Expectations: The Transformation of Miss Anne de Bourgh (Pride and Prejudice Continued), Volume 1
Expectations:
The Transformation of Miss Anne de Bourgh
(Pride and Prejudice Continued)
In Three Volumes
By Melinda Wellesley
Fiction For Real
Madison, Wisconsin
Copyright © 2017 Melinda Wellesley.
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Expectations: The Transformation of Miss Anne de Bourgh (Pride and Prejudice Continued), Volume 1 / Melinda Wellesley. -- 1st ed.
ISBN for mobi version: 978-1-68023-032-1.
ISBN for epub version: 978-1-68023-035-2.
ISBN for PDB version: 978-1-68023-038-3.
ISBN for PDF version: 978-1-68023-041-3.
ISBN for LRF version: 978-1-68023-044-4.
ISBN for plain text version: 978-1-68023-047-5.
ISBN for HRML SmashReader version: 978-1-68023-050-5.
This work is dedicated to the memory of my friend the gifted writer Sara Campbell, who believed that if you can’t fit pirates into your novel, you’re probably writing the wrong book.
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.
―JANE AUSTEN
Expectations:
The Transformation of Miss Anne de Bourgh
(Pride and Prejudice Continued)
Volume One
Chapter One
It is a truth universally understood—but never acknowledged—that an heiress with no husband and no prospects is an object of derision and pity.
And an heiress who had a prospect—for decades—but her intended was stolen away by a rival with no family, no money, and no connections, is so profoundly to be pitied that she must not be talked about, even behind her back.
Unless, of course, she is not in town.
And most definitely if she is the daughter of that imperious old harridan, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
If there could be a saving grace in this, it would be that the object of society’s sporadic curiosity had never been a member of that society, and she had no idea that interest could be focused on someone none of the gossipers had ever seen. Miss Anne de Bourgh, the heir to magnificent Rosings Park in Kent and current possessor of indifferent health and a weak constitution, had only been to London four times in her life, and all before the age of ten. Now, as she faced the rapid approach of her thirtieth birthday, her attention could not be spared for people she did not know. She concentrated her thoughts on her family.
The gossips would have been surprised to know that in fact she gave little attention to her cousin, Fitzwilliam Darcy, to whom she had been engaged from her childhood up until three years ago. She had not seen him since months before he had broken their long-standing engagement arranged by their mothers in order to ask for the hand of the former Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
Instead, Anne dwelled on her mother, Lady Catherine, and her long-deceased father, Sir Lewis de Bourgh. In preparation for her daughter’s birthday, Lady Catherine had left for London two days ahead of a cold November rain, promising to return with gifts suitable for the occasion. Anne dreaded the prospect of what—or who—she would bring back. In the years since Darcy’s defection, Anne had been subjected to a meager parade of suitors brought to Rosings by her resolute mother. The difficulty in finding a suitable husband lay in her ladyship’s stubborn insistence on achieving a great dynastic alliance. Lady Catherine refused to discuss matrimonial matters with families in financial distress or parents who offered younger sons. Unfortunately, the families Lady Catherine considered worthy expressed no interest, and the only families willing to brave an association with the great lady were in such difficulties that Lady Catherine would have nothing to do with them. Over the years Lady Catherine had fetched a few young men to meet Anne, but they either balked upon meeting their prospective bride or subsequently earned the disapprobation of her ladyship in some other fashion and were summarily dismissed. Anne knew her mother had good intentions, but the humiliation Lady Catherine continually caused her was all she could bear. So Anne sat at Rosings and waited…waited for she knew not what.
Lately her thoughts had been turning more and more to her father, a man she barely remembered. Sir Lewis de Bourgh had died shortly after his thirtieth birthday, when Anne was four. Her memories were thin but pleasant, punctuated by loving recollections and silly moments so precious to a child. Her earliest recollection of him was one afternoon when her mother had gone visiting and, thinking he had no witnesses, he strode down the long gallery at Rosings singing a full chorus of Lili Bulero in his fine tenor voice. When he spotted Anne, who had slipped from the nursery and managed to crawl up into a hallway chair, he laughed and stopped before her. He proclaimed that he would not tell her mother about her eluding the nurse if she promised not to mention that he had been singing in the hall. As he picked her up, she asked him what was wrong about singing. “She thinks there is a time and place for everything, my little dear,” he explained as he continued on his way with her snug in his gentle arms. “But singing a mere folk song in a hallway, where servants and all the world might hear, ‘has no dignity.’ So let this be our secret.” In a quieter voice, and to her delight, he serenaded her the rest of the way down the long corridor.
