Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

Georgie was so thrilled that she sailed through her ball and marked the occasion as memorable by declining to become Mrs. John Parker of Virginia.

“Why?” asked Elizabeth, exasperated. “To refuse so many advantageous offers is ridiculous! You’ll get a reputation for the worst kind of capriciousness and receive no offers at all.”

“With a dowry of ninety thousand pounds?” Georgie asked smugly. “I do not intend to marry yet, Mama-if at all. I am enjoying my season, especially breaking hearts. You were twenty-one when you married Papa, and had had other offers. Besides, I refuse to have a betrothed underfoot while I am busy watching our new precious mite grow into a person.”

Well, that answers one question, thought her mother: Georgie is not in love with any of her suitors.

What she didn’t know (and Georgie had no intention of telling her) was that every week Georgie wrote to Owen Griffiths, who had not yet succumbed to her charms, but would, she was sure. She had worked out how to have her cake and eat it too, even if Queen Marie Antoinette had failed. When time had proven that she was a dedicated spinster, she intended to buy a farm on the outskirts of Oxford; then she could be a farmer and Owen could be an Oxford don.

Word came from Glasgow that Mr. and Mrs. Angus Sinclair would shortly be embarking upon a ship to sail to Liverpool, as both orphanages were nearing completion, and Mary wanted to be on hand to drive both teams of builders mad. Everyone knew that builders might be relied upon for ninety percent of the works, but never bothered with the last ten percent. These two projects, vowed Mary, would be finished down to the last nail and the last touch of paint in the most obscure corner.

Angus had finally succumbed to the need a wealthy man was supposed to have for the status of a country seat. Alastair and his brood occupied the Scottish mansion, and some weeks of Mary’s company had reduced them to abject terror. The very thought of Mary resident in Scotland had Alastair’s wife in the throes of vapours and Alastair himself on the verge of emigration to America. So to learn that Angus intended to live in close proximity to the Sheffield orphanage caused rejoicing in every Sinclair breast north of the Border. They could escort him and Mary on board the ship with light hearts and sincerest good wishes. Let Angus live among the Sassenachs!

He found seven thousand acres outside Bradfield on the edge of the moors; they included a forest, a park and a proper number of tenant farms. Because the mansion could be sited atop a tall hill, Mr. and Mrs. Angus Sinclair agreed that the property should be named Ben Sinclair.

In the meantime, said Angus’s letter to Fitz in London, would Fitz object if they stayed at Pemberley until Ben Sinclair became a reality?

Everyone gathered at Pemberley or Bingley Hall for the summer of 1814, eagerly awaiting the birth of two longed-for, very worrying babies. The only defector was Owen Griffiths, who was not sure if he could withstand Georgie’s charms did he see her in the flesh, so prudently went home to Wales. His paper upon the movements of Caesar in Gaul had circulated far and wide, so perspicacious was it upon things like the inaccuracy of Caesar’s mileage; the academic Powers That Be were now hailing him a formidable future scholar. If the formidable future scholar kept Georgie’s letters in a neat bundle tied with a satin ribbon the colour of her eyes, that was his business, no one else’s. When he wrote to her, he addressed her as his dear Scruff. Her letters to him said “dear Owen.”

Elizabeth’s pregnancy had been uneventful yet burdensome; she swore to Fitz that this one was a giant. Her labour was exhaustingly long, though uncomplicated, and resulted in a huge boy child with curly black hair and Fitz’s fine dark eyes. Provided that he was fed by two wet-nurses, he was a quiet and placid baby, but alert.

“God has been very good to us,” Elizabeth said to Fitz.

“Yes, my sweetest lady. Ned has been returned to us, and this time he will rejoice in his name. Edward Fitzwilliam Darcy. Who knows? Perhaps he will be prime minister.”

Mary’s pregnancy was more eventful, chiefly due to the book Kitty had sent her. It was written by an aristocratic German obstetrician who had definite ideas upon motherhood, despite (as Angus protested) his inability to experience the phenomenon in person. Everything she consumed was measured or weighed, its proportion of the whole diet regulated, and her own bodily condition monitored ruthlessly.

As the months wore on Angus grew increasingly sure that an expectant Mary was a fair indication of her ability to don the mental trappings of a married lady. She had hopped into the connubial bed with all Lydia’s glee, rendering him profoundly grateful that her child-bearing years were nearing an end. Otherwise, he reflected, she would probably have followed Jane’s example and fallen again every time he hung up his trousers for the next twenty years. Therefore he could be confident that his bride was up to the physical demands of marriage.

As to the intellectual and spiritual demands-she took them in her stride too. Who else would have seized upon the ideas of an unknown German accoucheur as if his book were an obstetrical bible? Who else would have accepted pregnancy as a matter of course, made no attempt to hide herself away and, as her girth increased, shoved her belly into people’s midriffs thinking she was as thin as ever? Unaccustomed to witnessing blatantly pregnant ladies, those she met, including the staff of “her” orphanage at Sheffield, were forced to pretend she was indeed as thin as ever. When “her” children told her she was getting fat, she told them outright that she was growing a new baby inside her tummy, and made them a part of the process. Her frankness appalled the staff, but…hers was the hand that fed.

As if that were not enough, she insisted upon journeying to London to see how Angus lived there, and participated in the pleasures of choosing furniture, carpets, drapes, wallpapers and paints for the interior of Ben Sinclair. Much to Angus’s relief, her taste in these things proved better than he expected, and, besides, when it veered away from his own tastes, she deferred to him with equanimity. She met all his London friends, and held sway at several dinner parties with that distressing bulge un-camouflaged.

“The worst of it is,” she informed the insufferably stiff and proper Mrs. Drummond-Burrell with a peal of laughter, “that I cannot pull my chair into the table, and end in wearing everything from soup to sauce.”

Perhaps the time was right for change, or perhaps it was just that Mary was Mary; Angus didn’t know, save that even the most waspish among his acquaintances hungered for more of her refreshing candour, particularly after they realised that her grasp of politics was highly developed and she cared not a jot that ladies were not supposed to be political. Shorn of his anxieties on her behalf, Angus understood that over the space of one short summer Mary had changed from a dandelion into a most exotic orchid. What he suspected he would never know was how much of the orchid had always lain dormant underneath.

Entering her eighth month, she returned to Pemberley to make sure the child would be born surrounded by its family. So by the time that she began her labour early in September, Angus had a very good idea of what his married life was going to entail. His wife intended to be his partner in all his enterprises, and expected him to be a partner in all her enterprises. It was as clear to him as it was to Fitz and Elizabeth that the Sinclairs were going to be in the vanguard of social change, particularly education. Mary had found her mйtier-universal education. Over the wrought-iron gates to the Children of Jesus orphanages at Buxton and Stannington stood the motto Mary had coined: EDUCATION IS LIBERTY.