Book 1 – Discarded
Prologue
Longbourn 1789
Fanny Bennet entered her confinement just after ten o’clock. Her husband had his housekeeper summon the midwife, Mrs Cecilia Ponsonby, to attend his wife, as he could barely stand to be in the same room with her. However, he knew that he needed a male issue to keep his miserly and illiterate cousin Collins from inheriting Longbourn due to the entail that his great-grandfather had placed on the estate stipulating that the estate could only pass to a male of Bennet blood.
How his poor dead sister Janine had ever agreed to marry that buffoon of a cousin of theirs he would never know. The estate had been home to Bennets for over four centuries; he was determined that it would not fall into the hands of a Collins. So, as much as it was abhorrent to him, he did his duty and laid with his wife. He would never forget how Miss Francine Gardiner had entrapped him into marriage.
It was the night of the monthly assembly in Meryton, the last Friday in February 1788. Thomas Bennet was well aware that the daughter of the local solicitor, Elias Gardiner, had set her cap for him, but he was not interested in her, or in any woman at that time. He was five and twenty and felt that he was not ready to look for a wife.
His parents and older brother James had died within weeks of each other in a scarlet fever outbreak that had taken many in the environs of Meryton some three years previously. Thomas had graduated from Trinity College Cambridge the year before their deaths and was installed as the youngest maths professor in the storied history of the institution, to the only chair that did not require ordination.
Thomas had not planned on taking over his family’s vast holdings in Hertfordshire; as the eldest son, James was supposed to inherit it all after their honoured father passed. In addition to Longbourn, the Bennets owned Bennington Fields. His father had purchased that estate when the Benningtons had decided to join the rest of their family in the now former colonies of America. Netherfield Park had been purchased by Bennet’s late grandfather some years before his father had added the Bennington estate. Mr Morris, then the owner of Netherfield, had passed with no issue and his heir was a distant cousin who had no interest in managing an estate so far from his own in Devon.
The residents of the area did not know about the Bennet ownership of the other two estates, nor did his idiotic cousin Ned Collins. There was no reason to disclose their ownership, as neither estate was part of the entail. The only good thing about his sister Janine marrying that oaf was that she was spared the fever which took so many in the area of Meryton.
Fanny, as she was known to friends and family, was very pretty on the outside, but the effect of her beauty diminished when one learned she was vapid, scheming, and vain. Worse than that, she was not at all intelligent. She was smart enough to know that the owner of the largest estate in the area was not interested in her. None of her feminine wiles had worked on him to date, so the seventeen-year-old Fanny planned to have Mr Bennet compromise her at the assembly in front of the whole town; she knew he was too honourable to refuse to marry her. She was determined to rise above her roots in trade.
Her sister Hattie had recently married her father’s clerk, Frank Phillips; they were away on a short wedding trip. Her brother, Edward, the middle Gardiner progeny, was away at Oxford. Mrs Gardiner had died five years previously, and to maintain some semblance of equanimity, Fanny’s father did everything he could to placate his spoilt, youngest daughter. Both Hattie and Edward had warned him that he was doing Fanny no favours, but Elias did not have the energy to oppose his wilful daughter or her infamous attacks of nerves.
At the assembly, Fanny waited in the shadows until she saw her prey approaching. Once Thomas Bennet was close enough, she‘tripped’into his arms and started to wail that he had compromised her at the top of her voice. She had pre-ripped her dress so that one of her breasts escaped from the tear, which may have been distasteful but would erase all possibility of his denial. She also hoped it might entice him to anticipate having her as mistress of his estate. Bennet was frozen as he stood with the exposed woman in his arms. It struck him forcefully that he had been entrapped and that he had no choice but to marry the chit.
Mr Gardiner had presented himself and his daughter at Longbourn the day after the assembly. Fanny had a dowry of five thousand pounds and Bennet refused to settle any more on her. Her pin money would only be fifteen pounds per quarter. He did not disclose his true income to the Gardiner patriarch; he was told what was publicly known—that Longbourn had two thousand five hundred per annum. The truth was that the combined estates’income was over twelve thousand pounds per annum. Due to the scandal her actions at the assembly wrought, Bennet rode to Town and returned with a special license, and they were married the very next day. When Frank and Hattie Phillips returned, they admonished Fanny for her behaviour, but it was too late. When her brother Edward came home on a term break, he came to see Bennet and apologised for his sister’s perfidy. Thomas Bennet quickly became remarkably close to his in-laws. As much as he disliked his wife, he liked her siblings.
