“No, Papa, please not that. I will behave,” Caroline pleaded.
“Unfortunately you have said that and not held to your promises too many times, so I do not trust your word. It will be as I said,” Bingley insisted firmly.
Miss Caroline Bingley stood. She needed to go throw some things in her chamber to release her frustration. Why did no one understand that she was not meant to be the daughter of a tradesman?
“Before you go and do what I suspect you want to do, know this: anything you break will be paid for by you, and I will not allow any maid to clean up your mess. If you do not clean it yourself, you will live in squalor because no maid will enter your chamber until you clean up what you have destroyed and the resulting filth.” Bingley looked at his daughter until she could see that he was intractable in this.
After stomping her foot again, Miss Bingley ran out of the sitting room and up to her chamber. The only breakable thing within was an empty vase. She picked it up, but then she heard her father’s words in her head. Surely he would not stop a maid emptying her chamber pot if she broke the vase? Rather than take the chance, with a huff of frustration, the vase was returned to the small table it had been on. Instead, Miss Bingley fell face-first onto her bed and screamed into her pillow. While she screamed, her hands beat her coverlet and her feet kicked up and down.
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Lady Catherine de Bourgh sat on her ‘throne’ in her favourite drawing room at Rosings Park.
It was certainly not a throne in the royal sense but it was a chair the grand lady had ordered be placed on a raised platform so she was able to look down on everyone. She had commanded that it be reupholstered with red velvet, but even she would not dare to emblazon her chair with the royal standard. To finish the effect, she had the exposed wood gilded.
She had commanded her family to attend her for Easter, so why had no one arrived? Her sister Anne, who refused to engage Fitzwilliam to Anne de Bourgh, had written to say the Darcys and Fitzwilliams would be spending time with the Carringtons at their estate.
It was not to be borne that the one Lady Catherine had chosen to be Anne’s husband was around those damned foundlings! They were far too pretty. Her daughter was sickly and had been that way ever since she had suffered a bout of scarlet fever two years after that useless Lewis had died. But she needed Anne to marry someone with an estate far from Rosings Park so that she would be left in charge of her domain.
As it was, her brother and brother-in-law, just because they were the executors of Sir Lewis’s will, would not allow her to access estate funds for all the redecoration she wanted to achieve in the manor house. The steward reported to them, and no matter how much she objected to money being spent on the tenants and their hovels, the man paid her no heed.
Now it seemed that her orders that the Fitzwilliams and Darcys attend her had been ignored. It was not to be borne. Lady Catherine decided to make for Staffordshire to make her displeasure known in person. She would berate everyone for ignoring her orders.
After two long days of travelling, the de Bourgh barouche box arrived at Holder Heights. Seeing no signs of life did not deter thegreatlady. She rapped on the front doors with her cane.
Mr Belle cracked one door and informed the screeching lady no one was home; they were at another Carrington estate, and no, he could not tell her the name or where. Then, he closed and locked the door. No matter how much the termagant beat on the door, the butler did not open it again.
Lady Catherine could not understand why things did not go according to the way she had determined they should. She sulked all the way back to Kent.
Chapter 20
August 1807
Jane Carrington-Bennet was close to the age of eighteen. She would reach that milestone on the twelfth day of the month. Of the three sisters adopted by the Carringtons, the day her parents had chosen to celebrate the date of her birth before they had been informed of the true dates was the closest to her actual birthday.
The birthday was to be celebrated at Holder House with the Fitzwilliams, Darcys, Gardiners, Phillipses, and Charlotte Lucas in attendance—she had arrived with the Phillipses after being invited to attend the birthday and the upcoming ball. It marked Jane’s pending entry into London society. She would make her curtsey before Queen Charlotte[4]a sennight or so after she turned eighteen, and the day after Jane’s presentation would be her coming-out ball at Holder House. Although she did not object to all of the pomp and circumstance surrounding her coming out, neither did Jane love it as it would mean she would be in the spotlight and have to bear the attention of many fortune hunters.
In the years since the adoption of their daughters, word had begun to reach the farthest corners of society that although the Carrington-Bennet girls had initially been thought foundlings, they possessed spectacular fortunes to rival those of some of the daughters of the wealthiest peers in the realm. Evidently the Earl of Holder had dowered them shortly after the adoption.
In fact, they were not foundlings. Rather, they had been born to a gentleman and his wife. With the reputed massive dowries had they been foundlings, it would have been irrelevant to men chasing a large fortune.
When Gardiner had been reunited with his nieces some seven years past, the amount he held in the account the late Bennet had begun was close to fifty thousand pounds. Now it was about five and seventy thousand pounds, and that did not count the original amount Holder had invested for his daughters, which had also increased apace over the years. Thanks to the growth generated by Gardiner, it was now over one hundred and twenty thousand pounds. That meant that if Jane married soon after her entry into society, her dowry would be a staggering five and sixty thousand pounds. The rumours estimated the fortunes of the Carrington-Bennet sisters at about forty thousand pounds, large enough to gain the attention of many fortune hunters. Had the truth been known, none of the sisters would have had a moment’s peace, even before they came out.
Edith and Holder were not too worried about their daughters’ safety thanks to Biggs, Johns, and their men. When the girls left the house, whether it be in London or the country, alone or in a group, they were never without at least two of the footman-guards escorting them. So far, the presence of the men—especially the mountainous Biggs and Johns—had discouraged any schemes before they began.
It was known throughout society that the Carringtons’ daughters were as well guarded as royal princesses, so if one was simple enough to attempt anything untoward aimed at one of the heiresses, he did so at his own peril.
If the presence of the footman-guards was not enough of a discouragement, when the sisters were out in public, it was seldom they were not in the company of a combination of Lords Hadlock and Hilldale, Richard Fitzwilliam, and Fitzwilliam Darcy.
Of late Hilldale, who was six and twenty, had been less evident as he was courting the only daughter of the Duke of Bedford, Lady Marie Russell.[5]It was a recent event, one which pleased Hilldale’s mother to no end. Lady Matlock was more than ready to be a grandmother.
Upon returning from his two year grand tour, Andrew Fitzwilliam had thrown himself into the management of his estate, Hilldale, which was within a few miles of Holder heights. Unfortunately, thanks to the war of aggression the Corsican tyrant had begun, when Richard Fitzwilliam graduated at the end of the 1801-1802 school year, and then when Jamey and William did so with the summation of the 1802-1803 scholastic year, they had not the option to have a grand tour.
With the war raging in Europe, after graduation on the first Tuesday in July 1802, Fitzwilliam intended to join the regulars, specifically the Royal Dragoons. He did not relish dying on some battlefield, but of all of the professions available to those who were not an heir, the military called to him the most.
No arguments changed his determinations until a conversation with Fitzwilliam’s father some days later.
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