“Good God,” Darcy exclaimed.
“You never killed them?” Lord Hartley cried. “And she is...little Lizzy?”
“You are the one who beat me. You beat Mama too!” Elizabeth suddenly exclaimed. He had said enough, she knewenough of who he was to guess at the whole. But her mind did not want to give himthatname.
“I would not have beaten you had I known,” the gentleman said. He was Lord Rochester. “I was under a misapprehension. But your appearance shows the truth now. You are the image of my mother, your hair color is identical to Bobby’s, and to what mine was when I was young. You still have the marks on your face of your mother’s ancestry—I wish there was nothing left ofherin the world. But you are my daughter.”
Everything was hazy. Scared, so scared. Elizabeth’s breath caught; she could not breathe right. It was as though she were choking, but she could not faint. She had to watch him. She had to, so she could tense up when he struck her. Maybe then it wouldn’t hurt as much. She had to—
There was a touch on her hand and Elizabeth jumped in startlement. She had not seen Darcy get up and come stand next to her. He pressed her hand. “Do not fear,” he whispered to her, “You do not need to fear him.”
She took his hand and squeezed it as tightly as she could.
Prompted perhaps by Darcy coming to Elizabeth’s side, Mary also came and embraced her around the shoulders. “Lord! I’d seen that you had the same coloring as Lord Hartley! But I never imagined.”
Looking at the man Elizabeth said, “You called me a bastard, and you beat me. I remember that. I always remembered that. I believed it. I’ve never forgotten.”
“I was mistaken,” he said. “But you need not worry. Your coloring, the look of your face, there is no question. Despite the many sins of my wife, which the Lord saw fit to kindly punish her for, she had not presented me with a false child. The Lord has been kind to me. I had chosen to forgive her, to find her so that I might test if I could forgive her when I saw her—the Lord sawmy soul, and he knew it was good, and he rewarded me. She is dead already, and I have a second child. Thereisbalm in Gilead.”
“I think,” Darcy said sharply, “that your attempt to find forgiveness in your soul for your departed wife has clearly failed.”
“By what right do you criticize me—” The earl sputtered. “Get away from my daughter, Darcy. I do not give you permission to touch her.”
Elizabeth had a spark of fear, but Darcy did not move.
“You beat me,” Elizabeth said again. “You beat me and called me a bastard.”
“I only did so because I had been mistaken about your identity.”
“You beat me.”
The gentleman waved his hand, as though he wished Elizabeth’s words to float away as the trivialities that they were. A matter of no importance, not next to things of greater importance. “I am a man of strong temper, and my rights had been stolen from me. I was full of anger. And I was mistaken. You need not—”
“And Mama. She screamed! I remember her screaming. There was a crack as you kicked her.”
“She deserved what she suffered. I’ll let no gentleman in England say otherwise. And I would have shot her lover if he’d not fled to France. Darcy, step away from my child, or I shall remove you.”
There was that look in his eyes. That look that he’d hadthen. The anger made the weakness in his face more apparent, the difference between the drooping left side and the harsh lines of the right side greater.
“Miss Elizabeth,” Darcy said with a pretense of ignoring Lord Rochester, but there was a tenseness in his form, and a way of holding his head that showed that Darcy watched him fromthe corner of his eye. She saw that Darcy was prepared to stop him if the man abandoned his drawing room manners so far as to attack her, “Do you wish to retreat? You cannot find present company congenial, and you must wish to have some time to think upon what you have learned.”
“Fitzwilliam Darcy,” Lady Catherine said sharply, “You will sit down immediately, and cease to interfere with Lord Rochester’s conversation with Lady Elizabeth.”
That name.
She wasn’t a bastard. She wasn’t illegitimate.
And she wasn’t Mr. Bennet’s daughter in any real way. She had a living father who she feared. Was she supposed to go with Lord Rochester?
No. He’d beaten her, and he only spoke of how he had been right to do so.
Elizabeth pulled in a deep breath.
Darcy’s hand on hers. Mary’s arms around her shoulders. Clear afternoon sunlight streaming in. Velvet cushion beneath her.
Lord Rochester’s sunken in face. That familiar haughty expression. The old fears.
Lord Hartley stood. He stepped between Elizabeth and his father. “You really are. I saw it. I thought I half recognized you. Elizabeth. You really are Elizabeth.”
