And Francis Bennet was the person standing between her husband and his soulmate.
Is that why Thomas came to her so infrequently?Why the room was always dark and the coupling always swift?Had he been hoping she was her?Imagining it was so?
Suddenly, Francis felt sick.She called for her maid to bring her a basin and there on her marriage bed, a new babe in her arms, she retched and retched and retched, feeling all her vaunted tenacity, all her determination to better herself, seeping out of her with each heave.
Fate had had her say after all.Fanny was never meant to be Mistress of Longbourn.She had stolen that title from its rightful owner and Fate had punished her by denying her a son.Thomas Bennet would be the last Bennet at Longbourn, all because Fanny was a greedy upstart who did not wish to wait for her soulmate.
She lay back on the pillows, spent and miserable.Hot tears tracked down her cheeks, fueled by exhaustion and wild emotions she could not contain.
Thus disturbed, she ordered the room next door to be made up and for the first time in eight years of marriage, she moved her things out of the master’s chambers and into her own rooms.She would no longer share a room with Thomas Bennet.She would not remain in the bed of a man who wished she was someone else.
As Francis settled into her new chamber a few days later, she looked around proudly.All her scheming and planning had gotten her exactly where she wished to be.It had only taken a few hours for her altruistic feelings of sympathy and guilt to fade into anger.She was the wronged woman, after all.Thomas Bennet had married her in good faith.She had accepted him with the understanding that neither of them were marked.He may have not had a say in the changing of that fact, but he certainly could have told her when the mark began to appear.
They might have been able to work out the problem together.Even had they not come to a solution, at least he would have been honest with her.They would have faced the situation side by side, like a husband and wife ought to do.Instead, he had let her continue on in ignorance, sharing her bed, filling her with children, and sating his baser needs with her while wishing she were someone else.
Well, no more.She was Francis Gardiner Bennet, the prettiest woman in Meryton.She was second to none, and she would not be treated like a shoddy replacement.
She was no man’s consolation prize.
Thomas Bennet stood in front of the mirror as he removed his shirt, staring at his chest.He was still a young man—only two and thirty—but he felt old in his bones.Fanny had moved out of their shared chamber; the one they had lived in together for the last eight years.For the first time, he felt the full weight of his arrogance, his hubris.
What had he been thinking?That he, a thirteen-year-old boy raised on a middling estate in Hertfordshire, would know better than Fate?The conceit!The sheer stupidity!
Even with a fine education and an intelligent mind, he had chosen poorly.Oh, Fanny was a perfectly decent woman, but after their fourth babe was born, he finally saw her as she truly was.A woman who had married him solely to improve her station, not because of any particular fondness for him.He was sure she liked him at least a little, or she had before she saw his mark, but he had no place in her heart.She had never longed for his company; he doubted she was even attracted to him.Questions he had long had about his marriage and his wife’s behavior were suddenly answered once he realized she had married him for Longbourn and Longbourn alone.
He sighed.What a fool he had been.His soul mark had come in when he was seven and twenty—only four years after he had married Fanny.He could have waited.What were four years compared to a lifetime of happiness?He could have begun truly searching for her when he was thirty.He could have done it.It would not have been such a very great hardship.
He stared at the red camellia over his heart, wondering who bore the matching mark.Had he already met her?Was she in Meryton?Hertfordshire?He thought she must have a knack with flowers for he had never done anything in the garden beyond walking through it.He felt a throb of pain for her, whoever she was.She was likely going to assemblies, or even going to Town for the Season, searching for the man who bore a matching mark, but she would never find him.
He would make sure of that.He knew himself enough to know that he was an indolent man.He had not had the stamina to search out a soulmate, but neither did he have the strength to resist one were she to cross his path.
He traced his fingers over the initials on one of the petals.ARD.
Sometimes late at night, when he was alone in his bookroom and staring at the flames in the fireplace, he would imagine what her name might be.Alice Rose?Arabella Rosamund?Perhaps she was foreign like his mother had been and her name was Amandine or Anita or Anya.
Thomas had never been a romantic.He had never daydreamed about a lady’s eyes or her hair or the shape of her mouth.But he found himself wondering about his mysterious soulmate.Picturing her smile, imagining her laugh.
It was Fate, he knew.He had tried to out-maneuver her, but she had had her way in the end.Fate would not be denied.
Now here he stood, alone in his room, his wife and new babe down the corridor, and his head filled with a woman he would never know.
Fate was cruel, indeed.
Chapter 2
Longbourn, Hertfordshire
YoungJaneBennetwasgrowing into all that was lovely.Francis Gardiner had been a beautiful young woman, but she paled in comparison to Jane.Jane’s face was a perfect oval, her chin ending in a delicate point.Her eyes were a bright, sparkling blue, framed with thick dark lashes.Her skin was milky white with the slightest touch of pink over her cheeks.Her lips were a perfect rosebud, darker than all her sisters, and when she smiled, the sun shone brighter.Her hair was a golden halo, her neck graceful like a swan.She was tall enough to be elegant but not tall enough to intimidate.Her figure was beginning to form in an enviable fashion, and her nature was as sweet as her smile.
She was her parents’ greatest source of pride and the envy of her neighbors.
Francis watched Jane growing, saw her beauty, and debated how she should advise her daughter.To mark or not?To choose for herself, or to let Fate decide?If she chose a mark, there was no guarantee that her soulmate was not already married.Then she would be an old maid, forever pining for a man she could not have.But if she did not receive a mark, there was no guarantee she would be happy in marriage.Her husband might be cruel or dull or receive his own mark when it was too late.
Francis pondered all of these questions, wondering what she should do about her girls.After speaking to her sister at length, they came up with a rough plan.If the girls received their mark before their thirteenth birthdays that would mean their mates had chosen to be marked and their futures were secure.The girls could come out at sixteen or seventeen as was the norm and begin looking for their husbands.After all, neither Francis nor Mrs.Phillips had ever heard of an early-marked girl not eventually meeting her soulmate.It simply did not work that way.
Alternatively, if the girls did not receive a mark before their birthdays, she would encourage them to get the mark, but she would accompany it with a stern warning.There was a chance they would never find their mates, and they may end up living with their married sisters.They must be very sure they were willing to endure that before choosing to get the mark.And if one of her daughters chose not to be marked, Mrs.Bennet would advise her to marry a little later if she could.Not so old she would be on the shelf, but old enough that the man she was marrying would have had plenty of time for his own mark to appear, and she would be less likely to be disappointed when it was too late to do anything about it.
Francis changed her mind about her plans more than a dozen times before Jane, shortly after her eleventh birthday, awoke with a tiny blue mark on her upper back, just below her neck.Francis could not be sure, so she checked it each day for a week until one day, Jane complained that her neck had been itching horribly, and Francis told her she was likely coming into a soul mark.Jane’s younger sisters rushed to see, and then held mirrors for Jane to observe it herself.It took six months for the mark to be complete, but eventually, the image of a grand house emerged.On the front door of the house, in tiny letters, were the initials CHB.
