Page 34 of The Next Mrs Bennet
Early 1806
H is Grace, Archibald Winston Chamberlain, the Duke of Hertfordshire and Marquess of Hertford Heights, whose main estate Falconwood straddled the Hertfordshire-Buckinghamshire border, was in desperate need of a wife.
It was all his idiot son’s fault. Not six months previously, his son, Archibald, the younger, Marquess of Hertford Heights, died from the French disease, which had returned his title to the Duke. He was to marry, but when the damned Earl of Tamarin, father of the girl his son was to have as his wife saw evidence of the pox, he dissolved the engagement.
This fact was what led Hertfordshire to be seeking a new bride. He had his mistresses and was busy with some, on the women’s side, involuntary affairs—cuckolding other men was the greatest sport—but that would not give him an heir and he refused to accept he would be the last in his line, the final Chamberlain.
Finding a new wife should not have been as hard as it seemed to be.
Yes, he was no longer a young man. He was well into his sixth decade, but not counting the royals, he was second in wealth only to the Duke of Bedford which should have made him highly eligible. One would have thought the families of London’s polite society would have been falling over themselves to marry off their insipid daughters to him, however, that was not the case. He was not welcome in any homes of his fellow peers and members of the Ton just because two of his wives had died, supposedly from his abuse. How could he abuse property which belonged to him? It was his right to treat his wives as he saw fit.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
The first one, he did not even remember her name, he had married in 1765. She had been a pretty little thing, but far too docile for him. Where was the fun in breaking a docile mare? It was so much better when, like a horse, there was spirit to break.
It was not his fault he had given her a light push and she had not been able to maintain her balance and had toppled down the stairs.
He married his next wife, Lady Felicia Eggerton, in 1774. She was the daughter of the Earl of Gryffinwood. Felicia had been even more beautiful than his first wife and had vivacity, spirit, and was somewhat impertinent. She had represented the exact kind of challenge in which Hertfordshire revelled.
For the first two years, he treated her well, never lifting a hand to her until she delivered him an heir. He had learnt from his experience with his first wife and had left Felicia be until a boy was born. As soon as little Archie had reached the age of one the Duke had been sure he would survive.
That was when he began his campaign to break his spirited wife. It had not taken as long as he had expected it would, only about a month. How was it his fault she fell off her horse while making a jump just because he had spooked the mount? She had fallen and broken her neck. By April 1778, he was the father of a son and was without a wife again.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
As long as his son was healthy, the Duke decided not to trouble himself with a wife for a third time. Five mistresses and two to three dalliances with married women at any one time were more than enough to keep him entertained.
His mistresses he could hit occasionally. They were living by his largesse so it was his right. The women he was having affairs with were a different story. He had to leave them unblemished so regardless of the rumours, there would be no marks leading back to him. So what if he forced himself upon them. He was a duke and it was his right!
Money and rank were wonderful aphrodisiacs, and he exuded both. However, as the years went by and his reputation went from bad to worse, married women resisted him so they had to be convinced to do his bidding.
It angered him greatly that Lord Sedgewick Rhys-Davies, the Duke of Bedford, was wealthier than he was. His estate of Falconwood, which was on both sides of the Hertfordshire-Buckinghamshire border, was on par in size to Woburn Abbey. However where he owned seven additional estates—the biggest of which was Castlemere in Derbyshire, Bedford had ten. He owned shipbuilding yards, but so did Bedford. That which propelled the Duke of Bedford’s wealth far beyond Hertfordshire’s was the latter’s shipping line, Dennington Lines.
As wealthy as he was, it never sat well with him that he was the second wealthiest. Archibald Winston Chamberlain hated not being first in everything he did.
In May 1798, the Duke’s son had graduated from Oxford—barely. His Grace had to use his money and influence to affect his son’s completion of his studies. The son took after the father insofar as he loved wenching. He spent more time in brothels with courtesans than in class.
Unfortunately, the idiot was not very discriminating in the ladies of the night he frequented so by mid-1802, the Duke was made aware of the fact his son had contracted the French disease.
In 1805, the Duke convinced (with a huge bribe) the Earl of Tamarin to engage his only daughter to the Marquess of Hertford Heights. Four months later, clear evidence of the pox was visible on Archibald the younger’s person and the engagement had been ended.
