Mere seconds after Darcy’s final revolt, some heavy object crashed into the back of his head. Hobbled and defenceless, he slid drunkenly to the ground. Even could he have seen about him, his vision would have been tilted and hazy. He shook his head, instinctively desperate to see, to act, but it was useless.
Stupidly, he hung his head and complied meekly when the rod again jerked him to his feet. He heard the voices speaking roughly into his ears, but he could not comprehend. With the savage blow to his head had come another, equally brutal stroke to his heart. One thought only was coherent to him, and he clung to it with the ferocious desperation of a man whose greatest hope has been ripped away.
Elizabeth!
Longbourn
“Lizzy?Lizzy,whateveriswrong?”
Elizabeth Bennet had jolted wildly in her sleep, snapping to immediate attention in her bed. She gasped and braced her arms behind herself, weak with the sudden shock of the sensations washing over her. She blinked and stared in disorientation out the window of her bedroom, still insensible to the protests of her startled sister beside her.
“Lizzy!” Jane rocked her shoulder insistently. “Did you have a nightmare?”
Elizabeth’s heart slowed after a moment, and she sighed out the last of the breath she had captured in her panic. “I—I think so,” she confessed at last. “It could have been a dream, I suppose.”
“What else could it be? Did you hear something from out of doors? The new rooster crows at odd hours. He is lucky that Mrs Hill has not made a stew of him.”
Elizabeth shook her head vaguely. “No, it was not a noise. I felt… cold. And wet—yes, that is it. Like when we used to play in the pond when we were very little, and we would frighten ourselves when we strayed too far from the bank. Do you remember?”
“Oh, yes! How we would cough and paddle for safety! It is a good thing Mama never discovered us. Do you think Papa ever found out, and simply never said anything?”
Elizabeth could not yet join in her sister’s fondness for the memory. Her brow furrowed in thought, and she lay flat once more on her bed. “It was more frightening than that,” she frowned.
“I am certain it was simply a bad dream. It is only to be expected, you know, with the way things have been of late.” Jane lapsed into humiliated silence, her hand falling unhappily over her stomach as she joined Elizabeth once more in repose. “Do you think Lydia’s marriage will be made much of?”
Elizabeth grunted. “If Mama has a say in the matter. Our dear sister shall be paraded before the adoring populace of Meryton and all the surrounding villages, and our new brother shall smile and laugh and speak everything that is charming and insincere.”
“Oh, that she had to marry such a man!” Jane lamented. “But I do wish to think the best of him. Perhaps he truly loves Lydia! She is… lively.”
Elizabeth turned her head in the darkness, and Jane could sense, if she could not see, the sarcastic glare her sister directed at her.
“Come, Lizzy, we shall gain nothing by thinking ill of him. The matter is done now, and we can but make the best of it,” she decided sensibly.
“Did you not think it strange that they did not arrive yesterday afternoon, as they expected to? Both Lydia and Aunt Gardiner wrote that such were their intentions.”
“Yes, but I imagine that anything might have happened immediately following the wedding. Perhaps he had some new instructions from his regiment, and was obliged to travel on straight away. I think we should have word today, or on the morrow at the latest.”
“Yes, perhaps,” Elizabeth agreed. She pursed her lips, gazing blankly up at her darkened ceiling. It would be dawn in a couple more hours, and she could anticipate an entire day of her mother’s demeaning fawning over Lydia’s good fortune. How it stung! To think that wild Lydia, who had disgraced herself and her sisters, should in their mother’s eye be accorded all the honours and distinctions of a faithful marriage, only amplified Elizabeth’s own regrets.
Such a happy estate might have once been hers, had she only the sense at the time to see the opportunity for what it was—a chance at love and felicity with the best man she had ever known.And as he is such, her heart whispered,he deserves better.Better than a woman with a fallen sister and George Wickham as a brother-in-law. Better than a woman who had insulted, misunderstood, abused, and rejected him.Better than I.
She closed her eyes, chiding herself for a fool when she felt the cool tears slipping down her cheeks. “Jane,” she whispered, sensing her sister’s unseen gaze still upon her, “I am well, truly. You must rest, for I believe we will have need of our fortitude in the morning.”
“Sleep well, Lizzy,” Jane comforted. With a sweet sigh of pending slumber, Jane rolled to her side and spoke no more.
Elizabeth stared at the ceiling.
Chapter two
Itwouldbetwomore days before the residents of Longbourn had word of their absent daughter. Mrs Bennet had retired to her room with a fit of the vapours, and Mr Bennet had just ordered his horse to be saddled for London when, at last, a carriage rattled into view.
“Jane, Lizzy, look!” Kitty called out from the window. “I believe it is Uncle’s carriage!”
Her two sisters joined her in a moment, and concurred with her assessment. “But why would Uncle be arriving now?” Jane wondered.
“I expect we will have our answer soon.” Elizabeth remained only another moment, then left the window to meet the carriage. George Wickham’s presence she did not anticipate with pleasure and Lydia’s she absolutely dreaded, but her aunt and uncle could tell her much that she longed to hear.
As the family gathered outside, the passengers of the carriage disembarked. Aunt Gardiner stepped down first, to Elizabeth’s great surprise. Her eyes immediately touched her niece’s with a look that spoke of long conversations to be had in privacy. She turned back to the carriage, and there was an uncomfortable pause during which Mr Bennet stepped forward.
