Page 15 of Under Such Circumstances (Desperately Seeking Elizabeth #1)

ELIZABETH HAD NOT realized how much she had missed her sister Jane. Within hours of being back in her company, however, she began to feel restored in a way that she had not anticipated. It was not simply a restoration of her good spirits and her happiness, it went deeper than this.

Elizabeth began to feel, by degrees, as she remained in her sister’s company, a restoration of her very self.

It was as if, somehow, she had forgotten who she usually was.

She had lost sight of her cheerful and playful self and had become something dolorous and used and dejected.

She did not chide herself for the transformation; how could she have reacted otherwise?

But being with Jane, it was the first step towards that thing that the colonel had indicated she could be—intact, whole, untouched.

Herself.

Again.

She related the story of the death of Mr. Wickham easily enough, even though it was entirely a falsehood. Jane was all aghast. How horrid that Elizabeth had witnessed such a thing, and then to be trapped for hours with the hated Mr. Darcy, who Elizabeth abhorred.

Elizabeth said that Mr. Darcy improved upon further acquaintance, but she did not tell her sister that Mr. Darcy had proposed to her, something that would come out later and be a source of consternation when it was mentioned in passing in a letter from Charlotte.

Jane would be all astonishment that she could have kept such a thing from her, but Elizabeth would pass it off as having seemed unimportant in the wake of watching a man choke to death on his own blood, and this was acceptable to Jane.

But this was not to take place for some time.

At present, Elizabeth was simply in the company of her sister in London, feeling her very self return, and she gloried in it.

Had circumstances been different, she and Jane may have stayed for a week or more in the company of their aunt and uncle on Gracechurch Street. But given the strange news of Elizabeth’s inheritance, they were wanted at home immediately, and their father came to fetch them the very next morning.

On the way back to Hertfordshire, she discovered a few pieces of information she had not been been able to make out in the ruined letter she had received. The first was that she had inherited a house in addition to the six thousand pounds.

“A house?” said Elizabeth to her father and Jane. “But if Aunt Matilda had a house, why didn’t she live in it?”

“It’s not a large house,” said her father. “It’s in London. It has been let out for years to an aging couple who still live there, I suppose.”

“Oh,” said Elizabeth, making a face at this news. “So, if I wished to take residence there, I should have to turn elderly people out onto the street.”

“Why would you wish to take residence there?” her father said, shaking his head at her. “In London?”

“Papa, some people do enjoy London,” said Elizabeth.

“I was thinking you might sell it,” said her father.

“Ah,” said Elizabeth. “Yes, that’s a possibility, I suppose.”

Her father eyed her. “You’re going to go and live in that house, are you not? Whyever for, Lizzy? That’s a preposterous idea. I think what your aunt would have wanted was for you to use this money to have a very respectable dowry, so that you might attract—”

“Why, though?” said Elizabeth. “Why me?”

There was a very long silence that filled up the carriage, and Elizabeth looked at Jane, who only shrugged and then back at her father, who was pointedly not looking at either of them, but rather looking at his hands.

Finally, her father let out a deep breath. “All right, I am going to tell you both this, Jane included, but it goes without saying you won’t wish to repeat it.”

Elizabeth felt a sinking sensation settling into her. She wasn’t going to like this, was she?

“Your Aunt Matilda is not your aunt,” said her father. “She is your mother.”

Elizabeth collapsed into her seat, understanding it all at once. Lord, just as she was recovering from the fact of being ruined, she was struck again with some other calamity. “I’m not legitimate, am I?”

“Oh, you most certainly are,” said her father stoutly. “You are the most respectable and intelligent of women. You are my daughter .”

“This is why Mama doesn’t like me,” muttered Elizabeth.

“She likes you,” said her father. “She was the one who insisted that we say you were ours, Lizzy. We could have said you were a foster, but we both decided—”

“Who is my father, then?”

“ I am your father,” said her father firmly.

“Aunt Matilda never told you?” said Elizabeth.

“No,” said her father. “No, but there was always this, the house, the money. It came from somewhere, so he wasn’t some sort of pauper, I don’t suppose. Isn’t, perhaps. Might even still be alive. Perhaps he was already married to someone else.”

Might still be alive? This made something in her lurch.

“Well, then, Lizzy,” breathed Jane. “You might be the daughter of anyone. You might be the daughter of someone frightfully important.”

“I think not,” said Elizabeth. “Not with six thousand pounds and a very small house. And if he cared, he would have looked for me, which he obviously didn’t do.”

Jane reached out and took Elizabeth’s hand in both of hers.

Elizabeth looked over at her sister—not her sister.

Oh, this was going to be devastating, wasn’t it? How painfully ironic that she had thought she was returning to herself, to her former identity.

Her identity had been a lie.

And perhaps this was why it had all happened. Perhaps something in her had called to Mr. Wickham, who had seen in it her somewhere. Her mother had been a shameless hussy. Maybe she was one, too.

“No, no, whatever you are doing there, Lizzy, do not do it,” said her father.

“I absolutely forbid it. You may not think any of the things that I can plainly see are flitting through your mind, for your expression is giving it all away very clearly. You are still my Lizzy Bennet. You must not think that any of this changes anything, and—in fact—we are not telling the other girls. Lydia must never know. Surely, we can all see the sense in that. Nothing is different.”

“But they must wonder why I am getting this money,” said Elizabeth.

Her father shrugged. “Let them.”

“I thought,” said Elizabeth, “that when you said I must sell the house, you would recommend I divide the money amongst my sisters—”

“I am to forbid that,” said her father. “My sister expressly made me promise you would be prevented from doing anything other that keeping all of it.”

“Yes, but that will only make it all more conspicuous!”

“It is what she could do for you, my darling,” said her father. “She could not be with you in the way she wished—”

“Oh, why couldn’t she?” asid Elizabeth. “She could have come to Longbourn. She could have lived with you instead of—”

“Yes, true.” Her father sighed, folding his hands in his lap. “My sister Matilda remains mysterious to me in many ways. I don’t know why she did it.”

“She abandoned me,” said Elizabeth. “And she offers me six thousand pounds and a house, and this is supposed to… what? Make up for never knowing me?”

“She knew us, Lizzy. We did visit.”

“Oh, not often,” said Elizabeth, who yanked her hand out of Jane’s in her anger.

“At least five summers,” said Jane.

Elizabeth’s lower lip was trembling. It was her own fault, she realized.

Her aunt would have been happy to have them visit every summer, but when Elizabeth was older, she had asked if they must go and said she would rather stay at home, and that had put an end to it. “I asked to stop going. It was me.”

“You didn’t know,” said her father.

No, she did not know.

And even if she had known, perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered. Her mother had given her up, had left her here, to be raised by her brother’s wife, who hated her.

She refused to feel guilty for not forming a bond with that woman.

No, Aunt Matilda was not her mother.

But Elizabeth found herself relieved to think that Mrs. Bennet was not her mother either.

I am motherless, she thought.

Yes, no mother, no father, no virtue, nothing.

When she had left Longbourn to go and visit Charlotte less than five weeks ago, she had been someone else entirely. She was no longer that girl.

I am not a Bennet , she thought, letting out a deep breath.

Who was she, then?