“What letter?” Lydia asked.
“The letter I mean to write now. Get ready for bed, Lyddie. Morning will come early for us both.”
After changing into one of Elizabeth’s shifts, Lydia climbed into the bed and pulled the covers over her head. Elizabeth ignored the fact that she lay right in the middle, leaving no room for her; she had more important business to attend to than sleep.
It required many hours and many drafts until she had a letter which expressed something of what she meant to say. Or at least she hoped it did. She was too tired to know by then, with the pearly grey dawn beginning to lighten the sky. She signed it only with ‘Yours, E’ and then fretted about her own brazenness. She considered it as a young maid entered to see Lydia dressed and had only just resolved to change it again when the sounds of a carriage approaching came from outside the window. Looking down, she saw Mr Darcy’s fine carriage, and her heart leapt.
“Silly girl,” she murmured to herself. “It is only his carriage you can see, not even him!”
He did not get out but sent a man—his valet, she thought—to the door.
Hurriedly, she sanded and sealed the missive. “Here,” she said, thrusting her letter towards her sleepy sister. “Pray,do notforget to give it to him.”
Lydia mumbled something that seemed like agreement and then left the room. Elizabeth watched from the window until she saw her sister appear and be helped into the carriage. Moments later they were off. Elizabeth pressed her fingertips to the glass of the window, watching them round the corner. “Please,pleasedo not forget, Lydia,” she whispered, hoping desperately Mr Darcy would not think her too bold in sending it.
Darcy always enjoyed travelling at the earliest possible hour when the roads were least busy and the temperatures were coolest. This particular early departure proved to have an additional advantage: Miss Lydia Bennet, still tired from the events of the night prior, fell immediately into slumber. His sister and Mrs Annesley did likewise, and though Darcy knew he was not asleep, Fitzwilliam nevertheless closed his eyes and rested quietly against the squabs.
Georgiana, Darcy had been informed, had not slept a wink in the night, and he was not sorry for it. He had blamed himself extensively for her near-elopement with George Wickham, telling himself he had been negligent in her care. But this time he could not take so much on himself. She ought to have known better; there was more rebelliousness and defiance in her than he had ever suspected.
“We will talk about this in London,” was all he and Fitzwilliam had said to her.
It proved a long day. Even with Darcy’s excellent equipage, it required nearly ten hours to reach London, and much as he might have wished Miss Lydia to sleep through it, she did not. At length she woke, and as soon as she saw that Georgiana, too, was awake, she began to talk.
She was diverting, he had to own, occupying his sister and Mrs Annesley, and even on occasion making Fitzwilliam chuckle with gossip of the regiment, Meryton,and any other person she knew. All persons save for one, that was, for she had remarkably little to say of Elizabeth.
It was Georgiana who mentioned her, right as they rolled down Grosvenor Street. “Are you excited for your sister’s engagement?”
Miss Lydia tilted her head and looked at Georgiana. “Jane’s?”
“Miss Bennet is engaged?” Darcy asked.
“To Mr Bingley?” Miss Lydia exclaimed.
“Bingley?” Fitzwilliam asked, clearly as bemused as Darcy felt.
“I knew he had returned to Netherfield,” she explained, “but I am sure I had no notion he had proposed to her.” She huffed a little and said to Georgiana, “Jane and Lizzy are two of a kind, both so secretive about everything! You would think their own sister would be the first to hear of any engagements!”
“I do not know anything about Mr Bingley proposing to your sister,” Darcy interjected. “I merely mistook what you said for news of an engagement. But I daresay my sister meant Miss Elizabeth’s engagement to Mr Hartham.”
“Oh that!” Miss Lydia said with a blithe wave of her hand. “That was nothing at all.”
Darcy’s heart leapt; alas, they arrived at the house before any more could be said and became engaged in a flurry of removing from the carriage, with footmen hurrying about to take trunks, Mrs Hobbs appearing to enquire about supper, and Miss Lydia gawping and gasping about the grandeur of the house. Darcy listened to it all with impatience, trying to comprehend how he might ask her what she meant by ‘nothing at all’. Was it nothing at all that she hadnot heard of Elizabeth’s engagement? Or was the engagement itself nothing at all? He was mad to know.
He was tempted to ask Fitzwilliam what he thought during the supper they took together in his library, but their fruitless discussion of what to do about Georgiana proved distressing enough on its own. Proposals of a delayed coming out, an arranged marriage, a trip abroad, a stint at school, a stricter companion were all made more than once. None of their suggestions were new, and none of them gave much hope of success. They were thus engaged when Georgiana knocked gently at the door.
“It was good of you to send someone to get Miss Lydia’s trunk, Brother,” she said. “She is very grateful.”
“She will be far less grateful when she hears what I have to say to her father about her antics,” said Darcy sternly. Mr Gardiner had written to warn his brother-in-law that Darcy was on his way, but the details of the girls’ misadventure had been left out, too injurious to commit to writing. It would fall to him to inform Bennet of his youngest daughter’s brush with scandal.
Georgiana’s eyes filled immediately with tears. “I am so sorry to have disappointed you both…again.”
“What on earth were you thinking, Georgiana?” Fitzwilliam said. “You do realise how things might have been were you discovered? In a gaming hell, filled with military men? Gambling away untold sums of money?” He shook his head, and Darcy took up the admonition.
“It would be surely beyond either of our capabilities to keep such a thing quiet. The scandal would have been?—”
“I know, truly I do.” Georgiana wiped at the tears on her cheeks. “I… It was just too enticing to have such afriend. I did not want her to think me…Countess Killjoy of House Ennui.”
Despite everything, Darcy barked a laugh. “Countess Killjoy? Is that what she said?”
