Chapter 1
She could not understand it, but Elizabeth felt relief and comfort and hugged the woman in closer for a moment, unable to reject such pure emotion as she saw on her face before this woman hugged her.
After a long moment of silence, while all those around them stared, everyone seemed to find their voices at once and began talking over one another.
“Perhaps we should pay attention to the rest of our party for a moment, Miss Bennet.” Lizzy teased her. Jane’s laugh barely hid a sob of relief as she reluctantly acquiesced. They mutually broke the hug, Jane’s smile watery, when Lizzy instead took her hand and squeezed it gently in appreciation.
“Does someone want to enlighten me as to just what is going on?” Lizzy raised her voice in an attempt to get everyone to at least focus, unable to quite check her smile when she heard Miss Bennet’s soft laugh.
Bennet was still staring at her as if he were in a dream, feeling like none of this was real. Elaine knew; she had not a shred of a doubt that Lizzy’s birth family was the Bennets.
“Excuse me for asking you this, Lady Elizabeth,” Jane ventured, “but are you the natural daughter of the Dowager Countess of Matlock?”
“No, Lizzy is not my natural daughter but is truly my daughter in every way that counts. It has never been a secret that Lizzy was a foundling that we adopted,” Elaine stated gently.
Bennet found his voice. “When and where was she found? Also, Lady Elizabeth, would you object if I viewed your cross?” he asked, not wanting to frighten the young lady that he now was on the verge of believing was his daughter.
Elizabeth looked to her mother and Andrew, and both nodded yes.
She removed the cross and handed it to Mr Bennet, watching him closely, and saw that it had the most extraordinary effect on him.
He fell into the nearest chair weeping like he had not wept in many years as he held his mother’s cross in his hands, the very one that Lizzy had been wearing the day that the deranged woman stole her away from him.
Tammy and Jane kneeled by him, while his other children looked on in confusion.
“My brother Richard,” Andrew pointed to Richard, “and I recovered Lizzy in Sherwood Forest on the twentieth of June 1792. The same man that murdered our father had discarded her.” While Andrew was speaking, Richard stuck his head out of the drawing-room and told the butler to have someone summon the Darcys urgently.
“My late father put notices in papers and towns in all of the surrounding shires, even some further afield. There was never a response, so my parents adopted Lizzy and recognised her as their daughter just months after she came to live with us.”
“It was June when our daughter was kidnapped,” Tammy Bennet added while she comforted her husband.
“Good Lord!” Maddie Gardiner exclaimed. “I had just departed Lambton; I assume that the late Earl placed a notice there.”
“He did not,” George Darcy said as he entered the drawing-room, his family in tow.
“I did, and every town that we reached.” He looked at Bennet.
“We met at Bennington Fields when I purchased the mare for my daughter here.” He met Bennet’s stare, none getting in the way as Georgiana made a beeline for Elizabeth.
“I believe you met William when he visited the Bingleys one Easter.” Bennet nodded.
“My wife, Lady Anne Darcy, and that young lady,” he pointed to his daughter now tucked under Elizabeth’s arm, “is my daughter, Georgiana, and the young man behind his mother is my son Alex.”
“So, it was the madwoman’s paramour who took Lizzy away from us. All the clues he left pointed to the south and a departure from the country. Why did he murder the late Earl?” Bennet was trying to assemble the pieces of information he had been craving for over a decade.
As everyone calmed down, Elizabeth sat on a settee with Georgiana on one side and her mother and Anne de Bourgh on the other. Andrew and Marie sat in chairs right next to Georgiana, while Richard and William stood behind Elaine. Elizabeth was thus surrounded by the family that she knew.
Bennet started the recitation with information about the madwoman and her belief that Lizzy was the devil’s spawn because she was a girl and not a boy, including the steps that he took to protect his daughter.
He moved to that horrendous night when his world came to a standstill, the night his Lizzy had been taken.
His wife filled in information about how she and the nursemaid watched over Lizzy to protect her from the deranged woman were drugged.
The story of how they searched for months on end without result was told, and then the unpleasant part of how the deranged woman on her deathbed tried to hurt him by telling him that his precious demon daughter was dead at her hands; as proof, she offered the box that contained a heart.
