“I… I do not know… that is to say. How does one?”
“It is serious then. Well, sit down before you fall, you are shaking enough to rattle my specimen case! Port?”
“No. No port.”
“What is the matter man?”
“I…” the sound of gulping filled the air, followed by a strange downturn to the inflection of his voice as Sir Lucus answered, “It is about your wife. You see, she was in town when some heinous fool brought an unbroken stallion into the heart of Meryton. It was spooked and injured several people… the thing would have likely killed a young boy if your wife had not. If she.”
“She?”
“She shoved the boy aside, but the horse reared up as she did and came down… hard. The doctor was there, but within a few moments she… she was gone. There was nothing he could do. What, with all the men and women and children crying and screaming and so many injured–one man not expected to survive as he jumped or was pushed into a window–well, no one sent for you. I… once things settled down, I wanted to tell you myself. Better to hear this sort of thing from a friend I thought. Better?”
Hands pressed against the wall as she sought to hold herself up, Elizabeth’s breath pulled wildly.
It made no sense. None at all. She must have heard wrong?Chest heavy, Elizabeth gulped as she forced herself to look upon her sisters.There had been no mistake.
Eyes pinching shut at the sound of Lydia’s wails and the dismay of her sisters, Elizabeth pressed her ear to the door, hoping to hear conversation within rather than the heart-wrenching sobs around her.
“May I see her?” Mr. Bennet’s dim, hollow voice questioned.
Sir Lucas allowed silence to prevail; the sound of Lydia’s tears and Mary’s soothing filling the void.
“I… I would advise against it,” he answered at last.
Taking a step back, Elizabeth again closed her eyes, her stomach rolling and the world plummeting around her.
Why had she stayed with Father playing chess? And he? He too should have gone with Mother.
He.
Blame? No. No. He held no blame. He never went, but she?
“I can write her brother for you?” Sir Lucas offered, his voice all but spent. “Her cousin too. The uncle?”
Mamma? She never spoke of any cousin. Of an uncle.Shaking her head, Elizabeth rubbed her brow.A mistake on his part; but what did it matter? Mamma had been taken from them… forever.
“Never,” her father growled, the thickness of grief still torrential in his tone, “Never. Gardiner, yes, but not them. Not after they hurt my wife so. After. It.”
Sir Lucas had been right?
Head jerking toward the study at the sound of her father’s weeping, Elizabeth’s throat grew tight as her own tears poured out.
“No,” she whispered as she viewed her sisters through bleary eyes.She had to be strong. She had to be a help. She had to be… better. Whether she held blame or not, it was her job to be strong.
For their mother.
Chapter 3
Boston, Massachusetts – 1808
“Catherine, Georgiana, would you come into my study, please?” Fitzwilliam requested from the doorway, his sisters, occupied with drawing each other’s portraits, setting their pencils down as they met his gaze.
“Of course,” Catherine said, her staid, lifeless tone too familiar for her family’s liking.
Following him into the darkly furnished room, the pair sat down where he directed, the overcast day adding little light to the space.Should they have had this discussion in the library? No. He needed the desk between himself and them–as cowardly as that may be–for their joy or anger he could not predict.
Sitting in the seat that felt his father’s still, he rubbed his hands secretly against his clothing and gulped.