At the age of eight and twenty, at the end of 1805, his son died from his malady. As angry as he was at his son, the Duke had mourned as would be expected of him, for six months.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
April 1806
Accepting that no family in polite society who knew him or of him would allow their daughter to become his wife—the one earl he had leverage on had no unmarried daughter, the Duke turned to looking in small towns.
The first place he decided to look was in Hertfordshire, in the market town of Meryton, only a few miles from Falconwood’s northern border. As it was the nearest town to his estate in that county, he decided to begin his search for the woman he would honour as his duchess in the small market town where he was sure no one would know of him.
Chesham in Buckinghamshire was the closest market town to his main estate but he was too well known there. Talk of what had happened to his previous wives was still rife in that town.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
The Bennets of Longbourn owned an estate next to Longbourn Village about a mile from the market town of Meryton in Hertfordshire. It had been occupied by the Bennet family since shortly after the Conqueror became King William in 1066. Thankfully, the Bennets traced their roots to Norman descent which had led to them being awarded a very large estate in Hertfordshire.
Thomas Bennet sat in his study, for once not paying attention to the open book on his desk. As often happened ever since his fifth daughter had been born and the news his wife would never be able to bear another, he was lost in his thoughts.
He could feel the scorn of over eight hundred years of Bennet ancestors heaped on his head as he would be the last Bennet to preside over Longbourn as its master.
The estate was a fraction of the size it initially had been all thanks to a profligate son of his great-great-grandfather, his own great-grandfather’s older brother. The man had been an inveterate and terribly bad gamester.
By the time the man’s father had instituted the entail to heirs male, which forbade the sale of any remaining Bennet land and after disinheriting his eldest son, almost eighty percent of the original estate had been sold off to satisfy the dissolute man’s debts. The result was the creation of four other estates with the lost land.
The largest was Netherfield Park, then Haye Park, followed by Purvis Lodge, and lastly what used to be named Bennet’s Folly—as an insult his ancestor had richly deserved—but now renamed Lucas Lodge.
The man who had caused all of the Bennets’ losses had been most indignant he should be disinherited and had somehow convinced some unsuspecting lady to marry him. He had then assumed her maiden name of Collins as retribution to his father and the brother who had, in his mind, usurped his rightful place as heir. According to the letters and family history Bennet had read, the man who had caused all their woes—including the infernal entail, as his wife termed it—had broken with his family once he was named Collins and the remaining Bennets had not mourned his loss.
Up to and including his father’s generation, there had always been at least one Bennet son, sometimes two. Bennet had been the only son of James and Elizabeth Bennet. His father had passed before his mistaken marriage and his mother was gone these twelve years at least.
As it often did, his train of thought led him to the mean of understanding, shrewish, vindictive wife he had been trapped into marrying. He took a long draw on his glass of port as his mind took him back to that damned assembly.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Autumn Assembly Meryton 1786
Frances Gardiner, called Fanny, was on a mission. She had tried every art and allurement her mother had taught her and, to date, the reasonably handsome master of Longbourn had not looked at her.
This assembly was the first one the new master of Longbourn would attend after coming out of mourning for his father. She had been happy for William Lucas, the son of the owner of Meryton’s general store to pay attention to her—she loved attention from men, but he was lost to Sarah Huntington. The fact she had only been thirteen at the time did not phase Fanny. The loss of the owner of the Lucas Emporium had spurred Fanny to make sure she made a much better match than the woman she counted as a rival.
By the time she was sixteen Fanny set her cap for Thomas Bennet. Sarah Lucas was welcome to her tradesman husband; she would marry a member of the gentry. The fact her father was the town solicitor—also in trade—and her brother who was at Oxford intended to go into trade as well, did not discourage the youngest Gardiner.
For Bennet’s part, before his father had passed he had thought about Fanny Gardiner as a mate for a few minutes. Being a very studious man who was a confirmed bibliophile, he could not countenance ever being tied to one as vapid and empty-headed as the solicitor’s youngest daughter.
Her failure to induce Mr. Bennet to offer for her had led Fanny to her plan for this evening. She had enlisted her older—by six years—sister Hattie as her accomplice. Hattie was engaged to their father’s law clerk, Frank Philips.
