No one knew she was missing, now, not yet. They’d find her empty bed tomorrow—today—but when that might be, I couldn’t say. Would she be missed at the breakfast she shared with Mr. Collins? His wife and his wife’s sister would be off seeking ribbons, as they did every day. It might take until mid-morning.
I could raise the alarm now, get everyone out of bed, start the search party now.
But the silence gave me leave to think more clearly, and I realized there was only one place she would go.
She had gone home.
I galloped off on the road toward Hertfordshire, thinking that if I could ride quick enough, I could overtake her. I could not imagine she would ride quickly on a horse when she was no horsewoman.
But I did not overtake her on the road. Perhaps she had left immediately after she ran from me in the woods. If so, she might have arrived at Longbourn before midnight. She might have crept into her family home under the cover of darkness, crawled into her own bed, and slept there.
When she woke, her family would be startled to find her there, and it would be Thursday, but she would have likely thought of some plausible story as a cover to explain it. And certainly her mother and father would welcome their daughter home without questioning overmuch. She had been gone from them for some time. She would be there with her beloved sister, the one who I had separated from Bingley, and her father, with whom I knew she was quite close.
Or, no. Her sister had been in London, and I knew this, because I had conspired to keep knowledge of her presence there from Mr. Bingley. It might be likely Jane Bennet was still there, then.
I arrived in Meryton sometime near dawn. I was exhausted, both physically and deep inside, in my heart, and I did not wish to go and break in on her reunion with her loved ones, a mad and bedraggled man who had ridden all night without any sleep.
I might have simply found someplace to sleep, on the ground. I thought that if I got off the horse, I should be able to keep it until the following midnight, even if I wasn’t touching it. But I had only my intuition that she was even here.
So, I rode, half-asleep on horseback, to Longbourn, and I stayed hidden to watch and wait for a sign of her.
I fell asleep there, hidden away, and only woke to the sound of a shrill noise, obviously from the throat of Mrs. Bennet. I cringed.
What a mother-in-law you shall have,came the echo of words in the past.
Yes, but it would be worth it. Anything would.
Elizabeth’s mother was shrieking out her surprise at finding Elizabeth in the house, I was able to ascertain.
I had been correct.
I knew where she was.
Relieved, I went off to find myself a place hidden in the fields to lie down and slip off into sleep.
When I woke, it was because I had been lying in such a way that the pocket watch was digging into me in the pocket of my waistcoat. Of course, I had not thought throwing it in the lake would make any difference at all.
elizabeth
It hadn’t gone particularly well, but I’d do better after everything reset and I woke up here again. My mother was particularly out of sorts at my reappearance.
Had I traveled all the way here on my own without a chaperone? What about my reputation? What about my safety? What if I had been set upon by thieves on the road?
She couldn’t know that the reputation part of it didn’t matter at all. But I supposed I had not been abundantly careful about my own safety, truly. I would have thought it nearly impossible that I should ride so far on horseback on my own, but I had been somewhat desperate.
Even so, I could recognize that my actions were not the actions of a woman in her right mind, not truly. I had gone rather mad, but then, one would go mad, if one had to live Thursday over and over the way I had been doing. It was only reasonable.
After I sent my mother into a tizzy and she said she must lie down due to a headache, I went for a walk on the grounds of Longbourn. My father seemed to wish to speak to me. I could tell that he knew that this wasn’t normal, what I’d done, and he was worried, too, but worried in a different way than my mother was worried, for my mother’s concern for others—even her daughters—always seemed a little self-absorbed, as if she was only worried about other’s pain as it affected her.
Perhaps we were all this way, in the end, only worried about things that hurt us, but at the very least, we should all have the decency to hide such things.
Ostensibly, I had come home to see my papa, to be with people who loved me and who cared for me. Ostensibly, I should have spoken to my father.
It was only that I couldn’t.
I had two options. One was to tell him the truth, and he would not believe me. He would think I had lost my mind. The other was lie, and then why tell him anything?
I began to wonder why I had come here at all.
