Page 32 of Under Such Circumstances (Desperately Seeking Elizabeth #1)

BACK AT WEYTHORN , Elizabeth was entirely unaware of her husband’s immediate demise.

She was in one of the rooms at the top of the house, looking for somewhere safe to store the marriage documents.

There was an attic up here that she had hitherto not explored. It was quite warm all the way at the top of the house, and the sloping roof meant she had to duck as she peered at the contents of the place, covered in cobwebs.

There were some chairs, an old trunk, open and full of nothing but rat droppings, it seemed. But there was also an old writing desk.

That might do nicely, she thought, making her way over to it, smoothing her hand over the dust on it. It was the kind with drawers in the front, the kind with drawers that locked. She fingered the keyholes on the small drawers and then tried to open one.

It was locked up.

Hmm.

She stepped back from it, scrutinizing the desk, thinking that she would have Frederick, the manservant she employed, help her move it downstairs to her bedchamber. Maybe the locks could be picked open or a key could be made for it. Perhaps she could call a locksmith to ask if it could be done.

But then, she saw something dangling beneath the desk. She ducked down her head and there it was. The key, tied up on a string and secured to the leg of the desk.

She tugged on the key, and the string strained.

She tugged harder.

The string snapped.

She fitted the key to a drawer, and it opened. It was empty, so she tucked the marriage documents away in it, shut it, and locked it.

Then she decided to go and seek Frederick to move the desk.

She started for the door out of the attic, moving through the hot air stooped over.

And something stopped her. She could not say what, exactly.

She turned and went back to the desk and began to open all of the drawers. Each one was empty except the last. There, she found a stack of writing papers, yellowed at the edges, all blank.

She riffled through them and she realized they were not all blank. There were sheaves of paper in the middle that had been written on, a series of them.

They all began, Dear Eddie, and all had the beginnings of a letter, but none of the letters were finished.

Elizabeth lay them all out on the desk and read each one.

Dear Eddie, You have obviously never been a mother, and I suppose you would say that I haven’t been one either, but I can tell you that from the moment I felt my babe quicken in me, I have loved the child.

You may say that this is a better path for my babe, but I cannot think I can trust anyone in that family, no matter what they may say.

But the letter cut off there.

The next said, Dear Eddie, I regret ever informing you that I had eloped with the Duke of Neithern. I should have followed my own internal belief to keep that information locked away forever. You have betrayed me in the deepest way I can imagine and I shall never forgive

And then the next abandoned letter.

Dear Eddie, I suppose you will think that I ought to be grateful for what you have done but if you think I shall send my sweet child away to live anywhere near the reach of that dreadful man, you have lost all your wits.

And the next.

Dear Eddie, I shall be indebted to you forever, and I know this.

I think you have it in your head that you are my savior, and it is partly my own fault, for perhaps I have seen you that way.

I also have known for some time that as the duke’s child grows larger within me, it has pushed you further away.

It is not only the way you seem hesitant to touch my body or the way you look at me as if I am no longer yours, as if you feel the duke has taken possession of me, his seed growing here.

But this child has never been the duke’s, and if you persist in trying to give my own sweet babe back to that monster who spawned him

There was one more.

Dear Eddie, I love you. I thought you loved me too. I see now you never did.

Elizabeth was stunned. What was this?

The letters were addressed to Eddie, who must be the Vicomte de Larilane and the person who had written the letters must be Elizabeth’s own mother, Matilda Bennet.

These letters, this babe she spoke of, it must be Elizabeth herself, and if that were true, there was an indication here that Elizabeth was not illegitimate at all, but the product of some hushed elopement between her mother and… and the Duke of Neithern?

Odd.

Hadn’t Jane just mentioned that summer ball given at the Neithern estate?

Elizabeth read the letters again, trying to ascertain what she could.

Her mother used the word “elope” which might not always mean that marriage had occurred, she supposed.

Maybe her mother had been spirited off and not been married.

If she had married a duke, why would she be here, living in Weythorn, after all?

On the other hand, if what Larilane had said was true, that whoever it was who fathered Elizabeth had used Elizabeth’s mother ill, battering her physically, then it might make sense that her mother had run away from the man.

This seemed to be supported by the idea that she called the man who had “spawned” Elizabeth a “monster.”

So, yes, her mother married in secret and then fled in fear of her husband’s hurting her. She would have hidden from him, for men like that could be irrationally possessive and frightening. She would have wished that no one know where she was…

Except, no, that made no sense, because she had not remained in hiding.

It wouldn’t have been difficult for a duke to find her mother when she was working as a governess or when she was living with their cousins.

And the Duke of Neithern, well, the former duke, had only died a few years ago.

There was a new duke now, his son. But now that Elizabeth thought about it, she was fairly certain that the current duke didn’t have a living mother, that she’d died in childbirth or something.

Elizabeth could be getting things mixed up, however.

It was Lydia who liked to chatter about the ins and outs of dukes and barons and their children and their wives and all of that.

Lydia was a silly sort of girl who had no ability to keep anything useful in her head, but she knew the full names of every duke in England and the names of all of their young and unmarried sons. She could recite them on cue.

Anyway, the late duke must have remarried.

Maybe somehow, her mother had negotiated a divorce from the duke. That might fit, after all, for she had lived a life of a woman who might have wished to conceal her divorce. But if so, why not marry Larilane?

She was angry with Larilane in these letters, and it seemed to have something to do with Larilane trying to give Elizabeth to the duke.