Hattie knew what her sister planned was underhanded and wrong and was extremely uncomfortable with it. The problem was she had never been able to resist her younger, more forceful, and far prettier sister. Due to her looks, Fanny was their mother’s clear favourite. Hattie had always sought their mother’s love and approval and found the easiest way was to follow Fanny which gained her the much desired attention from their mother who valued looks above all else.
It was well known Thomas Bennet eschewed dancing, so Fanny had a plan to catch him unawares on his way to the cardroom. She was not intelligent, but Fanny did not lack in cunning.
As soon as her victim made his walk down the short hallway towards the cardroom, Fanny fell into his arms as Hattie waited in the shadows. On cue, Hattie screeched bringing men out of the cardroom as well as many dancers from the main body of the assembly hall.
Fanny pushed her body against the shocked Thomas Bennet and made it seem like he had been kissing her. “Thomas I enjoyed your kisses, but we do not have an understanding yet,” Fanny stated innocently.
“ Bennet, I will see you in my office first thing in the morning! ” Elias Gardiner thundered. He had been in the cardroom when he heard Hattie’s scream.
“B-b-but I-I d-did n-not touch her,” Bennet protested as he came out of the stupor.
“Hattie, you saw all did you not?” Fanny demanded. Unable to look at anyone, the eldest Gardiner sibling nodded. “Did you see my Thomas kiss me?” She knew she would be consigned to hell, but nevertheless, Hattie nodded again.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
The present
There had been no escaping his fate and now here he sat, nineteen years of being in a hellish marriage later, with five daughters, and no son, and there would never be an heir.
Knowing he needed a son, Bennet had performed his distasteful duty but instead of a son, a daughter had been delivered in October 1787, a little over a year after the wedding. She had been named Jane.
Their daughter had her mother’s golden blonde hair and deep blue eyes.
By the second half of 1789 Fanny was again in the family way and told everyone who cared to hear—and those who did not—she was carrying the heir who would end the entail.
His wife was very frightened of the entail once she understood if her husband died without male issue she would lose her home—in her words, be thrown into the hedgerows. Bennet had to admit, if only to himself the idea of Fanny cast out without a home was not unattractive to him.
Her prediction was disproved when another daughter was born on the fifth day of March 1790. She was smaller than Jane had been as a babe and had a head full of dark hair, just like her Grandmother Elizabeth’s.
Fanny had berated the disobliging girl for not being born a son. She had wanted nothing to do with the wilful girl. As her colouring was similar to his mother’s, Bennet named her Elizabeth Rose, who he and Jane would call Lizzy. His mother had always been disgusted with his wife, and now more so than ever with her son’s wife’s attitude towards an innocent babe.
Elizabeth Bennet took on the care of her namesake and with funds from her own jointure, made sure a wetnurse was employed.
Bennet had started to value peace and quiet in his home, something his sly wife was well aware of. If he ever tried to assert his authority and deny her something she desired, she would make the home a living nightmare with caterwauling and remonstrations so Bennet learnt to simply give in, like he had with her treatment of Lizzy. By the time little Lizzy turned six months of age, she had the same striking emerald-green eyes as her paternal grandmother.
Next to be born was Mary in April 1792. She too had blonde hair, but not golden like her mother and eldest sister, rather it was a sandy blonde. She started off with blue eyes, but by her fifth month she had hazel eyes with some flecks of green and gold in them.
Fanny pronounced her plain because Mary did not have the colour hair and eyes she herself did.
The next lying in resulted in the fourth Bennet daughter in November 1793. This daughter was named Catherine after her mother’s late aunt. Strangely enough, for her own inexplicable reason, Fanny did not hold the daughters after Lizzy to blame for not being sons as she still did her second born.
The year 1794, had been a year of great losses. In the early part of the year, Elias Gardiner succumbed to a heart ailment. He was followed three months later by his wife, Lydia Gardiner who had fallen in front of a carriage.
The greatest loss to both Bennet and Lizzy, who was then four, was when Grandmama Beth—as she had been called by her granddaughters—slipped away in her sleep the first week of December of the same year.
By February 1795, Fanny Bennet felt the quickening for the fifth time. Again she was positive she would finally have a son. It was not to be. In early July, another Bennet daughter arrived. Before Fanny could reject her like she had Elizabeth, she saw how much like a Gardiner the mite looked. She even had the same birthmark below her left shoulder as Fanny’s late mother.
