Chapter Seven
“Rise, Lord and Lady Rumley.”
At the summons, Bennet drew himself up and gently lifted his wife from her deep curtsey, her new hooped gown bobbing slightly with her movement.
Though an earldom usually passed with little ceremony, his wife’s first presentation before Their Majesties required this formality amid the gilt splendour of the palace’s receiving room.
“We are delighted to see Lady Jane and Lady Elizabeth once more. They have grown in beauty since last we met,” the Queen said, her gaze warm as Jane and Elizabeth dipped their heads.
Her expression shifted, turning somber. “We understand your middle daughter chose not to be present. Having read your letter, we hold no ill will towards her.”
“Your Majesty’s kindness is most heartening,” Bennet replied with a respectful inclination, the weight of his new signet ring still unfamiliar on his finger. “Lady Mary finds peace only in the solitude of home, and I could not in good conscience subject her to an ordeal she would dread.”
The Queen offered no further comment, her powdered face carefully neutral, and Bennet sensed the audience had drawn to its close. He and his family bowed and retreated. Once they reached the anteroom, they all exhaled in unison.
“I am so relieved that it is over,” his wife murmured, fanning her flushed cheeks with a delicate lace handkerchief. “I was certain I would stumble and embarrass us all.”
“Nonsense, Franny,” he said to sooth his wife as he pressed the gloved hand that rested on his arm. A slight tremble was just perceptible beneath the soft satin. “You were exquisite. Miss Tyler’s lessons served you well. You behaved precisely as a countess should.”
Lady Rumley halted midsentence and turned to him, eyes glistening. “You have no idea how much I appreciate your patience in explaining everything to me. There was a time when you would not.”
Tears gathered at her lashes, and guilt swept through Bennet.
Mindful of the waiting servants in their liveries and courtiers in their finery beyond the mahogany doors, he guided his wife onward, grateful that Jane and Elizabeth maintained a respectful distance, their silk skirts swishing in unison as they walked.
“I owe you so many apologies,” he whispered. “If you will allow it, I would like to visit you after dinner to discuss everything.”
“Everything?” Her voice trembled as she clutched his hand.
He paused in the hallway, meeting her anxious gaze. It was time they spoke of what happened more than eighteen years ago in the shadowed corners of their marriage.
“Yes, my love. Every last thing.”
Firelight bathed the room in warmth and cast a gentle glow upon his wife’s face.
The soft light smoothed away the fine lines that had appeared over the decades, softening her features until he could see only traces of the happy girl, she had once been.
When Thomas Bennet, at two and twenty, had first encountered Frances Gardiner, she had been Meryton’s incomparable beauty, all tumbling golden curls, sparkling blue eyes, and a laugh that rang like silver bells.
Enchanted, he had pursued her with the single-minded determination of a besotted young man.
Bennet attended every assembly where she might appear, and sent bouquets of wildflowers gathered from Longbourn’s meadows until he secured the hand of a carefree sixteen-year-old girl whose only dowry, other than a modest five thousand pounds, was her loveliness and a vivacity that lit up every room she entered.
In those early days, he had been contented with superficial pleasures.
He had a beautiful wife on his arm and in his bed, whose soft sighs filled their bedchamber in private moments.
His mother had taken Franny under her wing, patiently instructing her in the duties of a landowner’s wife, while his father had dragged Bennet reluctantly from his beloved library into the muddy business of estate management.
For three years, they had lived thus, their happiness crowned by the births of Jane, with her angelic blonde curls, and Elizabeth, whose dark, intelligent eyes mirrored his own.
Then his father had gone to bed one bitter winter evening and never woke up.
Suddenly, Thomas Bennet found himself master of Longbourn, responsible for decisions that affected dozens of lives.
Tenants with weather-beaten faces and calloused hands looked to him for guidance he was unqualified to give.
He had detested the burden, shirking duties until ledgers piled high on his desk and could no longer be avoided, while ignoring his mother’s disapproving glances across the dinner table.
Then tragedy had struck again with the swiftness of a summer storm.
Within a year of his father’s passing, his mother succumbed to an influenza outbreak that also afflicted Franny, leaving her feverish and delirious for days.
In her weakened state, she had delivered their long-awaited son, the heir who would secure Longbourn’s future.
