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“I have, for more than thirty blissful years,” Lankershim agreed.

“It has been a subject I have thought about for some time. I think that now that I am seven and twenty, I am ready to seek a bride,” William said. “I want what I see in my parents’ marriage and what I have seen of your union. Love, respect, and compatibility.”

“When it is time, He will show you the way,” Lankershim opined.

Farewells were exchanged, and soon, William Collins was on a galloping Vulcan headed back towards his parsonage.

~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~

The Fitzwilliams were still in London, as the House of Commons and the House of Lords would be in session until the final Friday of June. Lord Matlock would not leave while both were still in session. Thereafter, they would leave the odours and heat of Town behind and make for Snowhaven, the main Matlock estate near the town of Matlock in Derbyshire.

“William, you employed this companion for Anna, Mrs Younge, but did you verify her characters?” Lady Elaine Fitzwilliam, the Countess of Matlock, enquired of her nephew.

“Her characters were impeccable, and I have seen nothing in her comportment to make me doubt my judgement,” William Darcy replied without addressing his aunt’s main question. He hated having his judgement questioned, and when someone did, it only made him more certain that he was in the right.

“You know, William, as I am Anna’s co-guardian, you should have involved me in the search for a companion,” Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, the second Fitzwilliam son, stated.

“When I began the search, I was not sure when you would return from the Peninsula,” Darcy defended himself. He was well aware that he could have waited to begin to seek a companion for Anna, but he was confident in his own judgment, so he had decided it was not necessary.

Before Colonel Fitzwilliam could respond to his cousin’s claptrap, the butler entered the room and bowed to the earl and countess. He proffered the silver salver to his master and stood to the side once the earl took the missive.

“It is from Anne,” Matlock boomed. “But I see no franking on the thing. I wonder how it was delivered?”

“A courier from Bishop Lankershim in Kent delivered the epistle, my Lord,” the butler intoned. “The man will ride back in the morning and will be happy to convey a reply should one be forthcoming.”

“Thank you, Ainsley. I will ring if there is to be a reply,” Matlock said in dismissal.

“Why would our cousin send a missive through a bishop?” Lord Andrew Fitzwilliam, Viscount Hilldale, enquired.

“There is only one way to find out,” Matlock said as he broke the seal. He began to read and soon stopped as his anger took over. “Richard, read this aloud. I am too perturbed to continue reading.”

The colonel took the papers from his father. He cleared his throat and began to read aloud.

16 May 1811

My gaol cell

Rosings Park

Uncle Reggie,

I wish that I could assure you that my referring to my accommodation here as a prison is mirth, but it is not. I am kept like an inmate would be.

Any letters you have received from me in the past telling you how happy I am and how good Lady Catherine is to me are false. I have been forced to write what she dictated and then sign my name to the drivel.

I had feared that Lady Catherine would employ a pusillanimous bootlicker like she sought to replace Mr Belvedere. It soon became evident that the man she awarded the living to, Mr Collins, acted as she wanted him to during her interview with him in order to be preferred to the living. He does not kowtow to her, is not intimidated in the least by my mother, and like Mr Belvedere before him, he refuses to allow Lady Catherine to insert herself into any ecclesiastical affairs.

Once I determined he was a good man who would do what was right, I decided that I could trust him to get this letter into your hands.

When I said above that I am held as a prisoner, it was not hyperbole. A year after the last time Lady Catherine’s plans to engage me to William were thwarted, she ordered her lackeys, among them my companion and maid, to administer a ‘cordial’ to me once or twice a day.

Thanks to the time when I was younger and I fell and broke my arm; I recognised the taste of laudanum in the concoction. From that first time on, I made sure to dispose of the drink each time while acting like I would be expected after having imbibed the opium-laced drink. It is my belief that the reason for the drugs is to keep me too sickly to take up the management of my estate if (when) her scheme to marry me to William and have him take me to Pemberley fails.

I have heard Lady Catherine accuse others of being fortune hunters; however, that is exactly what my mother is. I know this is disrespectful, but it is nothing but the truth.

The reason I had to post this epistle to you by a circuitous route is simple. Lady Catherine is handed any post written to or sent from me which she then reads. I suspect that to account for the chance that someone would post a letter for me, she has paid the landlord of the inn in Hunsford to intercept anything to or from me, which is why I have requested that Mr Collins post this from Westerham.

Uncle Reggie, I pray that you will act to assert your will as the executor of my father’s Last Will and Testament. Until I reached my majority, you were my guardian. I believe that now that I am older than 21, Lady Catherine hopes that you will not intercede. I pray she is wrong.