Page 2 of Her Favourite Daughter

“We do not,” Lady Amelia responded. “After all of our disappointments, we did not want to tempt fate.” She looked at her sleeping daughter lovingly and gently moved some of the swaddling aside to have an unimpeded view of her child’s head. “She has my colour hair. I wonder if her eyes will remain the colour she was born with, or if they will change to be the same as mine. I will not complain if they mirror my emerald-green eyes. Then again, if she has Francis’s blue eyes, I will not be disappointed.” She looked to her friends. “Will one of you please inform Francis that he has a daughter?”

“I will go,” Lady Anne volunteered. She made her way down to the first floor where the study was located. The men were awake, and none of them were foxed. “You have a beautiful, healthy daughter,” she announced.

“And Amelia is well?” Leeds verified.

“As well as any lady who has laboured for close to ten hours to bring a new life into the world can be,” Lady Anne assured the duke. “Your wife is waiting for you to meet your daughter.”

Leeds did not need to be told twice. He bounded up the grand staircase, taking the stairs two at a time, as if he were a young man once again. As he arrived at the door of the birthing chamber, it opened and Elaine, the midwife, housekeeper, and maid exited. The latter three bobbed curtsies to him.

“Go in, Francis; all is well. Amelia is keen to see you. Go now,” Lady Elaine urged.

He squeezed his wife’s friend’s hand and stepped into the chamber. The picture of his Amelia, their daughter at her breast, was the best thing he had ever seen. When his wife had told him that the mores of society be damned, she was going to feed their child as much as she was able; Leeds had not gainsaid her. He had suggested, and Amelia had agreed to, the employment of a wetnurse for nighttime feedings so that his wife would be able to get uninterrupted sleep. Besides, who would criticise a duchess?

“Come, Francis, it is time to meet your daughter. She has your birthmark behind her left ear.” To emphasise the point, Lady Amelia gently moved the mite’s left ear to display the crescent moon birthmark.

“She cannot be anything but beautiful because I see she has her mamma’s hair colour. What should we name her?” Leeds asked.

“I was thinking that Bethany Anne Elaine would be perfect for her. That way she honours your late mother and her two godmothers,” Lady Amelia suggested. “Do you object to those names?”

“Not at all. Welcome to the family, Bethie.” Leeds thought of some objectionable people. “You have a distant cousin who will not be at all pleased you are here, little one,” he told his daughter as his wife patted her back once she was sated.

Little Bethie emitted a most unladylike belch. Lady Amelia rang for Nurse to come collect the babe to change her and then to bring her back to sleep in the cradle in the corner of the room.

Amelia waited until Nurse left with their daughter. “After telling anyone who would listen how she will be a duchess one day, I am certain that Catherine de Bourgh will not be at all impressed that we were blessed with a child,” she opined. “Francis, do not forget that we need to notify Buckingham House that you have an heir. They were no keener than any of us for the de Bourghs to ascend to the dukedom.”

~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~

Less than a sennight later, Lady Catherine de Bourgh was sitting in the breakfast parlour with her husband while he read the London broadsheets. As she did not enjoy speaking to the man, she was perfectly content not to converse with him.

“They were not supposed to bear a child!” de Bourgh exclaimed.

“Are you referring to the Duchess of Leeds? Did she bear a living whelp?” Lady Catherine enquired.

“Indeed, she did. The announcement from Their Majesties says that Lady Bethany Anne Elaine Osborne is the heir apparent to the Leeds Dukedom,” Sir Lewis lamented. “All of those estates and the vast wealth are slipping through our fingers.”

“Not necessarily,” Lady Catherine averred. “Leeds is still alive, and she will have to remain alive to inherit.”

Sir Lewis saw the evil look on his wife’s face but said nothing to contradict her.

~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~

Grantham, North Riding, Yorkshire March 1791

Thomas and Frances—called Fanny by all—Bennet and their two children lived in a cottage near All Saints’ Church in the town of Grantham, right across from the green. Their eldest was Jane, born in January 1788, and her younger brother James was born in May 1790. As happy as Fanny was to have her son and daughter, she sometimes wondered if she had angered God due to the number of potential children she had lost.

The Bennets were both from the town of Meryton in Hertfordshire and had been living in Grantham for over seven years, since one year after the two, who were deeply in love and respected one another, married.

~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~

He was the son of James and Elizabeth Bennet, the master and mistress of Longbourn, the largest estate in the area around the aforementioned market town. She was the daughter of Elias and Jane Gardiner, who lived above the former’s law offices in Meryton.

Although they had disparate interests, both Fanny and Thomas were intelligent. He had been attracted to her beauty—she had golden blonde hair and the deepest coloured blue eyes that Thomas had ever beheld. But Fanny was so much more than her looks. They had a healthy respect for one another, and they had soon fallen deeply in love, which had led to Thomas proposing and Fanny accepting him.

Henry Bennet was Thomas’s older brother and the heir to Longbourn. He was two years older than his younger brother, and although they had no children yet, Henry was married to the former Penelope Morris, whose father owned the second largest estate in the area, Netherfield Park. Henry and Thomas and their wives had always been on good terms.

Fanny was one of three children with whom the Gardiners had been blessed. She had an older sister, Harriet called Hattie, and a younger brother, Edward. When she and Thomas married, Edward had been in his second year at Oxford.

A year after he married Fanny, who had been close to the age of nineteen at the time of the wedding, Thomas Bennet had accepted the position of tutor at the school in Grantham, Yorkshire. Even though his father and brother made it clear that Thomas and Fanny did not need to leave the estate to seek employment, the former was not sanguine with not working and earning his keep. He, like Bennet men before him, which included his sire and brother, had not liked sitting around and being idle with no purpose.