grandparents. Her brothers and Maria were no less pleased to be uncles and an aunt.
Although as they promised, they would not address her as ‘Aunt Charlotte’, her relationship with Jane and Eliza was as strong as it had ever been. Even though they were not related by blood, they, and their younger three sisters, considered Charlotte’s son to be a cousin and Mr Bennet—she could not bring herself to call him Thomas as he had offered—counted Lawrence as a nephew.
The same was true of the Gardiners, the lack of blood ties did not stop them still considering the Phillips family related to them. Unlike with Mr Bennet, Charlotte had no pause in calling the Gardiner parents Maddie and Edward.
She supposed that her reluctance to use Mr Bennet’s familiar name stemmed from her many years of being his oldest two daughters’ good friend.
