Chapter 8
It was the fourth day of March that Lady Anne Darcy delivered a daughter whom she and Robert decided to name Georgiana Bethany.
Elaine and Amelia had both attended her at Pemberley along with the midwife, the housekeeper, Mrs Reynolds, Lady Anne’s lady’s maid, and two other maids who were ready to carry away dirty linens and return with clean ones as needed.
Little Lady Georgiana came into the world quite calmly, quite the opposite of how Bethie had been on the day of her birth. Everyone knew that Bethie, if she still lived, would be five years old on the morrow.
As hard as it was for Amelia to see Anne bring a daughter into the world, she pushed her grief aside in order to be strong for her best friend.
When she had held her goddaughter—she and Elaine had been asked to be godmothers and Reggie her godfather—for the first time, Amelia had wanted to cry over her stolen daughter whom she had not been able to hold since the day she was kidnapped.
The fact that all those who had conspired to harm Bethie were no longer in the mortal world did not change the constant ache in Amelia’s heart that she felt for her missing daughter.
It was now one day shy of five years since Bethie had been born, and no word, no trace of her; nor was a body ever found.
In dark moments, Amelia would tell herself that knowing Bethie was dead would be easier to bear than the questions which swirled around in her head with the not knowing.
Even though Francis hid his pain behind a mask, she was well aware that her husband felt the loss of Bethie every bit as keenly as she did.
The Duke of Leeds sat waiting in Holderness’s study with the expectant father and Matlock. When Elaine had told them a healthy daughter had been born, Leeds felt a stab of envy in his heart. Of course, he did not begrudge Holderness and Anne their joy, but it brought his loss into painful relief.
Even though he and Amelia had not discussed the tragic subject, Leeds was fully aware that the morrow would be Bethie’s fifth birthday.
The fact that all those who had partaken in the plot to harm his daughter were in hell, perhaps except for de Bourgh, who had repented and taken last rites before he met the executioner’s axe, was cold comfort to the sense of loss which was always Leeds’s companion.
He was aware that once he was called home, the crown would wait fourteen years to find Bethie before the dukedom was declared extinct.
He did not think he would go to his final reward for some decades yet, and all Leeds could do was to pray his daughter would be found, one way or the other, before then.
When a beaming Holderness entered the study, his daughter in his arms, Leeds exclaimed over Lady Georgiana as he was expected to do, but seeing a Darcy daughter made a small piece of his heart die as he thought about what he had lost.
William Darcy, Viscount Conyers, was beyond pleased he was no longer an only child.
He knew that his parents had wished for more children since shortly after his own birth.
Hence, he was as happy for his parents as he was for himself.
When he looked to the future, he saw himself playing with Georgiana and, when she was old enough, teaching her to ride alongside Father.
Two of the three Fitzwilliam siblings were present.
Andrew would only start his journey home on the second Monday of March to arrive before Easter on the final Sunday of the month.
Richard was pleased for his Aunt Anne, Uncle Robert, and Cousin William, while Anne Fitzwilliam was grateful that she would no longer be the only female child, or the youngest one, in the family.
After they broke their fasts, the two Fitzwilliam children and the eldest Darcy offspring had their horses saddled for a nice ride.
When Richard turned twelve, he had been presented with a gelding, which was the same for William when he turned that age.
Anne, who was not quite nine yet, rode a small cob.
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December 1798
Shortly after Georgiana Darcy was born, Lady Amelia and Lord Francis Osborne decided that there were too many bad and sad memories at the estate from where Bethie had been taken, so they closed Kiveton Park and moved the ducal seat to Hornby Castle in the northern part of Yorkshire.
Hornby Castle had become Leeds’s property on his marriage to Amelia[6].
The Castle was a very grand structure with parts of it covered by ivy.
It made the manor house at Kiveton Park look small, and that house was as large as Pemberley’s.
The park was also far larger; it did contain trees, but not the type of stands as the other estate had which had allowed the dastard who took Bethie to hide.
