Chapter Eliza Brandon #3
She let him take her, right there against the ivy-covered wall where she used to explore as a child.
And as her legs went around his waist, as he forced her back up against the cold stone, she gripped his red coat and let herself imagine that he was Kit.
That he had come back from his war and saved her from this loneliness, this desolate excuse for a life.
Afterward, she learned quickly that no one comes to save you.
That when you end up pregnant with another man’s child, and your husband finds out and beats you to the point of almost killing you, then throws you out onto the streets, while keeping your fortune and your home, you must navigate that yourself.
For the briefest of moments, she had felt free.
Yes, she had no money, no prospects, but she hadn’t worried.
For the first time in her life, she had free will.
She had a choice. And when she gave birth to a little girl a few months later, she was confident enough to name her Eliza, after herself, because men shouldn’t be the only ones allowed to honor themselves in their progeny.
Because women’s survival was just as important.
But Eliza quickly learned that the world wasn’t designed that way.
Where she thought she would have a choice, she soon found only condemnation.
The responsibility of all those choices that had been made for her now landed squarely at her feet, and all she could do was take what menial jobs she could find to keep her and her daughter out of the poorhouse.
But then the cough arrived in her chest, and even that became impossible.
She wasn’t Eliza Brandon, lady of Delaford House. She was just Eliza. And she was dying.
The physician said it was consumption, and by the time he came to see her at the small room she had rented in the East End of London, he said it was too far advanced to offer anything but prayers.
Two weeks later she could barely get out of bed to take care of her baby, let alone find work.
The bills accrued quickly, but there was nothing to be done.
No one wanted to hire an unmarried woman with a small child, let alone one who was deathly ill.
So she and her baby were hauled off to a debtor’s prison.
When Eliza was a child, she had thought dying young would be romantic somehow, like a character in one of her novels, but that was only because she thought it would always be inspired by romance, the ultimate genuflection to love.
But no, this was just pain and loneliness and fatigue.
A slow atrophy of life in a tiny room with a single bed and one stale meal a day. Not the ending she intended.
That’s where Kit found her, after she had been there for three months.
The sickness had taken hold of her lungs, and she had begun to find blood in her handkerchief after a coughing fit.
She had convinced herself that she would never leave that place when she heard that familiar voice again. “Hello, Eve.”
She used the last bit of her energy to turn her head, and there he was. Standing in the doorway of her dilapidated room.
“Hello, Kit,” she had said, tears already forming in her eyes.
Except he wasn’t her Kit anymore. He was Colonel Christopher Brandon, a moniker that brought with it new creases to his forehead, a sad turn to his lips.
The voice that had always carried a hint of amusement was now grave, and his eyes serious.
Had his military service done that? It had been only a few years, but then, she knew how much a person could go through in that period of time.
Who knows what war and bloodshed he had been forced to witness.
But he had come back to her. She hadn’t asked how, and she didn’t inquire about the swiftness with which he had her out of that place, how much he had paid to clear her debts.
She knew only that he smiled when he held her daughter and made her laugh.
And for the first time in almost two years, Eliza felt hopeful.
A few days later, she woke up here, a cottage north of London.
Being saved was nothing like it was written in her old novels.
What had once seemed so romantic and sweeping was, in reality, quite perfunctory and logical.
Her things were new, but she had no idea from where.
There was a governess watching her daughter, but Eliza didn’t know the woman’s name.
It was all so much better than it had been, but she also understood the motive even if Kit didn’t have the courage to tell her: It was in anticipation for the moment she was gone.
“I want to marry you,” he said one day as he sat beside her bed and held her hand.
She tried to smile, even though she barely had the energy. “I’m still technically married to your brother, you know.”
“Then I will force him to give you a divorce. I don’t care if it takes a hundred years.”
“I fear I don’t have anything close to that left.” She had hoped the words sounded light, like a joke and not a harbinger of doom. But she still felt his breath quiver from where her head rested against his chest.
After a long moment, she looked up and met his tear-lined eyes.
“I want you to take care of little Eliza,” she said. “I know she’s not your daughter, but she should have been and—”
“I already love her as my own,” he said. “She will never know want or pain….”
His voice cracked, and she knew she couldn’t survive it if he did start to cry. Everything else hadn’t broken her, but that just might. So she tried to smile again. This time she managed it.
“All right,” she said softly. “So long as she has agency, too. Let her have choice in her life, Kit.”
It could have been so different. What if he hadn’t gone away? They would have been married, surely. The army would never have stolen that spark from his eye, and she wouldn’t be dying right now. Her little girl would be his.
What if.
“I’m so sorry, Eve,” he had whispered, hugging her tightly, like she might slip away right then. “I should have protected you.”
If Eliza had had the strength, she would have protested. She didn’t want protection. Not from her guardian, or her husband, or the world, which seemed so intent on grounding her down to nothing at all. She only wanted a choice. Was that too much to ask?
Even Eve herself had a choice. And while the world still railed against her for the one she made in the Garden of Eden, in the end, God had still granted her free will to make it.
Was it so wrong to want agency over her life, too?
She was so tired. Even now, she could barely keep her eyes open to spy her daughter as she ran by the window again, her squeals of glee mingling with Christopher’s laughter.
That’s when Eliza considered that thread again. The long one that spanned to the beginning of time, the line she was now throwing forward for her daughter to catch.
Maybe, in that way, it wasn’t an ending. Her Eliza would grow up without her, yes, but perhaps she would have a chance at happiness. At love. At independence and choice and everything she had once dreamed of.
That was the last thought that floated through her mind before she passed, her last breath exiting her lips, and her eyes locked on the window of her room. Hope that the next Eliza would have a chance at discovering her own happily ever after.