Cambridgeshire 1795
“You the gent that the dying woman sent for to take the child?”
Dying?
The dingy woman who’d thrown open the bolted door stared at Mr. Bennet as she waited for him to reply.
“Well, if you ain’t, you the one who beat her so bad?”
“No,” Mr. Bennet replied faintly. “I am the one she sent for.”
“Good. No doubt she deserved what her man did to her, but the child is also beat black and blue. Don’t like that. A little whipping never hurt a child. But this is more. Someone else should raise that girl.”
Mr. Bennet pushed past the woman and ducked under the low doorframe. “Where is she?”
The proprietor pointed him in the direction, and she hurried behind Mr. Bennet saying, “I’d have turned them both away if I knew she’d start dying. A respectable place. I don’t want no one who no one knows dying in my house.”
Mr. Bennet opened the door.
Nine years. It was the same face. They had once planned to marry.
The sunken eyes, the handprint bruise visible on her cheek, the feverish glow to her features. Her breath was raspy and labored.
“You came,” Amelia wheezed out. A fit of hacking coughs took her. She pressed her hand against her side, her face filled with pain.
“Oh, God, Amelia.” Mr. Bennet took her hand. “Of course I came.”
The old resentment could not survive the sight of her suffering.
The child was four or five years of age, with big dark eyes that reminded him of his own Jane and Mary. Part of Mr. Bennet’s attraction to Fanny had been a similarity in her appearance to Amelia’s. But her coloring was dark rather than blonde. A huge black bruise had formed around one of the little girl’s eyes.
Amelia’s hand was burning. Mr. Bennet asked, “Lord Rochester did this?”
“I should never have let them make me marry him.”
“Oh, Amelia.”
“I took a lover. I admit it. But why did he need to beat Lizzy with such violence?”
Mr. Bennet looked at Elizabeth. The little girl stared at him with wide eyes. The huge black eye made Mr. Bennet wish to kill Lord Rochester. Mr. Bennet smiled at her a little, but she did not smile back.
“You cannot be dying,” Mr. Bennet said helplessly to Amelia. “Have you been seen by a real physician?”
“I feel so odd. So, faint. The pain in my side becomes worse. I think I only kept myself erect because I needed to live until you arrived.” She slouched into the seat. Her eyes seemed to wander. “My ribs are broken. He did it. The bouncing in the stagecoach hurt so much. But I must protect Elizabeth. That is why I called you.”
“You want me to care for her if you die.”
“Not if.” She smiled at Mr. Bennet, and she sat up again, looking just a little like Miss Lamont of old. That old flash of attraction went through him. The memory of all their clever conversations. “You are a man who likes to be reasoned and calculated. Tell me, how would you assess my odds?”
“It is not impossible,” Mr. Bennet replied.
She laughed, but the movement made her gasp in pain, gripping her side again.
“I do not wish to die still full of longing for life,” she said. “I sinned against God, and I repent for having made false vows of love, when I still loved you, and for having then violated those false vows. But I hate him, I despise the thought of him. I will not repent for the sin against my husband and his honor and his rights—I beg you to promise me.” She gripped Mr. Bennet’s hands with that burning strength which fever could give. “Promise me!”
“I swear, I shall care for Elizabeth. I shall treat her as my own daughter.”
She gasped and slumped back into the chair. She closed her eyes. Each breath was a struggle for her. Mr. Bennet studied the child, and he thought of what must be done to keep her safe and hidden.
“He is wrong.” Amelia’s voice was so quiet that Mr. Bennet could barely hear it.
“Very wrong.”
She opened her eyes again. That smile. That old clever, mischievous smile. “I mean about Elizabeth’s birth.” A pained pause. She pressed her side. “Oh, I will be happy for this to end. It was only after she was born. It was only afterwards I violated my vows. He refused to hear. He beat her. He’d kicked me. He screamed that she was a bastard. I was scared. I worried he would not stop.”
Mr. Bennet did not know what to say to the horror of the image.
“I sinned,” Amelia repeated. Her eyes were wandering about again. “But only after. I know I shall die. I swear she has Rochester’s blood.”
“I would not think of her differently no matter who the father was, so long as you are the mother.”
“I know. But though I am an adulterer, and though I do not repent having sinned against my husband, I swear. Elizabeth had an untainted birth. Please believe me.”
“I believe you.” Mr. Bennet was frightened that she was deteriorating before his eyes. “But I shall call the doctor again.”
“It is useless, he shall just bleed me. Leave me to die.”
“I must hear for myself.”
“Very like you.” A strained smile. “Help me to the bed.”
Mr. Bennet helped her stand. Her legs were shaking.
The girl, Elizabeth, watched them. Wide eyes, one ringed by a bruise.
Once Amelia settled herself, she called to the girl, “Lizzy, climb up here next to Mama. My dear, my dear, I love you so.”
The girl desperately embraced her mother. Once a spasm of pain went over Amelia’s face, but she said nothing to the girl.
