Prologue #2
Catherine would pinch her brother and sister when no one was looking; she did everything she could to make their lives unpleasant, at least until she was thirteen.
Reggie was ten years old when he grew larger and stronger than Catherine.
Once when she tried to hurt seven-year-old Anne by pushing her down, her arm was grabbed from behind.
She was about to berate the servant that had the temerity to touch her when she was whirled around and was forced to face her brother who looked at her in such anger she was taken aback.
She had then found herself thrown to the floor just as she had intended for her sister.
He had also warned her that if she ever tried to hurt him or her sister again, not only would he retaliate, but he would report all he could remember to their father.
Knowing that her father would believe her brother without reservation, Catherine retreated and although she never touched her siblings again, her resentment grew and grew.
With her having such a high opinion of herself, when she debuted, she was sure that a Marquess or at least a Viscount would snap her up.
She was the daughter of an Earl, after all, with a dowry of five and twenty thousand pounds.
By the end of the season, the furious debutante could not understand why not one young man had even requested to call on her, nor why so few ever requested to dance with her at the balls during the season.
She had no idea that she repulsed the young men of the Ton.
It was not just that she was homely in appearance, but her reputation for being a controlling, grasping, shrew was well known by all who attended these events.
She gave unsolicited advice on every subject whether she knew what she was talking about or not; most of the time it was the latter which made her a laughing stock amongst her peers of which she was blissfully unaware.
She had no accomplishments; she was tone deaf so had never mastered singing nor any musical instrument, and she could barely draw a straight line.
Her sister Anne was excellent at both. She played the pianoforte, harpsicord, and harp with technical precision and feeling and was a wonderful artist. Her sister’s accomplishments only caused Catherine to resent her all the more.
By her fourth season Catherine had condescended to set her cap for George Darcy.
He was not titled but he was the heir to a vast fortune, and the Darcy’s main estate, Pemberley, dwarfed Snowhaven, the primary estate of the Earl of Matlock.
The Darcy heritage went back to William the Conqueror and was, in fact, an older and more established family than the Fitzwilliams. Unfortunately, it was her sister Anne’s debut season, and before she knew what was happening, George Darcy was courting her insipid sister and showed no interest in her.
She had considered compromising him until she had overheard a conversation between him and her brother where young Mr Darcy had said that he was surprised at the marked difference between the sisters, that he could not wait until he had permission to court Anne but that nothing would ever induce him to offer the older sister, not even a compromise.
That same night she had a tantrum of epic proportions and broke anything that she could lay her hands on in her chambers at Matlock House.
In order to get her off his hands, her father negotiated a marriage contract for her with a lowly, but very wealthy Baronet, Sir Louis de Bourgh.
At the end of that season, her fourth and Anne’s first, her little sister had married George Darcy in a magnificent ceremony, while she, the oldest and in her mind most deserving, was married in a small poorly attended ceremony.
She found herself at the de Bourgh estate, Rosings Park, in Kent.
Sir Louis, her husband who was more than twenty years her senior, came to her that first night and she hated having to give her virtue to him.
After some years of enduring her husband’s attentions, Lady Catherine finally was with child.
The day that her state was confirmed was the day that she locked her door to her husband…
permanently. Anne de Bourgh was born in October of 1786.
Lady Catherine was again most displeased that she had born a daughter after almost three years of marriage while her hated sister, Anne, had birthed a boy, heir to Pemberley and the Darcy fortune that Anne had had the temerity to steal from her, in July 1783.
Luckily, there was no entail on Rosings, so Lady Catherine never unlocked the door for her husband again.
Sir Louis could have demanded his marital rights, but he found that he had no taste for relations with his shrew of a wife so he accepted her locked door with equanimity.
He regretted marrying her, even the extra ten thousand her father had added to sweeten the pot was not worth putting up with the woman.
Knowing how controlling his wife was, and the fact that she knew nothing of consequence regardless of her endless pontifications, Sir Louis went to see his solicitors in London soon after Anne’s birth.
He named his brother-in-law guardian of his daughter if he died before her majority was reached and placed the bulk of his wealth into a trust for her while naming her his heir, stipulating that she would inherit at her majority if he were no longer alive.
If Anne passed before her majority or never married, the estate would go to a cousin.
Six copies of the will were created. One would be in his safe in his study at Rosings while the others would be with his solicitor, Lord Hilldale, George Darcy, a distant cousin Edward Gardiner, and the last copy was placed in a deposit box in the Bank of England.
Only his brothers-in-law were aware of the location of the last copy of the will.
Sir Louis rightly did not trust his wife to honour the terms of it, hence the reason for provisions that he made.
A year earlier, Lady Catherine had decided that she did not want her husband to live any longer as she was most displeased with him.
She had tried to cajole him in brokering a marriage contract between Anne and young Fitzwilliam Darcy, thinking to use Anne as the means to get her hands on the Darcy fortune she believed should be under her control.
Her weak-willed husband had refused her, and when she had raised the issue with her sister and her husband, the Darcys had refused to consider her request in the clearest terms possible.
The opinions of others had never swayed her from a decided course, so it was the same now.
She tried to convince her brother-in-law that if something should befall him and her sister that she should be named guardian of any Darcy children and be in control of the Darcy fortune.
George Darcy had laughed her out of his study and the furious woman, driven by avarice, had sworn revenge.
It had taken a year, but she had accomplished the first part of her plan.
She had put powdered night shade into her husband’s favourite port, and it was not many days later that Sir Louis was found dead in his study.
Lady Catherine had the foresight to destroy the evidence of her crime; she disposed of the bottle and left the body to be discovered by the butler in the morning.
That night she had discovered the copy of her husband’s will and was infuriated by its terms. She tossed it into the fire and set about writing a more agreeable copy, not considering that there may be other copies of the document to usurp her intent.
When her brother, George Darcy, Sir Louis’s solicitor Mr Harrison Wright, and some unknown tradesman arrived for the reading of the will, they took her incompetent forgery and tossed it in the fire.
As she started to protest vociferously, each produced a copy of the genuine will, all signed and witnessed with proof that it had been filed with the courts in London.
Under her husband’s legal will, she was allowed to live at Rosings until Anne reached her majority and inherited it, at which time she, the great Lady Catherine de Bourgh, would be relegated to the dower house.
This was not to be borne! Only her dowry of thirty-five thousand pounds would be hers.
In addition, she would receive one thousand per annum from the estate until Anne’s majority; however she would have no access to any of the de Bough fortune or any of the income from the estate.
When she inquired why her dowry was larger than she was led to believe, she answered her own question by saying that she deserved it as she was the oldest. Her brother told her how their father had increased her dowry in order to bribe someone to marry her, but only Sir Louis had been interested.
The men all suspected that Sir Louis’s death had not been of natural causes, but as they found no evidence to the contrary, they held their peace.