Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
M r Julius withdrew his hand from Lady Catherine’s neck, shaking his head. He then grasped the edge of the counterpane and pulled it up to cover her face. When he spoke to the stone-faced housekeeper, it was with none of the good cheer he was so often characterised by, but rather a deep solemnity. “She is gone.” Mrs Knight, apparently unmoved, nodded in response and began ordering the assembled maids about the business of collecting soiled linens.
If Anne still breathed, she might have sighed. In sadness for the mother who had raised her, in anguish for what that mother had done, but primarily in relief for the fact that Lady Catherine de Bourgh could never harm another living soul. “It is done, then.”
“Done?”
Anne lifted her head to regard the spirit of her recently deceased mother from where she had formed on the other side of the deathbed. She stood—floated, more like—just behind Mr Julius, still robed in the mourning gown she had perished in, observing in slack-jawed outrage as he proceeded to pack away his medical bag.
“It is not done at all!” cried Lady Catherine in an echoing voice, gliding forwards to swipe at Mr Julius. Her incorporeal hand merely passed through him unnoticed. She tried again, then again and again ad nauseum, her rage rising at every impotent blow; she verily glowed with it. “Where are you going, you charlatan? Revive me! Revive me, or else I shall see you ruined! You will never practise your trade again!”
Her hands folded against her midsection, Anne patiently waited for her mother’s tantrum to subside, knowing full well that there was no reasoning with Lady Catherine when she worked herself into this sort of lather. One did not rationalise with a tempest; one simply battened down the hatches and waited it out.
When Mr Julius had placed the last of his instruments in his bag, he left the room, still none the wiser that the free-floating soul of his last patient wanted a word with him. The maids and housekeeper followed him out, burdened with the detritus of their failed attempt at resuscitating the mistress. Mrs Knight, at the tail end of their procession, shut the door behind herself, leaving the dead to themselves.
“Come back here this instant!” Lady Catherine shrieked, swooping for the door like a rush of ill wind. It rebuffed her, however, per Anne’s will, and she was thrown back to the centre of the room. She hovered there a moment, nonplussed, and made another attempt that met with the same result. Then another, and another, and another .
After several fruitless minutes, Anne’s patience wore thin. If she were to wait for her mother to acknowledge that she was no longer in control, they would be there for ages. “You are wasting your time, Mother. Mr Julius cannot hear you, so he will never obey your commands.”
“I will make him hear me!” Lady Catherine insisted, reaching for the latch. Her fingers could not so much as touch it, and she howled with outrage.
It was time to employ the frankness her mother was so fond of. “You are dead , madam. The living, save for a few exceptions, cannot hear us.” This stark proclamation reverberated on the still air like the relentless echo of a bell.
Lady Catherine halted in her efforts momentarily before resuming her assault on the door. “That is utterly ridiculous.”
“Is my presence here not evidence enough?”
“You expect me to believe myself dead on so little? If I were, I would not be trapped in my bedchamber suffering the incompetence of worthless tradesmen.”
Anne scoffed, not at all inclined to allow Lady Catherine to roam the house. There was no telling what sort of mischief she could inflict upon the Darcys were she allowed free rein. “Given all you have done, I think it most generous that you were not simply left to bleed to death on the floor. The efforts of Mr Julius are better than you deserve.”
Lady Catherine whipped about, her gown floating on the air at a lazier pace. It collected about her like a dark cloud ready to unleash havoc. “I have only done what was necessary, you obstinate, ungrateful girl.”
Anne’s iridescence, so striking a contrast to her mother’s murky aura, only brightened with her outrage. When she spoke again, her voice was more of a knell than a chime. “You murdered me, Mother.”
“It was an accident.”
“You poisoned me for years—it was no accident.”
“Exactly my point.” Lady Catherine lifted her chin and set it stubbornly. “You lived for nearly a decade before succumbing, so obviously my tonic did not injure you too greatly. If I had not been forced to dismiss Mrs Jenkinson, you might yet live. Better yet, if you had married Darcy and retired to Pemberley, you would never have required the tonic again.”
“That is very like you, to blame others for your own malfeasance. What of Mr Stephens?”
“Who?”
“The solicitor you had burnt alive to hide my will.”
“Oh, him.” Lady Catherine sniffed. “He was a nobody. He did not matter.”
“I should think that his family disagrees with you there. Mr Stephens was beloved in Hunsford and must be greatly missed.”
“Nobodies all! Why should I care for them?”
Anne’s eyes narrowed, and her aura glowed brighter. “Should you not have cared for your husband?”
Lady Catherine scoffed. “Sir Lewis was a worthless idiot, and the world is better off without him. I surely am. He thought to order me about, and I could not have that. Once he was gone, and Rosings was left to me, everything was as it should be. Really, it was for the best.”
“You killed him to gain control over Rosings, I knew it. I dare say you disposed of me for the same purpose. ”
“I have already said that your death was an accident. Besides, my dowry saved the estate once, and it rightfully belongs to me. You were going to give it away to Fitzwilliam, of all people. What does he know of running an estate?”
“What do you?” Anne countered, wishing she were substantial enough to stamp her foot. “Rosings is in ruins thanks to your mismanagement.”
“Ridiculous! Rosings is the jewel of Kent thanks to me. Your father, after wasting his own money, married me for mine, then wished to run the place like a close-fisted miser. With him out of the way, I could do as I pleased, and the estate flourished. By leaving it to Fitzwilliam, you have undone all my hard work.”
“And if, without my will to provide direction, Rosings had fallen into the hands of strangers?”
Lady Catherine waved this rational concern away with an impatient flick of her fingers. “I am sure my brother would not have allowed that to happen. He would have secured it for me in the end.”
