At first the patronesses and duchess could not understand why the child was not under the control of her governess until Lizzy opened her mouth to speak. The ladies were impressed beyond anything that they had expected. Here was a not yet five-year-old girl who sounded like one many times her age. She spoke like a young lady, not as expected for one of her tender years. When she happened to mention some of the books that she was reading, mouths hung open in a most unladylike fashion. Lizzy mentioned that she had just completed‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’,so the Duchess decided to play along and ask her opinion of the Bard’s work.
Not only were her opinions cogent, well formed, and backed by logic, but Lizzy could recite the noted passages flawlessly. It was easy to see that the girl did not think that what she could do was anything special; it was just what she did. Within five minutes the beautiful little girl had all of the great ladies of the Ton in her thrall, while Ladies Elaine and Anne looked on beaming with pride.
Lady Anne pointed toward the pianoforte in the corner.“Will you play for us, Lizzy?” The girl curtsied and sat on the bench after her mother raised it for her. With no music sheet provided, Lizzy lifted her hands and started to play a movement from‘Lascia ch'io pianga’fromHandel’s Rinaldo. Yes, there was a mistake here and there, but mainly due to the size of her hands and not being able to cover a complete octave with them, and of course her shorter legs could not reach the pedals. When she was done there was silence until the Duchess led the applause which rose to a crescendo.
Within days of the visit, word about the prodigy that was Lady Elizabeth Fitzwilliam had spread through the Ton like wildfire. There had been some hushed whispers of her merely being a foundling, but those were silenced as it became clear that the most powerful members of the Ton would not hear a bad word spoken about the young girl. It was noted that Queen Charlotte had asked her cousin, the Duchess of Bedford, to arrange an audience for the Countess to bring her remarkable daughter to see her.
They had been in London for a month when Ladies Elaine and Anne heard about a wonderful store on Gracechurch Street near Cheapside that belonged to Gardiner and Associates. One morning the two mothers took their daughters to peruse the wares and fabrics from all corners of the known world. While they were shopping, they were introduced to the owner’s wife, a Mrs Gardiner who obviously was with child, and was looking for some fabric from India for her niece, Miss Jane Bennet.What Lady Elaine could not know was that as the ladies spoke, Jane looked at the highborn girls, and when she looked at Lady Elizabeth a memory stirred that she could not place so she dismissed it to the back of her mind. When Elizabeth looked at the ethereal-looking girl who was but two to three years older than herself, she thought that she looked similar to the girl that she used to see in her dreams.Before she could consider the meaning of her memory, Lizzy and Gigi were called by their mothers and told that it was time to return home.
The Countess was snapped out of her reverie when the subject of her thought burst into her study, assuring herself that Gigi would be arriving on Friday.‘I have to teach my daughter to knock and wait for leave to enter,’her mother reminded herself before giving her full attention to her daughter.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
The almost two-and-a-half years since James’s birth had seen the Bennet family expand further. A year after her confinement, Tammy Bennet was once again with child. By the time she reached her seventh month, she was huge, far bigger than with her previous two confinements. Mrs Ponsonby opined that the mistress of Longbourn was carrying twins, and Mr Jones did not gainsay her.
On the twelfth day of December 1795 Tammy entered her confinement in the morning, and by three that afternoon she had presented her husband with twins. A boy they named Thomas Frank, to be called Tom, and Catherine Elizabeth, to be called Kitty. Bennet told himself that Kitty’s middle name was for his late mother, but if he were honest with himself, he would have admitted that she was named for the daughter that he mourned still, albeit somewhat less than he once did. With news of a second son he grinned, remembering his cousin’s reaction when the letter from Sir Randolph was received, although the end result had not been a laughing matter.
It had been a peaceful start to the day some six months after James was born, the peace was shattered by a persistent banging on the front door at around ten that morning. When Hill, who had been promoted to butler, opened the door, he was met with the visage of a sweating and unkempt Ned Collins who immediately demanded to see the master. To the outrage of the odiferous man, Hill closed the door while he went to inform his master of the uninvited presence on the doorstep. Bennet immediately dispatched a groom to Meryton to summon his brother-in-law. As much as he wanted to, he could not leave the perspiring man with greasy hair waiting outside, so, being a gentleman, he instructed Hill to show him into the small parlour and keep him there until Mr Phillips arrived. It was then noticed by a gardener that Collins’son, William, was told to wait in the small, hired conveyance. When apprised of this, the master told Hill to show the young man in and provide him refreshments in a separate parlour.
Once Phillips arrived, the now overly irate man was summoned to the master’s study. Even before the door closed, he spat out, literally and figuratively,“Do you think I will allow you to steal my inheritance with this interloper you call a son. How dare you take another wife, and a servant at that!”
“SILENCE! You ignorant man!” Bennet said as he stood and leaned forward on his desk.“As Sir Randolph’s letter explained to your solicitor, I have every piece of evidence that I need to prove that James is my son, even without the fact that he looks so much like I did as a lad.”
