Chapter 2

Study

Hunsford

11 th September, 1811

Mr. Collins was not a tidy rector. Loose papers and books ever remained scattered around on the small desk, the windowsill, and in front of their fellows on the bookshelves behind the desk, some of them furred with a layer of dust. A half-empty cup of tea sat cold, specks of lint and dirt floating on the milky surface. Three simple oak chairs were before the desk, and one, upholstered and rather more comfortable, was behind the desk, pushed back as though its occupant had left in too much of a hurry to return it to its proper position.

Lord Matlock guided Anne to a chair near the window and gestured for his sister, Lady Catherine, to take the seat behind the desk. She did so with ill grace, while the earl took a place next to his niece, and Darcy stood near to the closed door.

"Anne," Matlock said gravely, looking down on the pallid countenance of his niece. "If you did not wish to marry your cousin, why did you accept his offer?"

Anne took a deep, shuddering breath and glanced nervously at her mother, whose eyes were narrowed and cheeks flushed with anger

"My mother said that if I did not accept Darcy's offer, she would have Mr. Bamber declare me mad so that I would be sent to Bedlam," the girl quavered.

Matlock speared his sister with a glare, his eyebrows lowered menacingly. "Is this true, Catherine?"

"She is mad!" the older lady exclaimed. "Anne, do you have any idea how many women in England long to become mistress of Pemberley? You and Darcy were meant for this, to unite the estates of Rosings and Pemberley! You cannot refuse..."

"She most certainly can, and indeed, did," Darcy interrupted, his eyes flashing with anger. His poor cousin! Guilt gnawed at him; he ought to have known that Anne did not want the marriage, but she had always been so quiet.

"Catherine," the earl said coldly, "it is unconscionable that you would force your daughter into an unwanted union with her cousin. How could you?"

"How could I? How could I not? Anne is not old enough to make a decision of this magnitude! "

"I am five and twenty, Mamma!"

"And you act like a child, sniveling about marrying a handsome, wealthy, intelligent young man and becoming mistress of a great…"

"Stop, Lady Catherine!" Darcy snapped and turned an apologetic look on his cousin. "Anne, I hereby accept and assert that you and I will never marry. Furthermore, I also confess that I was not certain we would suit, but I was compelled by my loyalty to my mother. She wished for the marriage, but I acknowledge, rather belatedly, that she is dead and gone, and to marry under such circumstances is absurd."

"Furthermore," Matlock growled, "my sister Anne was a gentle soul and Catherine always dominated her. No, this was a foolish idea dreamed up by Lady Catherine, and it ends now."

"You cannot!" the older lady exclaimed. "The notice of the engagement has already been posted in the London newspapers!"

"I do not care," Matlock said baldly. He looked at his niece, whose face had regained some of its color, her body was slumped against the chair in relief.

"My dear, am I correct that you no longer desire to share a home with Lady Catherine?" he asked.

She nodded frantically, refusing to look at her mother. "I never wish to live with her again. She will scold me mercilessly and might even send me to Bedlam when I am not insane! I am not!"

"Of course you need not stay here," Darcy said, trying to be reassuring, but he was so furious, so angry at his aunt, that he feared he sounded brusque. "Anne, I will never claim you as a bride, and I do not wish to do so now that I know your feelings, but I promise that I will look after you as a cousin."

"And I will look after you as a niece," Lord Matlock declared.

Lady Catherine shrieked in outrage.

/

Dining Room

Longbourn

8th October, 1811

A generous ham sat in the middle of the white linen tablecloth, surrounded by carrots and potatoes from the Home Garden. Alongside of the ham stood a pitcher of gravy, which was in turn next to a basket of puffy white rolls, and alongside that, a ragout. Lydia passed the rolls from Mary beside her to Mrs. Montgomery, their pretty, widowed governess. At only five and thirty, Mrs. Montgomery had not yet lost the bloom of her youth. She had been the only daughter of an impecunious but very learned parson and had been taught thoroughly at home under her father's care. Her marriage to a clergyman had been happy, but far too short, when Mr. Montgomery died from influenza. Left largely insolvent, she had chosen to make her way as a governess, and had arrived at Longbourn more than a decade previously, where she was now one of the family. She was of grave and kindly temperament and had a gift for diffusing fraught situations with admirable diplomacy.

She smiled as she accepted the dish and served herself a small portion. "Thank you, Miss Lydia," she said politely, before returning to her conversation with Kitty, across the table, about her sketching. Nearer the foot of the table, Mrs. Bennet and Mary were discussing Mary's advancing skill in music.

Elizabeth, seated across from Jane, was silent as she worked her way through her ham and watched the head of the table from the corner of her eye. Mr. Bennet's chair, occupied at perhaps a quarter of the family meals, was filled tonight. Normally when Mr. Bennet was out of sorts, he preferred to eat in his library, far from the commotion of his family, and she could only hope that her sire's presence here meant that he was feeling more cheerful and at ease. But though his plate was not quite emptied, his wineglass had been refilled twice, and that made her nervous. Her father's tongue was more withering than usual when he was in his cups, and she did not like the thought of his ire falling at some passing comment.

"I called on Mr. Bingley yesterday," Mr. Bennet announced suddenly, which caused the conversations to cease instantly, and all seven ladies turned startled eyes on him.

This obviously pleased him, because he smiled and said, "I see that I have surprised you."

"I am not surprised!" Mrs. Bennet cried, deliberately pitching her voice a little higher. "You are such a wonderful father to the girls, Mr. Bennet. How very kind of you to call on our neighbor so that we can, in turn, invite him to have dinner here!"

