The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet. Colleen McCullough

Pack her boxes and bring them with you.”

      “She’ll kick up a fine old rumpus, Fitz.”

      “Oh, come, Ned! Who in Macclesfield will gainsay you — or me, for that matter? I don’t care if you have to bind her hand and foot, just have her in Lambton on time.” The swift scrawl ceased, the pen went down; without bothering to seal his note, Darcy handed it to Ned Skinner. “I’ve told Bingley to ride. Mrs Wickham can go in his coach with Mrs Bingley. We are for the charms of Hertfordshire to bury Mrs Bennet, not before time.”

      “A monstrous slow journey by coach.”

      “Given the season, the wet weather and the state of the roads, coach it must be. However, I’ll use six light draughts, so will Bingley. We should do sixty miles a day, perhaps more.”

      The note tucked in his greatcoat pocket, Ned departed.

      Darcy got up, frowning, to stand for a moment with his eyes riveted sightlessly on the leather-bound rows of his parliamentary Hansards. The old besom was dead at last. It is a vile thing, he thought, to marry beneath one’s station, no matter how great the love or how tormenting the urge to consummate that love. And it has not been worth the pain. My beautiful, queenly Elizabeth is as pinched a spinster as her sister Mary. I have one sickly, womanish boy and four wretched girls. One in the eye for me, Mrs Bennet! May the devil take you and all your glorious daughters, the price has been too high.

      Having but five miles to cover, the Darcy coach-and-six pulled into the courtyard of the Crown and Garter before the Bingley contingent; Bingley Hall was twenty-five miles away. Hands tucked warmly in a muff, Elizabeth settled in the private parlour to wait until the rendezvous was completed.

      Her only son, head buried in a volume of Gibbon’s Decline, used his left hand to grope for a chair seat without once lifting his gaze from the print. Light reading, he had explained to her with his sweet smile. Nature had given him her own fine features and a colouring more chestnut than gold; the lashes of his downcast lids were dark like his father’s, as were the soft brows above.

      At least his health had improved, now that Fitz had yielded to the inevitable and abandoned his remorseless campaign to turn Charlie into a satisfactory son. Oh, the chills that had followed some bruising ride in bad weather! The fevers that had laid him low for weeks after shooting parties or expeditions to London! None of it had deflected Charlie from his scholarly bent, transformed him into a suitable son for Darcy of Pemberley.

      “You must stop, Fitz,” she had said a year ago, dreading the icy hauteur sure to follow, yet determined to be heard. “I am Charlie’s mother, and I have given you the direction of his childhood without speaking my mind. Now I must. You cannot throw Charlie to the wolves of a cavalry regiment, however desirable it may be to give the noble son and heir a few years in the army as polish — polish? Pah! That life would kill him. His sole ambition is to go to Oxford and read Classics, and he must be permitted to have his way. And do not say that you loathed Cambridge so much you bought yourself a pair of colours in a hussar regiment! Your father was dead, so I have no idea what he might have thought of your conduct. All I know is what suits Charlie.”

      The icy hauteur had indeed descended, had wrought Fitz’s face into iron, but his black eyes, gazing straight into hers, held more exhaustion than anger.

      “I concede your point,” he said, tones harsh. “Our son is an effeminate weakling, fit only for Academia or the Church, and I would rather a don than a Darcy bishop, so we will hear no more of that. Send him to Oxford, by all means.”

      A cruel disappointment to him, she knew. This precious boy had been their first-born, but after him came nought save girls. The Bennet Curse, Fitz called it. Georgie, Susie, Anne and Cathy had arrived at two-year intervals, a source of indifference to their father, who neither saw them nor was interested in them. He had done his best to alter Charlie’s character, but even the might and power of Darcy of Pemberley had not been able to do that. After which, nothing.