Bennet knew his parents would have hated the crass woman who had entrapped him. They had high hopes that both of their sons would marry daughters of landed gentlemen, at the very least. They also expected that they would find ladies with whom they would have common interests. Thomas Bennet had even had the romantic notion that he would like to marry for love. He knew that dream was dead as not only did he not love the former Fanny Gardiner, he did not even like her. When he was forced into her company, he would unleash his acerbic and sarcastic wit on her without regard to who heard him. Thanks to Fanny’s lack of intelligence, she did not understand that he was making sport of her, most of the time. When she did suspect, she could not grasp how his words made others laugh as they were statements anyone might say.
His sister had gifted Ned Collins with a son in early 1787, who had been named William. She became with child again toward the middle of 1788, but unfortunately neither mother nor child survived the confinement. Bennet knew that Collins had never treated his sister as he should have, so he cut all contact with the man after his sister was laid to rest.
Jane Florence Bennet was born on the fifteenth day of January 1789. She was the most beautiful and serene babe that Thomas had ever beheld, and he loved his daughter from the first. Fanny loved Jane in her own way because the babe looked so much like her. To ensure she knew why he bothered coming to the marital bed after the first time, he told her about the entail; she was sure that her next babe would be male. She would have preferred that her first be the male that would break the entail, but she was not vexed given Jane’s looks. By April or May 1790, Fanny was with child again. She proclaimed to one and all that she was sure that she carried a son this time; that she just knew how it would be. Bennet hoped that she was correct because if his wife delivered a son, he would never go to her again.
It was a little after midnight that Thomas heard his wife caterwauling like a cat who had its tail cut off. Bennet held his scared two-year-old daughter to comfort her, telling her that all would be well, and she would soon have a little brother. Jane fell asleep in her father’s arms as he told her a story, and he eventually joined her in the arms of Morpheus. Both father and daughter slept in the chair until his man Hill shook him awake past three in the morning.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Rosings Park, Kent
Lady Catherine de Bourgh was most displeased, a state that seemed to be permanent ever since she was old enough to talk. She was the first born of three Fitzwilliam children. She was followed by Reginald, Viscount Hilldale, and heir to the Earldom of Matlock, and lastly, the beautiful, serene, and perfect Anne.
For the first three years of her life Catherine had enjoyed being the centre of her mother’s attention, and even if her father did not seem to see the value in a daughter, he did acknowledge her from time to time. That all changed when Reggie was born, his heir, which she felt was unfair. She was the oldest, after all, so should she not be the heir? He was now the centre of her parent’s world, and Catherine, who had basked in the attention as the only child, found herself relegated to being an afterthought, and so this state of displeasure was one she had long felt.
She considered making the annoying babe that stole all of the attention she was due disappear, but, to her chagrin, found he was never left alone. To add insult to injury, when she was six, Anne had been born. Where Catherine was dark in hair and homely in looks with dirty brown eyes, her new sister was angelic, blond, and with the trademark deep cerulean blue eyes that her father and brother sported. Reggie still garnered the lion’s share of her parent’s attention, but perfect Anne was afforded much attention as well, even from her father!
Catherine would pinch her brother and sister when no one was looking; she did everything she could to make their lives unpleasant, at least until she was thirteen. Reggie was ten years old when he grew larger and stronger than Catherine. Once when she tried to hurt seven-year-old Anne by pushing her down, her arm was grabbed from behind. She was about to berate the servant that had the temerity to touch her when she was whirled around and was forced to face her brother who looked at her in such anger she was taken aback. She had then found herself thrown to the floor just as she had intended for her sister. He had also warned her that if she ever tried to hurt him or her sister again, not only would he retaliate, but he would report all he could remember to their father. Knowing that her father would believe her brother without reservation, Catherine retreated and although she never touched her siblings again, her resentment grew and grew.
With her having such a high opinion of herself, when she debuted, she was sure that a Marquess or at least a Viscount would snap her up. She was the daughter of an Earl, after all, with a dowry of five and twenty thousand pounds. By the end of the season, the furious debutante could not understand why not one young man had even requested to call on her, nor why so few ever requested to dance with her at the balls during the season. She had no idea that she repulsed the young men of the Ton. It was not just that she was homely in appearance, but her reputation for being a controlling, grasping, shrew was well known by all who attended these events. She gave unsolicited advice on every subject whether she knew what she was talking about or not; most of the time it was the latter which made her a laughing stock amongst her peers of which she was blissfully unaware. She had no accomplishments; she was tone deaf so had never mastered singing nor any musical instrument, and she could barely draw a straight line. Her sister Anne was excellent at both. She played the pianoforte, harpsicord, and harp with technical precision and feeling and was a wonderful artist. Her sister’s accomplishments only caused Catherine to resent her all the more.
