If you feel inspired, I would love some Kity Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam fluff ❤️ It‘s such a small fandom and deserves some nice fics.
Thank you so much for taking prompts!
It's taken over a year... but let's just pretend it was for @janeuary-month 2026 Day 31: Dearest
You asked for fluff but I hope you also like some angst and yearning, because I ended up writing almost 22k.
I didn't even know this fandom existed before this ask, but this fic consumed my life for awhile there and converted my beta reader, so I hope you enjoy it <3
There's a snipped below, and you can read the whole thing on ao3.
Someone's Dearest
Miss Catherine ‘Kitty’ Bennet was the dearest child of neither her mother nor father. Those positions belonged to Lydia Wickham and Elizabeth Darcy, respectively. Yet Kitty did not mind, because that honour seemed to come paired with being the least dear to the opposing parent (though – after Lizzy’s great marriage their mother’s affection for her seemed to increase). No, it was far more comfortable being the second or third favourite of their mother (depending on how much Mrs Bennet desired excitement and gossip over admiring Jane’s serene beauty and steady sense) and third or fourth of her father (depending on how preachy Mary was being that day).
She had been “Kitty dearest” to Lydia, but had not always appreciated it enough. It came with so many squabbles over the borrowing of clothes, stealing of wardrobe space, and arguing over whether they were allowed to hint to a man to ask them for the first dance even though the other had expressed her admiration for him first. It could be quite exhausting at times. Especially when she was scolded for keeping Lydia’s confidences that July before she married Wickham. Which Kitty felt was completely unjust. Two years before, everyone had been so cross at her for sharing what Mrs Goulding had written to Mamma because “Correspondence must always be private!”
And then it was very unfair how strict her father had been with her following Lydia’s elopement. It was not like she had done it! At least his threats of no balls and never stirring out of doors had not materialised. And she was getting scolded less, with Lydia gone. Before, their mother always took Lydia’s side in quarrels, and their father blamed them both for ideas which had been largely Lydia’s. Even if Kitty had happily gone along with those schemes most of the time, it still was not fair how often being Lydia’s dearest involved being rebuked.
Mostly, however, Kitty had loved it so. Perhaps even more now that it was ended. Since Lydia had gone so far away, and Kitty never permitted to visit, it really did not much signify that she was still the dearest to Lydia of all her sisters. She had become Mrs Wickham, anyway, with a husband to be her real dearest, and now little Georgie too. That would make Kitty the third dearest. A familiar position, at least.
She explained all this to Georgiana one day, who seemed to think it a sad thing. “You are very dear to me, Catherine,” insisted she, grabbing Kitty’s hands. “I hope you never doubt that.”
Kitty looked to her in bewilderment. “Of course I do not doubt your friendship! We are essentially sisters, after all. But really, I am sure I am not saying anything so very shocking – in a large family most children must find their situation similar to mine.”
But Georgiana continued to frown. “I do not believe most children could place their – position in the hearts of their family so readily. I should think that for the greatest share of parents the distinctions are so small it would be hard to evaluate even for themselves. Or else the love is so liberally spread a child never has cause to wonder.”
“Really?” asked Kitty.
“I am sure it is so. I cannot accept it is a weight the majority are burdened by.”
After a moment’s ponderance, Kitty said “I think you just feel that way because you believe it naturally follows that such knowledge is painful. But it does not have to be.”
“Catherine –”
“Take us, for example. I have nothing more to ask of your friendship, and it does not hurt me to recognise that you love Lizzy yet more than me. Or your brother, too.” Kitty shrugged. “That just makes me third again. Maybe fourth, in a few months, once Lizzy has her baby. But I am not childish enough to think any of that lessens the love you have for me. It is merely the truth,” said she.
That shocked Georgiana into contemplative silence for some time. But with Kitty beginning to look at her questioningly, she said “My dear Catherine, I cannot tell whether you are a great philosopher, or far too acclimatised to neglect.”
