Pride and Prejudice Non-Canon AU

Fan Fiction

I am My Father's Daughter

Previously

Drinks being brought in by the servants, music playing and his family mingling with himself and Anne spread an ear-to-ear smile to Mr. Bennet's face. Leading his bride onto the floor, he too set aside the fact Lady Catherine, had been too bull-headed to attend her only daughter's wedding and focused on doing what he could to see his wife smile and laugh.

Lady Catherine

Ch. 23

Lady Catherine watched as multiple servants moved her personal belongings into the dower house. It was not a small building to many but to one who was used to Rosings Park? It was a cottage. The drawing room was far narrower and the length was less than half. There was still a piano and enough couches and chairs for company. The drapes were... a light blue? Since when? They had been brown.

"Who changed the drapes?" She demanded of the footman when he hauled in her last box of things.

"I did, on Mrs. Bennet's orders. All the curtains in the guest rooms have also been changed." He bowed and then left; there was no way the gentleman was going to stick around to hear that rant.

Anne? Anne had changed the curtains without asking? Lady Catherine then looked around and realized all the furniture was of brighter color, the walls and even the rug. Where had her mind been to miss all the activity this change would have required.

"She should have asked first." Anne's mother spoke out loud though she could see no one else in the room.

"Why? She is not a child. And this place was too dark."

"Lewis, you were always taking her side." She then complained Anne had not even had the wedding on Rosings Park's lawns. "It is not like I needed to be present for the lawns to be used."

"Seriously, Catherine? If her own mother was not going to attend, did it really matter where our daughter exchanged her vows?"

Lady Catherine could sense her late husband sitting in a chair against an oil lamp. "Do you have to be right?" Leaving the room the woman ignored what she could have sworn was Sir Lewis chuckling.

Anne's mother saw no other changes, but she could feel them in the air. If her daughter had changed so much in one room, what had she done to the others. Climbing up the stairs she looked into the guest rooms. No, none of the walls had been touched. But the bedding? And the heavier items she would not be able to move, or even the servants for they had been ...nailed down? They were all brighter in color. However, in the room that she would be sleeping in there was only a neatly stacked pile of blankets, linen and curtains - all brighter colors with a note on top.

Mother,

Feel free to do with these items as you see fit; this is your room. I will not force my will onto you as to your own private space as you did to me while growing up. However, the rooms are meant for guests... they - the guests- have, more than once, complained in my ear about the dark and drabness of Rosings Park. And I happen to agree. Therefore, there will be an overhaul of all the buildings on this property.

Nonetheless, like we just wrote, this is your room and your space. No one, not even us, should have the right to tell you how to decorate it. If you do not want these items, or wish for a different color, just let one of your servants know and they will let us know upon our return from Longbourn..

Your Daughter

Anne D. Bennet

The letter made Anne's mother cringe; especially about imposing her will onto Anne in regard to her daughter's room. It was true, and Anne's mother knew why it had been done; the lady simply had never known how to explain to her daughter she thought it had been her duty to make sure Anne be raised in a certain manner. And that was to raise in her a way as to prepare her to handle life among the upper class... a class clearly Anne had now turned her back on.

Lady Catherine was stunned to the rest of it. All those years people had come to her parties and they had complained to Ann about how Rosings Park looked? But they had not once said a negative word to her? Thinking back to those balls Lady Catherine sighed and sat down in a chair; unless Anne opted to hold parties than did the all the changes she spoke of really matter? Going back to what the drawing room had looked like compared to before Ann had apparently taken over, a small seed began to grow without Lady Catherine being aware of. One that would be interesting to see when it came to fruition.

The weather was one of the warmer days at Rosings Park so Lady Catherine walked down the path by her new residency and sat on a bench overlooking a stream passing by the dower house. Normally, in the past eighteen years, doing such a simple activity as watching geese land in the stream or watch deer in the field, but Annes' past activities -not to mention whose ring her daughter now wore and whose name Anne now bore, had her mother rethinking -and rehashing events that had happened going on eighteen years ago; ones that could not be changed.

"It is not Thomas's fault." Lewis spoke weakly.

"Yes, it is. He should have left here sooner...before the storm turned so bad."

Lady Catherine felt old anger rising only now it battled with a desire to be on speaking terms with Anne. Anne, her only child. The heiress to Rosings Park. Anne who now had married and had given Sir Lewis's property and lands into the hands of the gentleman her mother blamed for the man's demise.

"How could you, Anne?" Her mother wanted to shout but did not. "Why could you not have allowed Viscount Wellington to court you? He is a good man. Life is hard enough as it is. Life is simpler with the cash that a title brings in. And I want to see you happy. How can Thomas Bennet do either one of those? He clearly cannot handle money and he did not even make his first wife happy."

It was probably a good thing Lady Catherine was not aware of the viscount's interest turning to Kitty Bennet. If her mind and heart were not ready to see Anne was happy with Thomas; she would be spitting nails at some poor -innocent- geese to see Kitty sitting next to and laughing with Blake Wellington.