He nodded. “I see.” A pause. “We wait.”
“We wait,” she said.
THEY WAITED.
THEYsent letters.
A month went by, and Mr. Darcy came to see Elizabeth and told her that Neithern still was ignoring Georgiana, much to her chagrin and despair. He was not certain he wished to encourage the match anymore—not because of any concern over Neithern’s blood, but because of the way he was treating Darcy’s younger sister.
And Elizabeth was, of course, exchanging letters often with Jane, who was back at Longbourn, preparing for her own wedding. It would be in another months’ time, and Elizabeth would go, though she had decided she was going to do the frightfully mad thing and travel there and back in a day, just for the wedding and the wedding breakfast later, and then be back in her own bed at Weythorn. She knew that Jane would protest and her mother would protest and everyone would say that was too much time in a carriage for one day, but Elizabeth thought she would like it better that way. She would be in mourning, of course, in her black dresses on the periphery, a young widow at her sister’s wedding.
From Jane, she also got word that Lydia was married. She’d eloped with some officer in the regiment, a Mr. Denny, apparently. They’d left Brighton together, heading straight for Scotland, leaving only a letter behind with the Colonel and Mrs. Forster, where Lydia had been staying. Elizabeth could not profess to be surprised about this turn of events. She thought it sounded exactly like something Lydia would do. It had caused a bit of a scuffle, but everything had settled down now, since the new Mrs. Denny had come round to dine with the family, quite pleased with herself as having gotten married before Jane and the others. Only Elizabeth had ruined her triumph of being the first daughter married, Lydia apparently claimed, but that wasn’t really fair, since Lizzy had concealed her marriage from positively everybody.
Elizabeth was nervous about seeing her family.
Even though she had grown up with the Bennets, she felt now as if she had always known, somehow, that she wasn’t one, and it seemed even more true now, in the wake of everything she had experienced. She thought of telling Lydia she was the daughter of a duke.
Of course, she might be a duke’s daughter, but it hardly counted, considering everything, in the end. She could not tell anyone she was.
And then, two weeks before Jane’s wedding, who came to call upon Elizabeth again but the dowager duchess. She told Elizabeth that Mrs. Sulles was increasing, and Elizabeth at first didn’t know who that was, but then remembered that Caroline had married Bishop Sulles.
“Well, that’s lovely news,” said Elizabeth. “Another grandchild for you.”
“Yes,” said the dowager duchess. “And I have solved the problem entirely, you see, so there is no need of your interference. Bart is going to marry his uncle’s widow.”
“Is that legal?” said Elizabeth.
“We’ll go to the continent to do it, of course,” said the duchess.
Caroline, a duchess? Elizabeth could hardly believe it. “And Neithern is amenable to this?”
“Oh, yes,” said the duchess. “It was his idea, you see. They have become rather close.”
Elizabeth could not fathom that, she found. How could Neithern trust Caroline when she had schemed against him to try to marry Houseman and manipulated him into marrying Georgiana in the first place? Which was when Elizabeth knew that this was the way it must have come about, that Caroline had threatened him with exposure unless he made her a duchess.
“I suppose they won’t be honoring the mourning period,” she muttered.
“No indeed,” said the duchess. She eyed Elizabeth. “I did not come to speak of this, really. I came to apologize.”
“Pardon me?” Elizabeth was rather stunned by that.
The duchess laughed softly. “Yes, I suppose it must seem rather preposterous to you, hmm? I know how I have appearedto you through the course of all of this. The truth is, I think of you often.” She started to reach out for her and then she closed her gloved hand and laid it on her knee. She looked down at her lap while she continued to speak. “When I found out that my eldest son had fathered a babe, I cannot tell you how pleased I was. And, yes, I thought Bart was that child for many years, and I lavished my love upon him, but I suppose some part of me knew that he didn’t really look like Bartholomew Senior or like anyone in our family, and I suppose… I know not, but Mrs. Fitzwilliam, when I set my eyes upon you for the first time, I knew you were of my blood. It is writ there, in the set of your chin and the cut of your brow.”
Elizabeth looked up at the woman, moved by this in a way that she could not quite account for. It didn’t matter, looking like people, or it shouldn’t, but she had never looked like her mother, for instance, and her mother had once been a handsome woman. Jane resembled her mother and so did Lydia, and her mother had heaped praise on the both of them, and there had been little Elizabeth, different Elizabeth, and she had always longed to belong somewhere.
“I wish to ask you to accompany me to our house in town today,” said the duchess. “You could see it yourself, in the portraits that hang through the hallways. Could see that you are a Sulles. You could see where you came from.”
Elizabeth wanted it, wanted it with a naked sort of desire she felt a bit ashamed of. She could not allow this woman to see how easily she could be bribed with such a thing, however, for it should not matter. What should matter was the way the duchess had treated her, and the duchess had not treated her well.
“Mrs. Fitzwilliam, family is perhaps a fraught thing, in the end, but one thing you must understand is that you are mine, you see? You are my blood. It is not the most important thing in the world, blood, not in the end. One must only look at Bartto see that. But there is something in it, something undeniable. I could lie to myself and say that I could cut you off entirely for the rest of my life, never give you another thought, but that would never be the case. So, even if you say no, I shall be back. I shall seek you out again and again. No matter how many times you rebuff me, I shall continue to try, because you are my granddaughter, you see?”
Elizabeth was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Very well, then, Grandmother. Continue to try.”
“Not today, then? You will not accompany me today?”
“Not today,” said Elizabeth.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