As Kitty had never been considered, by herself or others, philosophical, and was more generally accused of being a little spoilt, she had no answer.
Sometimes Georgiana would approach near the topic again, but Kitty never entered into it. She did not want to see that melancholy look on her friend’s countenance, nor seriously consider whether other families did not have a complaining mother and dismissive father who were both quick to denigrate, and Georgiana was too considerate to force it. But she did say once, after Kitty returned to Pemberley following three months at Longbourn, “Do you remember telling me you felt you are nobody’s dearest? My cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, mentioned something that reminded me of it while he visited here.”
“From your expression I can guess that it was similar to my sentiments,” said Kitty.
“Yes. He said that younger sons very often become less dear and more burdensome to a father once they are grown.”
“Really? I am used to parents always wishing they had a son. But,” said Kitty, thinking it over, “I suppose the letters patent for the Earl’s title exclude younger sons and daughters just as much as Longbourn’s entail does. So perhaps it is only an eldest son that is always wanted.”
She had never before thought that she might be able to sympathise with the position of an earl’s son.
Kitty knew the Colonel by reputation long before she ever met him. He was away fighting Napoleon for much of the time, and though Kitty spent fair half of every year at Pemberley she never did seem to be there when Mr Darcy’s relations were staying. Nor did she succeed in persuading Lizzy to take her to London. But from her experience with Colonel Forster, and how Georgiana always spoke of her cousin as a very attentive guardian, she was picturing someone rather humdrum, for all that he was an officer.
This supposition was not entirely discredited when she eventually did meet Colonel Fitzwilliam.
Georgiana had not felt comfortable having her first season until eighteen, and even then was quite shy at the prospect of entering society. She specifically requested “May dear Catherine please accompany us? It would be such a relief, to have another friend there.”
To which Kitty had very earnestly begged “Oh, yes Lizzy, please let me come! I shall behave ever so properly.”
After promising to obey every rule her sister or Mr Darcy put in place, she had at last been brought to London. The balls! The gentlemen! The shops!
Was it any wonder that she had little attention to spare for a colonel who was not even in his regimentals? It made him infinitely less interesting than others of his brother-officers, though they were ‘only’ captains. Yes, he was more manly in appearance than she expected, and much more lively and entertaining, but though he was very fun to have at a dinner table there were others who were more eager to win her smiles and offer her a dance. She enjoyed their attentions immensely, but aunt Gardiner’s opinion, after a particularly effusive panegyric of the merits of soldiers, was that Kitty would be better off marrying a man in a quiet occupation – perhaps a clergyman. Somehow that sounded like sacrilege to Kitty.
Her aunt was an accurate judge of the suitability of her current potential suitors, however. None of them impressed Kitty enough to win her heart. Whenever she began to suspect they hoped for her hand she drew back in intimacy. It helped that she needed only tell Lizzy of her feelings, and her sister would step in to say “Miss Bennet is not at liberty to walk in Hyde Park today, I am sorry, sir.”
For his part, the Colonel saw the excitable sister of his cousin: very bad at cards and behaving exactly as one might expect of a pretty young woman first exposed to all the delights of town. But how good it was to perceive how she was able to make Georgiana smile and giggle as they whispered secrets, like the carefree young woman she always should have been. Georgiana had a true sister in Mrs Darcy, but a close friend her own age in Miss Catherine Bennet. And she flourished under the love and support the two more confident women did not hesitate to bestow upon her.
When his cousin confessed he was worried Catherine’s behaviour could influence Georgiana, the Colonel was able to honestly reply “Darcy, I have seen no wildness from Miss Bennet, however she may have acted when you first met, but much good from her loyalty and friendship with your sister. Honestly, she is rather charming. I say keep them together as long as both wish it.”
The following year, when Kitty again saw Colonel Fitzwilliam in London, he was in his scarlet coat. Fresh with the honours of all those who had returned alive from Waterloo. At first Kitty was a little overcome with having a hero in their midst, but he was still the same friendly gentleman as the year before and so her blushes soon became more moderate.