“This is Mr. Bennet.” Amelia gestured weakly. “He is a kind man. You must go with him. He will take care of you.”
“Mama!” the girl sobbed.
Amelia closed her eyes. She clearly did not have the energy to comfort the poor child. Acting on a familiar habit, Mr. Bennet picked Elizabeth up and rocked her on his shoulder. “There, there, little one. There, there. All is well. All is well.”
His own face was wet.
Amelia stirred herself and addressed Elizabeth again. “Never, never talk about your father. Or your home. Forget him. He was no one. You never had a father. Not a real father. Trust Mr. Bennet. I trust him.”
Now the girl nodded, her face blotchy and tear covered, though Mr. Bennet had grave doubts about how much she understood.
Amelia relaxed into bed. “It is done. Now I can die.”
Mr. Bennet went to the door, still holding Elizabeth in his arms, and he called the unhappy landlady. “Bring the doctor again—do not worry about the fees, I have ample money. And also bring the town’s notary, and a lawyer if the notary is not one himself.” Some speed was required. He pulled out two guineas from his purse and gave them to the woman.
She nodded at seeing the money and went off, calling her own servant to go find the doctor again.
Amelia was dying.
The rasp from her difficult breathing promised it. Perhaps it was his imagination, but the breathing sounded harsher, more gasping than when he’d entered the room.
He watched over Amelia while waiting for those he’d called to arrive. He bounced Elizabeth while murmuring a nonsensical lullaby that Mary always insisted he sing to her.
By the time the surgeon arrived, the girl was asleep, and Mr. Bennet’s arm and back were tired. The man looked at Mr. Bennet as soon as he stepped in.
“Is there any hope?” Mr. Bennet asked.
“Precious little—I’d told her she must call someone to care for the child. I am glad to see that she did.”
“What is her complaint?”
“Inflammation of the ribs and lungs. She said she traveled for a great distance without having the broken ribs bound. Foolish. One must lie in bed after such an injury—but I suppose that was impossible for her.”
Amelia stirred awake. She smiled to see her daughter sleeping on Mr. Bennet’s shoulder. “She already trusts you.”
“She was very tired,” Mr. Bennet replied.
“Do not poke me again,” Amelia said to the doctor. “It will do no good. I’ll take the laudanum now. I no longer have any need to think.”
The town notary arrived, and Amelia made a statement swearing to her own identity and that of Elizabeth.
Once this was done, the doctor bled her, though in a manner that showed he expected this to do no good. Then Amelia drank a heavy dose of the laudanum, and within minutes fell into a fitful sleep.
Mr. Bennet had the physician also make and sign a statement describing all of Amelia’s injuries, and her state.
Amelia’s ribs expanded widely with each breath, as she struggled to take in enough air. Mr. Bennet was glad that the child was asleep. He half expected, and rather hoped, that Amelia would not wake again.
He sat in the armchair by the bed listening. He kept bouncing the child up and down.
When Amelia returned to consciousness, she was no longer lucid. She muttered again and again, “I hate him. I hate him. I do not repent. I’ll never repent! He deserved it.”
“Amelia, Amelia,” Mr. Bennet said helplessly. He took her hand. The only time he’d ever felt a hand so fevered was as his mother died. “You go to the Almighty, be at peace in your soul.”
She looked at him with a suddenly clear eye.
That startling and intent look, as though she saw through all the wordy haze which he projected in front of himself, and down to the essence of his character. It was that look which had made him fall in love with her when he was a young student, and she the beauty of the county.
“Are you not still an atheist, Mr. Bennet?”
“Perhaps. Maybe there is a creator who takes no interest in our doings, but I still have no belief in the creeds.”
“I ask you to still raise her to respect the church. I still believe. I believe in goodness, I believe that we all will be transformed, that Christ and his angels are bending down to touch me. They do not despise me—oh, I feel so strange. All is floating, and my thoughts are hard to corral.”
“I too believe in goodness,” Mr. Bennet said urgently. “I believe that there is justice, and love, and light—but only that we must create it. It comes from the actions of those men who act upon their better natures, and not those who seek to dominate, to be cruel, or even just to protect and care for themselves and their families at the cost of all that is good in their souls.”
“I see a glow, a light! I cannot hate him. Not even him anymore. All becomes clear.”
Mr. Bennet felt a catch in his throat. His motions, or perhaps the conversation, had woken Elizabeth. She wailed and crawled out of his arms and onto Amelia’s bed. She clutched at her mother.
Amelia lapsed into silence again and closed her eyes.
When she opened her eyes again, she pushed herself up in the bed with a sudden force, and she began to shout and speak loudly and incoherently, screaming and wailing as her daughter shouted, “Mama, mama!”
Then after five such minutes, she fell onto the bed, and convulsed.
When she stilled there was no breath.
Amelia Hartwood, né e Lamont, Lady Rochester, had died.