CHAPTER ONE
THE OVERTURNED CARRIAGEon the road in France might only have lingered a short time, for it was full of able-bodied English officers, all on their way to join up with troops fighting Napoleon on the continent.
Indeed, it took little time for the men—who’d been spilled this way and that along with their luggage—to right the carriage and set it back on its wheels. It was only that when they did so, they realized why their comrade, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, wasn’t speaking or moving.
He was dead.
Discovering the other man’s demise led to delay. First because no one could understand how it was, exactly, that he came to be dead. He had been crushed under the carriage, it was true, and this should have injured him, but likely not killed him on contact. They would have expected some cracked ribs and a broken arm, something of that nature. It should have been enough to have him shipped back home to that brand new bride of his that he could not stop speaking of, the one whose name made him light up.
Elizabeth,he had been saying, his voice reverent.
No one had seen Richard Fitzwilliam that way over a woman before. In truth, no one had seen him that way at all. He had been full of a fiery drive to change all manner of aspects abouthis situation. Even as the carriage had been bouncing about, he’d been attempting to write letters and make lists. He had spilled his ink all about.
It seemed abundantly a cruel twist of fate for him to be dead now, just when he had gotten the motivation to turn his life around, just when he had married the woman who he seemed to practically worship.
And indeed, why had he died? Where was the blood coming from?
For there was a great deal of blood seeping out from beneath him, indicating some sort of grave injury.
But they argued amongst themselves about moving him at all, for they all knew that a body could appear dead and not actually be dead. They would defer to a physician in a matter like this, and doctors in the army were always insisting on not moving anyone without their say-so.
So, the officers were uncertain about moving the colonel, and they dithered, back and forth, talking about sending for someone and staying here with the carriage. Then, eventually, someone moved to a different vantage point and saw the pointed rock that the colonel had fallen on.
Then they did move the body and saw that the colonel was definitely dead, that he had been grievously injured, that his skull had collapsed in the back and that there was no point in sending for a doctor to look at him.
At this point, then, the talk turned to what was to be done with the body. They thought they must wrap him up and load him back into the carriage. They were all quite aware of the fact that they’d been wasting a great deal of time here.
Perhaps if they hadn’t dallied so long, they wouldn’t have been noticed by the French soldiers patrolling the area.
But they were.
The soldiers burst out with pistols, crying for them all to stay still and to drop their own weapons. The French soldiers forced them all to put their hands on their heads and to march off in single file for their encampment.
They examined the colonel’s body and had it thrown into a mass grave with other dead soldiers.
They didn’t know who he was.
And anyone who’d been traveling with him was held captive and had no capacity to send word back.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was dead.
But no one knew this.
THE COUNTRY HOUSEof Mr. Nigel Houseman was called Barralds, and it was as pleasant a country house as one might hope for, at least so it seemed to Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzwilliam, née Bennet, who had come to stay here with her sister, Miss Jane Bennet, in the company of the man that Jane was courting, Mr. Charles Bingley, and his sisters and his sister’s husband.
If it seemed that their party was large for a stay at a country house, this was nothing compared to the sheer number of people staying at the house, in general.
The first morning, at breakfast, they dined in the dining room, and it was at least thirty people, and Elizabeth was stunned at it. The atmosphere was like a constant ball or dinner party, people going this way and that, playing games like battledore and shuttlecock and bowls in the lawn, gathering round the piano forte while someone played and sang, sometimes dancing, and everyone seemed to be perpetually with a drink in their hand, as if everyone intended to spend the entire summer inebriated.
Elizabeth had not come here for diversion. She had come here with the purpose of getting closer to the country estate of the Duke of Neithern, which—it turned out—bordered Barralds.
It was called Neith Abbey, and she had seen it when they drove past it on the way in, but she couldn’t simply walk over and present herself at the door.
Oh, perhaps she could. It was common for great estates like that to be toured in the summer months, of course. However, she didn’t want to see the house, she wanted to talk to the duke.
This was something that could not be done without an introduction, which she had never had. Someone who knew the duke was going to have to introduce her to the duke. It might not happen straightaway, but there was to be a ball midsummer, and it would be held at Neith Abbey, on the grounds, and the duke would be in attendance, and she would be introduced then.
This was what she was waiting for, so she told herself to be patient and to bide her time. She would spend her days reading and relaxing, not thinking overmuch about all the secrets of her past she had recently uncovered, nor about the fact that she was lately married, but no one knew that, because she had not really told anyone about it.
