Cinder-Liza
By Shanagrand
© 2021 Copyright held by the author
**No fairy godmother or magic in the story - sorry to those who thought so based on the title.**
Thomas Bennet married the love of his life Fanny Gardiner. She have him three children, Jane, Elizabeth and Tommy. 2 years after Tommy, Fanny dies birthing a second son, who is stillborn.
Another branch of the Bennet family is titles, the Earl and Countess of Holder who live in Staffordshire with their 5 children. The two families are close and after Fanny dies Bennets cousins, at his request, keep Tommy as in his grief Thomas Bennet doesn't think he can raise a 2 year old as well as his two daughters.
Martha Bingley is the widow of Arthur, who had dies of a heart attack. Bingley senior was a minor partner of Edward Gardiner in Gardiner and associates. They had three children, Charles, Louisa, and Caroline. Unlike canon, the Bingleys are not very wealthy, and the girls have small dowries of 2K each. Bennet is introduced to Martha who lives a few houses down from the Gardiners on Gracechurch street. She has always wanted to climb up the social ladder, so she compromises Bennet and being an honourable man he marries her.
Our 'prince' in the story is of course Fitzwilliam Darcy, Duke of Derbyshire, and Earl of Lambton. Like canon his parents are no more, and dear old Lady C will do anything to make her sickly daughter with a nasty disposition a Duchess. At some point Darcy purchases Netherfield to be closer to London so his sister, Lady Georgiana will have her preferred music masters close by.
Bennet never reveals the existence of his son or his relations who are peers to his new wife who he dislike intensely. He allows her to believe that the entail on Longbourn is away from females giving her the impression that on his death, she and her three spawn will be evicted from the estate by a distant cousin, William Collins. Sometime after sending Jane to live with the cousins, for reasons that will be revealed in the story, and Lizzy refused to leave her father, Bennet is killed in an accident. When no heir comes to throw them into the hedgerows, the stepmother and her children take over Longbourn.
A number of the usual suspects are present as well as some other characters.
Prologue
Longbourn 1794
Thomas Bennet was devastated. His wife, Fanny, whom he loved beyond all reason and had married in January 1786 had been taken from him trying to birth their second son. It was a risk that all woman faced in birthing a child and Thomas was angry with God as he had placed Fanny's safety in His hands, and He had taken her!
He was a widower and father to two daughters and a son. Jane, his oldest had been born in June 1787. She was followed in March 1790 by Elizabeth, Lizzy and then in February 1792 Tommy, the heir to Longbourn, was born. By the beginning of the current year, his beloved Fanny had been with child again. Neither he nor his wife considered her state a big risk as the previous three confinements had all been without even the hint of a problem.
In fact, Mrs. Maud Carlyle, the midwife, had opined that Mrs. Bennet was built to deliver children. That had been the belief until the newest son, who never even drew his first breath, was born breech and Fanny had bled to death.
Thomas and Fanny Bennet were vastly different one from the other, but that was what made them perfect for one another. Where Bennet was unsociable and somewhat of an introvert, Fanny was a social butterfly and extroverted. He loved books and scholarly pursuits and she fashion.
They had fallen in love with one another in October 1785 and by the following January they were married. He taught her of his love of books, and she taught him to be more sociable. He tempered her sometimes inappropriate outbursts and she made him feel whole. Against all the odds, and the advice of his late mother, they had worked.
Fanny had been the best of mothers showering her three children with unlimited and unrestricted love. As the time for her confinement had drawn near, Bennet had taken his children to visit his cousin, Lord James Bennet, the Earl of Holder. Unless his cousin was in Town at Holder House on Grosvenor Square, Lord Holder, along with his wife Lady Amelia, whom his children called Aunt Amy, and their three sons would be found, as they were when Bennet transported his children—at their estate Holder Heights in Staffordshire.
