The militia arrived in Meryton on a Tuesday, and Kitty and Lydia lost their minds.
This was not unusual. Kitty and Lydia lost their minds with some regularity, over hats and ribbons and whatever scrap of gossip had drifted within earshot. But officers were a different category of excitement. Officers wore red coats and carried swords and walked through the village in groups, and Lydia treated their arrival with the single-mindedness of a foxhound who has caught the scent.
"There are at least twenty," she reported at dinner, breathless. "A Captain Carter, and a Mr. Denny, and a lieutenant whose name I did not catch but who has the most wonderful whiskers."
"Whiskers are not a basis for character," Mary said, turning a page of her book with the weary patience of a woman surrounded by philistines.
"They are a basis for interest," Lydia said, "which is more than your sermons have ever been."
"There is also a Colonel Forster," Kitty added, with the air of a person contributing vital intelligence. "He is married."
"That is useless, Kitty," Lydia said. "Married officers are of no interest whatsoever."
Mrs. Bennet, who might have been expected to moderate this conversation, was instead calculating aloud how many unmarried officers could be seated at the Longbourn dinner table and whether they could be invited before the Lucases got to them first.
Elizabeth ignored the bickering. She was tired. The Netherfield ball felt like a lifetime ago, though it had only been a fortnight, and in the days since, Collins had proposed, been refused, been charged by a pig, and departed, and Charlotte had accepted him, and Elizabeth had lost her best friend to a comfortable parsonage in Kent. She had not stopped thinking about the dance. She had not stopped thinking about Mr. Darcy's apology, delivered between the figures of a country dance as though the words had been sitting in his chest for weeks and had simply chosen that moment to escape.I was wrong, and I have thought about it every day since, and I am sorry.
She did not know what to do with the apology. She did not know how to hold it alongside "not handsome enough to tempt me." The two truths sat in her mind like mismatched bookends, each propping up a different version of the same man, and she could not reconcile them.
She walked to Meryton the following morning with Jane, Kitty, Lydia, and Truffles. Mary had been persuaded to join on the grounds that the bookseller had received a new shipment, though she walked behind the others with the air of a woman being marched to her own execution. The air was sharp with thefirst real cold of autumn, and the hedgerows had turned russet and gold. Truffles trotted ahead, her snout working the ground for scents, her ears flopping with each step.
Lydia and Kitty vanished into the milliner's shop the moment they reached the high street, pulling Mary with them to adjudicate a dispute over ribbon colours. Jane and Elizabeth walked on with Truffles.
They encountered several officers near the draper's shop. The high street had a different air now, the red coats adding splashes of colour to the grey autumn morning like poppies in a field. Introductions were made. The officers were young and cheerful and deferential to Jane's beauty and openly charmed by the pig. A Captain Carter asked if Truffles was a Gloucestershire Old Spot. A Mr. Pratt said he had grown up on a farm and had never seen a pig follow a person so faithfully. Truffles accepted their attention with her usual composure, sniffing boots and twitching her curly tail and allowing herself to be scratched behind the ears.
Elizabeth smiled and made conversation and found the officers pleasant enough, if somewhat indistinguishable in their red coats and their easy manners.
Then Mr. Wickham appeared.
He came around the corner of the high street with Mr. Denny, and Elizabeth noticed him immediately because it was impossible not to. He was handsome in a way that was immediately, effortlessly apparent. Dark hair, bright eyes, a smile that seemed to arrive before the rest of him. Where Darcy's handsomeness was severe and architectural, Wickham's was warm and inviting, the difference between a cathedral and a fireside.
"Miss Bennet, Miss Elizabeth," Denny said. "May I introduce Mr. Wickham? He has just taken a commission in the regiment."
Wickham bowed. His bow was easy and graceful, nothing like Darcy's stiff, formal inclination. "A pleasure. I have heard a great deal about the Bennet family."
"Only the good parts, I hope," Elizabeth said.
"Is there another kind?" His smile widened. He had very white teeth.
Elizabeth was about to reply when she felt it. A pressure against her ankle. Truffles had stopped moving. The pig was pressed against Elizabeth's leg, her entire body rigid, her ears flat against her skull. She was trembling.
Elizabeth looked down. In all the months she had owned Truffles, through all the pig's adventures and escapades and encounters with strangers, she had never seen this. Truffles, who adored Darcy on sight. Truffles, who tolerated Mrs. Bennet's shrieking and Lydia's attempts to dress her in bonnets and Mary's pianoforte with equanimity. Truffles, who had never met a person she would not approach.
Truffles was afraid.
Wickham, who was still smiling, reached down to pet the pig. "What a charming creature. A piglet, is it not?"
Truffles snapped at his hand. Not a playful nip. A real snap, teeth bared, accompanied by a squeal that Elizabeth had never heard before, high and sharp and frightened. The pig scrambled backward, pressing herself against Elizabeth's opposite leg, as far from Wickham as she could get.
Wickham withdrew his hand. His smile did not falter. "Well. Animals can be unpredictable."
"I am so sorry," Elizabeth said, mortified. She picked up Truffles, who was shaking, and held her against her chest. The pig burrowed into Elizabeth's neck. "She has never done this before. I cannot imagine what has come over her."
"Please, think nothing of it. Some animals are nervous around strangers." He was gracious. He was perfectly, disarmingly gracious.
They walked together along the high street. Wickham fell into step beside Elizabeth, and the conversation unfolded with a naturalness that she found instantly appealing. He asked about Meryton, about her family, about the neighbourhood. He listened. He laughed at her jokes. He responded to her wit with wit of his own.
He was, she thought, everything Darcy was not. Open where Darcy was closed. Warm where Darcy was cold. Easy where Darcy was stiff and painful and impossible. Talking to Wickham felt like walking downhill, natural and effortless, after weeks of climbing a steep, stony path that led nowhere she wanted to go.
