The past is beginning to blend together. I remember myself as I was, Lady Anne Leigh, young and handsome and clever; I could have had any man I wanted, I told my children, and depending upon the child in question they sighed or laughed. I did not tell them, not until they were older and knew what the world was like, how it had come about. There was secrecy and deceit and by the end nobody was fooled, so there was scandal as well; and I hated it, I hated it all. Except Edward. They say, my father said, that love turns to hate when that sort of thing happens, that mine would, but it did not, I could not imagine not loving Edward, I think I always did. How they could have thought we disliked one another, I have no idea.
And I thought it should go on and on, but Edward's father died and then Catherine, and within a year I was Lady Matlock, and our little Edward, he always called me mother. Of course I was — it was Catherine's idea to go to Venice, she was so desperate to give him a son, even another woman's son — and he had my eyes, but Catherine had been a Leigh as well, that was no proof. Edward's Catherine was their only child, and she was always an odd girl, I think she must have felt it, although I did my best. I was very fond of her when she was a child, I was so sorry for her; neither Edward nor Catherine seemed to notice her at all. But she was so strange, as she grew older, I could not truly warm to her, nor any of the others, except Anne.
Anne. My dearest Anne, she was always highly-strung, brilliant and temperamental; and I was afraid for her, because I did not believe any man could ever make her happy. It was only in the family that she could be herself, and her husband, he would force her into a picture frame, demand parts of her until she was broken. George Darcy was lost for her, at first, but he was exactly what I feared; loving but not truly comprehending. He did not understand Anne and he did not understand Fitzwilliam and they were miserable because of it.
No mother should live to see the death of her child, my aunt told me when I tried to comfort her, all those years ago, but it was only when Anne died that I truly understood. I had loved Henry, but he had always been wild, we knew something would eventually happen, his life would catch up with him; Anne, though, there was no expecting it. She was alive and healthy and holding her little girl, she was happy for the first time in years despite her estrangement from her husband, and then she was gone. Fitzwilliam and I, we had known and loved her best, and it was so incomprehensible, I could do nothing but hold my grandson as he sobbed in my arms. It was not real; she would walk out of that room, laughing a little at our stupidity — she would hold out her arms for Georgiana, who could just say 'mamma' — and she would ask Fitzwilliam and Ella to play for us — in just a few moments. She could not possibly be gone.
Darcy was grieved, not perhaps for Anne as she had been, but for what had been lost, and that I could understand; but what he said, and did, then, I could never forgive. I thought I had forgiven him when he died, but I was wrong. If Catherine had known, she would have murdered him with her parasol as we took leave; but Edward knew, and that was why he took Fitzwilliam that evening, just as Anne had done all those years before. There was always an emptiness, we felt her loss as we never had Catherine's or Henry's, and Ella and Fitzwilliam and Henry altogether could not fill it.
The years passed, though, and the grief grew fainter. Ella married my great-nephew — a good match, and they did not expect too much of one another — and the others grew older. Henry and Richard and Fitzwilliam, they were always thick as thieves, for all the opposition of character between them; and they remained so all their lives. Fitzwilliam and Henry would still switch places, and although they could not fool me, Elizabeth and I enjoyed ourselves laughing at everyone else. I never knew anyone who could laugh as Elizabeth did, not even Anne. I did not approve of her at first, I thought Fitzwilliam could and should have done better for himself — but they understood each other, as Darcy and Anne had never done, and I had never seen him so happy as when he was with her. Even had it been in my power, I could not have denied him that. She was not good enough for him, of course, but since no-one was, that hardly signified.
Georgiana and Ella gave me three great-grandchildren each, and Fitzwilliam four more. And although I loved them in their different ways, we all knew that Fitzwilliam's Anne was first in my heart, and I hope, I believe, that they understood.