"That was indeed my purpose in calling on our new neighbor," Mr. Bennet declared. "I am quite ready to have one of my many daughters married off, and Mr. Bingley, while he is no genius, he will do very nicely, assuming one of you can capture him before he pursues a woman of more fortune and sense."

"What is he like, Father?" Elizabeth asked as steadily as she could. She hated that her father relished in putting down his family, but she also knew that there was no point in confronting him directly. She had tried four years earlier, and the ensuing scene had been extremely ugly and had resulted in her losing her allowance for a full year. Her sisters had nobly given up some of their money to her for that year, but she did not intend to provoke him again.

"He is handsome, rich, amiable, and charming. I daresay he will like you, Jane; he seems the sort of man who would appreciate a woman of great beauty. Mary, I fear you have no hope at all and recommend that you continue to work on your skills on the pianoforte; perhaps you can serve as a governess eventually, like our dear Mrs. Montgomery."

Jane flushed with misery at this cruel reference to Mary's lack of beauty, but Mrs. Montgomery said calmly, "I do not think that Mary will ever be a governess, but it is true that she is remarkably gifted at playing the pianoforte. She is far better than I ever was."

"Mary," Lydia cried out as the Bennets' butler, Mr. Stewart, entered the room, "Kitty and I wish to learn the waltz from Mrs. Montgomery, but we need the music to do it properly. Would you be willing to play a waltz for us?"

"Certainly," Mary said, majestically indifferent to her father's insult. "When would you like to practice?"

Elizabeth ignored the rest of the conversation as she watched the butler walk over and bend to speak softly into his master's ear.

"Oh, how marvelous!" Bennet replied. "Have the package placed on my desk in the library. I will be there shortly."

Elizabeth shifted her gaze to the plate and began eating her potatoes as her father pushed himself to his feet, suppressing a groan of pain, and took the cane held in Stewart's hand.

"I am retiring to my library with my new books," he announced. "I hope that none of you will find it necessary to disturb me this evening?"

"Of course not, Mr. Bennet!" his wife said. "You have done enough for us all by calling Mr. Bingley! Thank you!"

He grunted and limped away, with Stewart trailing him. The door closed behind them, and all seven ladies relaxed.

"Will you invite Mr. Bingley to dine, Mamma?" Kitty asked.

"No," Mrs. Bennet said, "because he is no longer at Netherfield. My sister Phillips told me that he left this morning for Town, and the rumor is that he is bringing a party back for the assembly in a week. We will have to wait until then to meet Mr. Bingley."

/

Netherfield Hall

Tuesday, 15 th October, 1811

Noon

The carriage wheels rattled briskly over the hard-packed dirt of the road, bearing Darcy and his sister, his cousin Anne, and the ladies' companion, Mrs. Annesley, away from the heavy, close air of London. Mrs. Jenkinson, the companion hired for Anne by her mother, had been summarily dismissed by Matlock at Anne's behest. Anne had claimed that the companion had been a spy for Lady Catherine, and Matlock, knowing well his sister and her proclivities, did not protest.

Anne had stayed with her uncle and aunt and female cousins for a full month in London. Matlock and his wife were kind to her, and Darcy had been told that on more than one occasion, Lady Catherine had sought to darken the portals of the earl's house and had been unceremoniously ejected. None of the family intended to allow Lady Catherine to torment her daughter further. The mistress of Rosings was not dissuaded, of course, and sent many letters to both her daughter and her nephew. Darcy had done her the courtesy of opening the first one and reading the initial few lines, but as they were filled with nothing but vituperation, the letter had been tossed into the fire, followed in short order by all the others that arrived from his aunt's hand.

It had done Anne good to be away from the oppression of Rosings and her domineering mother, and under the purview of the kindly Matlocks, but the London air did not agree with her frail constitution. A letter from Darcy's friend Bingley, which had arrived but a week previously, offered a viable solution. In the note – chicken scratched and hasty and barely legible, like all Bingley's correspondence – Darcy's old friend had reminded Darcy of his long-standing promise to come and assist Bingley whenever he should obtain an estate. He had leased a property named Netherfield, Bingley wrote, a pleasant estate down in Hertfordshire, near a small town called Meryton. Bingley liked the locals – little surprise there, Darcy had mused, as Bingley always stood ready to be pleased by any person remotely agreeable – and urged Darcy to come to visit as quickly as he may, magnanimously extending the invitation to any guests Darcy might wish to bring with him.

Darcy had taken counsel with his uncle and penned a return letter that very day. He would travel there within a few days, and he would be accompanied by his sister and his Cousin Anne and their personal servants. The Earl of Matlock, in the meantime, would study the will and the documents left behind by Sir Lewis de Bourgh, his deceased brother-by-marriage. Anne was aware that she would inherit Rosings upon her thirtieth birthday, or when she married, whichever came first. The earl thought it possible that there was a third path that Catherine had concealed from her daughter which would enable to take over the estate as a single woman.

In the meantime, Darcy was determined to protect his frail cousin. He noted with worry her pallid face and thin frame, her pelisse hanging baggy on her slender frame. Anne still grew tired easily and was now lounging back against the cushions, staring listlessly out the window at the hedges rolling by outside, the forests beyond turning the sunset colors of autumn. Workers labored in the fields they passed, bringing in the last of the summer wheat. Squirrels scampered beside the road, gathering acorns and nuts to store away against the approaching winter.

Georgiana, too, had been watching their cousin, and now she leaned over to touch Anne's knee gently and murmur, "I am very glad you are coming with us, Cousin. I will enjoy your company very much."

Anne turned her head to summon up a small smile and a polite response, and Darcy relaxed back on the plush cushions behind himself. Georgiana was as shy as ever, but she was truly trying to set Anne at ease, and he was proud of her. Perhaps the two ladies would benefit from each other's companionship.