They did not entirely abate, however.
Given she was not in the fever of admiration which had characterised all her previous preferences, she gave it little thought. He was more of a friend, really – a dashing soldier friend who occasionally made her blush. It barely occurred thrice a week; which, considering how regularly Kitty encountered him, was not even a reaction worth including in her letters. The first time she mentioned him, beyond as one of many in a list of who attended what, was when she wrote to her correspondence “I danced the third with Colonel Fitzwilliam, who was a better partner than any of the others I had that evening. He kept me laughing almost the entire set, and looked very becoming. But as he also danced with Georgiana and Lizzy, I do not think it much signifies.”
To which her mother responded: “How good of dear Mrs Darcy, to arrange for you to dance with the son of an earl! I bet that made many other young men take notice of you. Is the Colonel to inherit anything? I thought he was not, but of course, that may change. It would be very good if he might be given a barony or some such for his work against Napoleon. Are any of his friends very rich? You might ask him to introduce you. It is only right to keep your dance card full.”
Lydia’s reply was even less satisfactory. “How lucky you are to have so many beaus in town!” she wrote. “There are scarce any in Portsmouth. But Wickham’s friend is allowing us to stay without asking us to cover the added expenses, so I ought not to complain, though they do not pay for our tickets when we go to the local theatre or anything fun. They barely entertain at all! Except the gentlemen sometimes visit a club. It is very dull here. Do you think the Colonel knows of any positions my dear Wickham would suit? It does not need to be in the army – if the Earl needs a steward or could secure a place at court, I am sure we would be very happy. Only think how much fun it would be for us both to be in London! It is a wonder Lizzy did not invite us to stay.”
Kitty did not include him in her letters again.
He was in attendance more often that season now he was freed from his duties abroad, as even someone with Colonel Fitzwilliam’s rank had little to offer the crown at present. Though, naturally, he did not struggle to shift for himself the way many of the common infantrymen – without home or sufficient income – were forced to. While in town he always had a home in St James’s Square with his father, the Earl, though he preferred to stay with the Darcys in Mayfair.
Kitty wondered at his shunning of his noble home, until she happened to be present one morning when the Earl called. More specifically, present in the library when she was not meant to be.
It was completely unintentional; she had only been looking for a hiding spot. Little Anne Darcy, chubby fingers curled around her aunt Georgiana’s hand, was meant to toddle in after a minute or two and find her. Nothing set Annie to giggling like playing hide-and-go-seek with her aunts.
But when the door opened, it was Colonel Fitzwilliam and his father who entered. They did not notice her shoes peeping out from the curtain. Before she could announce her presence and quit the room, the Earl’s tone made her freeze.
Continue reading here
_________
Ask me a question | Austen Discussions | Ao3 | Ko-fi
This is unnecessarily long, but: I was just thinking about Wickham's predation on fifteen-year-old Georgiana Darcy and then, almost exactly a year later, Wickham's predation on sixteen-year-old Lydia Bennet.
There are obvious parallels between the two incidents. In fact, they're so obvious that I think the incidents are sometimes treated as equivalent, with the consequences only differing by happenstance. I don't think that's true, personally.
There are some mechanistic sort of differences—Wickham put a lot more effort and planning into the Georgiana situation. He wanted to marry her for her money and to make her brother suffer. She had to be isolated from people who would look out for her interests, he had Mrs Younge in place, he had known Georgiana as a child and was able to exploit his own previous kindness to her as her father's godson, etc.
And Georgiana, despite all of this, and despite being swept away by a teenage infatuation with an extremely attractive man, was still uncomfortable with it. She was worried about disappointing a brother who raised her and whom she deeply loves and admires. When her brother actually showed up by surprise, she decided to tell him everything; Darcy takes pains to give her credit for this. Adaptations generally downplay Georgiana's active decision-making here, but the only element of chance is Darcy deciding to go to Ramsgate at all. He insists that he was only able to act because Georgiana chose to tell him what was going on.
