And perhaps that was why, when the cold news came about the duke—the dreadful arrangement, the countess-to-be widowed three times already—Amy did not weep.
“It is settled,” the fifth earl of Matlock had said casually one evening at dinner. “You will marry him in a month.”
She protested. She pleaded. She even attempted to bargain.
Her father’s face remained unmoved.
Barry, home on holiday and flushed with new authority, laughed and echoed their father’s words with cruel delight.
“Do not be foolish, Amelia,” he said. “You should be grateful someone of the duke’s stature is interested in a girl like you.”
She left the room numb. But instead of going to her room and weeping, she sought out the one person who had never made her feel small.
And found him already waiting.
“There is no safety for me,” Amy told Frank. “None.”
He listened as she railed against her father, against the injustice of a world that had left her all alone to be bartered away.
At last, he said quietly, “It is a pity you are not already married.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“If you were,” he continued evenly, “no one could force you into another match.”
The thought struck her like lightning.
“You do not mean—”
“I do,” he said. His voice lowered. “I could take care of you, Amy. No one would force you to do anything you do not wish.”
Amy. The name she had not heard spoken since her mother’s passing burned within her chest.
Before she could speak, before fear could catch up to her courage, he bent and kissed her—briefly, reverently—and then stepped back, crossing himself.
The gesture seemed to almost be a sign from her mother.With Frank, she thought wildly,there would be love. And faith.
“Yes,” she said, her voice shaking. “Yes.”
They left before dawn.
They married over an anvil in Scotland.
And for the first time in her life, Lady Amelia Fitzwilliam chose her own fate.
∞∞∞
August 1753 — Longbourn
The air in the Longbourn drawing room hung heavy, thick with the August heat and heavier still with tension. Theo stood before his father’s chair, shoulders squared, chin lifted with quiet determination.
“Please, Father,” he said, his voice steady but urgent. “Let Natty come to Cambridge with me. There’s the living at Meryton—he could study theology. He would have a place, a purpose. He would not be idle.”
Timothy Bennet looked up from the letter he had been pretending to read, then cast a glance across the room to where Maria sat with her embroidery, her needle halted mid-stitch. He sighed and leaned back in his chair, rubbing at his temples.
“It is not so simple,” he said. “Sending one son is no small expense. Sending two—”
“We could room together,” Theo interrupted. “It would halve costs. And maybe we could let the dower house. I am certain that someone would be more than happy to lease it for a year.”
