“I want you to take care of little Eliza,” she said. “I know she’s not your daughter, but she should have been and—”
“I already love her as my own,” he said. “She will never know want or pain….”
His voice cracked, and she knew she couldn’t survive it if he did start to cry. Everything else hadn’t broken her, but that just might. So she tried to smile again. This time she managed it.
“All right,” she said softly. “So long as she has agency, too. Let her have choice in her life, Kit.”
It could have been so different. What if he hadn’t gone away? They would have been married, surely. The army would never have stolen that spark from his eye, and she wouldn’t be dying right now. Her little girl would be his.
What if.
“I’m so sorry, Eve,” he had whispered, hugging her tightly, like she might slip away right then. “I should have protected you.”
If Eliza had had the strength, she would have protested. She didn’t want protection. Not from her guardian, or her husband, or the world, which seemed so intent on grounding her down to nothing at all. She only wanted a choice. Was that too much to ask?
Even Eve herself had a choice. And while the world still railed against her for the one she made in the Garden of Eden, in the end, God had still granted her free will to make it.
Was it so wrong to want agency over her life, too?
She was so tired. Even now, she could barely keep her eyes open to spy her daughter as she ran by the window again, her squeals of glee mingling with Christopher’s laughter.
That’s when Eliza considered that thread again. The long one that spanned to the beginning of time, the line she was now throwing forward for her daughter to catch.
Maybe, in that way, it wasn’t an ending. Her Eliza would grow up without her, yes, but perhaps she would have a chance at happiness. At love. At independence and choice and everything she had once dreamed of.
That was the last thought that floated through her mind before she passed, her last breath exiting her lips, and her eyes locked on the window of her room. Hope that the next Eliza would have a chance at discovering her own happily ever after.
ELIZA WILLIAMS
Circa 1812
Eliza Williams came from a long line of Elizas, an unbroken thread of life that spanned all the way to the beginning of time. Of course, Eliza herself was unaware of such a thread or, in any case, was never allowed to consider it. At eighteen years old, it already felt like she had lived a lifetime, yet there never seemed to be a moment to ponder such questions. At school, there were far too many other things to learn, facts to recite, and books to read to get distracted by her lineage. And later… well, it hadn’t been the most pressing concern.
Still, she would sometimes look in the mirror and wonder about the origins of her brown curls, her dark eyes. Only that there was no one available to ask. Not her mother, who had died before Eliza turned three, or her father, whose identity was a mystery. There was her guardian, Colonel Brandon, of course, but he was not a blood relation. From what Eliza had gathered, he was a friend of the family who had stepped in to take her upon her mother’s death and whom she now called her uncle. Besides, he spent most of the year on the Continent fighting Napoleon, which was why, at first, he had sent her to live at Ms. Goddard’s School for Girls when she was just a young child.
There were no answers at the school, either. At least, not the ones she was looking for. But even with her limited familial knowledge, she recognized the rumors whispered among the other girls.Eliza the orphan. Eliza the bastard. But as far as Eliza had been concerned, she was still just Eliza.
Even now, as she stood on the creaking deck of a merchant ship bound for New York, the scent from the sea and brine filling the air, it seemed strange to think of her name. It had been scrawled there on her ticket, but that had only made it feel more alien. Eliza, the name of a mother she never knew, and Williams, the surname of a man who didn’t even know she existed. Either a joke or a punishment from divine circles, she still wasn’t sure.
Of course, it hadn’t felt like that when she was young. Not until she had stumbled upon her mother’s books. She had found them one Christmas while visiting the Colonel. She had wandered into his library, desperate for something to read, and had recognized the title of an Ann Radcliffe novel stashed on the top shelf. At the time she had almost laughed at the idea of her stoic guardian reading such a sweeping romance, but then she had opened it and found a name carefully scrawled on the first page: Eliza Fowler.
She found the same name in a half dozen others and promptly scooped them up, stowing them in her trunk to bring back to school. For the next few years, the books lived under Eliza’s bed. Each night she would pore over them—The Romance of the ForestandEvelina, The Mysteries of UdolphoandThe Decameron. At first, she had hoped to imbibe something of her mother, as if the stories hid some of the truth Eliza had been starving for, but then the stories themselves became too good. Romance and violence, death and mourning, but always wrapped up in a happy ending. Despite the trials and tribulations, love always won.
How odd. Just a few years ago, she couldn’t imagine anything more romantic than those happy endings. Then, after last year, she had almost resented them, as if they had sold her a false billof goods. But in that moment, as she held her newborn daughter to her chest and stared out across the Atlantic, the ship swaying beneath her feet, she was struck with the memory of those books and how she had loved them once. After all, they were the reason she made her first friend.
When she was fourteen, the Colonel had pulled her from boarding school. He had inherited the estate after the death of his brother, William—a man Eliza never met but who, by all accounts, would not be missed, particularly since he left behind no wife or children—and with their new status came new expectations. Therefore, the Colonel was sending her to live at the prestigious home of Mr. and Mrs. Carrington, a family whose estate took up a good amount of Dorsetshire. There, in their residence and under the tutelage of Mrs. Carrington, Eliza would receive a more thorough education on what was expected from a young lady of landed gentry.
The rationale had been sound, even if Eliza hadn’t entirely agreed. Her books had told her about the tumultuous world beyond the small patch of countryside she knew, had promised adventure and love beyond anything she had yet experienced. But she also knew that in order to live a life that was in any way acceptable, she had to conform to societal norms. Her sex dictated a prodigious amount of her future, if not all of it, and whatever she wanted was less important than what was expected. So she arrived at Mrs. Carrington’s with her trunk as directed—her mother’s precious books safe from prying eyes—and she hid away in her room as she always had done at school before.
Perhaps that was why, a few days later, when Eliza returned to her room after a morning spent on the piano and found a girl about her own age lounging on her bed, she was so startled.
“Is this yours?” the girl asked. It was only then that Eliza sawthat she was leafing through her mother’s copy ofThe Mysteries of Udolpho.
“Yes,” Eliza replied nervously.
“I’ve been dying to read it,” the girl replied. “I only haveThe Romance of the Forest, and I’ve read it so much I think I’ve broken the spine.”
Eliza straightened. “You haveThe Romance of the Forest?”