The new babe was named Lydia after the late Mrs. Gardiner and became her mother’s instant favourite. The fact she was told she would never bear another child due to the damage wrought by Lydia’s enormity at birth did not dim Fanny’s enthusiasm for her newest daughter.
As she grew, Lydia looked more and more like her namesake only endearing her to her mother that much more.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Although he believed being out at fifteen was far too early, Bennet had not had the wherewithal to stand up to his wife who proclaimed a match to a wealthy man was the only way to secure her and any unmarried daughters’ futures.
Hence, when first Jane and then Lizzy had been pushed into society he had not objected much. In April of the coming year, it would be Mary’s turn.
Being aware he should be standing up to his hated wife, and doing it were two different things. He remained silent as she spent all of their available remaining profits. Regardless of how many times Edward Gardiner, his wife’s brother, had begged him to save and invest for his daughters’ futures, Bennet had done nothing.
Peace was better than telling his wife her spending habits would be restricted.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
The Darcys of Pemberley were an old and very wealthy family. The first Darcy had in fact been a D’Arcy and had joined William, the Duke of Normandy in his invasion of England during the war of 1066.
As a reward, Pierre D’Arcy had been granted a huge swath of land in Derbyshire. When William became king, the monarch had offered his loyal subject Pierre a noble title. Pierre wanted nothing more than to be a farmer as he had been in Normandy; he politely refused, and the King had not insisted, increasing his grant of gold instead. Over the centuries successive Darcys had also refused titles.
Pierre embraced his new country with open arms and as such married a native Englishwoman and anglicised his name to Peter Darcy in 1089. As much as he loved farming, Peter was enamoured with the written word.
Once there was peace, he had sent some men to his old home in Normandy to bring his large collection of books to him and made sure that his library had a place of prominence in his house.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Over the years the wealth and holdings of the Darcys increased significantly. By 1806, they were second only to two other residents of the county in wealth. One, the wealthiest was the absentee landlord who owned the estate Castlemere which had a common fence along Pemberley’s western border, the Duke of Hertfordshire. The Duke resided all of the year either at his primary estate Falconwood or at one of his London homes. Given the Duke’s dissipated and cruel behaviour, there was no friendship between him and the Darcys.
The next wealthiest was the Duke of Devonshire whose estate of Chatsworth, while a little smaller than the Darcys’, boasted a much larger mansion.
The current master of Pemberley was Robert Darcy. He was an only son and had two younger sisters. Edith Portnoy was four years her brother’s junior and had married Mr. Ernest Portnoy in 1778. They lived on a large estate in Nottinghamshire. The youngest sister, Leticia, was married in 1780, to Hubert Barrington, a very successful barrister in London who lived at a Darcy estate—Rivington—in Surrey when they were not in Town.
Over her older sister’s objections because he was not titled, Robert married the love of his life, Lady Anne Fitzwilliam, the daughter of the Earl of Matlock, sister to the current Lord Matlock. For some reason Lady Catherine Fitzwilliam, eight years Anne’s senior, thought she had the power to command all to her will—all evidence to the contrary.
Robert had married his lady love in 1781, with everyone else in the Fitzwilliam family’s blessing and approval—other than Lady Catherine’s. Robert Darcy and the current earl, Reggie, had been best of friends for many years prior to the former’s interest in the latter’s youngest sister.
A year after her younger sister married, and after not taking for eight seasons, Lady Catherine had married Lewis de Bourgh, the only man who had offered for her. Unwilling to be married to the untitled de Bourgh, Catherine pressed her father until he finally petitioned for a knighthood for his son-in-law. His estate of Rosings Park in Kent was nothing to Pemberley or Snowhaven—the estate of the earls of Matlock—but he was, in her opinion, acceptably wealthy.
The old Earl had passed away in early 1779, his wife followed him not three months later. Lord Reginald Fitzwilliam, with his beloved wife Lady Elaine at his side, had assumed the Earldom and his son Andrew, two-years-old at the time, had become the new Viscount Hilldale. A second son, Richard, had been born in February 1782.
Lady Catherine had come to Snowhaven in order to dispense her advice (orders) after her father’s death, but had been sent away almost immediately by her brother who had no time for her officious pretentions.