What an arrogant, nonsensical presumption! Even in the absence of legal assurance, her mother had unreasonably assumed that Rosings would naturally devolve to her without Anne’s will to contest it. Poor Mr Stephens had lost his life to Lady Catherine’s absurd sense of entitlement.
Calming herself before her rage reduced the room to wreckage, Anne shifted the subject to one yet more unforgiveable. “Your greed, while despicable, is easy enough to comprehend. However, I still do not understand why you wished to take Mrs Darcy’s life.”
Her mother flew at her like the horrid ghoul that she was, eyes alight with gleaming rage. Inches from Anne’s placid face, she shrieked, “Do not call her that! Never call her that!”
“Elizabeth, then,” Anne replied, all composure. “Was it not enough that you had already punished me for not marrying Darcy? Or that you schemed and murdered to illegally claim Rosings as your own? Why could you not be satisfied with that? You knew very well that she was with child, and you sought to harm her—why?”
Lady Catherine slunk back a few paces, growling. “I did it for you, of course. You were meant to be mistress of Pemberley, not her.”
“That is both disgusting and nonsensical. It is not as if I were still alive to take her place.”
“It was not her place to begin with—it was yours . She stole Pemberley out from under you, and you ask me why I needed to seek revenge? I could not allow that grasping upstart to profit from her crimes. It was in every way appalling.”
“Elizabeth stole nothing from me that I did not already cast aside. Darcy asked me to marry him years ago, but I rejected his suit.”
Lady Catherine was aghast. “Why in heaven’s name would you do that?”
“Because I did not wish to see him beholden to you or become responsible for Rosings. Pemberley’s coffers are full now, but repairing this place would have drained them.”
“It is no less than his duty to assist us. We are family.”
Anne, her patience again waning in the face of her mother’s intractable nonsense, threw up her hands in exasperation. “He has already been assisting us for years, since his father died. You ask too much.”
“Which was why I sought to unite the pair of you in marriage. It would not have been too much then. You might have lived at Pemberley whilst I oversaw Rosings Park. It was the perfect plan until that horrid girl, with her arts and allurements, interfered.”
“What disgusts me most is how you absolutely disregarded Elizabeth’s pregnancy in your evil schemes. How could you attempt to harm that precious, innocent babe?”
Lady Catherine’s rage flickered behind her eyes like lightning strikes. “That child is a mongrel! To see the shades of Pemberley so polluted…it is not to be borne, I tell you. Even if he can no longer marry you, he can at least select a woman of excellent breeding who will do credit to his lineage. There are many young ladies who might suit—ones whom I could mould into a proper wife for my nephew. Miss Bennet is an impertinent nobody from nowhere who knows not how to take direction from her betters.”
Anne’s repugnance must have been clearly writ upon her face, however much Lady Catherine overlooked it. “Even were that so, that gives you no right to murder her, Mother.”
“It gives me every right! If a pest, full of disease and filth, shows up on one’s doorstep, does one let it inside and invite it to dine? No! One stamps it out.”
“That is a horrible way to speak of Elizabeth, or any other person. I have always suspected it, but now I know for certain that you have no heart.”
Lady Catherine’s responding cackle reverberated off the rafters. “I do not require a heart. It only interferes with what must be done and done for the best. What you do not understand, what you have never understood, is that you and everyone else in this house lived by my sufferance alone. I brought you into this world, and it was my right to remove you from it when you no longer deserved your place in it. You are in no position to question me, girl. I am Lady Catherine de Bourgh of Rosings Park, and I answer to no one.”
“I see,” replied Anne, solemn as her own grave. “Fortunately, you are now trapped here with me.”
As Anne made this proclamation, chains sprouted from the floor like writhing vines, twining about Lady Catherine’s ankles, creeping up her legs, and pinning her arms to her body. Her ladyship thrashed and fought, but her struggle was futile; she was subdued in less time than it would have taken her to form the intent to flee.
Lady Catherine writhed fruitlessly against her new bindings, screeching and howling to be let free. “Unhand me at once, you wretched girl, else you will learn to regret it!”
Anne, unperturbed by her mother’s threats, glided forwards as if skating on a breeze. She bent close to Lady Catherine’s ear and hissed, “You misunderstand your situation, Mother. As I no longer have a body for you to weaken, your power, such as it was, is gone. It is I who am mistress here now and you who have no choice but to obey.”
Lady Catherine turned so they were nose-to-nose, a grotesque snarl on her lips. “Obviously, I was too kind in poisoning you. I ought to have beaten the life out of you instead so you would remember your place even in death.”
Anne straightened. “Given your apparent lack of remorse, I shall take your voice from you as well.” She observed with nonchalance as one of the chains lashed out from the others and wrapped about her mother’s face, muffling the shout that had attempted to escape Lady Catherine’s throat. Only her mother’s bulging eyes were visible above the suppressive links. “As much as you have always loved doling out advice and ordering people about, it ought to be a torment to be deprived of speech. It will be a relief to everyone else.”
Although Lady Catherine could neither move nor speak, the betrayal writ across her features was easy enough to comprehend. The irony amused Anne more than she liked to confess.
“You will remain here, confined to your chambers and never wailing quite loudly enough for anyone to hear, long after the world has forgotten that Lady Catherine de Bourgh of Rosings Park ever existed. I shall return eventually, though time has but little influence over me now. I dare say I shall recall my promise in a few decades, perhaps a century or two at most. If you are suitably repentant by then, I shall consider loosening your chains.”
Anne concluded on a more cheerful note, “If you will excuse me, I must see off our guests. Goodbye, Mother.”
As she faded into mist, Anne’s last image of Lady Catherine was of her brought to her knees in a silent scream.