This isn't meant to be an indictment of Lydia, though. Does she admire the parents who raised her? No. But why would she? Especially why would she admire a father who treats her mother and sisters and herself with profound contempt and no sense of responsibility? Why would she ever confide in him?
It's not like Lydia doesn't confide in anyone. In fact, she too confides in an older sibling, her sister Kitty. And in one sense, her trust in Kitty is not undeserved. Kitty does keep the secret. Presumably, she does this because, despite her occasional annoyance with Lydia, she is very much under her influence and goes along with whatever Lydia does. Regardless, she is trustworthy in that sense. Moreover, we see at the end of the book that Kitty is easily improved by being placed in better environments and taught how to behave. She just didn't know better.
How was she going to judge Lydia's situation correctly? Who was teaching her to judge anything correctly? Certainly not their parents.
If Mr Bennet had bothered to interest himself in his younger daughters and try and influence them for the better, impressionable Kitty is probably the one who would have benefited the most. The whole Lydia/Wickham thing would have fallen apart before it went anywhere if all the girls had been been properly raised, even if Lydia did exactly the same things.
And Lydia likely wouldn't do the same things if she'd been brought up properly and, you know, treated with a baseline of respect rather than being openly mocked by her father, the person most able to affect her development. Instead, at barely sixteen, she's been continually rejected by her father, over-indulged by her mother, and flattered by adult men (28-y-o Darcy says he and Wickham are nearly the same age). And she still tells someone what's going on, even though she doesn't care about her parents' opinions or the consequences of her actions. And she was under the protection of a colonel and his wife at the time, who also could have told someone or acted, and didn't.
It's not that nobody could have done anything about the Lydia/Wickham situation. It's that nobody did until Darcy found out and tried to extract her. But it was, in one sense, too late. To Lydia, he's just some unfun acquaintance who says boring things like "go home to your family and I'll do what I can to cover for you." That is, he tries to do what he did for Georgiana.
But Lydia is not Georgiana—she did not choose to tell him about any of this. She did not want to be extracted because she didn't know and couldn't be quickly made to understand what marriage to Wickham would mean in the long term. And she didn't care what her family thought because she had no reason to, pragmatically or psychologically.
Georgiana, otoh, did care about her family's welfare and the good opinion and affection of the head of her family. But despite their radical differences in personality, the most fundamental difference between the girls IMO is that Georgiana had every reason to believe that disappointing Darcy and losing his respect would be a change from the norm.
Normally he is affectionate and attentive towards her. They write each other long letters, he defends her to other family members, and praises her frequently. Georgiana, quiet and intimidated though she may be, talks more when he's around. Disappointing him had actual stakes for her.
Put another way, the potential loss of his good opinion mattered to her because he's gone to the trouble of raising her as well as he can and forming a good relationship with her. She chose to tell Darcy the whole thing because he had earned her affection and trust in a way that Mr Bennet has utterly failed to do. Even Darcy happening to visit Georgiana at Ramsgate comes from his affection and attention to Georgiana's welfare, even if he couldn't have known what would follow from checking on his sister at that particular moment.
Chance is always part of life, and it's part of the novel and these situations. But a lot of how these scenarios wound out was not determined by chance but by long-existing patterns in these girls' educations and relationships.
OK. A long time ago someone recommended a Kitty Bennet fanfiction to me. It was on an older offbrand site (maybe Dwiggie?). It was set after the events of the book, Kitty went to visit Lizzie and stayed with the Darcy's for a time. She grows up quite a bit, meets their guests, gets to know one of the men well. It ends with some drama that was not Kitty's (maybe Lydia's) she helps them secretly but some of the information is noticed by this man and makes it look like Kitty's mess. She is determined to do the right thing and be helpful despite the situation it puts her in. He man finds out the truth and they get married. A happy ending for all.