In January 1783, Fitzwilliam Alexander Robert Darcy was born. He was a rather serious lad by the time he was eight or nine, taller than most boys his age with dark, wavy hair. William as he was called, also had the piercing blue eyes of all the Fitzwilliam family—except for Lady Catherine—who had brown eyes.
Lady Catherine had delivered a daughter, Anne, in June 1786. With no pressure to produce a male heir as Rosings Park was unentailed, since Anne’s birth, she had locked her door to her husband and never allowed him to come to her again.
Having been roundly refused to securing an engagement between Andrew and her daughter, she tried to force one between Fitzwilliam—she refused to call him anything but Fitzwilliam—and Anne. The result was the same. Adamant refusal. A seething Lady Catherine had been sent back to Kent with much resentment that no one would obey her commands.
Between William’s birth and early 1795, Lady Anne Darcy had multiple miscarriages. She came to believe they would never be blessed with another child. When she had felt the signs of being with child in September - October 1794, she had said not a word to anyone. Then close to Christmas of that year she had felt the quickening. It was on the morning of Christmas day when Lady Anne told her husband her news. Until she entered her lying in on the third day of March 1795, Robert Darcy had been very watchful over his wife’s health.
After a long and arduous birthing process, on the fourth day of March a little girl, named Georgiana by combining her late paternal grandfather’s and her mother’s names—with hardly a hair on her head had been born. She would be called Anna by all her family and friends.
Anne Darcy had been assisted by three of her sisters—the three she enjoyed being with—through the lying in. It had been Edith who had come to collect her brother to come see his wife.
It had taken a while for his beloved Anne to recover, but recover she had. In the meanwhile little Anna captured all of their hearts, especially that of her older brother.
In May of 1800, Sir Lewis de Bourgh had taken a journey to inspect some holdings of his on the Orkney Islands. Everyone knew it was one of his ways to have some peaceful time far away from his wife. There had been a sudden and unexpected storm and the ship and all hands and passengers had been lost.
Due to Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s continued insistence on an engagement with one of her two firstborn nephews, and her continued attempts to order the lives of those in the family, after the funeral, it had been the last time the Derbyshire and Staffordshire family had been in her company. An empty coffin had been placed in the family crypt as the body was never recovered.
Sadly, Anne de Bourgh was a rather sickly girl. She had a serious bout of scarlet fever she had when she was seven. It was unfortunate she did not have contact with her aunts, uncles, and cousins, but as long as her mother behaved as she did, it would not be possible.
It was sad, but it was the cost of not being in Lady Catherine’s company. Any requests to have Anne come visit her family in London or the north had been rebuffed by Lady Catherine, of course, unless there was agreement to an engagement.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
In 1786, Robert Darcy had employed a new steward, a man who had been a law clerk in Lambton. He had joined the staff at Pemberley with his wife and son. George Wickham was almost two at the time Lucas Wickham took up his new post.
In the years since Wickham had become his steward, George had been added to the group of friends which included Andrew, Richard, and William. The group expanded when the Portnoy and Barrington male cousins were present.
Unfortunately, as George aged, Robert saw jealousy and resentment being stoked in the boy. His son and nephews had not wanted to tattle on the steward’s son, but when confronted by their fathers and asked pointed questions, they had not dissembled.
With the mischief coming to light, Darcy had to have a hard conversation with his steward telling him he felt it best for there to be no more contact between George and the children of the family. Lucas Wickham was not blind to his son’s faults nor was he unaware that his avaricious wife was the one who had influenced George’s behaviour.
He promised his master to make sure George caused no more mischief at the estate. To that end, after his mother passed away in August 1803, George was sent to live with his father’s sister in Devonshire.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
The whole family—excluding the irascible Lady Catherine de Bourgh—were at Pemberley to celebrate Easter which would fall on the sixth day of April 1806.
As he did each and every day, Robert said a prayer of thanks to the good Lord above for the fact his Anne was as healthy as she had ever been and not been taken after Anna’s difficult birth.
Although he was not active in the Ton, he had heard the rumours regarding the disgusting Duke of Hertfordshire’s search for a new wife. He was certain a parent would have to have little love for a daughter in order to agree to marry her to such an abusive brute.