“You have a choice…” He had held up his hand when Fanny wanted to protest. “You will remain silent until I have had my say. Do you understand?” She nodded her head. “Good. You have no more chances! Just one more outburst, wilfully break one more item, raise your voice above a normal speaking level, and to the cottage you will go.
“As distasteful as it is, I need to consummate this marriage. Lying with you is the very last thing I desire in the world, however, there is an entail to heirs male on Longbourn. Without a son, this estate will pass to a distant cousin, and the day I die he will be able to turn any living here out of the house. Hence, as soon as I have an heir and a spare, you and I will never have relations again. Now, you may speak.”
“How can you be so cruel to your wife?” She had asked.
“Because I detest you. Can you not understand that even after I told you what you cost me? Even one as mean of understanding as you should be able to grasp why I resent you.”
She decided not to increase his ire, or else she would be on the way to a cottage. Yes, she did not have the mistress’s chamber, but what Fanny had was certainly better than a cottage. “This entail,if we have no son, and you are called home, what will happen to me?”
“For all I care, you can go live in the hedgerows. Is there anything else?”
Not wanting to anger her husband any further, Fanny shook her head. She knew he said he would not strike her, but she was still afraid.
Her husband had turned and walked towards the door and then stopped as he remembered something else. “No maid will clean the mess you made,” her husband had commanded. “You made it, you will clean it: if not, you are the one who will live in this squalor. Also, nothing you destroyed will be replaced.” With that, her husband had left her chamber and closed the door behind him.
Fanny had finally grasped that she would not be able to have things her way after the wedding like Mama said. She and Mama should have never compromised Mr Bennet. She also accepted that her husband meant everything he said.
She had cleaned up all of the items she had destroyed.
That night, after dinner, her husband came to her for the first time. She was allowed to have meals in the dining parlour with him, where she sat around the centre of the table at one side, not at the foot like she would have had she been the mistress.
She had done what Mama told her to do, lay on her back as still as she could, her eyes pinched shut and waited for Mr Bennet to do what he did. He had not said a word when he entered, either during the act, or when he departed afterward. There had been some pain the first time, but thankfully, it was not present the subsequent times he came to her. He came twice a week, except when she had her courses.
They spent no time together other than for mealtimes, and when her husband visited her at night. Fanny was cunningenough to know that she had to behave like her husband demanded so she did. Although her husband would not allow her family to visit her, once he found her behaviour acceptable, he allowed her to visit her family once a week. Unless it was raining, she had to walk the one mile to Meryton. On her first call in January, her brother Edward was home from Oxford. Sure that he would sympathise with her, Fanny told her brother her tale of woe.
“What did you expect after you were dishonourable enough to entrap Mr Bennet? You are very lucky he allows you into the manor house at all. Really, Mother and Fanny, I am ashamed of you,” Edward stated firmly after Fanny told all.
“Elias, how can you allow our son to speak to me in that way?” Jane Gardiner demanded.
“Tell me one thing Edward said which is not true,” Gardiner responded. “You did conspire with Fanny to entrap Mr Bennet, and like our son, I am not only chagrined by what you two did, but that I was not able to stop the madness before it went too far.” Gardiner was not moved by the aggrieved looks on his wife’s and youngest daughter’s countenances. Hattie and Phillips were looking anywhere except at the two in question.
“In fact, I will make for Longbourn to apologise for the dishonourable behaviour of some in this house,” Edward decided.
“I will join you,” Frank Phillips added.
Ignoring the looks of offence by either Jane Gardiner or Fanny Bennet, the two men left the sitting room.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Bennet was enjoying the solitude without his wife’s presence. His allowing her to call on her family was as much for his own peace of mind as it was for her being able to spendtime with the Gardiners and Phillipses.
He was seated at his desk reconciling his ledgers when Hill knocked. “Mr Phillips and the young Mr Gardiner are here to see you,” the butler announced.
Suspecting the two men were at his estate to plead his wife’s case, Bennet almost decided to send them away. In the end, he chose to hear them out. What was the worst that would occur? That they would cause him to banish Mrs Bennet to a cottage? He could live with that. “I will see them, Hill,” he responded.
When Hill showed the two men in, Bennet did not invite them to sit. “State your business,” he barked gruffly.
“Mr Bennet, after my mother’s and youngest sister’s dishonourable actions trapped you into an unwanted marriage, I understand why you would not want to welcome anyone from my family into your home, and I cannot blame you,” Edward stated forthrightly. “Our purpose,” he cocked his head to his brother-in-law, “here is to apologise for what has been perpetrated against you.”
He was taken aback. This was not what Bennet expected from the two men standing opposite him. “I am sorry I prejudged you before I knew why you were here.” He pointed to the pair of armchairs before his wide, oak desk. “Please be seated.”
Both men sat and relaxed a little. “I am Edward Gardiner, Fanny’s older brother. I am only sorry I was away at Oxford and was not able to stop my mother and sister before they executed their supremely dishonourable plan. As I told them before coming here, I am ashamed to be related to them. My words will not change what occurred, but I pray you can see that not all Gardiners are like Fanny and my mother.”
“Had I been apprised of what they planned I would have forewarned you,” Phillips stated. “Knowing that neither I normy wife would approve of what they were to do, they said not a word to us. I suppose it was easy for them to plot their planned compromise undetected. Gardiner and I work long hours in the law office, and Hattie, my wife, spends most days at our cottage away from Mrs Gardiner and Fanny.”
“Fanny told us her sorry tale. Unluckily for her, its effect has been exactly the opposite of how she hoped we would react. I am sure her actions which caused you to place the strictures on her were far worse than what she told,” Edward added.
With that, Bennet told them how his wife had behaved for the first weeks of his marriage. He also related what the compromise had cost him.
