Prologue
Cambridgeshire 1795
“You the gent that the dying woman sent for to take the child?”
Dying?
The dingy woman who’d thrown open the bolted door stared at Mr. Bennet as she waited for him to reply.
“Well, if you ain’t, you the one who beat her so bad?”
“No,” Mr. Bennet replied faintly. “I am the one she sent for.”
“Good. No doubt she deserved what her man did to her, but the child is also beat black and blue. Don’t like that. A little whipping never hurt a child. But this is more. Someone else should raise that girl.”
Mr. Bennet pushed past the woman and ducked under the low doorframe. “Where is she?”
The proprietor pointed him in the direction, and she hurried behind Mr. Bennet saying, “I’d have turned them both away if I knew she’d start dying. A respectable place. I don’t want no one who no one knows dying inmyhouse.”
Mr. Bennet opened the door.
Nine years. It was the same face. They had once planned to marry.
The sunken eyes, the handprint bruise visible on her cheek, the feverish glow to her features. Her breath was raspy and labored.
“You came,” Amelia wheezed out. A fit of hacking coughs took her. She pressed her hand against her side, her face filled with pain.
“Oh, God, Amelia.” Mr. Bennet took her hand. “Of course I came.”
The old resentment could not survive the sight of her suffering.
The child was four or five years of age, with big dark eyes that reminded him of his own Jane and Mary. Part of Mr. Bennet’s attraction to Fanny had been a similarity in her appearance to Amelia’s. But her coloring was dark rather than blonde. A huge black bruise had formed around one of the little girl’s eyes.
Amelia’s hand was burning. Mr. Bennet asked, “Lord Rochester did this?”
“I should never have let them make me marry him.”
“Oh, Amelia.”
“I took a lover. I admit it. But why did he need to beat Lizzy with such violence?”
Mr. Bennet looked at Elizabeth. The little girl stared at him with wide eyes. The huge black eye made Mr. Bennet wish to kill Lord Rochester. Mr. Bennet smiled at her a little, but she did not smile back.
“You cannot be dying,” Mr. Bennet said helplessly to Amelia. “Have you been seen by a real physician?”
“I feel so odd. So, faint. The pain in my side becomes worse. I think I only kept myself erect because I needed to live until you arrived.” She slouched into the seat. Her eyes seemed to wander. “My ribs are broken. He did it. The bouncing in the stagecoach hurt so much. But I must protect Elizabeth. That is why I called you.”
“You want me to care for her if you die.”
“Not if.” She smiled at Mr. Bennet, and she sat up again, looking just a little like Miss Lamont of old. That old flash of attraction went through him. The memory of all their cleverconversations. “You are a man who likes to be reasoned and calculated. Tell me, how would you assess my odds?”
“It is not impossible,” Mr. Bennet replied.
She laughed, but the movement made her gasp in pain, gripping her side again.
“I do not wish to die still full of longing for life,” she said. “I sinned against God, and I repent for having made false vows of love, when I still loved you, and for having then violated those false vows. But I hate him, I despise the thought of him. I will not repent for the sin against my husband and his honor and his rights—I beg you to promise me.” She gripped Mr. Bennet’s hands with that burning strength which fever could give. “Promise me!”
“I swear, I shall care for Elizabeth. I shall treat her as my own daughter.”
