Chapter Four
After a peaceful day left to themselves, a day of many tearful embraces and painful speculations, Elizabeth and Jane had accepted for a certainty that they were twin sisters.
It was not pleasing to consider that they had been borne out of wedlock to Miss Fanny Bates and Captain Thomas Bennet, but their obsessive examination of the portraits made it impossible to deny.
They were both in want of further answers, and each a little vexed with their respective guardians for all that had been concealed from them.
“Oh! But Lizzy – something wonderful has just occurred to me,” Jane cried as they took their supper on trays in their shared bedchamber.
“Lady Gresham is my aunt, which means that she is your aunt, as well.”
“Oh! I had not thought of that! But perhaps she knows something we have not already deduced.” Elizabeth grinned widely. She had an aunt – and a rather remarkable one! “I cannot think it a mere coincidence that we are here at the same time.”
Jane gasped, then nodded energetically. “How wonderfully devious of her – she wished us to discover one another! She even managed to arrange it so that we might meet and form a favorable impression of one another before we knew of our resemblance.”
“Well, I hardly think she can be credited for the damage to my father’s carriage, which caused my late arrival.”
“No, Lizzy, but had you arrived earlier, I would have been absent, for she pressed the Campbells and I to spend the whole day seeing the sights of Weymouth. All of her other guests, aside from yourself, had gone up to dress by the time we returned. When we did meet, I liked you at once, but when we removed our masks, I was so shocked, and even a little frightened.”
“Lady Gresham has undoubtedly acted with very helpful guile,” Elizabeth said with a laugh. “She did look very well pleased last evening when we agreed to walk out this morning and speak together.”
“She cannot reasonably take credit for making it rain, but I am glad we have been sequestered together,” Jane said. “And I am sorry it took me an entire week to come round. Diana was so upset, and I allowed her to persuade me to keep a distance from you.”
“I confess I shall resent your friend for that, but never you, Jane. It has been shocking indeed to make such discoveries; I cannot fault you for hesitating.” Elizabeth embraced her sister again and then smiled impishly at her. “What do you think Lady Gresham meant, in bringing us together?”
“Well, surely she wished us to uncover the truth. But it does seem rather a pity that our knowing of one another’s existence only brings the sorrow of being denied a lifetime of sisterhood.”
“And a lifetime of only knowing one of our parents, without knowing them to be our parents,” Elizabeth said with a heavy sigh. “But I suppose we might contrive to visit one another from time to time.”
“I could tell the Campbells I have discovered you to be a distant relation – that is not quite a lie. But I do not suppose I should ever be able to visit you at your home, not until you are married someday, and your home is elsewhere.”
The two sisters sat in contemplative silence for a few minutes more, and then Elizabeth was struck with a very wicked, very wonderful idea. “Jane! I have it! What if you could visit our father, and I could visit our mother?”
“How? Oh! Oh no, surely not….”
Elizabeth stood and began to pace, fidgeting with her hands as she hurried to speak as quickly as her devilish impulses raced through her mind.
“We have two choices before us, Jane. The third option, that we part ways at the end of this house party with no assurances of ever meeting again, is something I refuse to consider; I am far too fond of you already. So, either I tell Father and you tell our mother that we have found each other, and we put ourselves at the mercy of their giving permission for us to occasionally visit – or… we take matters into our own hands. I shall always be in favor of relying on my own wits and wiles.”
“You mean… run away? I could never! And surely you would not….”
“Not run away – but we might exchange places. Look.” Elizabeth unpinned her loose chignon and held a tuft of her hair against Jane’s face.
“I have come to suspect Mrs. Hill had been dying my hair a darker shade all these years, for I recall having golden hair as a child. Indeed, it was not long after visiting Highbury that my hair began to darken; my father must have been pained by my resemblance to our mother, and either he instructed Mrs. Hill to dye my hair, or she took that liberty herself, for his sake. But since I have come here and been told by Sally that Mrs. Hill’s hair soap smells so foul, and I have subsequently ceased to use that decoction, my hair has gone golden in a week! ”
Jane stood, and now she began to pace and fidget as Elizabeth reclined in a comfortable chair, smugly satisfied with her scheme, which Jane appeared to be seriously considering.
