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“The nursery was overfull, and you and Jane, with your sweet, sunny smiles, were allowed out—I do not think anyone minded either of you. Janey would play quietly but not you—you spent your hours trying to please your parents. You’d bring Bennet a this or a that or whatever he’d wished for aloud, whilst he shunned you. He did it one time too many in my presence, breaking your little heart, until I lost my temper and explained to him just how ridiculous, how disgusting, how ungentlemanly his behaviour. He ordered me to begone and never return, told Frances my name was never to be mentioned again. I was sorry for it later, but in the moment, I was too angry.” He shook his head sadly.
“You…wished to return?” The remnants of the lonely young girl she had once been clung to this notion—inexplicably wanting this man, yet a stranger, to care.
“After I moved to London and had cooled down a bit, I tried writing my apologies again and again. I renewed my efforts after my marriage then again after the birth of my eldest. When Frances never answered, I knew it was no use—either he did not give her the letters, or else she stood with him on the situation. Either way, it wasn’t worth the price of the postage to keep bothering her. But I have many regrets, and you are the biggest of them. I would have loved to…to have been allowed to be your uncle, perhaps even brought you to us after my marriage, if only I could have held my tongue.”
“But this is fantastic,” she murmured. “Nothing is as I believed.”
Something about him exuded safety and familiarity. Another wound in her heart even eased a bit; Mama’s decision to send her to her Uncle Gardiner was not quite the act of cruelty she had believed. Negligent, of course, as she had plainly neither verified his direction nor written to him regarding the situation—but Mama had always been thoughtless and silly. Mr Bennet, of course, was neither. He simply had not cared what became of her.
Impulsively, she asked, “Will you excuse me for a moment? I need to fetch something.”
He nodded solemnly.
She hurried upstairs and dug about in her trunk until she found the letter her mother had given her before she left. It had her uncle’s name and the direction in Cheapside on the front of it; she had never broken its seal, only assumed it contained an introduction and an order to find her a place. Returning to the parlour, she shut the door behind her as she approached the man who, incredibly, was her near relation, the guardian her parents had chosen. Taking a deep breath, she held out the letter.
“It is a long story, but I refused a marriage proposal against the will of my parents. In punishment, they have, well, disowned me. They sent me to you—or rather, to your old address—with this letter of explanation,” she got out in a breath.
“They did what?” he exclaimed in shocked astonishment.
“Plainly, I did not go to Cheapside. Instead, I went to friends in Ramsgate then, quite by accident, stumbled into the situation of the Darcys. Mr Darcy spent a month at an estate near Longbourn, so I knew him, and as I have some skill with nursing, with him being quite ill and his family—”
“Yes,” he interpolated, and she recalled Mr Darcy’s dictation and how he had explained most of his recent past to this trusted advisor. There was a pregnant pause. “He did not mention taking a wife, however.”
“I am not his wife,” she admitted baldly. “The housekeeper here assumed I was, and I did not correct her. When we arrived, he was so very ill. I did not know whether he would live or die. All I cared about was his recovery, and I had nowhere else to go, regardless. I expected my sister and her husband—Jane recently married Mr Darcy’s good friend Mr Bingley, you see—to arrive at any moment and provide whatever explanations were necessary. It turns out, however, that they recently took Miss Darcy into their care and returned to Netherfield Park instead of journeying on to Brighton as expected.”
“Posing as his wife.” Although his tone was even, she could not help but listen for disapproval.
“Yes, we have been staying here under the alias of Mr and Mrs Bingley, although only as a ruse.” She blushed, remembering the kisses, the longing. But she lifted her chin. Whatever mistakes she had made, she could not apologise for that which she did not regret.
“I understand why, originally, you undertook to care for him,” Mr Gardiner began carefully. “However, I do hope you can see why he ought to have sent for me, or someone else he trusted, much sooner. You cannot remain here another minute with him, alone like this. Surely you know it.”
Some resentment stirred within her at his easy assumption of authority over her; but he quickly seemed to think better of his approach and sighed instead of continuing. “Perhaps I should read the letter,” he said, reaching for it.
Lizzy handed it over, her heart beating hard, her emotions nearly escaping her control, although she was uncertain why. In essence, he was a stranger to her still; his opinion of her could not truly matter, no matter how unkindly her mother had chosen to describe her, no matter how imprudent he believed her decision to act as ‘Mrs Bingley’. Nevertheless, as he opened it, she could not help moving so that she could see what had been written.
It was in her mother’s messy scrawl and embarrassingly brief, with blots nearly obliterating a word or two—though still legible, for all that.
Edward—
You wanted her. Now, you may have her.
Frances
* * *
The events of the next hour blurred in her mind. She hoped against hope that Mr Darcy might return before her departure, but it was not to be.
’Tis for the best, foolish girl.
She tried to write him a letter of farewell, but Mr Gardiner—she could not, as yet, think of him as ‘uncle’—watched her as he waited, and she could not express a hundredth part of what was in her heart. Gardiner was obviously desirous of protecting her; if he knew that Mr Darcy had actually spoken of marriage, she could not tell what he might insist upon. In the end, she wrote only a short note explaining the barest facts of her uncle’s appearance and his offer to accompany her to Netherfield. She ordered her trunk brought down while an astonished—and suspicious—Mrs Davis looked on. “My…husband will be staying on for a bit,” Lizzy said. “In a fortunate coincidence, my uncle has travelled here for another obligation and is able to return me to our home estate in Hertfordshire, where I have many commitments.”
“Do ye wish me t’give Mr Bingley a message?” she asked, obviously probing.
“We discussed this possibility earlier. He will not be concerned,” Lizzy prevaricated. “Leaving now with my uncle will prevent him from a tedious journey he is not yet up to undertaking. He will come home when he can.”
“Your uncle. Very well, madam,” the housekeeper said, scepticism writ plain upon her face. “No message, then.”
Lizzy nearly turned away without saying anything else, but found she could not. One message, one last exchange. All of her words, all her feelings demanding expression, clogged her throat: I will miss you. I will think of you every day. I could have loved you. Be happy, be safe. I wish…I wish.
