“What is it like,” Elizabeth asked Lydia as they walked, “to be back in Brighton?”
“Oh quite the same — pretty as ever.And exciting enough, though it is emptier than during the war.I was so gay, so young, and quite naïve then.”She laughed.“I was sure as rain, no sure as cloudy days, that Mr.Wickham planned to marry me.Took at least a month and a half before I realized that was not his notion at all.Quite annoyed with him then, but I had nothing better in sight.I came back here immediately after he left me in the lodging house.He’d had enough of me, and left me in our rooms without warning, and with a note to Mrs.Younge that I would settle the accounts.”
Lydia laughed, though Elizabeth saw nothing at all funny with the story.
“Mrs.Younge?”Darcy asked looking sharply at her.“About your height, brown hair and with a pretense of gentility and education.A friend of Wickham’s?”
“Ah,youknew her too?She wasn’t a kind one.Would sell her own daughter for a profit, but the constables laughed when she tried to have me thrown in the debtors’ prison for the money Wickham owed her.They said it would be absurd and wrong to charge an abandoned woman in such a case, and that if she could not show any papers I hadsignedsaying I would pay, they would not bother me at all.And they did not.So she just tossed me out, into the winter.”
Elizabeth gasped, remembering her own cold time.“Why did you not come back?Papa was still alive that winter.”
“I have a notion that was her idea when she tried to have me arrested for the debt — she knew my family was quality, and she had the notion I would send to Papa to pay my debts to leave prison if that happened.Likely thought I might be better off if I did that, which perhaps I might have been — but I was with child then, and I do not think Papa would have been happy to see me.”
“He abandoned you with child!”Darcy exclaimed, clearly disgusted.
Lydia shrugged as though to say that such a man was George Wickham.
Elizabeth studied her sister’s nonchalant expression.“Papa would not have thrown you entirely off, if you came to him repentant.”
“Repentant.”Lydia rolled her eyes.“I was certainly notrepentant.Made my choices, and though I was a naïve fool, I’ll not apologize for being lied to, and I’ll not apologize for being imprudent — I wish I’d not been such a fool, but it is no sin to trust the wrong sort.”
“Perhaps not…” Elizabeth said.“I made a mistake in who I trusted to employ me.”
“I’ll certainly make no apology for trying to have a jolly time,” Lydia added.“Life is too short to worry about a little scandal.”
“I do not agree withthat,” Darcy said dryly.“For it was a great scandal.”
Lydia laughed.“Youdosuit Lizzy — seeing you two together.I worried for you, Lizzy, ever since I heard ‘bout your marriage.La, I could barely remember you, Mr.Darcy, but never thought you were the sort of man Lizzy could like.”
Darcy smiled and took Elizabeth’s hand and kissed it smiling widely.“I am.”
“I read that story you wrote, Lizzy — about how you fought off that horrid earl.Read it five times, aloud too, did I not?”
“She did,” Captain Dilman confirmed.
“I know how terrible it can be to walk whilst it is freezing.I did not even think of going back to Papa — I had a notion I’d return to Harriet and Colonel Forster in Brighton.So when Mrs.Younge turned me out, just the clothes on my back, I walked straight here, in the middle of winter.I had good shoes and a good coat, but it was not a pleasant walk.”
“More than fifty miles!”Elizabeth exclaimed.She looked rather shocked at Lydia.The warm wind blew over them, but she still shivered.“You did not.”
“A farmer gave me a ride for some five miles of the way, and I found friends to sleep with all but one night.‘Tis easy to find friends when you are friendly yourself.There is many a poor person out there who if asked kindly, not standing upon your dignity, would give their last penny to feed a child.”
Elizabeth tilted her head disbelievingly.
That wasnother sense of how the world worked.She wondered, but was unwilling to ask the question, if these friends who Lydia said had helped her may have been men who received a friendly recompense.
It would be unkind to ask in any case.And whatever her past, Lydianowwas married, and married to an officer of the British army.
“And then we met.”Captain Dilman embraced Lydia.“I saw her when she came back to Brighton — I was still an ensign then, for two more months — and she was the prettiest girl I ever saw, wandering round, like a bedraggled cat who’d slept in her fur.”
Lydia kissed her husband full on the mouth, in front of his soldiers.“He took me in, and ensured I was kept well — I never approached Harriet, or anyone from the regiment at that time.I was too shamed to.But I was also quite happy here.And then we decided to marry.And after that I miscarried Wickham’s child, which I suppose was God’s will — ah, but here we are, at the camp of the regiment.”
There were lines of barracks housing for the soldiers, built around what had once been a farmhouse; it was all relatively empty, as this place had been constructed to hold a far larger force before the dismissal of soldiers followed close on the end of the war.
The colonel’s house was a decent sized timber framed building, white and brown, with two floors, the second overhanging the first all around, and producing a nice covered porch the commanding officer of the regiment sat on while he watched his men parade in the drill grounds.
Colonel Pike was a short man with balding hair and a deep limp that made him almost drag his foot as he supported himself heavily with a cane.
Lydia’s husband saluted the colonel while the men who had escorted them stood at attention, the buttons on their coats gleaming, and the white belts of their uniforms making a clear X.
