Chapter Twenty-One The Heiress and the Dress
ANNE DE BOURGH AWOKE with the distinct, unfamiliar, and intoxicating sensation of not having to fake a respiratory ailment.
She stretched her legs under the eiderdown of her guest bed at Darcy House, admiring the sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains.
It was well past eleven o’clock. For twenty-four years, eleven o’clock had dictated her third dose of lukewarm barley water and a shrill lecture on the mortal perils of draughts. Today, it meant victory.
Vauxhall had been a triumph of theatrical proportions. Fitzwilliam had managed to bend his knee without looking as though he were checking his boot for a pebble, and Elizabeth Bennet had accepted him. The world was tilting on its axis, and Anne intended to ride the rotation.
She threw back the covers, ignoring the bell pull. She dressed herself in her vibrant sapphire day dress—a colour her mother would have legally declared fatal to the spleen—and marched downstairs, leaving her woollen shawls to die a lonely death in the wardrobe.
She found Georgiana in the morning room, slumped over a cup of chocolate. The young girl seemed as though she had been run over by a carriage composed of joy and exhaustion.
“Good morning, Cousin,” Anne announced, dropping into the opposite armchair with an un-invalid-like thud. “You are delightfully ruined.”
Georgiana blinked, her curls slightly askew. “I did not sleep, Anne. My brain was too loud. Fitzwilliam is getting married. He smiled at his porridge this morning. His porridge. And Robert is going to walk straight into the Thames if Miss Bennet asks him to hand her a fish, I am certain.”
“A successful evening on all fronts, then,” Mrs Annesley remarked, gliding into the room serenely.
She carried a silver tray laden with the morning post. “Will you be requiring the carriage this morning, Miss de Bourgh, or are you remaining indoors to recover from the emotional exhaustion of witnessing other people’s romance? ”
“We are taking the carriage,” Anne declared, reaching across the table to procure a crumpet. “I have no time for emotional exhaustion. I have a house to conquer. Eat your toast, Georgiana. You are coming with me. You too, Mrs Annesley. We are going to Portman Square.”
The carriage ride across Mayfair was brisk and short. Georgiana, revived by the prospect of a sanctioned rebellion, peered out of the window. “Are you truly opening your father’s house, Anne? Without permission? Will Lady Catherine not descend with an army of footmen to drag you back to Kent?”
“Let her try,” Anne said, lifting an eyebrow. “My mother is operating under a ticking clock, and she knows it, even if she refuses to acknowledge the pendulum. She has exactly two months left of her tyrannical reign.”
Georgiana frowned, her brow crinkling. “What do you mean?”
“My twenty-fifth birthday,” Anne grinned with a predatory, wolfish expression that would have made Viscount Keathley proud.
“My late father, Sir Lewis, for all his flaws regarding interior decoration, was a man who appreciated an iron-clad legal document. His will explicitly states that upon my twenty-fifth birthday, I come into full possession of the estate. I become the sole Mistress of Rosings Park, and I inherit the entirety of the de Bourgh fortune unencumbered by trustees or maternal oversight.”
Mrs Annesley’s eyebrows climbed a fraction of an inch towards her hairline. “The entirety, Miss de Bourgh? And Her Ladyship?”
“My mother,” Anne pronounced the words with the reverence of a vicar delivering a sacred text, “will retain her cherished title of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, naturally, but her reign at Rosings will be over. She will receive a handsome jointure and the exclusive use of the dower house on the far edge of the estate.” She paused, her smile widening.
“A dower house which, I might add, she deliberately neglects to clean.”
Georgiana gasped, her hands flying to her mouth in horror and delight. “You are going to evict your mother?”
“I am going to reorganise her,” Anne corrected. “I have spent two decades wrapped in scratchy wool, coughing into lace handkerchiefs so she could play the benevolent, burdened matriarch. On my birthday, the wool comes off, and the Dowager moves out.”
The carriage turned onto Portman Square, the townhouse standing tall and imposing, an elegant brick structure. As the carriage drew to a halt, a thrill sparked in Anne’s chest. This was hers. Not her mother’s, not Fitzwilliam’s. Hers.
Unlike its dormant neighbours, the de Bourgh residence was a hive of resurrection. The front doors were pinned wide open, and two maids were scrubbing the front steps with soapy water, while a footman wrestled a rolled-up carpet out the door.
A woman in a severe black dress and a mobcap was standing in the foyer, barking orders at a girl carrying a bucket of ash. She spotted the carriage, handed her feather duster to a passing servant, and hurried down the steps.
