Grandma Bennet

Chapter Two – To the Colonies, 1751

Elizabeth Bennet watched her two boys playing on the plot of grass set aside from the park at Dundegal Reach for that purpose. Several nurses hovered nearby, but the boys were too young yet to get into too much mischief. She looked up from her husband of four years as the handsome man rode into the drive and waved. Their older son, Thomas, tried to run to him, but was restrained by his nurse before he could run under the hooves of the great stallion. The younger boy, Henry, tried to stand and waddle, but could not get far. His nurse caught him up and carried him forward.

Thomas dismounted and scandalized the servants by kissing his beautiful wife, then taking Thomas and placing him onto the great steed. Then he took Henry from his nurse and carried the fussy boy in his arm.

"How are you, my love?" His question was not rote. Elizabeth had lost their third child, a girl, after many hours of terrible labor. She was only now fully recovered... or so she tried to convince her husband.

"I am well, Thomas. I promise you. Now, enough of me. What have you learned?"

"Sean and Harry found the perfect location and have already staked their claim. It is an inlet guarded on both sides by cliffs, so we can claim the entire area for a shipyard and have no fears of neighbors moving in and interfering with our enterprise. My buy-in would furnish the tools and the labor to build all of the necessary structures for building. If we did this, Elizabeth, we could very well float our first vessel by the end of the year."

"Father will not be pleased," Elizabeth sighed.

"Your father has not been pleased with me since I first asked for your hand. Without your grandmother's intervention, he never would have agreed. Elizabeth, Dundegal will never give us more income than it does right now. It is locked in on all sides by larger estates and the ground has more rock than arable soil. I dislike the idea of selling my mother's bequest, but Lord Carter has made a very good offer and it would give us the opportunity to do make a real future for ourselves and our sons."

"You could use my jointure..."

"No! This is a gamble. It is not foolish because Sean, Harry, and I are all determined and industrious, but it could still fail. I need to know that you and the boys are protected if anything goes wrong. Your dowry is yours and it should stay with only safe investments. If all goes as I hope, then our sons will have a secure future and a ship building empire to take over. And we will have another child... a girl perhaps, who will need a dowry."

"As you wish, my dear Thomas. Now, the important question: When do we depart?"

~oOo~

Rupert Darcy had not been pleased with his youngest daughter's choice in the slightest. He had intended for her to marry the first son of a duke, or an earl at the very least. She was beautiful, intelligent, and lively, with a natural grace and a ready wit which made her the natural leader in any company. Yet she had chosen a minor gentleman instead! And not even a first son! Assuredly, Longbourn was a very lucrative property, spanning much of a long valley between two low lines of hills, it had been in the family for generations and boasted eight-thousand per annum. But the boy would not even inherit!

Thomas Henry Bennet was the second son, a child of a second marriage. He was a bright, ambitious young man, to be sure. Captain James Darcy named him as a dear friend and a very good man. That was why he had brought the man to his younger sister's coming out ball. What nobody had expected was for the man to steal away the brightest jewel of the season!

Rupert Darcy consoled himself that his daughter's husband at least had his own property in Cornwall, bordering on one side by the family seat of Lord Wellford Carter, the third Earl of Canterville. The Earl had spoken well of the young scamp. His mother's family was actually related to the Earl. And along with the young man's small estate he had been left with twenty-thousand from his mother's estate when she passed.

Still, Elizabeth could have done much better!

And now this! They were selling everything and becoming COLONISTS! Why would anyone with a spot of sense wish to do something like that?!

The family and servants stayed well clear of the Master of Pemberley that day as he stormed from room to room, venting his spleen on any who got in his way.

~oOo~

Dundegal Reach was sold to Lord Carter within the month. The weather was fine and the seas fair, so the Bennet family wasted no time in preparing and boarding a ship bound for the Massachusetts Colony. Elizabeth quickly fell in love with the wild coastlines and the thick forests. She liked the local peoples as well, though there was certainly a rough crowd among the rest.

The partnership between Sean Carter, nephew to Lord Carter, Harry Rutherford, and Thomas Bennet proved to be a good one. Harry came from a family of ship builders, Thomas was a gifted carpenter, and Sean had money, ambition, and a drive to succeed. Between them they had their shipyard built and two sloops floated by by the end of that first year.

All went well for the first six years until a spar fell and killed Sean Carter. He had only just begun courting a young woman and had no other immediate family, so his share of the partnership was absorbed into the whole. By that point the young company had built over twenty sea-going ships and many smaller fishing vessels. They had a reputation for fast, reliable sailing vessels.

