Page 78 of A Life Diverted
Lady Catherine de Bourgh, née Fitzwilliam was seriously displeased. She was isolated from her family, and five years earlier the executor of her husband’s will and her daughter Anne’s legal guardian, her brother, the Earl of Matlock, had done the unthinkable and removed her daughter from her care.
The self-styled great lady was never happy with what she had; she was always more interested in what she did not have—what others had.
Growing up, she had been jealous of the attention her brother and heir to the Matlock Earldom had received, as well as the love showered on her younger sister only because she was more pleasant.
She had been launched into society when she was eighteen, supremely confident she would capture no less than a Duke—but it never happened.
She had been certain that all she needed to attract a man of such exalted rank was her dowry of five and twenty thousand pounds and the fact her father was an Earl.
It was quickly evident to the men searching for a wife that the woman with strident opinions, few of which were correct, was a harridan, hoyden, and termagant all rolled into one unpleasant package.
No first sons would approach her; a few second and third sons made the attempt, only to be spurned as not good enough for Lady Catherine Fitzwilliam’s inflated opinion of herself.
By her fifth season, her father had enough and brokered a marriage for his older daughter with Sir Lewis de Bourgh, a lowly baronet.
Lady Catherine had harangued her parents about the degradation of marrying so far below her expected station, even if the man was wealthy and had a large estate in Kent.
It was all for naught; she had been married to Sir Lewis and had begrudgingly allowed him into her chambers to claim his marital rights. After their daughter Anne was born, Lady Catherine locked her door to her husband permanently.
Sir Lewis did not repine the loss of congress with his shrew of a wife and met his needs in the arms of a mistress.
He doted on his daughter. When he drew up his last will and testament, he made sure that Anne inherited all when she reached her majority.
Knowing his wife well, he put the protections in place to make sure if he passed before she did, she would not be able to drain the estate accounts with her extravagances and penchant for filling their home with overpriced gaudy décor and uncomfortable furniture.
When Anne was six, she had suffered from a mild case of scarlet fever, but recovered.
It was not long after that illness that Sir Lewis drowned while on a fishing trip.
As Anne would inherit Rosings Park when she attained her majority at one and twenty, Lady Catherine determined to keep her weak so she would be able to control her.
She used her position as mother and used Anne’s illness and made it seem that her daughter had been much sicker than she actually had been.
This, too, had been thwarted. No manner of ranting, raving, or cajoling had weakened her brother’s resolve to remove Anne from her care.
To make matters worse, her traitorous younger sister Anne had supported her brother’s actions.
All of her life, Lady Catherine believed she could get what she wanted by sheer force of will, and when that failed, by vociferous haranguing until she achieved the desired result.
The fact it was not true was an inconvenient fact she ignored.
No matter how much she had vented her spleen, her brother would not be moved. Anne had been removed and was being educated, becoming known to the Ton away from Rosings Park, and, worst of all, was in perfect health.
At the same time, after her sister and brother-in-law had refused to announce a betrothal between Anne and her nephew Fitzwilliam—she refused to call him William as it was such a common a name—she had started to work on the boy, and it had seemed to bear fruit.
He had accepted her advice on maintaining the distinction of rank.
Once she had the boy agreeing with her, she planned to manipulate him into agreeing to marry Anne.
When he did, he would take Anne away to the north and leave her at Rosings Park, which is what she wanted.
If she was successful in that, a request to manage the estate funds would surely be a small hurdle.
As he would be so grateful to her, he might even offer up the accounts of his own accord.
She knew not what, but about five years ago, before her brother took Anne from her care, something had changed.
She stopped receiving any positive responses to invitations to Rosings Park from both the Darcys and the Fitzwilliams, and from that time forward there were no invitations issued for her to visit them.
How could she continue working on her nephew if she never saw him?
On two occasions she had shown up uninvited at Pemberley, and both times without so much as a by your leave she had been sent away unceremoniously.
The second wasted journey, she had not been allowed to pass the gates to the estate!
Lady Catherine could not understand why she could no longer get what she wanted.
She had also been barred from her brother Reggie’s estate. It was unconscionable!
When her sister Anne delivered a baby girl who they named Georgiana, there had been no invitation to the christening, never mind a request to stand as a godmother.
To rub salt in the wound, her brother, the Earl, had blocked her access to all estate accounts belonging to Rosings Park; he went even further by even restricting her access to funds her late husband’s will had given her.
For her personal needs she had only the interest from her dowry, which amounted to a little more than one thousand pounds per annum.
Her brother had taken away her power to hire or discharge servants—much to the delight of Rosings Park’s servants; he vested that power, and the ability to pay them, with the steward.
She knew she had to bide her time, as her brother had made it clear if he perceived that she misbehaved, she would be relegated to the dower house—or worse, a pensioner’s cottage.
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Lady Anne Darcy would have loved to have had more than two children, but she was more than pleased with the two she had. Since the incident at Pemberley and the now infamous shin kicking incident, all influence her sister Catherine had attempted to exert over William was banished.
The Bennet, Darcy, and Fitzwilliam families had become close friends over the five years since that first meeting at Holder Heights.
All three families had been close to the Carringtons before that particular visit, but now they all felt like one large extended family.
After the Prince was notified of his daughter’s existence, Paul and Edith Carrington had been brought into the tight circle of those who knew the truth of Elizabeth’s heritage, because it was likely someone would slip up and they were too often in company for them not to surmise there was something different in how they all looked at and treated Lizzy.
William was still wary around Elizabeth, as she was with him. There was an uneasy truce between them. Although the two seemed to tolerate one another, they always seemed to find points to disagree on in books and other subjects. They would debate vigorously—neither willing to concede to the other.
In April of 1796, Robert and Anne Darcy were blessed with the safe delivery of Georgiana Imelda Darcy. Her middle name honoured Anne’s late mother. It was not long before she was called Gigi by friends and family alike.
As she grew, the bond between Gigi and the two youngest Bennet sisters became stronger and stronger. Kitty and Lydia Bennet were a little older than Gigi and looked on her as a younger sister.
The Darcys, Carringtons and Fitzwilliams would often spend time with the Bennets at Netherfield Park on their journeys south for the season and little season, sometimes around Easter, as well as a month in the summer. The Bennets were frequent visitors to Pemberley, Snowhaven, and Holder Heights.
Both the Darcy and Fitzwilliam parents had lauded the Bennets’ decision to inform Prince Frederick of the truth about his daughter.
Just as he had for the Bennet children, the Prince became known as Uncle Freddy to the Fitzwilliam, Carrington, and Darcy children.
At the same time, the adults in the three families had become close and trusted friends of the Prince.
If anyone asked about the relationship between the families and His Royal Highness, they were told the friendship had germinated during the time he was married to his former wife, which was essentially true. They had a bond even stronger than blood—their joint love for the late Priscilla.
The few times the Darcys were in company with the De Melvilles, it was no hardship not to mention anything to them, as they neither mentioned nor asked about their daughter.
When Georgiana was three, Lady Anne began to teach her to play the pianoforte.
Gigi had an aptitude for the instrument, not quite at the level of the three oldest Bennet sisters, but on a par with her friends Kitty and Lydia Bennet.
As Signore da Funti would not travel too far from London, Gigi would begin lessons with the maestro during the upcoming visit to Netherfield Park to celebrate Elizabeth’s tenth birthday.
She would have lessons with him whenever the Darcys were in London or at Netherfield Park.
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Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, Earl of Ulster, had not felt so happy since before the King forced his divorce from his beloved Priscilla. He still missed her every day, but a large part of the grief and misery had been soothed by learning of their daughter’s existence.