“Miss de Bourgh!” The housekeeper beamed and dropped into a deep curtsy as Anne stepped down from the carriage. “Welcome to Portman Square! I am Mrs Frobisher.”
“Mrs Frobisher. I see my missive was received and the troops have been rallied,” Anne noted, watching the flurry of activity in the hallway approvingly. “You have made excellent time.”
“Indeed, Miss! Though, if I may be so bold,” Mrs Frobisher stammered, her eyes widening as she took in Anne’s brisk, upright posture and vibrant dress.
“When your letter arrived instructing us to open the house for your immediate residence, I had the footmen arrange a carrying chair in the hall! We... we expected a litter! Or a sedan chair! Or at least an apothecary holding a basin, given what we knew of your constitution!”
“I have no apothecaries at hand, Mrs Frobisher, and I find carrying chairs disastrous for my posture,” Anne said, stripping off her gloves and tossing them onto a nearby table as she swept into the foyer.
“I am here to inspect the premises and the progress. I intend to take up residence by the end of the week.”
Mrs Frobisher stared at the woman before her, then let out a sound of pure relief. “Praise the Lord! We have been dusting ghosts for twenty years, Miss, and to have the house alive again is a blessing! The staff are beside themselves with the excitement. Shall I show you the drawing rooms?”
“Lead the way.”
The house was a monument to the previous century.
Thick curtains the colour of bruised plums blocked the light, and the furniture was draped in ghostly white Holland covers.
The air smelled of beeswax, extreme disuse, and dead moths.
In the corner of the hallway stood a full-sized preserved bear holding a silver calling-card tray.
“It is very... substantial,” Georgiana offered politely, coughing into her fist as a cloud of dust plumed from a nearby sofa.
“It is like a mausoleum for a very wealthy depressed vampire,” Anne observed, eyeing the bear with deep suspicion.
“Sir Lewis favoured a sombre aesthetic,” Mrs Frobisher offered apologetically, wringing her hands. “He believed that bright colours encouraged frivolous thoughts and invited unwanted visitors.”
“Well, it is certainly discouraging,” Mrs Annesley agreed, running a white-gloved finger along the mantelpiece and inspecting the dark smear of grime. “One feels the urge to repent one’s sins simply by standing in the foyer.”
Anne walked to the centre of the primary drawing room. A portrait of Sir Lewis de Bourgh glared down at them from above a black marble fireplace.
“We are changing everything,” Anne announced, her mind already buzzing with fabric swatches and plans.
She began pacing, pulling dust covers off chairs with theatrical flourishes.
“Down with the blood-plum! I want French windows. I want silk. I want a shade of yellow that would give my mother a migraine from fifty paces!”
Georgiana giggled, twirling a discarded dust cover like a shawl. “Can we have a pianoforte, Anne? A really grand one?”
“We shall have two,” Anne declared, pointing a commanding finger. “One for playing, and one purely to irritate the neighbours. And Mrs Frobisher, this portrait of my father?”
“Yes, Miss?”
“Move it to the scullery. Let him glare at the dishwater.”
“Right away, Miss,” Mrs Frobisher said, a grin splitting her face.
Anne marched to the tall windows, unlatching the iron shutters and pushing them open. Sunlight flooded the room, casting away the shadows. She peered out over the leafy square, the hustle and bustle of London life rushing by, ready to be seized.
“Mrs Frobisher.” Anne clapped her hands together, the sound echoing in the cavernous room. “Your time starts now. Let us build an empire. But first, let us inspect the rest of the house.”
They took to the stairs and reached the landing, pushing open the door leading to the mistress’s chambers.
Anne paused on the threshold. Unlike the cavernous, plum nightmare of the drawing room downstairs, this room had an unexpected, airy grace.
The shutters had already been thrown wide open, allowing the breeze to sweep through.
The walls were panelled in a soft, faded cream, and the four-poster bed was draped in pale gold silk that, while undoubtedly twenty years out of fashion, still managed to appear inviting.
“It is lovely,” Georgiana breathed, stepping past Anne to run a hand over the carved footboard. “It does not look like a mausoleum at all.”
“No,” Anne agreed, a strange flutter in her chest. “It looks like someone was happy here.”
“The late Master and Her Ladyship were very fond of this room, Miss,” Mrs Frobisher offered, her voice dropping to a hushed, reverent whisper.
She moved past them to open a side door.
“This leads to the dressing room. If you intend to take up residence, I must ask... what would you have us do with the contents of the wardrobes?”
Anne’s brow furrowed. “The contents?”