Convinced that the news was bad, I almost decided against travelling to meet you.
The tone of the letter changed my mind. It seemed hopeful, almost ebullient. My prayer is that I have not raised my expectations falsely, thinking that this is good news, the best of news.
Unless there are unforeseen problems along the way, I should arrive the day after this missive.
Please pass my thanks to Wendell for writing on your behalf.
I bestow my regards onallfamily members who are with you, sending you brotherly love,
Stephen
“He is coming!” Cilla exclaimed. “Seeing Ellie again renewed and refreshed my happiness. I pray it will do the same for Stephen.”
“Let us pray He hears you. It may just be what Stephen needs to bring him out of the deep melancholy into which he slipped since Adelle and his babe were called home to God,” Lady Matlock hoped.
“How could seeing me accomplish that?” Elizabeth asked.
“You became like a surrogate daughter to your Uncle Stephen and late Aunt Adelle. When you were taken from us, your aunt and uncle took it very hard. It was less than a year after Stephen accepted you had been murdered that Adelle was brought to bed. When both she and the babe were lost, our brother slipped into a deep melancholy, one from which he has never recovered. We are not sure it will, but we hope thatseeing you will have the same effect on him as it has had on me,” Cilla explained.
“I hope he will not be disappointed in me,” Elizabeth said quietly as a little of her prior insecurity asserted itself once again.
There was a chorus of emphatic “Never!”
The immediate and positive response drove away the momentary self-doubt. “I am afraid I do not remember Uncle Stephen at all,” Elizabeth owned.
“That could be because you did not see him and Aunt Adelle as much as you saw the rest of us,” Lord Matlock hypothesised, “and you used to call all of your uncles, including William’s late father, ‘Unca’ without our names.”
There was a noise from the entrance hall followed by the door bursting open. James Bennet was home. “What was all of the fuss which necessitated me missing classes and travelling to Longbourn?” the Bennet heir demanded playfully. There was no anger in his voice, only amusement. It was then James realised there were many in the room he did not know. His eyes settled on two ladies who looked like older versions of Lizzy. “I think I know why I was summoned,” he said, his voice subdued as he looked between the ladies and Lizzy. The similarities were uncanny.
“Bennet, will you make us known to, I assume, your elder son and heir?” Lord Matlock requested.
“James, go wash and change, and we will tell you the whole tale,” Fanny suggested. “When you return, you will be introduced to everyone.” Fanny watched as James took his mother’s suggestion and exited the drawing room.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Once he had changed, James walked down the stairs, but instead of the drawing room, he made for the music room, attracted by the sound of music emanating from there.
“James!” Mary, Lydia, and Henry exclaimedsimultaneously.
“Giana, this is our older brother, James Bennet. James, Miss Georgiana Darcy from Derbyshire. She is Lizzy’s cousin by marriage,” Mary told her eldest brother.
What Mary said added confirmation to his guess that Lizzy’s birth family had been discovered. If they were the ones who rejected her and sent her away, they did not deserve to have her in their lives. “Lizzy seems happy, even though these are the ones who gave her away,” James fished.
“They never did. The Wendells and all her family members looked for Lizzy, or as they call her, Ellie, for many months before most of them believed she had been murdered by the miscreant who she stumbled across robbing the safe in the study,” Mary corrected.
He felt chagrined, especially as the pretty Miss Darcy was giving him the gimlet eye. James owned, to himself, he could have phrased his question better.
“I will see you later. Mother and Father are waiting for me in the drawing room,” James stated. He nodded to Miss Weasley, Mrs Frost, and the lady, he assumed was Miss Darcy’s companion, seated together on one side of the room.
On entering the room, James hugged his grandmama, mother and sisters—giving Lizzy an extra-long one—and shook his father’s hand. Thereafter, his sire introduced James to those he did not know. Once he was seated near his two older sisters, he was told all, including about Janie being engaged to Lizzy’s eldest brother. He did not repine that he would no longer be the eldest brother once Janie married David, as he had been asked to call him. He could not but grin when he was informed about the near-simultaneous fainting of his older sisters.
Knowing that what Lizzy had believed about being cast out was the furthest thing from the truth allowed James to sympathise with the Wendells. He could not imagine that if he,or one of his siblings, had been ripped away from their family the way it had happened to Lizzy, or Ellie as they called her, his parents would have acted much differently than Lizzy’s birth parents and family had.
“Will Lizzy be leaving us?” James enquired. He had always felt a closeness to his second sister and would hate to never see her again.
“Until Ellie is ready to think about it, no decisions have been made,” Cilla replied. “I will repeat what everyone here already knows. We will never ask or expect Ellie to break contact with her Bennet family. My hope, especially with the wedding upcoming in January, is that we will become one large family. There will be gains of family members on both sides and no losses.”
Seeing his parents, Janie, and Lizzy all nodding their agreements allowed James to relax. He would not lose Lizzy as a sister, even if she resided elsewhere.