He told of the relief that he felt when the doctor had told him it was a deer’s heart, not a human one.
Although he knew not where his Lizzy was, he had always felt that she was well.
He finished his part with how, in June of 1799, he had a horrendous feeling that Lizzy was in trouble.
Jane then told them about her dreams, and as she was about to tell them what she heard in her dreams, Elizabeth and William both said: “Help me ‘aney, help me.” All the women were crying, as were most of the men without shame, for this was one of their greatest hopes and their greatest fears culminating before them all.
It amazed them all that Elizabeth had had some sort of inexplicable connection with her birth family for the whole of her life.
It was also the first time that Elizabeth had no doubt who the Bennets were.
Before they continued, the butler was asked to have some maids take the younger Darcy, Gardiner, and Bennet children to the nursery, all of whom left under protest.
Richard started with who he had seen, now known to be Hodges, discarding Lizzy from the carriage, and whipping his horse into a frenzy to leave the area as soon as he saw the Fitzwilliam carriage approach.
Andrew continued with how Lizzy looked similar to the sister they had lost to tragedy, adding how that had in no way influenced their decision to take her home to their parents.
The more that the Fitzwilliams talked, and when Elaine added that Lizzy had been like a breath of fresh air that breathed the life back into Snowhaven, the more Bennet understood just how fortunate his daughter had been to be discovered by such good people.
He knew that his Lizzy was intelligent, but he had no idea it was to the degree that he heard the Fitzwilliams describe. The queen routinely requested that Lizzy play and sing for her, and she had perfect recall after reading something but once!
When they reached the part about George Wickham and his attempted murder, that man made yet more and enormously powerful enemies.
A few hours later, they reached the part of the story about Hodges and his group of criminal cronies.
Bennet knew without a shadow of a doubt that had someone pointed a weapon at his wife and children, he would have done the same thing that the Earl, a hero in his eyes, had done.
“I just remembered something,” Bennet added after the telling was complete.
“About two years ago, possibly less, I received a note from someone demanding ten thousand pounds for information about where Lizzy was. There had been so many that had tried to prey on my grief for their personal gain that I consigned it to the fire. I was to write to the Wild Bull Inn in Packwood. If I had, then maybe the late Earl would be alive,” Bennet lamented.
“You have a trait in common with Lizzy,” Elaine responded. “She, too, likes to take guilt on her shoulders that does not belong to her.” Bennet looked questioningly at his second daughter.
“After Papa was shot, I blamed myself. I thought that my being a Fitzwilliam had caused everything bad that had happened. Mama, Aunt Anne, Uncle George, my brothers, and Will all helped me see that there was nothing I did or could do that would have changed who the bad people were. I think Mama is trying to tell you the same thing, Mr Bennet.” She paused, looked at her mother and then back at Mr Bennet.
“What do I call you? I had a Papa, so neither that nor Father sounds right to me at this time.”
“Lizzy,” Andrew said, “You are the common bond that makes us all family. The Bennets are your family, so they are our family. What do you think, Mr Bennet and Lizzy, if you address your birth father as Uncle…” Andrew did not remember the man’s familiar name in all the confusion of Lizzy’s birth family recognising her.
“Thomas. Uncle Thomas will work. I never expected to see my girl again in my lifetime, so she could address me as she pleases, and it will be music to my ears.”
“I like that, Uncle Thomas.” She looked at Tammy Bennet, “That would make you Aunt Tammy?” she asked, and Tammy nodded happily.
“You are not going to leave us, are you Lizzy?” Georgiana verbalized the fear that had been building in her since the revelations had begun.
“No, Gigi, I am not. I will always be your cousin, that I can promise you,” Elizabeth assured her young cousin, glancing around to make sure all knew she was not to be gainsaid in this promise, and her eyes stilled when she saw Perry and Miss Bennet together.
“Wait a minute,” Elizabeth watched them, noticing how Perry stayed close to her and how solicitous he was being.
“Perry, is there some news that you mayhap need to share with the rest of us?”
“It is not the time yet, Lady Eliz…” Jane was cut off by her younger sister.
“My name is Elizabeth and family and friends address me as Lizzy, ‘aney!” she used the last name by which she had addressed Jane Bennet. As usual, Elizabeth helped to lighten the mood.