Finally, she turned to Elizabeth. “So, when we leave this house party, I would go to Netherfield, and you would go to Highbury?
I had already considered declining the invitation to accompany the Campbells to Ireland, so that I might see Frank when he has occasion to visit his father in Highbury.
I suppose I could forgo that pleasure – ‘tis hardly a certainty, anyhow. But surely they would only take immediate measures to switch us back.”
“Only if they know us to be ourselves,” Elizabeth declared, vastly proud of her own devilry.
Jane gasped. “I would pretend to be you? And you would say that you are me? It would never work! We are too different! Besides, it is rather like lying.”
“I shall be obliged to practice at the pianoforte, for your playing is far superior to mine, and you would need to use Mrs. Hill’s special dyed soap on your hair….”
Jane grasped at her loose braid and wrinkled her nose. “You said it smelled foul.”
“Nobody else has ever said so but Sally,” Elizabeth said with a wave of her hand.
“It could work, Jane. I can teach you everything you need to know to give a convincing performance, and you could do the same for me. Since we are not ill, and have all our wits about us, we can use our time in quarantine to become as intimately acquainted as identical twins have every right to be. And as to the deception of it, I have no qualms whatsoever in playing a little trick on those who have deceived us all our lives.”
“I suppose I cannot argue with that.” Jane furrowed her brow, resumed her pacing for a few minutes more, and then came to perch on the arm of Elizabth’s chair.
“But how would we get home? We should have to switch back eventually, for I do not want to be you forever. I mean no offense, but I hardly wish you to marry Frank, and I doubt you will wish me to have your fortune.”
“It need not be forever! Think of it as a little holiday. Our birthday is six weeks away; we might find some occasion to switch back by then. We could each ask our guardians to take us to London – no, I know! Lady Gresham will help us manage it; clearly our aunt has a mind for intrigue.”
When Lady Gresham came to the dower house to look in on them the next morning, it was clear that she anticipated some diverting intrigue. She expressed her relief that the two young ladies had not fallen ill and then waited with a twinkle in her eye for them to confess what they had deduced.
Elizabeth stirred her tea slowly, rather relishing the prolonged silence and the accompanying suspense.
Jane sat beside her, content to let her bolder sister take the lead.
Elizabeth sipped her tea, set it down, ate an entire tea cake as Lady Gresham pursed her lips to conceal her bemused impatience, and then finished her tea.
“That was most refreshing, Aunt.” Elizabeth smirked at Lady Gresham as the import of that final word hung over them all.
Lady Gresham responded with a slow, broad smile. “How much have you managed to sort out, my dear?”
“We comprehend that we are the twin daughters of Fanny Bates and Thomas Bennet, my guardian. We have every hope of hearing the rest from you, dearest Auntie.”
“Ah, then you have spared me from breaking one old promise, and cleared the way for me to satisfy another. I promised your parents that I would never reveal their identities to you, and I have kept my word.”
Jane grasped Elizabeth’s hand with a look of excitement at this confirmation of their conjectures. “Then it is true?”
Lady Gresham refreshed their tea, her youthful face set in a look of deep contemplation.
“When my first husband was on his deathbed, poor man, I promised I would look after you both – that I would ensure you were always well treated and well provided for – and above all, that I would see you reunited when you come of age. I have been a little precipitous, but I felt I had to act before the Campbells carried you off to Ireland, Jane.”
Elizabeth felt a wave of emotion swell within her.
The guesses and speculations she had shared with Jane were shocking indeed, but to see it all confirmed in the set of Lady Gresham’s countenance made it truly a reality.
A thousand questions burned in her chest, but she managed to keep her composure.
“And your promise to our parents, does it prevent you from telling us… how it all happened?”
Lady Gresham smiled again at Elizabeth. “I might tell you the tale of two nameless strangers my first husband once knew. A young lady he had known since her infancy, who grew to be a great beauty of her village in Surrey, fell in love with a soldier when a regiment of the militia was quartered near her home. She had an elder half-sister who was also courted by a handsome, charming captain, and that captain received an inheritance that allowed him to marry the elder sister. The younger sister had little hope of the same good fortune, for her beau was a second son with only his wits to rely upon.”