Mrs. Bennet smiled sweetly. “Do you not wish to refresh yourself after your journey?”
“I have not come far – only from London. Besides, it is your day. Who cares for my appearance, when you are such a vision? And we are friends already, are we not little Lizzy?”
“You smell like flowers,” Elizabeth said by way of agreement.
“Well, then, my friend, I suppose we must be off,” Lady Catherine said. “Come, I shall call for the carriage. Your future as Mrs. Cardew awaits.”
***
Spring, 1796
Rosings Park, Kent
Lady Catherine shifted uncomfortably; she wore the same grey gown of half-mourning as when she had lost her husband, but her grief in the last six months had not been kind to her figure, and the gown was too snug. She did her best to appear imposing, for she was exceedingly displeased with the three men seated across from her, and she was determined to intimidate them.
“I am heartily disappointed, Mr. Cardew, that I should be obliged to look out for a new vicar when I have a great many other cares at present. But that is nothing to my disappointment in your failings as a father.”
“Now, just a minute,” Mr. Cardew harrumphed. “I have done my best these six months, with a newborn who does nothing by wail at all hours, and two girls not my own! Even your ladyship has yet to encounter a governess who can abide the ill-humor of my late wife’s second child. I have not been unhappy as your vicar, but my first love is now a widow, and she is out of her mourning. Lady Grey has accepted my proposal; her father is long dead and cannot prevent our union now. She understands I have a daughter –onedaughter – but she has every right to object to the girls who are not my own. She already has the care of her late husband’s foundling; he is only just now of an age to be sent off to school.”
“Well, Lady Grey sounds wonderfully tender-hearted,” Lady Catherine snapped. “But I cannot abide Jane and Lizzy being brought up by anybody who is not fond of them, and that precludes yourself, I suppose, Mr. Gardiner.”
He bristled at this, matching her imperious posture. “My bride and I have our first child on the way, and hope another will soon follow. My business is growing, but I cannot support two more children if Madeline and I are to start our own family. Not for some years yet.”
Mr. Phillips timidly raised his hand as if seeking permission to speak. “We could take the girls in, my wife and I.”
“That is absolutely out of the question,” Lady Catherine hissed. “They are a gentleman’s daughters, and after spending a part of nearly every day at Rosings these two years, I cannot think it prudent for them to quit the sphere to which they are accustomed.”
“Perhaps she is right, Lawrence,” Mr. Gardiner said to his brother-in-law, before turning to the vicar. “Your wealthy widow in Surrey, can she not be worked on? If you could take them for a few years, I am sure I shall be increasing my profits every year. By ninety-nine I expect I shall be doubling the size of my venture – perhaps sooner, if her ladyship would invest.”
Lady Catherine hissed in indignation. “I am descended from a noble line that has not once invested in mercantile endeavors, sir. Not even for Jane and Lizzy would I entertain such a preposterous notion! Mind your presumption. It is barbaric enough that you would suggest moving those poor girls about from house to house, as if they have not had enough upheaval! I am ashamed of you all!”
Mr. Phillips tittered nervously; Lady Catherine supposed the lanky, sweaty man must make a dismal solicitor. She looked between the three worthless men, letting the full force of herdispleasure wash over them. She would happily toss them all into the sea, if only it would bring her poor friend back. Fanny had indeed given Mr. Cardew a child, and it had cost her everything. And this was how she was repaid! It was beyond the pale.
“Fifty pounds per annum, each of you,” she said to Fanny’s kinsmen. “I shall put it aside for the girls, and match your contribution. Mr. Phillips, you will arrange it with my own solicitor, for I believe there is five thousand from their mother, and a small sum from their father. I will keep them here with me; it is what you are all too cowardly to ask.”
“But of course, I knew your ladyship would see it that way; it is for the best,” Mr. Cardew said with an obsequious bow. Lady Catherine recalled what Elizabeth had said of the man the day he wed Fanny; the man’s face was indeed repellent, though she had never seen it before now. At present, Lady Catherine thought him entirely ill-favored, and wished him to the very devil.
“You may go, Mr. Cardew; we can have nothing left to say to one another. But now that I think of it, I might as well inform you that I will send over a trunk before you depart for Surrey – some old things that my girls have outgrown. I cannot imagine Lady Grey will be keen to provide for Fanny’s daughter, and I will not have my namesake want for anything. I shall write to you quarterly, and I daresay Wildewood is not three hours’ journey.”
“Catherine will be very well looked after – I wish you luck with Jane and Lizzy,” Mr. Cardew said with a sweeping bow before hastening from the room with a look of relief. Good riddance!
Lady Catherine spent another quarter hour with the other two ill-bred blockheads, convinced that all men were quite useless. She managed to reach an agreement with them, andpenned a comprehensive missive to her solicitor in London to apprise him of her intentions toward the Bennet girls. Mr. Gardiner agreed that she should be their guardian and bring them up as the equals of her own daughter, who had been as a sister to them for more than two years.
After she drafted a second dispatch to her brother the earl, beseeching him to advise her solicitor on every particular of her wards’ provisions, Lady Catherine left her study in search of her sister.
Lady Anne Darcy had arrived at Rosings just a fortnight before, a widow with an infant, and Lady Catherine knew that today in particular would be difficult for her sister. She found her in the drawing room, holding her sleeping daughter in her arms. She looked on as the three girls, each a year apart from the other, huddled together on the carpet, playing with their dolls.
Anne’s usually rosy complexion looked sallow in her mourning black, and her expression was vacant as she stared down at little Georgiana. She did not look up as Lady Catherine sat beside her.
“At least she favors her father. Such fair hair, such blue eyes. I was the only one who saw anything of George in our little Fitzwilliam; everybody else said he was the image of me, dark curls and dark eyes.”
Lady Catherine reached into her pocket and presented her sister with a small gift, taking Georgiana into her arms as her sister accepted the offering. She watched her untie the ribbon and pull aside the delicate paper, and Anne’s breath caught in her throat as she looked at the painted miniature in the gold gilt frame. It was a replica of the only portrait Anne had of her infant son; the original had grown worn from a decade of wistful caresses.
“Today makes ten years since he was taken from us.”
“I know,” Lady Catherine said softly. “But you need not speak of him as if he is… he may be still alive. Perhaps he was found, and taken in, as I have taken in the Bennets. Perhaps someone has done the same as me, and given him a good childhood, wherever he is.”
Anne smiled sadly. “I do hope so, but I cannot think how that could be. We waited for that foolish governess to demand a ransom, but we never heard from her again, never located her. We posted advertisements in the papers, and every response led to nothing. Perhaps it ought to be enough to imagine him safe and happy somewhere, but I shall never get over the loss of my boy. And then, perhaps if hewasfound – might he have ended in some dismal orphanage?"
