検索キーワード： 著者 "Shana Granderson A Lady" すべてのカテゴリー

The tale begins with the compromise of Thomas Bennet by a 17 year-old Fanny Gardiner. No, Bennet is NOT the abuser, even though he detests his wife. Jane, Lizzy, and Mary are born before Bennet is lost when his daughters are respectively not 3 yet, a little past 1, and 3 months of age. At that point, Fanny, who is aware of the entail and who the heir is decides to act. As would be expected, Clem Collins comes to claim his inheritance and is not happy to find things are not as he expected.

This book looks at how everything would be different if the Duke of Hertfordshire was not a bad person, if he was in fact, a very good and honourable man. When he is still the Marquess of Hertford, Lord Archibald Winston Chamberlain makes an ill-advised agreement with his father, Lord Winston Chamberlain, the current Duke of Hertfordshire. When the Marquess is in his twenties, he is informed that his father will arrange a match for him.

Henry Bennet is a second son born in 1739. His father, Thomas Bennet, concentrates all of his energy on his heir, James, who is more than 10 years older than Henry. The father has no use for his daughter, Felicity, who is 6 years Henry’s senior.

Rather than protect their daughter like any good parent should, first Fanny and then Thomas Bennet push their sixteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth into a marriage with a much older man who happens to be a duke. Fanny is seduced by the fact he is a duke, even if he is not interested in Jane, something she cannot believe at first, and his willingness to dower her remaining four daughters. For Bennet, when the Duke offers to break the entail on Longbourn after a certain condition is met, his half-hearted opposition to the match dissipates.

A Duchess, two Countesses, and their families are forced to stop at the Red Lion Inn in Meryton on their way home to one of their estates due to two of the ladies beginning active labor. The same day, Fanny Bennet, with Thomas Bennet away in London, also goes into labor with her second child. When she calls for the midwife and Mr. Jones, she is informed they are both at the inn attending two ladies. 

This is a story of friendship that defies all odds and survives and flourishes regardless of the impediments that arise. The friendship is born out of an almost tragedy and extreme bravery by one Elizabeth Bennet. In saving the lives of those in peril, she thwarts the designs of one of the villains of this tale and makes an enemy of the person. As in canon, our Anne is sickly. In this variation, it is because she had suffered a bad case of childhood scarlet fever. For the purposes of this story, the disease has seriously weakened her cardiovascular system.

Elizabeth finds she cannot reconcile herself to Charlotte aligning herself with a man such as William Collins, so she refuses the invitation to Hunsford. Instead, she goes on holiday to Brighton with the Gardiners. The family takes a summer holiday each year, and either Elizabeth or Jane joins them. Due to her broken heart, Jane, whose turn it was, demurs and asks Lizzy to go in her stead.

Felicity is the daughter of Henry and Beth Bennet, and for his own reasons, her father decides to arrange a marriage for his daughter, who is seventeen, to the son of Augustus Collins, Clem. His reasoning is that he is not confident his son Thomas will ever marry, and if he does, he doubts the son's ability to produce a son. Given the entail to heirs male on Longbourn and that if there is no son of Bennet blood, the Collins line will inherit, Henry sees this as the only way to secure the future of Longbourn after he is called home to God.