      Cathy was now ten years old and would be the last, for Fitz had withdrawn from his wife’s life as well as her bed. He was already a Member of Parliament, a Tory in Tory country, but after Cathy’s birth he took a ministry and moved to the front benches. A ploy that freed him from her, with its long absences in London, its eminently excusable reasons to be far from her side. Not that she lost her usefulness; whenever Fitz needed her to further his political career, she was commanded, no matter how distasteful she found London’s high society.

      * * *

      Lydia arrived first, stumbling into the parlour with a scowl for that strange man, Edward Skinner, as he gave her a hard push. Elizabeth’s heart sank at the sight of her youngest sister’s face, so lined, sallow, bloated. Her figure had grown quite shapeless, a sack of meal corsetted into a semblance of femininity, crepey creases at the tops of her upthrust breasts revealing that, when the whalebones were removed, they sagged like under-filled pillows pinned on a line. A vulgar hat foaming with ostrich plumes, a thin muslin gown unsuited for this weather or a long journey, flimsy satin slippers stained and muddy — oh, Lydia! The once beautiful flaxen hair had not been washed in months, its curls greenish-greasy, and the wide blue eyes, so like her mother’s, were smeared with some substance designed for darkening lashes. They looked as if she had been beaten, though George Wickham had not been in England for four years, so she was at least spared that — unless someone else was beating her.

      Down went Charlie’s book; he moved to his aunt’s side so quickly that Elizabeth was excluded, took her hands in his and chafed them as he led her to a chair by the fire.

      “Here, Aunt Lydia, warm yourself,” he said tenderly. “I know that Mama has brought you warmer wear.”

      “Black, I suppose,” said Lydia, giving her older sister a glare. “Lord, such a dreadful colour! But needs must, if Mama is dead. Fancy that! I had not thought her frail. Oh, why did George have to be sent to America? I need him!” She spied the landlord in the doorway, and brightened. “Trenton, a mug of ale, if you please. That frightful man kidnapped me on an empty stomach. Ale, bread-and-butter, some cheese — now!”

      But before Trenton could obey, Ned came back with a big cup of coffee and put it down in front of her. A maid followed him bearing a tray of coffee and refreshments enough for all.

      “No ale,” Ned said curtly, dipped his head to Mrs Darcy and Mr Charlie, and went to report to Fitz in the taproom.

      It had been a regular circus, getting Mrs Wickham away. She was on her third bottle, and the callow pup she had found to warm her bed had taken one look at Ned Skinner, then decamped. Assisted by the terrified landlord of the Plough and Stars and his grim-faced wife, Ned had proceeded to force several doses of mustard-and-water down Lydia’s throat. Up came the wine bit by bit; only when he was sure no more of it was still to come did Ned cease his ruthless ministrations. The landlady had packed two small boxes of belongings — no decent protection from the cold in it, she said, just this ratty wrap. Lydia’s luggage strapped where the tiger would have perched, Ned had tossed his weeping, shrieking captive into the small seat and hustled Mr Darcy’s racing curricle out into the cruel night with scant regard for his passenger.

      Dear Charlie! Somehow he persuaded Lydia to eat a bowl of porridge and some bread, convinced her that coffee was just what she wanted; bearing a somewhat restored Lydia on her arm, Elizabeth went to the bedroom wherein Mrs Trenton had laid out fresh drawers and camisole, petticoats, a plain black wool dress bearing a frill hastily tacked on at Pemberley to make it long enough for Lydia, the taller of Elizabeth by half a head.

      “That disgusting man!” Lydia cried, standing while Mrs Trenton and Elizabeth stripped her, washed her as best they could; she stank of wine, vomit, dirt and neglect. “He dosed me to make me puke my guts out just as if I were one of his whores!”

      “Mama is dead, Lydia,” Elizabeth reminded her, giving the filthy corsets to Mrs Trenton between two fastidious fingers, and nodding that she could manage alone now. “Do you hear me? Mama died peacefully in her sleep.”

      “Well, I wish she could have chosen a better time!” The bloodshot eyes widened,