Part of the way Leeds coped with the loss and not knowing what had happened to their daughter was to throw himself into estate work when he was home, and to dedicate as much time as possible to the House of Lords when it was in session.
He did not love his Amelia any less, but the grief they both carried had built a wall between them so that the sadness was only highlighted when they were in company together.
In the summer of 1798, Leeds did more and more manual work, which included clearing brambles. He did not make sure his arms were covered, eschewed wearing gloves, and ignored the cuts and scratches he received from the thorns and other things with which he was working.
At first, Leeds ignored the red rash which had begun to form on his lower legs. As he did not want to worry Amelia, he said nothing to her, and as they had stopped sharing a bed a few years past, she never had occasion to see his legs.
It was not until a fiery, red, raised rash, one that was firm and warm to the touch, was all over his legs and, in the last day or two, had appeared on his face, that Leeds decided it was time to seek medical counsel.
He was in London while Amelia was at Hornby Castle.
Thus, she did not see the rash on his face.
With permission from His Majesty, Leeds was seen by the elite physician, Mr William Heberden, the younger, who was doctor to King George III.
Mr Heberden diagnosed the condition as erysipelas or ‘St Anthony’s Fire’.
He told the duke that there was no known cure[7] and that his only hope was that the disease would run its course without too much harm.
The physician did warn that, based on what he saw, the Duke of Leeds had a very serious case of the infection.
In mid-December he retired to Leeds House in St James’s Square—he had renamed Winchester House to Leeds House on the completion of the rebuild in late 1793.
Leeds House in Portman Square was renamed Osborne House, and once Christmas had passed, he had his secretary write to his wife to tell her about his illness and to request her presence in London.
Lady Amelia Osborne arrived in London on the first Friday in January 1799.
Travel from northern Yorkshire with the cold and snow had been very slow, but Amelia had been determined to come to her husband’s side.
She was beyond shocked to see how much her husband was ailing.
Rather than berate him for hiding his illness from her, she took charge of the house and made sure that anything which could be done for her husband’s comfort was done.
The distance between them was forgotten, and while Lady Amelia concentrated on nursing her husband, her grief over her stolen daughter was pushed to the side.
Mr Heberden called twice each week and sadly he had no good news to deliver. Once he saw the fluid-filled blisters and the red spots, some of them bleeding, all over His Grace’s body as they neared the end of January, he knew that the duke would not survive without a miracle from on High.
No such miracle was granted. On the final day of January 1799, two hours before midnight, Lord Francis Osborne, the fifth Duke of Leeds, breathed his last. With his death, the countdown of fourteen years to discover his heir began.
With the Fitzwilliams and Darcys for support, as well as a small contingent of royal representation, Lady Amelia accompanied her late husband’s body back to Hornby Castle, where he was the first Duke of Leeds laid to rest in the crypt below the church at the new ducal seat.
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In the middle of the first week of February 1799, Bennet was seated in his study when Hill delivered the post, which included the latest edition of The Times of London.
He did not expect to discover anything overly interesting—that was until he reached an article on the second page about the death of the Duke of Leeds.
That in and of itself was not diverting, but his heart almost stopped as he read the following:
… with the death of His Grace, Lord Francis Osborne, if his stolen daughter, Lady Bethany Anne Elaine Osborne, is not discovered alive in the next 14 years, then the dukedom will be in abeyance.
As the patents allow the title to flow through the female line, if Lady Bethany is in fact alive, then she is Her Grace, the suo jure Duchess of Leeds…
“No!” Bennet exclaimed aloud. “They cannot be speaking of our Lizzy?”
As he said the last, Bennet was questioning whether he should contact someone to investigate and see if Lizzy was in fact this Lady Bethany. Could it be that the note he and Fanny read, which was locked in the safe in his study, had been from someone other than her parents?
As quickly as he had the thought, he pushed it aside.
It may be selfish, but Lizzy was as much a part of the family as any of their other children.
Not only was she an integral part of the Bennets, but she was also the heart of the family.
How could he risk his family’s misery if Lizzy were taken from them?
Although neither of them showed it, she was a favourite to both Fanny and him.