But as Franny struggled to recover, her nightgown soaked with sweat and her once-vibrant hair limp against the pillows, their precious boy had slipped away in the cold light of dawn, not even a week old, his miniature fingers uncurling one last time against Bennet’s trembling palm.
It was then, to his everlasting shame, he cruelly laid the blame for the death of his son, along with his mother’s, at his wife’s feet, citing her fondness for local news as the root cause.
“Had you not insisted on knowing every trifling detail in the parish,” he had shouted, “you would never have encountered that wretched illness!” His reasoning defied logic, but grief and fury had blinded him.
He fled Longbourn, taking refuge with an old university companion.
There he remained for nearly a month, drowning his sorrows in spirits, too proud to return home and seek his wife’s pardon.
The cold reality of waking one morning to find one of the housemaids lying next to him brought about instant sobriety.
The evidence of their indiscretion lay scattered about, from garments strewn across the floor to bed linens in disarray.
Mortified by his conduct, he extracted a promise from the girl to inform him should their liaison bear consequences.
Four months later, a crudely penned letter arrived announcing a child would come with the spring thaw.
With a heavy heart, he confessed his transgression to Franny and once more implored her forgiveness.
After the infant’s birth, he engaged a wet nurse and brought little Mary to Longbourn.
His wife, admirably, embraced the child as her own, though anyone could see that Mary stood apart from her sisters, strongly resembling her birth mother’s family.
Fortunately, she had inherited her father’s eyes and hair, allowing them to shield this painful secret from the world, even their own daughters.
Bennet cleared his throat. “I have failed you as a husband, Franny.” She pressed her lips together, but offered no contradiction.
“After Mother and little Matthew were taken by the fever...” A sob caught in his wife’s throat.
“I blamed you unjustly. The illness that ravaged so many homes was not of your making. That you survived when our babe did not…” His voice faltered as he offered her his handkerchief, and she took it with trembling fingers.
“While you mourned, I retreated into selfishness. I fled our grief, only to return with Mary. Perhaps bringing her to Longbourn was a mistake. I should have left her with her mother.”
“No!” Franny exclaimed. “Do not say that.”
“You cannot deny that Mary is sometimes the forgotten child. We have ignored that poor girl, letting her bumble about on her own with no guidance from either you or me. Is it any wonder she clings to the church and wishes to remain in Meryton with the rector and his wife?”
“That little girl,” Franny whispered, “with those deep, knowing eyes... she mended something in me when our Matthew died, and all you offered were cold words and judgment.” She looked up. “Longbourn is where she belongs.”
“Do you truly believe that?”
“With all my heart, Thomas. The Lord took our son but blessed us with Mary. My only regret is not better understanding her quiet nature when our other daughters are so lively.”
Bennet’s lips curved slightly. “She reads more than Lizzy.”
“Her reading material is suspect. Who in the world introduced her to Fordyce’s Sermons for Young Women?”
Bennet ducked his head and cleared his throat.
“I did, purely as a joke,” he admitted when his wife harrumphed.
“Mary was asking for doctrinal tracts, and I thought she would be amused by the outdated ideas that the moralising fool spouted.” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Little did I know she would forsake the sound teachings of Holy Scripture for that claptrap.”
“Thank goodness for Mr. Allen and his wealth of knowledge, and the patience to answer all her questions.”
“Aye, he and his wife have, in many ways, adopted her as one of their own.”
“Thomas,” Franny ventured hesitantly. “Mrs. Allen strongly resembles Mary. Am I wrong in thinking that?”
“You are not mistaken,” he replied. “When I granted Mr. Allen the living at Longbourn, I was aware that Mrs. Allen is the sister of Mary’s mother.”
“Do they know who Mary is?”
“They do.”
“Are you not concerned that Mary’s natural mother might demand money, now that you are an earl?”
“I am not. Mrs. Allen’s sister made more than one mistake in her life, and, sadly, she died in childbirth less than two years after having Mary.” Bennet took his wife’s hand in his and squeezed. “I have entrusted Mrs. Allen to tell Mary the truth when she deems our daughter ready.”
“Mary will be so disappointed in us. I must know when she learns the truth. I want her to understand that though she is not my daughter by blood, she is the daughter of my heart.”