Page 21 of The Sole Love

“I do not know how to tell you except directly.” She drew a breath. “Jane is not your daughter!”

She covered her face with her hands.

“Of course she is…my…”

But even as he spoke, he began to understand.

“What are you saying, Mrs Bennet?”

His voice was so loud that a maid appeared at the door and asked whether they required anything.

Mr Bennet dismissed her. He rose and paced the room, then sat again and looked at his wife, who had finally raised her face to him.

The truth was there. For an instant, he could almost see the young woman he had married so long ago.

His gaze demanded an explanation.

“That summer near Bath…was not the first time we had been there. I cannot explain what happened,” she whispered, lowering her eyes to the pattern of the carpet.

“Oh, I think you can, madam!”

Mrs Bennet froze. Seldom in their marriage had she heard him speak in such a voice. Usually, his anger found expression through sarcasm or teasing. That morning there was nothing playful in it.

“We were only weeks from marrying, madam, and you could still have changed your mind. Why did you not marry that man? A betrothal can be broken. I should not have died of a broken heart.”

The sarcasm had returned, and Mrs Bennet began to cry again. Tears rolled silently down her cheeks.

“Do not say that,” she pleaded.

“This morning, I can say whatever I please. You have just destroyed the life I thought I had.”

“No, please do not say that. Jane—”

“This is not about Jane. She is my daughter, and my love for her is unchanged, regardless of the man who fathered her.”

The words stopped Mrs Bennet’s tears. She stared at him in shock.

“This is about you, madam. The innocent young lady I married who stood beside me in church and said yes, knowing she might already be with child.”

“I did not know…” she murmured.

“Perhaps you did not know for certain, but you knew there was a possibility. There always is after a man and woman have been together.”

Again, he rose and went to the window.

Every day of his life, summer or winter, he had watched his daughters playing outside. Jane had been the first. He could not remember Kitty’s or Lydia’s first winter with the same clarity; he remembered Jane barely able to walk and refusing to step upon the thin dusting of snow that had appeared as if by magic one January morning. She looked so comical that he went outside and made her laugh until she forgot her fear and began to enjoy it.

So many of his clearest memories were of Jane. Then the other babies had come, one after another. He had never been bored by his little girls, but he had been frightened by what their births meant. They were his happiness, yet each daughter had confirmed that Longbourn would one day pass away from them.

“You poisoned my happiness with your constant reproaches about our circumstances and the future awaiting our girls. You did so knowing that, had I not married you, you might have been an unmarried woman with a child. And instead of gratitude, I endured years of nerves and anger.”

“I was grateful…”

“Well, in that case, you concealed it remarkably well.”

He turned from the window.

“Who was he?”