Her last memory of him was so painful in comparison. When the physicians had given up hope, she was brought into his room to say goodbye. The ague had wasted him away, but he still had a smile for Anne as her nurse placed her on the edge of his bed. “My little dear,” he said, “be good and always listen to your mother. Do not give her trouble. But I know I need not say that. You have never given anyone a moment of trouble in your entire life.” The nurse picked her up to bring her close to him for a final kiss, and then the nurse carried her out of the room. Anne cried and begged to be brought back, but the wet-eyed servant ignored her pleading. A glance back revealed the physicians gathering around Sir Lewis as he closed his eyes and heaved a great, tearful sigh. At his bedside stood Lady Catherine, weeping. That was the last time Anne ever saw her mother cry.
Not long after he died, Anne became sick. At first the doctors thought she had caught his ague, but she got neither better nor worse. After consultations with many specialists in London, the physicians decided she had grown into
a “constitutional weakness.” They told her mother that this was not uncommon in the nobility, and having her stay out of the dreadful London air would help restore her. Anne never left Rosings again. Even now her mother still hoped the confines of the country estate would return her to something resembling strength. For her sake, Anne did, too.
Lately, when Lady Catherine was away from Rosings, Anne had taken to having a servant bring a chair into the portrait gallery so she could sit and view the painting of her father. The image might have been accurate—she only remembered him through a child’s eyes, and she often doubted her memories—but she could find little familiar in the portrait. Formal, serious, standing with a large dog at his side and holding out his hand towards the image of Rosings in the Kentish background, he was represented in the customary pose of a proud landowner showing his newly-built home. Anne knew she favored him—a former housekeeper had once called them “two buds from the same rose bush”—but she could not see that in the painting, either. The image did not match the father she tried so hard to remember. Missing were his smiles, his playful glances, and his joy of life. Was the portrait so inaccurate, or was her memory so very faulty?
Sir Lewis had provided well for Anne and her mother, but his loss cast a shadow over both their lives. Lady Catherine had done her best to do the work of two parents, watching over Anne and giving her every consideration. For her twelfth birthday, Anne received from her mother the small phaeton that was still her favorite possession. She had had a doting governess in the widowed Mrs. Jenkinson, who stayed on as her companion and shepherd after the completion of Anne’s schooling. Her mother had also provided occasional tutors brought down from London to teach her a bit of language and science and the feminine arts of sewing, decorating, and flower arranging. Her mother had never asked her to do more than she was able. Anne could not be more grateful. And yet….
Anne admitted that her mother failed to comprehend the embarrassment her marital efforts had caused. The endless—and apparently futile—quest for a suitable husband was a humiliation. Only once did her mother seem to realize this. Over tea, a neighbor, Lady Metcalfe, suggested a suitable alternative to the lost Darcy would be Colonel Fitzwilliam, another of Anne’s cousins. The notion greatly vexed Lady Catherine, who declared to Lady Metcalfe that the good-natured colonel was “a second son and an obvious second choice.” For her to turn to another member of the family after Darcy’s decampment, her mother pronounced with inflamed pride, would be an admission that she could do no better. “We are a noble family with many fine prospects,” she retorted to the chagrined neighbor. “Under the current circumstances, to choose from within the family would be an embarrassment. I am astonished that you would even suggest such a thing.” Lady Catherine forgave Lady Metcalfe in the interest of their friendship, but she grumbled for weeks afterwards about the woman’s lack of good sense.
Now, as autumn faded and the first hints of winter appeared outside her window, Anne found herself thinking daily of her father. Everyone agreed that she was just like him. All had meant it as a compliment, and she had always taken it as such. But he had died shortly after his thirtieth birthday. Would she do the same? She held her handkerchief over her mouth and tried to suppress a cough. She felt that her health had been slipping lately. Even her mother had noticed. Were her mother’s extra attempts at conviviality this year a response to the fateful nature of her approaching birthday? Lady Catherine had never been given over to superstitions, but one could argue with neither history nor the calendar.