“As you have chosen to ignore the terms of the letter,” Phillips said in a calm, cool solicitor mode, then he remembered that he had been informed the man did not read.“Your solicitor did read the letter to you, did he not?” Collins nodded sullenly.“In that case, as I was saying, I will be contacting the court to file suit against you to seek the maximum damages possible.”
“How can you allow this, Bennet,” Collins blustered.“I was married to your sister; you will dishonour her memory.”
Bennet stepped around his desk and stood toe-to-toe with the man, no matter how much his olfactory senses told him to back away.“You, who treated my sister as you did,” Bennet snarled,“do not get to use her to try to manipulate me. I know you used to hit her; I should call you out! Let me verify that my gun is loaded, and I will get justice for my sister.”
Collins eyes went wide in shock then he paled as he clutched his chest and keeled over, landing in a pile on the floor. The smell increased many times as the man involuntarily soiled himself. It did not take a doctor to see that the man was no more. The body was moved to the cold room as the master issued orders to scrub his office and summon Sir William and Mr Jones.
As the men waited for the doctor and Sir William, they remembered that the son was in the west parlour. On entering, they found what they judged to be a seven or eight-year-old lad cowering in fear. They quickly understood that his wife was not the only one who Ned Collins had terrorized in his useless lifetime.
“Your name is William, is it not?” Bennet asked his nephew gently. The boy nodded his head. He relaxed just a little but was still very afraid and wary. It seemed as if he was scared of all men; he thought that they were all like his father.“We have not met before, but I am your Uncle Thomas. Your late mother was my sister.” Looking at the boy, Bennet was gratified that he had more of the Bennet’s features rather than the unfortunate ones of his late father. Seeing the boy cower, Bennet tried to reassure him,“Do not fear me William, I would never hurt you or anyone else, and I will only punish if there is true cause such as lying, and that does not involve hitting.”
“I-I l-loved my Mama v-very much,” he stammered softly as big tears rolled down his cheek,“She never h-hit…”
Bennet approached his nephew slowly so he would not be frightened, but the boy still cowered. For the first time in his wretched life, William Collins felt a man hug him. His dear mama’s brother did not seem to want to harm him. Bennet, as gently as he could, told the crying boy that his father had passed away. Rather than be upset by the news, William only wanted to be sure that it was true; that he would not be hurt by the man again. Once he was assured, he seemed to visibly relax, as if he were emerging from a long nightmare.
Bennet had Hill request that his wife join them and introduced William to his wife. It did not take the boy long to see that none of the rantings by his father about the woman before him were even close to the truth. As soon as she heard a brief synopsis from her Thomas, she led the boy up to the nursery.
There was nothing for Mr Jones to do but confirm that Collins was very dead and had most probably had a massive heart attack based on the reports of the two men who witnessed his death. Sir William asked if Bennet knew if there was any family for the son besides himself. As far as Bennet knew, the dead bully was the last of his line. He asked his brother Frank to investigate to be sure and said that in the absence of any relation closer than himself, he would take William in as his ward.
That night Tammy shared that when they had bathed William, they had found bruises all over his body. It was no wonder that the boy had shown no emotion at the news of his father’s death. Bennet had thought that if the man were not already dead, he would have happily killed him. After a few days of being treated with love and compassion, it hit William that mayhap not all men were like his father.
As William became more and more comfortable with his Uncle Thomas, he shared what his life was like after his mother passed, and about the lies that his father had told him about Longbourn being‘stolen’from him. Bennet had explained all to his nephew, who accepted without question that his cousin James was the rightful heir to Longbourn. William, like his father before him, was not able to read, so Bennet had retained a tutor for the boy and discovered that the boy had a thirst for knowledge and was reading and writing with little aid in a few months’time.
Bennet returned from his reverie as he saw William playing in the park with John. He was much pleased as the tutor had recently reported that his nephew, now officially adopted, had caught up to where a boy of his age should be in his studies. When the issue of his last name had been discussed, William had thought about it for seconds before he announced emphatically that he wanted to take his uncle’s name; after all, his mother had been a Bennet. From that day on he was William Bennet, and the name Collins was not used again.
Thomas and Tammy Bennet were not the most sociable people, preferring the company of their small circle of family and friends and deeply disliked going to Town. Bennet was happy to have his brothers Gardiner and Phillips represent his interests and thus kept away from the metropolis which was full of too many people for his liking.
Jane loved her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner and loved spending time with them in London, as they did not have children of their own, so she garnered all of their attention. Jane had again been invited to spend some weeks with Aunt Maddie and Uncle Edward in London.
If he had not an aversion to Town, he may have been with Jane when she met the petite Lady Elizabeth Fitzwilliam, who just happened to be wearing his mother’s ruby cross.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Lady Catherine de Bourgh was a very frustrated and confused woman. She could not understand why no one in her family was bending to her will. The voices in her head kept telling her that she would make them pay dearly for ignoring her. She just did not know how she would go about punishing them…yet.
