Chapter 10
Because of that decision, Elizabeth sat frozen in place in Papa’s study the day after she had turned sixteen. What she had just been told by Mamma, Papa, Grandmama Beth, and Aunt Penelope could not be true, could it?
She had not been born to Mamma; rather, her mother had found her as a little babe in the woods near the town of Gainsborough, in the county of Lincolnshire.
Who was she? Why had she been alone in the woods and not with the mother and father who bore her?
The questions galloped through her head like Jupiter, her mare, did when she was given her head.
Elizabeth had received her on her fourteenth birthday.
“Why are you telling me this now? Am I to be cast out?” Elizabeth demanded, her question driven by the hurt of discovering she was not a Bennet.
“NO!” Was chorused by all four adults.
Fanny approached her second daughter and threw her arms around her.
“Lizzy, that is the farthest thing from the reality. We decided to tell you when you reached this age so you would know the truth of how you came to us.” She paused and looked Lizzy in the eyes. “You remember everything, do you not?”
“I do,” Elizabeth responded.
“Your father, grandmother, aunts, uncles, and I have known since we all first met you. Have you ever been treated as less than your sisters and brother?” Fanny challenged.
It did not take Elizabeth long to see that had never been the case.
Had she not been told what she had just learnt, she would have never suspected that she was anything but a Bennet by birth like her siblings were.
That realisation allowed Elizabeth to relax and chase the dark thoughts from her head.
She had always been loved, regardless of whose blood flowed through her veins.
“Is that why I am the only one with the birthmark behind my ear?” Elizabeth wondered.
“That is correct, Lizzy,” Penelope replied.
“Do you know why I was alone in the woods?” Elizabeth asked.
“There was no other living human with you when I discovered you; however, I did find…” Fanny revealed that she had found a dead man leaning against a tree and that Lizzy had been on the floor of the carriage with no other to be seen.
“Who was the man, and why was I with him?” Elizabeth pressed.
“Lizzy, we do not know who he was, but we do know he meant you no good. Your mother found this scrap of paper in his one pocket.” Gingerly Bennet handed his daughter the paper with the extremely offensive words scribed on it.
Elizabeth gasped as she read the words:
…the child is in the way. Kill it and make sure the body is found…
“Why would someone want to end my life when I was nothing but a babe? Who could I have hurt? Was the man my father?” As she asked the questions, big tears rolled down Elizabeth’s cheeks.
“Then you saved my life, did you not, Mamma?” She passed the paper to her father so her tears would not damage the vile words written on it.
“I believe I was led to you by God. For some reason, He meant me to find and save you,” Fanny responded. She was also crying because of the pain her daughter was feeling. She pulled Lizzy into a hug again, rubbing her back and rocking her until she calmed.
“Does Jane know? What about James? Have you told Mary and Kitty?” Elizabeth questioned once her eyes were dried off with Papa’s handkerchief.
“Your sisters and brother know none of this. As far as they know, you were born to your mother like all of them were. The fact that in some ways you look like Grandmama Beth, and Mary also looks similar to Mother and somewhat like you, has ensured that no one has ever suspected you are not a Bennet by birth,” Bennet explained.
“Do you know who it was who wanted me murdered?” Elizabeth queried.
The four adults looked at one another. “The suspicion was that your birth parents were the ones who wanted you murdered,” Beth said for all four. She noticed that Fanny and Penelope nodded their agreement, but her son was looking everywhere else he could. “Thomas, what are you not saying?”
“We may have jumped to a wrong conclusion that it was Lizzy’s birthparents who ordered her murder,” Bennet stated with a shaky voice.
“I do not know this for a fact, but what if Lizzy was stolen from her parents, and the one Fanny discovered near the carriage was working for the one who wrote the note? It is in the hand of a female. What female could you think of who would want to end the life of a babe she had carried and birthed? The blanket Lizzy was found in, as well as her gown, was very fine. I was so caught up in how happy we were that I refused to look at any evidence which refuted our conclusion. We left the area without a word about Lizzy to anyone and never looked back.”
