Chapter 41 #2
Their first year of their marriage was a quiet one, but not without happiness.
They did not possess the grand comforts of England, nor the ease of a well-established household, yet there was a steadiness to their days that Frederick had never before known.
Anya moved within their small home with the same gentle purpose she had shown at the mission, and he found, to his own surprise, that he looked forward to each evening not for rest alone, but for her company.
There was peace in it.
Not the careless joy of youth, nor the fevered intensity of first love, but something deeper—something chosen, built day by day, until it settled into a contentment he had once believed forever beyond his reach.
And a year later, when their son was placed in his arms for the first time, that quiet happiness deepened into something richer still.
Frederick named his son Theodore, after the grandfather he would never know, and Frederick prayed he would be able to raise young Teddy with the same strength of character his namesake possessed.
The boy grew quickly—bright, curious, with questions that multiplied as the years passed. Frederick was constantly amazed at his son’s thirst for knowledge that grew as quickly as his height did.
But then England began to appear in those questions more often than Frederick liked. It came first in small ways—in the stories other boys told, in the departures of those who were sent away for schooling, in the quiet awareness that there was a wider world beyond the one he knew.
In time, it became something more difficult to ignore.
Frederick resisted it.
He had chosen his life. He had made his peace with it.
There was nothing for him in England now—nothing but complications, old wounds, and a society that would not look kindly upon the woman he loved.
He would not expose Anya to that. He would not see her diminished by the judgments of those who neither knew her nor deserved to.
And yet—
Life does not always permit a man to hold fast to the course he has chosen.
Anya’s decline came quietly at first, so slight that it might have been dismissed as fatigue. But the simple ailment that began shortly after Teddy’s twelfth birthday did not pass. It lingered, deepened, and before long there could be no mistaking the truth of it.
His wife was sick.
There was nothing to be done.
No remedy to be found.
No reprieve to be hoped for.
Frederick refused to accept that. He sought out doctor after doctor, apothecary after apothecary, surgeon after surgeon. They all said the same thing: Anya was dying.
In desperation, Frederick turned to the local native doctors.
Multiple Vaidyas and Hakims were consulted, but even their Ayurveda and Unani medicine was no match for the disease that seemed to be eating Anya from the inside out.
Each morning, she awoke with new evidence of her disease’s progression: a new lump here, a new swelling there.
And each night, she suffered.
The pain came in waves at first, sharp and sudden, stealing her breath and leaving her trembling in their wake.
Frederick could do little but remain beside her, holding her hand, murmuring what comfort he could while feeling the terrible inadequacy of it.
In time, even that small relief failed her.
Sleep became fitful and brief, broken by quiet cries she tried, and failed, to suppress.
Laudanum and other draughts were prescribed in an effort to ease her suffering, and though they afforded some measure of relief, they could not wholly quiet the pain that gripped her.
Even so, she took them sparingly, often refusing more than the smallest portion. She did not like the heaviness they brought—the dulling of her thoughts, the distance they placed between herself and those she loved. What time remained to her, she wished to meet with a clear mind and open heart.
She would not have her husband and her son remember only a shadow of her, softened and obscured by medicine, when she might instead give them the truth of herself—however fleeting, however frail.
But there were moments—when she thought him asleep, or when the pain grew too great for concealment—when he heard her whisper prayers into the darkness, her voice soft and unsteady as she pleaded not for healing, but for strength enough to endure.
Towards the end, even that changed.
Her prayers grew shorter. Quieter.
More desperate.
She no longer asked for relief from the suffering alone, but for release from it altogether—for an end to the pain that neither medicine nor devotion could ease.
And Frederick, who had once believed himself capable of bearing anything, found that there was nothing more unbearable than listening to the woman he loved beg God for death, and knowing that such a prayer might, in truth, be the only mercy left to grant.
Frederick bore it as best he could, though the helplessness of it weighed upon him more heavily than any hardship he had known before.
He had survived jungle fever and its occasional relapses, rebuilt his life from nothing, carved out a place for himself in a land not his own—but this was beyond him.
And in the end, when her strength had nearly left her, she took his hand and spoke of only one thing.
“Promise me, Frederick.”
He knelt at her side and took her limp, frail hand in between his. Her fingers were freezing in spite of the summer’s oppressive heat.
