Holder House
Gardiner:
I read the notice in the papers.
On the 6th of April 1792, my wife, my son, and I were walking in Hyde Park when we discovered two girls and a babe.
Their names are Jane, Elizabeth, and Mary.
If these are your wards, please come see me at my home as soon as may be. Send a man when you are home, and we can meet at your convenience.
Holder
He stared at the missive from Lord Holder as if it were a snake about to bite him.
Those were his nieces, but it said nothing about where the girls were now. Had Lord and Lady Holder deposited them with a parish? Had the sweet girls been placed in an orphanage or workhouse?
Gardiner had to stop the questions. He would only get answers when he went to Holder House, and he would not be alone. His Maddie would accompany him.
He wrote a reply telling Lord Holder he and his wife would be at his house at nine the following morning. He summoned his manservant and instructed that the message be delivered by a groom forthwith. Then, Gardiner took the page and made his way to the first floor, where he would find Maddie in their shared bedchamber.
To say that Maddie was flabbergasted would have been an understatement. Now they needed to get through the night and try, as they may, to sleep.
Hopefully on the morrow, they would be one step closer to locating the girls.
Chapter 16
Holder House’s butler had been told to expect early callers—the knocker was down to all others. As soon as the Gardiners identified themselves, he admitted them, and he and a footman relieved them of their outerwear.
“Mr and Mrs Gardiner, please follow me to where his lordship, her ladyship, and the family are waiting for you,” the butler drawled and led the callers up the grand staircase to the first-floor main drawing room. He nodded to a liveried footman who opened the door. “Mr and Mrs Gardiner,” he announced. Then, the retainer withdrew, pulling the door closed behind him.
It was a fight for Gardiner to maintain his equanimity. He knew the earl, and he had seen the countess once or twice. He had never met the son, but there was no mistaking who he was seeing standing next to the viscount. Jane looked exactly like Fanny had at the same age. Lizzy had very similar looks to her late Grandmamma Bennet whose portrait was taken when she was eighteen and Bennet had on the wall in his study. Mary had her mother’s beauty but lighter-coloured hair and the colour of Bennet’s eyes. Maddie squeezed his hand while Lord Holder introduced his son and daughters. Lord Hadlock bowed, and the girls each gave a flawlessly executed curtsy.
“Jamey, will you take your sisters to the music room until we all break our fasts?” Holder turned to the Gardiners. “You will join us for the morning meal, will you not?”
“We have no appointments for the rest of the day, so we happily accept,” Gardiner stated evenly as he watched his nieces follow theirbrotherout of the room.
“By the look on your face, I assume that Jane, Lizzy, and Mary are the wards you referred to in the notice?” Holder stated once everyone was seated. He saw Gardiner give a nod. “Will you tell us how the girls came to be abandoned in Hyde Park?”
Gardiner cogitated and decided he needed to tell the Carringtons all without any obfuscation. “Their birth mother was my late sister, Frances, who we all called Fanny. She was the youngest of the three Gardiners; there was an older sister, but she was lost in childbirth some years past. When she was not yet seventeen, Fanny decided to compromise…” He told the whole of the history, including how Bennet had known he suffered from the same ailment which had taken his father. He told how Bennet had been called home to God while both he and Phillips were busy getting married at opposite ends of the country. Gardiner related all; the precipitate marriage his sister entered into with the brute who was next in line to inherit the estate and how the horrendous man used to abuse her. Next, he revealed how his sister, who had woken up to her past errors and had taken responsibility for her actions, caused the accident which ended her life as well as the life of the bully Collins. Said actions were to protect her two youngest daughters who were fathered by Collins and lived at Longbourn. He explained how that fateful day Collins had discovered his wife would never bear him a son on top of being removed as the master of Longbourn. Evidently the man had come home determined to mete out the most severe punishment ever, which had driven his wife to take the drastic step she had.
The retelling ended with Gardiner revealing the contents of the letter his sister had written, and how it had only recently been discovered, which had led to his returning to London sooner than planned and the placing of the notice in the papers. “There will be many fraudsters disappointed. My manager told me at least twenty have arrived, all claiming to have information, of course, depending on the size of the reward.”
“We experienced the same when we first found the girls,” Holder revealed. Then, he went on to explain how they had discovered the girls and the state in which they had been found.
“Poor Mary was rather weak and listless until I fed her. Until we found and employed a wetnurse, I fed her by dripping milk from a cloth. It was that lady we employed who fed Mary for most of her first year,” Edith interjected. “Mrs Indigo as she was, met a tenant at Holder Heights, married him, and he adopted her son, Peter. They have another son and daughter now.”
“When we discovered them, it took my wife seconds to decide that the girls would never go to a parish,” Holder related. “We did look for a family, but we obviously sought them in the wrong county…” He explained where they had looked and why.
When Lord Holder revealed the dates the notice had been printed in theTimes of London, Gardiner understood why he had not seen it.
Between both Carringtons, they spoke of how the girls grew up to the age they were now. The close relationship with the Fitzwilliams and Darcys was spoken of, and how all of the children counted one another as cousins. They also revealed what birthdates they had chosen for their daughters and why.
Gardiner smiled when he heard what prompted the choice of the dates of birth. “Today is Mary’s actual birthday; she was born on the second of January. Lizzy’s birthday is the fifth of February, and Janey was born on the twelfth day of August. The days you celebrated were close to two of the birthdays; only Lizzy’s was off by about a month,” he informed the Carringtons.
Next, Holder told Gardiner he had been waiting for him to return to ask if he knew of missing children from Meryton.
“What made you think of that now?” Gardiner enquired.
