Chapter 11 #2
As Mr Collins introduced each person, Caroline looked at them.
When he mentioned the next name, her eyes followed.
That was until he mentioned Miss Elizabeth.
She froze, her mouth open; she was looking at a younger copy of the Dowager Duchess of Leeds.
She looked at the Dowager Mrs Bennet and then at the one next to Miss Elizabeth, Miss Mary.
They had similar colouring and shades of their eyes to Miss Elizabeth.
However, the shapes of the eyes, the nose, the colours of the hair and eyes, and their stature were not the same, whereas all of those were an exactness to Lady Amelia Osborne.
Caroline knew she was staring, but she could not pull her eyes away.
“Miss Bingley, do I have a blemish on my face?” Elizabeth asked impertinently.
“No, Miss Elizabeth, you have no blemish. I apologise for staring, but you look very much like the younger version of a lady I met this past summer.” Caroline wanted to ask if Miss Elizabeth was born to the Bennets, but she knew not how without offending everyone in the room.
She noted that Miss Elizabeth had lost some colour, as had all four adult Bennets, while the rest in the room looked rather confused.
That was until Bingley took a long look at Miss Elizabeth.
His eyes had been pulled to the beauty who was Miss Bennet.
She was tall, willowy, had golden blonde hair and the bluest of eyes, and was prettier than any woman he had seen.
He pulled his eyes from her to look at the lady at whom Caroline was staring.
“Oh my! I know why my sister looks at you so, Miss Elizabeth. You look much like the Dowager Duchess of Leeds, or, I wager, how she would have looked at the same age,” Bingley stated.
“Are you perhaps related to the Osbornes since you look so similar to Her Grace?” Bingley looked at Mr Bennet, who looked like he was about to cast up his accounts. “What am I missing?”
“Bennet, Fanny, Aunt Beth, and Penelope, why are you all so affected by what Bingley and Miss Bingley have said?” Collins enquired.
“We have no relatives who are named Osborne,” James stated indignantly.
“You are a Bennet, James; you do not,” Elizabeth said hollowly, “but I am not, and I could very well be related to that family.”
“Of course, you are a Bennet, Lizzy!” James exclaimed.
“You have always been my sister,” Jane insisted.
“This is illogical,” Mary added.
Kitty just looked lost and confused.
“Collins, we had thought to talk to you later and ask advice, but it seems that the conversation needs to happen now,” Bennet managed.
He looked at Fanny. “We should have told the rest of our children the same day we informed Lizzy. Fanny, unless you object, I think all of the children should remain here.”
Unable to speak, Fanny nodded her agreement.
“For those who do not know, in August 1791, Fanny and I lived in the town of Grantham in the North Riding of Yorkshire.
My father and mother, and brother, Henry, and Penelope here lived at Longbourn while I was a tutor.
My father and brother were called home to God after a terrible carriage accident.
As soon as we received the epistle telling us what had occurred, we began to pack and left Grantham the next day, which was the fifth day of August 1791.
“We made good time, and at some point on that first day of travel, we broke the journey at an inn in the town of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. Any of you who know Fanny are aware that she loves to walk, and especially in forested areas. There was a forest a half mile from the inn, and while Nurse and I kept an eye on Jane and James as they played, Fanny walked in the woods…” Bennet told how the carriage, the dead driver, and finally the babe, whom they named Elizabeth Rose, were found.
Lastly, he mentioned the note and what it had caused them to believe.
Bennet had to fight to keep speaking, as he could see Jane, Mary, and Kitty holding onto their mother, tears flowing freely. James was standing behind Fanny, attempting to look stoic as one hand rested on his mother’s shoulder.
“Father, when did you tell Lizzy, and why did she not tell us?” James asked while his father was preparing to speak again.
Caroline Bingley would not say anything; however, she could not help but remember her childish dream of finding the suo jure duchess.
Perhaps she had, but nothing was certain yet.
Why had she not asked Lady Amelia if her daughter had any unique marks to identify her?
Caroline realised the question would have been improper, so she was pleased she had not done so.
“We only told Lizzy on her last birthday, and we instructed her that she was not allowed to inform you until we said otherwise. Now that Miss Bingley has seen the likeness to Lady Amelia Osborne, it has made it urgent to tell you.” Bennet paused.