The James Bennets had two sons, James Junior and Phillip and three daughters, Marie, Cassandra (Cassy), and Alicia (Ally). Phillip was around the same age as Tommy as were Cassy and Ally similar ages respectively to Jane and Elizabeth. The children loved to spend time with their cousins, so their father leaving them at Holder Heights was nothing that would worry the three Thomas Bennet children. Even though Tommy was only two, he was as enthusiastic as his older sisters to visit 'Unca Jamie' and 'Aunt Lia' and his cousins, especially Phillip who would soon be three.
Thomas was thankful that his children were not at home when their beloved mother passed. Bennet was not looking forward to explaining that they would never see their mama again, especially to Elizabeth who was wise beyond her years and had been especially close to her mother.
Bennet wrote the hardest letter of his life to his wife's younger brother Edward Gardiner. There once were three Gardiner siblings, but Hattie, the oldest of the three had been taken some fifteen years earlier by influenza. After his father passed on, Gardiner sold his father's law practice as he was not interested in the law and used the money to start his import and export business, Gardiner and Associates.
It was not widely known, but Bennet invested Longbourn's profits with his brother-in-law and was building a tidy sum. It was not a large fortune, but it was enough provide his daughters with at least ten thousand pounds each and a small legacy for Tommy.
Longbourn was entailed but not away from the female line. Two generations earlier the master had a son who liked to gamble. Before anyone could make a claim against the estate, he entailed it so that all or part could not be sold off under any circumstances and only a Bennet by blood could inherit, male or female.
A miserly and illiterate distant cousin, Ned Collins, who had married a Bennet cousin, believed Longbourn was entailed away from the female line, no matter how many times he was told it was not. With the stipulation of being a Bennet by blood, the Collins line could not inherit no matter what.
Thankfully, the man's wife had eventually managed to convince him that he was wrong and that no Collins could ever inherit Longbourn. More importantly, her son William understood this fact and was quite different from his father. At least that was a notification Bennet did not have to make. From the time that Ned Collins finally grasped the facts, there had been no further contact between the Bennet and Collins families.
The same day that Bennet sent the express to Gracechurch Street, Gardiner left his young wife, Madeline, at home and made for Meryton with all haste. Had the children been at Longbourn his wife would have accompanied him as they loved their Aunt Maddie greatly.
"Bennet I am so sorry for your loss," Gardiner gave his brother a hug of support before sitting in one of the armchairs in the study. "It is hard to believe that I am the only Gardiner remaining now. I hope Fanny is with Hattie and our parents now."
"Thank you for coming Gardiner. I have to make some hard decisions, especially about Tommy. I think it will be better for him if James and Amy agree to keep him there. Tommy will have Phillip there almost like a brother and he will have a mother figure. The girls and I would be able to spend the summer with them each year so he will never forget his father and sisters. I have much work on the estate and I am not equipped to raise a boy of two. Fanny did all of that," Bennet's voice choked up at the mention of his beloved.
"I am sure that your cousins will do anything to help that they are able to Bennet. Have you informed Phillips that Fanny is gone?" Gardiner asked.
Jacob Phillips had purchased the law practice from Gardiner, and he ran it, and lived in the old Gardiner house with his wife, two sons and a daughter. All of Longbourn's legal issues were dealt with efficiently by Mr. Phillips.
"Yes, he was here earlier, and I updated my will. Heaven forbid, if something happens to me and Tommy, then my oldest living daughter will inherit at her majority. Before you ask, yes, my neighbours still think that I clear two thousand a year. In a way that is true as the rest goes to you to add to my portfolio," Bennet told his brother by marriage.
After the funeral, Gardiner returned to his wife and business and Bennet journeyed to Holder Heights to break the devastating news to his children.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Martha Bingley had never been happy married to Arthur, who had died of a heart attack some six months previously leaving her with, in her opinion, a small widow's portion, a far too small, leased house on Gracechurch Street near Cheapside, and three young children. They lived a few doors down from number 23 where the Gardiners resided. Martha was extremely envious of the Gardiners' much larger house with far more servants, and she taught her children to be the same.
