Chapter 1 #2
Each Christmas the family celebrated at Snowhaven or Pemberley on alternating years.
Christmastide 1791 was celebrated at Pemberley.
Since her arrival, Lady Catherine had repeatedly tried to convince her sister and brother-in-law to name her guardian over Fitzwilliam.
Everyone called him William or Will, but she would not lower herself to use that appellation, and any future children the Darcys might then have if something untoward was to happen to them.
Her attempts, however, were rebuffed ever more forcefully each and every time she requested it.
She also tried to push her fantasy of a cradle betrothal between her daughter and the Darcy heir, no matter how many times she was told that it would never happen.
Yet even when she tried to redirect persons to see things as she wanted them, and no matter what tack she chose, either haranguing, cajoling, or charm—her version of it—she was not able to move the Darcys to her way of thinking, which frustrated her no end.
What she did not know was that both George and Anne Darcy had put explicit and iron clad clauses in their wills denying their permission for William to marry his cousin Anne unless they both chose that union with no regard to the wishes of her mother, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
The wills also stipulated that said lady would never be guardian to William or any other children they may have, and that she would have no access to the Darcy fortune under any circumstances.
After she had birthed her son, Lady Anne had a number of miscarriages and one still birth that had left her weakened but no less determined to have another child one day.
On the advice of their doctor, the couple had abstained for a long period of time, and luckily Lady Anne seemed to have regained her health again.
William was a happy lad and spent much time with his older cousins Andrew and Richard.
He had become friendly with his father’s steward’s son, George Wickham, who was two years younger than himself.
The boy was a bit of an imp and could be on the cruel side in his pranks from time to time, but he was treated as a friend by the three cousins, albeit a younger one.
Lady Catherine was disgusted that the Darcys allowed their son to consort with such a low born boy as the son of a steward.
She looked on the boy with a gimlet eye as he looked vaguely familiar, but she could not put her finger on it.
The truth that she was unaware of was that the boy was her late husband’s bastard.
On one of their Christmas visits, a maid at Snowhaven had been willing seduced by Sir Louis, hoping for some pecuniary advantage from the assignation.
There was not, but she was with child and so on the verge of further disgrace.
The truth of his birth was one few knew.
Jim Wickham, then an under-steward at Pemberley, agreed to marry the maid Clara and raise the babe as his own.
This led to the birth of George Wickham seven months after they married.
What no one knew was that from an early age Clara Wickham had passed her avarice, grasping, and manipulative ways on to her son, always filling his head with tales of his supposed due, explaining how she manipulated others to get more and more without working for it.
She poured poison into his ear at every chance that she got, told him that he was born of a great man, and lied to her son by inferring that Pemberley’s master was his father, hence the reason his name was George.
The more she was frustrated in her attempts to command her family, the deeper Lady Catherine’s anger took root.
Over a glass of whiskey, she was sipping to swallow the anger at yet another instance of being denied her wishes, she decided to bide her time which would lull her enemies, which is how she characterized any that opposed her will, into a false sense of security.
For the rest of her stay, she never mentioned the request for guardianship or a betrothal between Fitzwilliam and Anne again.
Luckily, the family was very wary of the self-styled ‘great lady’ and were not fooled by her supposed reformation.
In January 1792, after the Twelfth Night ball at Pemberley and Lady Catherine had departed in her barouche for Rosings, the adults of the family met in George Darcy’s study.
It was agreed that Lady Catherine could be dangerous, although they had seen no direct evidence of that yet.
Both families decided to hire a number of ex-military men to act as guards and double as footmen, they would also get double the salary for both positions so they would be loyal.
It was also decided that Anne de Bourgh was to stay with the Fitzwilliams until they came to Town for the season.
Neither Reggie nor his younger sister Anne could fathom why their sister had become the person that she was.
They were all raised in the same home by the same parents, so the character that she had was unfathomable to her siblings.
What neither knew was that before Reggie was born, Catherine had been a happy go lucky, pleasant girl.
Something had changed not long after Reggie was born and none of those who knew her before the change could explain what it was.
What their parents had not shared with their younger children was that one day not long after her brother’s birth, Catherine was playing in the park and had ran ahead of her nursemaid when she slipped and fell into a stream.
Some minutes later she was discovered by her nursemaid who pulled her out of the stream as she screamed for help.
By the grace of God, the servant had instinctively hit her charge on the back repeatedly, forcing water out of her lungs so she could breathe again.
What none, including the doctors of the day knew, and would not understand for more than a century, was that her brain had been deprived of oxygen for too long causing some brain damage, which was the fundamental reason for her change in personality.
At the end of January, the Darcys and Fitzwilliams made for Town with twelve new footmen-guards between the two families.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
March 1792
Thomas Bennet could not have been more enamoured with his almost one year old daughter had he tried to be.
At nine months old she had started to say words; her first two were papa and ‘aney for her beloved, older sister who had celebrated her third birthday on the fifteenth of January. At ten months old the little prodigy, as her proud papa called her, took her first tentative steps. Now, just shy of one year she was completely mobile and often ran as fast as her little legs would carry her and could articulate a fair amount of her wishes or observations verbally. Her father had never heard of intelligence like his Lizzy displayed, and would read to her as much as he was able. He read not just children’s books, but poetry and even some Shakespeare.
The more he read to her, the more she seemed to enjoy it.
Bennet was certain that Lizzy could not understand most of what he was reading, but she had an insatiable curiosity.
Jane was always welcome and would stay to listen for some minutes before she would eventually wander off to play with her dolls.
The two sisters seemed to love each other endlessly, as much as a three and almost one year old could.
As stipulated, Lizzy was never left alone.
When she was not under the watchful eye of her father, she was with either Miss Browning or Mrs Manning, sometimes both.
The toddler was being weaned off the sustenance from the wet nurse and was starting to eat solid food and drink milk from a cow.
Mrs Manning’s son John, who was a little more than two months older than Lizzy, had been weaned a week earlier.
He was a pleasant little boy who now walked with confidence and had started to talk a month earlier.
As far as Lizzy was concerned, Tammy Manning was her mother and John her brother.
Her birth mother was once again with child and was praying that this one would be a boy so she would never have to lie with her husband again.
Before she had become with child, she had started to have an affair with Sam Hodges, a very good-looking man of five and twenty who worked in Mr Lucas’s store.
Not very bright, but still crafty and manipulative, Fanny had made sure that her husband had planted his seed in her at the same time so if she were with child, he would not be suspicious.
As she saw how remarkable the demon child was, watching the love and attention that her husband showered on his devil’s spawn of a daughter, the more Fanny’s hatred for the child grew and the more determined she became to do something about her.
Given that the child was never out of someone’s sight, it was a problem that she would need to solve to take care of the abomination that she had brought into the world.
Fanny had been careful to hold her tongue around her husband or anyone connected with the estate as she was convinced that he had not made empty threats the morning that thing escaped hell.
The only one to whom she could vent her anger was her Sam.
Once or twice a week Fanny would find an excuse to go into Meryton where she would meet her paramour and lie with him.
With him she would vent her spleen, blaming all of the world’s ills on that thing.
” Hodges would listen enough to nod his head occasionally, but really, he was anticipating what he would do to the woman as soon as she was done expressing her vitriol.