Chapter 1 #2
Somewhere out there, an eighteen-year-old girl was looking for her future husband, her soulmate.
And she would never find him, because he was here, with her.
She did not know how she felt about that.
When she was younger, she would not have worried at all.
But now that she had five daughters of her own, daughters who might have marks, she could not help but feel a stab of pain for that unknown girl.
This was quickly followed by worry. What if Thomas met her eventually, as soulmates inevitably met?
What would he do? Would he set her up in a cottage somewhere, right beneath Fanny’s nose?
Would he sneak away to meet her at odd hours?
Take her to the seaside? Go carousing in Town with this unknown woman?
Is that why he had grown so close to Elizabeth? In the wake of a mark appearing, had he clung to whatever was sweet and simple in his life to avoid his confusion? Or was she simply the last child he had desired with his wife?
Now that Fanny thought about it, the appearance of his mark coincided with a cooling of his ardor.
It was well known that marked men were not interested in women who were not their soulmates.
They did not even look at other women. They saw only her.
They lived for her. Breathed for her. Desired only her.
And Francis Bennet was the person standing between her husband and his soulmate.
Is that why Thomas came to her so infrequently? Why the room was always dark and the coupling always swift? Had he been hoping she was her? Imagining it was so?
Suddenly, Francis felt sick. She called for her maid to bring her a basin and there on her marriage bed, a new babe in her arms, she retched and retched and retched, feeling all her vaunted tenacity, all her determination to better herself, seeping out of her with each heave.
Fate had had her say after all. Fanny was never meant to be Mistress of Longbourn.
She had stolen that title from its rightful owner and Fate had punished her by denying her a son.
Thomas Bennet would be the last Bennet at Longbourn, all because Fanny was a greedy upstart who did not wish to wait for her soulmate.
She lay back on the pillows, spent and miserable. Hot tears tracked down her cheeks, fueled by exhaustion and wild emotions she could not contain.
Thus disturbed, she ordered the room next door to be made up and for the first time in eight years of marriage, she moved her things out of the master’s chambers and into her own rooms. She would no longer share a room with Thomas Bennet.
She would not remain in the bed of a man who wished she was someone else.
As Francis settled into her new chamber a few days later, she looked around proudly.
All her scheming and planning had gotten her exactly where she wished to be.
It had only taken a few hours for her altruistic feelings of sympathy and guilt to fade into anger.
She was the wronged woman, after all. Thomas Bennet had married her in good faith.
She had accepted him with the understanding that neither of them were marked.
He may have not had a say in the changing of that fact, but he certainly could have told her when the mark began to appear.
They might have been able to work out the problem together.
Even had they not come to a solution, at least he would have been honest with her.
They would have faced the situation side by side, like a husband and wife ought to do.
Instead, he had let her continue on in ignorance, sharing her bed, filling her with children, and sating his baser needs with her while wishing she were someone else.
Well, no more. She was Francis Gardiner Bennet, the prettiest woman in Meryton. She was second to none, and she would not be treated like a shoddy replacement.
She was no man’s consolation prize.
Thomas Bennet stood in front of the mirror as he removed his shirt, staring at his chest. He was still a young man—only two and thirty—but he felt old in his bones.
Fanny had moved out of their shared chamber; the one they had lived in together for the last eight years.
For the first time, he felt the full weight of his arrogance, his hubris.
What had he been thinking? That he, a thirteen-year-old boy raised on a middling estate in Hertfordshire, would know better than Fate? The conceit! The sheer stupidity!
Even with a fine education and an intelligent mind, he had chosen poorly.
Oh, Fanny was a perfectly decent woman, but after their fourth babe was born, he finally saw her as she truly was.
A woman who had married him solely to improve her station, not because of any particular fondness for him.
He was sure she liked him at least a little, or she had before she saw his mark, but he had no place in her heart.
She had never longed for his company; he doubted she was even attracted to him.
Questions he had long had about his marriage and his wife’s behavior were suddenly answered once he realized she had married him for Longbourn and Longbourn alone.
He sighed. What a fool he had been. His soul mark had come in when he was seven and twenty—only four years after he had married Fanny.
He could have waited. What were four years compared to a lifetime of happiness?
He could have begun truly searching for her when he was thirty.
He could have done it. It would not have been such a very great hardship.
He stared at the red camellia over his heart, wondering who bore the matching mark.
Had he already met her? Was she in Meryton?
Hertfordshire? He thought she must have a knack with flowers for he had never done anything in the garden beyond walking through it.
He felt a throb of pain for her, whoever she was.
She was likely going to assemblies, or even going to Town for the Season, searching for the man who bore a matching mark, but she would never find him.
He would make sure of that. He knew himself enough to know that he was an indolent man. He had not had the stamina to search out a soulmate, but neither did he have the strength to resist one were she to cross his path.
He traced his fingers over the initials on one of the petals. ARD.
Sometimes late at night, when he was alone in his bookroom and staring at the flames in the fireplace, he would imagine what her name might be. Alice Rose? Arabella Rosamund? Perhaps she was foreign like his mother had been and her name was Amandine or Anita or Anya.
Thomas had never been a romantic. He had never daydreamed about a lady’s eyes or her hair or the shape of her mouth. But he found himself wondering about his mysterious soulmate. Picturing her smile, imagining her laugh.
It was Fate, he knew. He had tried to out-maneuver her, but she had had her way in the end. Fate would not be denied.
Now here he stood, alone in his room, his wife and new babe down the corridor, and his head filled with a woman he would never know.
Fate was cruel, indeed.