“Thomas, do you know something you are not telling us?” Beth demanded.
“Mother, I swear there is nothing I know,” Bennet stated. It was the truth; he was not sure of anything. All he had was a vague suspicion.
“Are you saying it is possible that I was wanted by my parents, and someone else wanted me harmed for a reason we do not know?” Elizabeth enquired. “Is it possible my birthmark will be the thing which would prove who I was then?”
“All that is possible, but Lizzy, do not let your imagination run wild that it will be easy to discover who your birth mother and father are,” Bennet warned.
“Thomas has the right of it,” Beth opined. “It will be very difficult, if not impossible.”
Fanny was shaken to her core. On the one hand, how could she ever give up her favourite daughter, the one whose presence in their lives made everything better?
She still firmly believed that, if it were not for Lizzy’s joining the family, she would never have been blessed with Mary and Kitty.
On the other hand, if they had been wrong about who was trying to harm Lizzy, had they been supremely selfish and deprived a loving mother and father of their child?
She stiffened her spine and looked at everyone in the study.
“When our Collins cousins come to Longbourn in July, we must tell Cousin Clem everything. He is a good and compassionate clergyman, and I am sure he will give us good counsel.” Fanny looked at each adult and challenged them to disagree with her.
“I think that Fanny has the right of it,” Bennet agreed.
“We must discover if we were wrong.” It gave him a reprieve of four months.
His conscience asked how he would feel if Lizzy were Lady Bethany Osborne as mentioned in the newspaper, and his refusal to make enquiries had cost her mother eight more years without her daughter.
He refused to answer that question for himself.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Caroline Bingley was in love. A year previously, the summer of 1806, just after turning nineteen, she had joined Charles when he travelled to Rosings Park, Mr Fitzwilliam’s estate.
Also in attendance were the Dowager Duchess of Leeds, the Earl and Countess of Matlock, Viscount Hilldale, Miss Fitzwilliam, the Earl and Countess of Holderness, Viscount Conyers, and Lady Georgiana.
Had her mother been in the mortal world, she would have sung paeans about her children being in company with so many high-ranking nobles.
Mavis Bingley had been taken by an apoplexy some two years past. Caroline was very sorry her mother had gone to her final reward, as she had loved her mother as a daughter would.
However, she did not miss her late mother’s harangues about how she had to raise herself and, by association, the family, in society.
If she found a man from high society she could love and respect, and he could do the same with regard to her, then she would rise in society.
If chusing one who she could love and respect was disrespecting her late mother’s wishes that she only chuse a man with an eye to societal advancement regardless of her feelings for him; so be it.
Caroline had enjoyed those first weeks at Rosings Park, and she and her siblings had quickly understood that as long as they did not fawn over the nobles, they were very pleasant to be around.
It did not take long before Caroline was befriended by Miss Fitzwilliam.
She was four years Caroline’s senior and being courted by the young Earl of Granville.
The courtship was postponed because the earl’s father had been very ill for the past three months and was not expected to live much longer.
As soon as the year of mourning was complete, they would move forward.
It did not take long before they were addressing one another by their familiar names.
Even though Lady Georgiana was only ten and rather shy, she was often in company with Anne and Caroline.
In the first week of August, the Dowager Duchess of Leeds departed to make the long journey back to Hornby Castle in Yorkshire. Less than a sennight later, the Collins family returned to Hunsford after visiting family in Hertfordshire.
It was the next day that Caroline met William Collins, who was his father’s curate.
Another curate had been employed while the three Collinses had been with their family.
The son, William, was three and twenty and a good-looking, intelligent man.
For some reason, Caroline felt a great attraction to the younger Mr Collins.
It was not his looks or intelligence which captured her interest, but his character.
He was a godly man who did not say one thing and do another.
For the month that she remained in Kent, Caroline began to think that she had found the man with whom she wanted to spend her life.
When she thought of how her mother would react to such a potential match; not only a clergyman, but one who was only a curate, it caused Caroline to giggle. Charles approved of her interest in Master Collins, and from all the signs she was seeing, her interest was returned.