“Now I must make an admission. When I read about the Duke of Leeds’s death in an early February edition of The Times of London, I began to suspect we had been wrong in our assumptions regarding who wrote the note. I selfishly told myself I was wrong.”
“Bennet, do you have the note?” Collins enquired.
“Aye, I do. Allow me to go collect it.” Bennet stood and made his way to the study and extracted the part of the message—the one Fanny had found on the dead criminal—that he kept in the safe. He returned to the drawing room.
Even though he had not seen a note from her since before she and Mr de Bourgh were executed, Collins identified the hand. He passed the paper to his wife.
“This is in the late Mrs de Bourgh’s hand!” Ophelia exclaimed.
“Now, it is for me to tell you a tale,” Collins stated.
“The de Bourghs were suspected of having a hand in the kidnapping of Lady Bethany Anne Elaine Osborne because her birth removed the then Sir Lewis de Bourgh as the heir presumptive to the fourth-richest dukedom in the realm.
There was no concrete proof, but the suspicions were so strong that His Majesty stripped Sir Lewis and Lady Catherine of their titles.
In addition, Mr de Bourgh and any of his line were irrevocably removed from the line of succession.
“Proof came one night soon after the royal decree appeared in the papers when Mr de Bourgh confessed all to me when he was deep in his cups. The day the Duke of Leeds and the Earls of Matlock and Holderness, accompanied by a detachment of the Royal Guard came to arrest them, an argument between the two criminals was overheard where they each blamed the other for their failed scheme. To avoid a scandal, they were quietly convicted of treason and executed at the Tower.”
Collins paused as he looked about the room and settled on Fanny. “You discovered Lizzy in a carriage drawn by a single horse in the forest near Gainsborough, did you not?”
“I did,” Fanny stated shakily.
“One of the late duke’s men managed to get a shot off.
From what I was told, the criminal was struck in the back and died of his wounds.
The man in the woods was named Jim Younge.
His sister-in-law worked as a nursemaid at Kiveton Park, the estate where Lady Bethany was born.
She was told that the babe was to be ransomed, so she assisted, but on the condition the girl would not be harmed.
She was murdered for her trouble. The man’s brother, who was married to the murdered woman, provided his brother’s name and identified his body.
” Collins stopped speaking and allowed his words to sink in.
“Am I this ‘Lady Bethany’?” Elizabeth asked.
“I think you are, but I do not know what, if anything, can prove it,” Collins returned.
Elizabeth’s hand shot to her left ear. “I have a birthmark.”
“God forgive me, I was so wrong about who wanted to harm Lizzy,” Fanny wailed. “If we had remained and sent word that we had found a babe, Lizzy would have been restored to her parents right away. We stole sixteen years.”
“Mamma, you stole nothing. You saved my life!” Elizabeth insisted. “As Cousin Clem said, there is no proof I am Bethany Osborne. Even if it is proved that I am this Lady Bethany…”
“A suo jure duchess,” Caroline interjected.
“And a duchess, as Miss Bingley says, I will gain more family, but I will never agree to give you up. I care not if it is not by blood, but you are my family, and I love every one of you, even James,” Elizabeth added to lighten the mood. “Besides, if I am a duchess, who will gainsay me?”
“And we will never give you up as our sister, Lizzy!” Jane exclaimed as James, Mary, and Kitty nodded emphatically. “No matter your title and rank, you will always be our Lizzy.”
Hearing Lizzy’s declaration, Fanny, Beth, Penelope, and Bennet felt much better.
They could not believe the birth family would be so cruel as to cut them out of Lizzy’s life even without her determination.
If they attempted such, they would discover that Lizzy could be as obstinate as she was intelligent.
“Collins, how do we proceed?” Bennet queried.
“If memory serves, the Matlocks and Holdernesses are Lady Bethany’s godparents.
I will write to Lord Matlock. I am certain if there is a way to identify Lady Bethany, they will know how.
I believe they will want to establish the identity beyond any doubts before they inform the Dowager Duchess of Leeds.
They would not want to raise her hopes only to have them dashed. ”
“In that case, please use the desk in my office. We will send the missive by express,” Bennet allowed.
Even though her identity had not been confirmed, Elizabeth had to endure much ‘Her Grace’ teasing from her sisters and brother.
Once Collins’s letter was on its way to Seaview House, the Darcy’s house near Brighton where the Fitzwilliams and Darcys were until the end of July, Bennet sat down and wrote first to Gardiner and then a note to Phillips.