It was true that the duke would have had the legal right to Elizabeth as her father—if he were, in fact, her father.

Perhaps, however, her mother had concealed Elizabeth’s existence in some way.

Having her raised by Mr. and Mrs. Bennet as their own made it seem as if she were not Matilda’s child.

Perhaps she had convinced the duke that their babe had died or something of that nature. Then, she’d hidden Elizabeth with her brother. With no tie to the duke, he’d been willing to divorce her and set her free and to no longer pursue her.

With the duke no longer a danger, her mother had stopped living here, in Weythorn. She had, however, kept the money and the house in reserve for Elizabeth upon her death. These things had been gifted her from Larilane.

But if Larilane had offered to give Elizabeth to the duke…? Why would he do that?

Elizabeth needed to know more. If there was a ball to be given at the home of the Duke of Neithern, who might be her half-brother, she needed to go there, to meet him. She would tell Jane she had changed her mind and that she would go to the country, after all, that she was very eager to go.

And she must devise some way to contact Larilane, to show him these letters, and to get him to explain what had happened.

Obviously, her mother and Larilane had some love affair, and obviously it had occurred whilst her mother was with child with the duke’s babe, but why had they fallen out?

Why had Larilane left this house? Why had he gone and married someone else?

There were too many questions now.

She touched the word elope on the aged sheet of paper, traced it with her fingers.

Perhaps she was not illegitimate after all.

Perhaps she was the daughter of a duke, the legitimate daughter of a duke! If so, there could be no objection to her marriage to the colonel, not anymore.

Should she write of this to her husband?

She considered.

No, best not put all this down in a letter, especially one that had to travel so far and into such dangerous territory. It could be intercepted, and besides, there was so little she was sure of.

MR. DARCY HAD stopped spying on Elizabeth and started spying on his cousin Richard.

This, he had accomplished primarily by having servants report to him on his cousin’s comings and goings.

Though he had spied on Elizabeth in person, himself, he did not feel the need for such dire and personal interference into his cousin’s affairs.

At first, he was horrified, because his cousin was not marrying Elizabeth.

He had known when he went to speak to Richard that he could not be truthful about how he felt. He had to make his cousin think that there was no chance that he would ever marry Elizabeth.

It had hurt him to say the things he said, calling her soiled, saying that he didn’t want her after she’d been used by other men. It had hurt him because he had a feeling that Richard would repeat these things to Elizabeth someday, and that she would think he thought this of her.

It wasn’t true, though he recognized it likely should be true.

He should think of her as soiled or at least taken or at least claimed.

He had hoped, with him out of the way, no obstacles in his path, the colonel would marry Elizabeth straightaway.

He wished this because he had seen when he visited the woman that she was badly gone for the colonel and he wanted her happiness more than he wanted anything on earth.

But the colonel did nothing.

He kept drinking. He kept sleeping all day, into the afternoon and staying up at taverns until the wee hours. He behaved just the same as he had before the confrontation between them.

As the date of Richard’s departure to the front loomed, Darcy began to think his cousin was not going to do it, was not going to marry Elizabeth.

What did he do then?

Darcy could not pursue her. If he wavered again, came to court her again, proposed marriage again, after swearing he would not do that only… what? Four times? Five? He didn’t know. If he did that, he would not ingratiate himself to her.

Well, he would not marry her, but he would look after her in whatever way he could. She would be heartbroken, of course, having been abandoned by Richard. She already was, he supposed.

He thought about killing Richard.

Really doing it.

He thought about Wickham’s body in the rain, and he thought to himself, I could end him. He deserves it .

And he wondered at himself, because what was it, exactly, that Elizabeth had done to him?

But then, word came that Richard had gotten his father to procure him a special license, and the servant said that the marriage would take place at Weythorn.

Darcy went to watch that himself, through the windows outside, shamefully spying on the both of them. He left after they were all alone, after they started kissing, after they climbed the stairs in each other’s arms.

He went home and he didn’t sleep that night.

He wept, actually. He was alone and no one was there to witness it, witness his falling into a puddle of his own pathetic self-pity.

The next day was a numb day of exhaustion.

And then he slept and when he woke the next day, he decided it was time to simply get on with his life. He began to think that it might make sense to simply do as his family wished and marry his cousin Anne de Bourgh.

He had been thinking that he and Georgiana must go to the country for some social visits, and he might as well write to his aunt and say that they would come to Rosings. There, he would try to really consider Anne as a wife.

But then, he ran into Bingley at a dinner given at the Whitson home, and they got to talking, and Bingley said he was going to stay in Neithern county, and that there was quite a gathering there at the home of Mr. Houseman, who was some upstart in trade who was throwing around his money in all manner of odd ways.

Darcy had received an invitation to come and stay at Houseman’s country house and dismissed the man as someone not to visit, not the right sort, someone neither of his aunts would approve of.

However, he didn’t relish the idea of marrying Anne, really.

Perhaps he could put that off. Houseman’s country house promised to be lively, full of social opportunity, and that would be good for Georgiana.

Above all, he needed to get away from his cousin’s new wife, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.

He still thought of her often. Many, many times a day.

He needed diversion, and he would not get it at Rosings.

So, he determined he would accept Mr. Houseman’s invitation, after all.

And word would not come of Richard’s tragic death until he was already there. By which time, he would have seen that Elizabeth was there, too.

They would all be spending the summer together in the country.

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