There was her oldest, Charles who was ten, Louisa who was eight, and Caroline who was five. Martha had never wasted an opportunity to tell her children how important it was to rise from their status as wife and children of a tradesman to the ranks of the gentry. She also oft repeated and ingrained in her children that their lot in life was not their fault. She blamed an amorphous them or they, never able to define who them or they were and what they had done to affect her family's lives. It was always useful, however, to have a scapegoat handy.
Her husband had moved them from Scarborough some three years previously to become a minor partner in Gardiner and Associates. He had promised that as the business grew so would their fortune. There had been no visible improvement in their wealth and to her chagrin her daughters had a pittance of two thousand pounds each. On his passing, Gardiner had bought out the late Bingley's stake in the company for seven thousand pounds which had been placed in trust for Charles until his majority and to be managed by Edward Gardiner. Martha's widow's portion was two thousand pounds, but their living expenses were paid out of the interest and dividends earned by the principal that would one day be her son's inheritance.
The roughly seven hundred pounds per annum was enough to pay the rent and their living expenses while leaving a few hundred pounds to be added to the principal. As much as Martha wanted to get her hands on as much of her son's inheritance as she could, Gardiner had been charged with the management of the funds and Arthur Bingley had placed strict guidelines on said management as he had known who and what his wife was. He did so to protect his son's money as much as possible.
As much as she disliked and resented the Gardiners for their apparent wealth and success, Martha kept up the pretence of a friendship with Gardiner's young wife, as it usually led to an invitation to dine with them at least once or twice a week and Martha was not willing to do anything overt to jeopardise those invitations as she and her three resentful children enjoyed the quality of the repast they found at Madeline Gardiner's table too much.
Madeline Gardiner was nobody's fool! She knew full well the truth of Martha Bingley and her grasping children, but she also felt sorry for them after losing the patriarch of the family. This led her to keep inviting them against her better judgement.
It was at one of the dinners the Bingleys were invited to that they met the widower Thomas Bennet. Martha saw the man as an answer to a prayer. He was a gentleman whose family had been on their land for a good number of generations, and he seemed like he was reasonably well off. She was determined to marry the man and incorrectly believed it would raise her and her children's status to the gentry.
No matter how much she fawned over Thomas Bennet, batted her eyelids at him, behaved coquettishly, or tried to employ, in her opinion, any of her vast array of feminine wiles, the man showed no interest in her whatsoever.
When she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw a woman not yet thirty who still had her looks about her. She could not understand how it was that she had not been able to turn Mr. Bennet's head at all. She decided that as he seemed like an honourable man, there was only one thing for it, she needed to compromise the man and she would conscript her children to help her.
Once she explained how their lives would improve as the son and daughters of a gentleman, her older two agreed to assist her any way that they could. The opportunity came before Bennet was to return to Longbourn, the Bingleys were invited to dinner the night before his departure.
Martha had not missed that her quarry sequestered himself in Mr. Gardiner's study after dinner. She did not know that it was his way of escaping her attentions. A half hour after her victim separated himself from the company, she gave Charles and Louisa a wink and then stated that she needed to use the necessary.
On opening the study door slowly she saw that her victim had fallen asleep on the settee. She lay down next to him, freeing a breast from its constraints and placing his hand on it. Just then, as planned, Charles and Louisa opened the door and screamed.
"What are you doing in here woman?" Bennet demanded as he pushed her off of him and she landed unceremoniously on the hard floor, her breast still hanging out of her dress.
"Oh but Thomas, you were saying how much you wanted me before we were discovered," Martha stated with a straight face.
Maddy and Edward Gardiner shook their heads at the obvious compromise. Unfortunately, several servants had come running when the two Bingley children screeched, so it seemed there was no hushing up the event. Even if the Gardiners could hush their servants, they were sure that the despicable woman and her spawn would crow about it to one and all.
Bennet's honour would allow him to do naught but marry the woman. "I need to return to my home and inform my daughters of my impending marriage," Bennet spat out with distaste. "I will return in a sennight."
The look he gave the self-satisfied woman would have been enough to wilt a flower, but she cared not. She had achieved her aim and that was all that was important. She was to be the wife of a gentleman!
