28

Cameron Court had lost its luster for Jane Bingley by that winter. She had wished to host her family for Christmas, but Mrs. Bennet was insistent that the family celebrate at Longbourn, claiming it was what her late husband would wish. It had not seemed as though the Collinses particularly wished for it, but the Lucases offered to host the Bingleys and Gardiners at Netherfield. Feeling a sense of sisterly affection from Elizabeth had been the greatest of gifts for Jane, but it had all fallen apart not long after.

Elizabeth had been glowing on Christmas Eve; everybody had remarked on how well she looked, dancing around the fact that she had been a sallow and sickly shell of herself only three months prior. Elizabeth radiated joy and love, basking in the spirit of the season despite the pall of grief that lingered at Longbourn.

And in a gesture toward reconciliation, Elizabeth had confided in Jane that she was expecting a child in late summer. It was too early to be certain, but Elizabeth wished Jane to be the first to know, just as Jane had done in her letters the previous summer.

They had never spoken of it when Jane was last in Meryton. She supposed that Elizabeth might never have read her letters, else she would have expected Jane to be with child at the time. And Jane had never told anybody of the miscarriage, save for Charles, who had wept with her for weeks. She confessed it to Elizabeth, and then told her that she suspected she was once more expecting, and at nearly the same time. They laughed and celebrated together, even discussing names for their children, and future visits to ensure a friendship between the young cousins.

But the return journey to Yorkshire had been an arduous one, the heavy snows making the roads treacherous, and by the time they reached Cameron Court, Jane was bleeding. She had once again miscarried. She and Charles grieved, and their distress was compounded when they received word of Caroline’s sudden death in the middle of January.

Charles took the news very badly, and hardly spoke to her of it. They abandoned any attempts to conceive another child. Everything at Cameron Court appeared some shade of gray to Jane’s eyes, as desolate as the wintry landscape that hung over them. Jane had only the comfort of writing to Elizabeth, who had finally consented to a correspondence.

They had never fully spoken of the rift that had formed between them, and the events that brought that about. But there was peace between them again, and it was enough. Jane had begun to regain her equanimity and feel almost content, despite the strange distance Charles kept from her.

At the end of February, her fragile serenity was shattered. A widowed cousin of Charles’s had died in childbirth, and he wished to adopt the child, a baby boy who had not yet been given a name.

Jane agreed, as much as it pained her to face her husband’s fear that she could not give him an heir. She wanted a child, and here was one who needed a mother and father. The babe would be loved, she promised him, and would bear the Bingley name.

But when Charles retrieved little Marcus Bingley from the woman he had paid to nurse the babe, Jane’s world came crashing down around her. The baby was the spitting image of her husband.

“We are related,” Charles reminded her. “My poor late cousin and I both resemble our maternal grandmother, and so little Marcus looks not like me but like his mother.”

But this could not explain Louisa’s Hurst’s reaction to the child, which was one of irrepressible emotion. Again, Jane questioned her husband. “You and Louisa share a father, but not a mother – and was your cousin not a relative from the maternal side? Why should Louisa weep and croon over his resemblance to his mother? And why did you dispute it?”

“I only meant to soothe her,” Charles had answered. “She was friends with my cousin from childhood, for they are of a near age.”

But Jane had never heard of any such cousin from either of her husband’s sisters, nor had he ever spoken of the woman until her demise. Nightmares plagued her and the sight of the child she had pledged to cherish became painful. Jane began to suspect that the child resembled his father, her husband. And it was all her own fault, for following Caroline’s advice and waiting months to take Charles to her bed at last. Living amongst them was proof that he had taken a mistress, and all because of her many, many failures.