By her fourth season Catherine had condescended to set her cap for George Darcy. He was not titled but he was the heir to a vast fortune, and the Darcy’s main estate, Pemberley, dwarfed Snowhaven, the primary estate of the Earl of Matlock. The Darcy heritage went back to William the Conqueror and was, in fact, an older and more established family than the Fitzwilliams. Unfortunately, it was her sister Anne’s debut season, and before she knew what was happening, George Darcy was courting her insipid sister and showed no interest in her. She had considered compromising him until she had overheard a conversation between him and her brother where young Mr Darcy had said that he was surprised at the marked difference between the sisters, that he could not wait until he had permission to court Anne but that nothing would ever induce him to offer the older sister, not even a compromise. That same night she had a tantrum of epic proportions and broke anything that she could lay her hands on in her chambers at Matlock House.
In order to get her off his hands, her father negotiated a marriage contract for her with a lowly, but very wealthy Baronet, Sir Louis de Bourgh. At the end of that season, her fourth and Anne’s first, her little sister had married George Darcy in a magnificent ceremony, while she, the oldest and in her mind most deserving, was married in a small poorly attended ceremony. She found herself at the de Bourgh estate, Rosings Park, in Kent. Sir Louis, her husband who was more than twenty years her senior, came to her that first night and she hated having to give her virtue to him.
After some years of enduring her husband’s attentions, Lady Catherine finally was with child. The day that her state was confirmed was the day that she locked her door to her husband…permanently. Anne de Bourgh was born in October of 1786. Lady Catherine was again most displeased that she had born a daughter after almost three years of marriage while her hated sister, Anne, had birthed a boy, heir to Pemberley and the Darcy fortune that Anne had had the temerity to steal from her, in July 1783. Luckily, there was no entail on Rosings, so Lady Catherine never unlocked the door for her husband again.
Sir Louis could have demanded his marital rights, but he found that he had no taste for relations with his shrew of a wife so he accepted her locked door with equanimity. He regretted marrying her, even the extra ten thousand her father had added to sweeten the pot was not worth putting up with the woman. Knowing how controlling his wife was, and the fact that she knew nothing of consequence regardless of her endless pontifications, Sir Louis went to see his solicitors in London soon after Anne’s birth. He named his brother-in-law guardian of his daughter if he died before her majority was reached and placed the bulk of his wealth into a trust for her while naming her his heir, stipulating that she would inherit at her majority if he were no longer alive. If Anne passed before her majority or never married, the estate would go to a cousin. Six copies of the will were created. One would be in his safe in his study at Rosings while the others would be with his solicitor, Lord Hilldale, George Darcy, a distant cousin Edward Gardiner, and the last copy was placed in a deposit box in the Bank of England. Only his brothers-in-law were aware of the location of the last copy of the will. Sir Louis rightly did not trust his wife to honour the terms of it, hence the reason for provisions that he made.
A year earlier, Lady Catherine had decided that she did not want her husband to live any longer as she was most displeased with him. She had tried to cajole him in brokering a marriage contract between Anne and young Fitzwilliam Darcy, thinking to use Anne as the means to get her hands on the Darcy fortune she believed should be under her control. Her weak-willed husband had refused her, and when she had raised the issue with her sister and her husband, the Darcys had refused to consider her request in the clearest terms possible. The opinions of others had never swayed her from a decided course, so it was the same now. She tried to convince her brother-in-law that if something should befall him and her sister that she should be named guardian of any Darcy children and be in control of the Darcy fortune. George Darcy had laughed her out of his study and the furious woman, driven by avarice, had sworn revenge.
It had taken a year, but she had accomplished the first part of her plan. She had put powdered night shade into her husband’s favourite port, and it was not many days later that Sir Louis was found dead in his study. Lady Catherine had the foresight to destroy the evidence of her crime; she disposed of the bottle and left the body to be discovered by the butler in the morning. That night she had discovered the copy of her husband’s will and was infuriated by its terms. She tossed it into the fire and set about writing a more agreeable copy, not considering that there may be other copies of the document to usurp her intent.