The French and Indian War, as many named it, had already carried on for several years without effecting the company or the Bennets, but in 1759 Thomas Bennet and several of his best men were forcibly drafted to accompany a troop of redcoats in a push towards Quebec. The Army needed barges and Thomas was chosen as the man to build them.

The attitudes of the British officers and their treatment of the colonists, although British themselves, was the beginning of a change in Thomas Bennet's feelings about his home country. He and his men were drafted for almost seven months, fed poorly and treated worse, then dismissed without their promised pay to find their own way home.

While her Thomas was away, Elizabeth was faced with her own problems. Her husband had built them a fine home, which the British commander chose as his headquarters. Elizabeth and her sons were not forced to leave, but she was treated as a servant in her own home and her boys, ages twelve and ten, were subject to occasional cuffs and kicks. Worse still, the officers who came and went could not help but take note of her beauty. More than once she had to fend off unwelcome advances. In the end she had to inform the colonel of her family connections and threaten reprisals if he did not bring his men into line.

The colonel and his regiment moved on before Thomas made his way home, but Elizabeth was faced with a new trial in the form of her husband's remaining partner, Harry Rutherford. He had long coveted his partner's wife. While the regiment was encamped, he convinced himself that at least one officer was taking that which he desired. So when the redcoats finally departed, the normally placid and pleasant Mr. Rutherford suddenly became aggressively determined.

Thomas, who was soon to be thirteen, did not trust the man, but his brother Henry, who was still only ten, was more easily fooled. Without understanding that he was being used, Henry was soon reporting everything that happened in his home. This included providing the man with an idea of his mother's daily routines.

On a warm night only two months after the regiment departed and only one month before her husband's return, Elizabeth was forced to fight for her life and virtue when Harry Rutherford caught her alone in the milk barn. Elizabeth, already alarmed by the multiple and unwelcome overtures of several men, had taken to carrying a large knife with her at all times. When Harry followed her, she heard the footsteps and armed herself, so that when he attacked in the dark, her knife did it's work with sudden and deadly ease. She had not intended to kill the man, but he was now dead at her own hands.

Elizabeth Bennet sat hunched in the corner of the barn, rocking and hugging her knees for over an hour, but then her slender hand found the garnet cross. Generations of strong women gave her strength as she rose from her position, gathered her most trusted servants, and saw to it that Harry Rutherford's body was never seen again. Then she burned her dress, ensured that her knife was clean, and ordered that the straw in the barn was replaced and fresh.

Young Thomas was relieved when his father's partner suddenly disappeared. Henry was upset and increasingly difficult. In his young mind he blamed his mother even though he did not know what had happened. Over time he became more withdrawn and difficult.

Thomas Bennet and his ragged crew returned to the shipyards weary and disgruntled. They all went back to work, but none of them ever felt the same about the British again. All throughout the colonies the people who had wrestled a living out of that new land by toil, sweat, and tears began to identify themselves in their minds as people of their colony, or as Americans, but fewer and fewer thought of themselves as British.

Elizabeth told her dear husband all that had taken place during his absence. Between them they kept no secrets. She feared his reaction when he learned that she had killed a man, his own partner and friend, but he only held her close and apologized for not being there to protect her. If any of the servants talked, it was only to each other. No hint of the true fate of Harry Rutherford ever leaked out to anyone else.

With both Sean Carter and Harry Rutherford gone, the entirety of the enterprise was now in the hands of Thomas Bennet. The demand for cargo vessels and fishing vessels only increased each year, so the Bennet wealth also grew. Elizabeth finally convinced her husband to allow her to invest her dowry into the company, which allowed them to expand the yard and build even larger ships. The British Navy even commissioned a small fleet of coasters to patrol against the French and piracy.

When the bill for the cost of the war came due, Parliament decided to put the entire burden onto the colonies. Small grumbles quickly grew into genuine complaints and even words of sedition.

Rupert Darcy was a good man with a closed mind. As he heard and read about the steadily growing disaffection of the colonies with the Parliament and their policies, he only saw one view. He began writing letters to his son-in-law and his daughter, first asking and then demanding that they return to England's shores. The letters back and forth grew more heated each year until, by the year '68, he ceased to correspond altogether.

Elizabeth felt hurt by her father's unyielding attitude, but she remained firmly on her husband's side.