“Anything, my love.”
“Teddy… you must take him…”
“Take him? Take him where?”
“To England. To your home.”
Frederick shook his head at once. “No.”
“You must,” she insisted, her voice faint but unwavering. “He deserves more than this. He deserves what is his.”
“He has everything,” Frederick said, though even as he spoke, he knew the argument was a poor one. “He has us.”
“He will only have you,” she whispered, her fingers tightening weakly around his. “And so, you must give him the rest.”
There were tears in her eyes then—not for herself, but for the child she would soon leave behind.
“In England,” she said, “he will not be alone. He will have family, and he will make something of himself.”
Frederick closed his eyes.
He did not wish to hear it.
Did not wish to accept what she was asking of him.
“You must not keep him from it,” she said softly. “Not for my sake.”
“Anya—”
“Promise me, Frederick.”
“I… I promise.”
It was as though that promise had been the last thread binding her to this world.
She died that night.
Frederick had thought himself acquainted with grief. He had believed he understood its weight, its persistence, the way it settled into a man and made its home there.
He had not.
Not like this.
There was no preparing for the silence that followed.
No preparing for the absence of her—her voice, her presence, the quiet steadiness that had come to anchor his days.
The house felt altered beyond recognition, as though some essential part of it had been removed, leaving everything else diminished in its wake.
He tried to bear it as he had been taught as an Englishman: with restraint, with composure. With the same rigid control he had once believed to be a mark of strength.
But grief does not yield so easily to discipline.
And in the stillness of the night, when the house lay quiet and there was no one to observe him, he heard his son weeping.
Softly at first.
Then with a helplessness that no child should ever be made to endure.
Frederick lay awake, staring into the darkness, his own throat tight with the effort not to join him. But the sound cut too deeply, and at last, he turned his face into the pillow and wept as well—silently, fiercely, as though the act itself might ease something that would not, in truth, be eased.
But the long hours passed, eventually giving way to days. And in time, the gaping hole in his heart began to give way, making room for emotions he thought he would never feel again.
And one morning he awoke and remembered, for the first time, the promise his wife had wrested from him.
His mind immediately rebelled; it felt simply too impossible to keep his word.
At first, there were reasons—reasonable ones. They were in mourning. Theodore was too young. There were arrangements to be made, affairs to be settled, inquiries to be sent.
Time, he told himself. We need more time.
But time passed, and still, he did not act.
Until one day, a letter arrived in response to his inquiries about his brother.
And he discovered, to his horror, that his brother had no son. The estate, he knew, was entailed. And since he, Frederick Bennet, was long presumed dead and without issue, everything would be left to his uncle’s progeny.
Frederick read the letter once.
Then again.
Slowly.
Carefully.
And with each word, the weight of what he had been avoiding settled more firmly upon him. If he did not return, the results would be devastating to more than just himself.
His son would not only be deprived of a family, but of an inheritance. The chance to be master of an estate.
Moreover, his nieces—his daughter—would be left to the mercy of a man whose ancestors lived on spite and jealousy.
There was no question anymore; to England, he and Teddy would go.
He sold everything: his interests, his ventures, his carefully built position—all of it.
His partners protested at first, then argued, and then, with increasing urgency, fought to persuade him to remain.
“You have no equal,” one of them insisted. “You will not find such success again.”
Frederick did not doubt it. But success, he had learned, was not always measured in profit. “No,” he said simply. “I shall not.”
And that was the end of it.
Passage was secured. Arrangements were made. What could be carried was gathered; what could not, was left behind.
And at last, he and his son boarded the ship and left the glistening sands of India for the dreary clouds of England. Along the way, he realized that his arrival would occur nearly a week after Elizabeth would reach her majority—at least, according to the actual day she was born.
This filled him with relief. Whatever truth might come to light—whatever scandal might arise—she would at least stand upon her own footing, less vulnerable to the consequences of it.
It was a poor consolation, but it was something.
He rested his hands upon the rail, his gaze fixed upon the shifting water. He had made his choice. Whether it was the right one or not, only time would tell.
And as the ship bore him steadily toward England, Frederick Bennet could do nothing but look out upon the restless sea and wonder what awaited him—and whether his return would mend what had been broken, or only fracture it further.