Chapter 15
Elizabeth felt very grown up as she just turned fourteen.
In the last year while the family mourned the late patriarch, her womanly curves had been accentuated and if anything, she was more beautiful that she had been before.
For the first number of months, she had done extraordinarily little except be with her mother, brother, sister-in-law, and Anne.
She had thrown off the feelings of guilt completely and was angry at those who had committed the despicable acts.
She was able to place the blame where it belonged.
Knowing that the rest of her birth family had, and possibly still, loved her, filled a hole in her heart that she had not realised existed.
With the information that the murdered Hodges had imparted to his cohorts, the mystery of where she came from had come tantalisingly close to being solved, but it remained just out of reach.
She had maintained her correspondence with Mr Bennet throughout her mourning period, and they planned to meet in November of that year when the family went to London for the first time since the disaster befell them.
The Fitzwilliams and Darcys would be hosted at Netherfield so Elizabeth and her chess-by-post partner would finally get to play one another across a chess board.
The matches were almost split down the middle in terms of wins and losses.
Mr Bennet was one match ahead of Elizabeth, but she was confident that she would win the current game and draw the win-loss total even.
Anne, who would be nineteen later that year, would have her come out in the little season.
By then, the whole family would have emerged from mourning, other than Elaine.
There was a little over a month and a half of half mourning left, and the same period before the still-grieving widow would emerge from full mourning.
The late Earl’s presence was felt everywhere on the estate nowhere more than Andrew felt it in the study that was now his.
In most things that he did in those first few months he always had asked himself what his father would have done.
Most of the time the answer was the same as what he wanted to do anyway, but there were times when Andrew would know that his father would have chosen an older more familiar answer, and in those cases the new master of Snowhaven would follow what he believed was the best path.
Uncle George was available to help him as needed, but he never imposed his help on his nephew, only giving it when specifically requested.
Now, almost a year after his father’s murder, Andrew still thought about his father, but he no longer questioned his own decisions or substituted what he thought that his father may have decided for his own judgement.
The Darcys and the Fitzwilliams would see each other once or twice a month.
Each time that William saw his cousin blooming further and further into womanhood, he had to remind himself that she still had some years to go before she was out, and besides, once she reached that point there was no guarantee that she would love him.
Elizabeth was having the same internal conflict that William was.
Once she came out of deep mourning, she could not help but notice her cousin and it was not just he was handsome; it was as if there was a connection between them that seemed magical.
She was well aware that nothing was possible between them until she came out the year that she would turn eighteen.
Regardless of her feelings and wishes, she did not know if Will still had feelings for her as he did those years ago.
As she thought back a wave of sadness hit her as it was wont to do from time to time as she had memories that included her papa.
She remembered how her mother and father had explained how Will felt and helped her see that she should forgive him.
There was no one else in her life that she enjoyed spending time with.
Elizabeth believed that he would always accept her as she was and never be intimidated by her intelligence.
Richard was still training men, much to his disappointment, and in May of that year he was promoted to Major and became second in command of the training grounds of the Royal Dragoons.
Over the six months of full mourning, he had come home for at least a sennight each six weeks.
Unfortunately for Richard, and fortunately for his family, he was a natural at training men, so that is where General Atherton believed that he would have the most impact.
Andrew and Marie had decided that they would not move into the master suite until the Dowager Countess’s deep mourning year was complete.
After three months, Elaine took the choice out of their hands as she moved into the dower suite in one of the refurbished wings of the castle.
She took her son and daughter-in-law and wordlessly pointed at the master suite and turned and headed to her suite.
Andrew and Marie moved in a sennight later after having the suite reorganised and furnished to meet their needs.
Elaine never tried to countermand any of the new mistress’s orders in the house and also only helped when asked to do so.
Marie never did get to redecorate the mistress suite at Hilldale; that would be up to a future Viscountess Hilldale.
She wisely asked her mother-in-law to join her for tenant visits until she got familiar with all of the tenants and their families and then she changed her request so that Elaine could join her if and when she chose to.
Both Lizzy and Anne got along perfectly well with their sister-in-law and enjoyed spending time with her.
Marie’s mount Aphrodite was delivered to Snowhaven by Perry on his first visit after the funeral, and she, Anne, and Elizabeth would take a good long ride once a week at least. Georgiana, who was eleven, would stay with her cousins for a few weeks at a time whenever she could.
If she had her druthers, she would have stayed with them a lot more.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Just after her footman Hodges murdered her brother, Mrs Fitzpatrick had been extremely nervous when Bow Street Runners were in Packwood, at the Wild Bill Inn, asking questions about Hodges and his co-conspirators.
She read an account in the paper of how Richard had impaled the man with his sabre, doing her a favour as dead men tell no tales.
In the almost eleven months since, she had kept an extremely low profile.
Thanks to that low-life footman of hers, she had come too close for comfort to discovery.
She made sure that her late husband’s by-blow was not allowed out of the house, ordering him locked in his room when her remaining footman could not watch him.
George Wickham could not believe the charmed life that the mongrel seemed to live.
She had escaped twice and was, if the papers were to be believed, hale and healthy.
How he hated her! He would get another chance, and this time he would not miss!
He spent time while locked in his dingy little room drawing up infallible plans to deal with the foundling.
It was nor fair and he would not, could not, let it stand.
He could not accept that she would live a charmed life while he was practically a slave!
He realised that he may have to dispatch the old lady one day to gain his freedom, but the problem would be how to get his hands on her fortune.
She had been very tight lipped as to where she had her money squirrelled away, and Wickham was sure that however much it was, it had to be substantial.
That was a problem for another day; he did agree that they would have to lie low until this latest incident was further in the past.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
At sixteen, Jane Bennet was out in the local Meryton society, but not out in London when she visited her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner at Portman Square.
As much as she knew that her husband hated London and the hypocrites that inhabited society there, Tammy Bennet had succeeded in convincing her husband that in the 1806 or ’07 season that Jane should have an official coming out with a ball hosted at the Gardiner’s residence, as they had a large ballroom that would suit.
Jane had grown more ethereally beautiful as she got older.
She was tall, willowy, blond, with blue eyes, everything that the current fashion considered beautiful.
Unlike many daughters of the Ton, she was as pretty inside as she was out.
Jane spent many a day at the parsonage with Charlotte Pierce and her three-month-old son Christopher Junior, who they called Chris.
Jane hoped that one day when she married that it would be a union like those of her parents and the Pierces.
She had also seen a good example in the marriage of Louisa Hurst, who was visiting Netherfield currently with her baby daughter of almost eight months, Mary.
With many love matches around her she could aspire to nothing less.
She knew that both Franklin Lucas and Charles Bingley, recently returned from his grand tour, thought themselves in love with her, but she did not think of them as more than friends.
If either approached her after her London season, she would have to let them down gently.
As tough as she could be when needed, she hated to hurt anyone needlessly.
She was to travel to London in the next few days to be with Aunt Maddie to help her as she had given birth to her third child, a daughter named May for her late maternal grandmother.
Lilly was now six and loved being a big sister to Eddy, just turned four, but he was a boy.
When her mother gifted her with a baby sister, Lilly was most pleased.