She gave him that warm smile again before tucking her gloved hand comfortably into the crook of his arm, and he wondered how on earth he had been so blind before his disastrous proposal at Hunsford. The smiles she favoured him with now were very different than the distantly polite and formal ones he had received then.
Mr Gardiner offered his arm to Jane, of course, and they proceeded out of the hotel and down to the sea front, the first part of the hotelier’s directions. Both Misses Bennet wished to pause for a minute and look at the water, and neither Darcy nor Mr Gardiner were averse to indulging them.
“If only I was not so worried, I am sure I should enjoy the sight much more,” Jane sighed, and Elizabeth nodded.
“All will be well, my dears,” Mr Gardiner said reassuringly. “I have not the slightest doubt of it, and then you shall be able to consider this a little holiday. Perhaps you will even be able to convince my sister to try sea-bathing.”
“Oh, I have no doubt Mama should be delighted,” Elizabeth said rather flatly, and Darcy had to firmly suppress the urge to pather on the hand. They would just have to hope that Mrs Bennet had, against all the odds, gained a sense of the seriousness of Lydia’s situation.
Mrs Forster did not look in the least surprised to see them when the housemaid showed them into her parlour. Mrs Bennet, however, leaped to her feet with a shriek of delight and embraced both her eldest daughters with a fervour neither of them returned.
“Jane, Lizzy, thank goodness! And my dear brother! Oh, Edward, I am so relieved you are here!”
“There, there, Fanny.” Mr Gardiner adroitly resettled Mrs Bennet in her chair, though she popped right back up again when her gaze fell on Mr Darcy.
“Mr Darcy!” Her eyes and mouth were wide with shock.
“Mr Darcy was kind enough to speed our journey from Derbyshire, and to bring Jane along when we left Madeline at Longbourn with the children,” Mr Gardiner advised.
“Well, that is most gentlemanly of you, I must say.” Mrs Bennet sounded astonished.
Darcy stifled a smile and bowed over her hand. “I am delighted to have been of assistance, Mrs Bennet.”
“Well.” The lady did not seem to know quite what to say. It was Elizabeth who spoke next, coming straight to the point.
“Where is Lydia, Mama?”
“Why, she will be back at any moment... she just went to refresh herself after dinner. We dined with her fiancé tonight, such a personable young man!” Mrs Bennet beamed. “And I understand he is your near relation, Mr Darcy!”
Darcy blinked. “I beg your pardon?” he said in chilly tones. “Wickham is certainly no relation of mine, whatever he might claim.” He could not believe Wickham had the gall to claim an actual relationship... had he dared say he was a brother born on the wrong side of the blanket? Darcy would shoot him dead if he had let such words slip from his lips. Frankly, he couldn’t believe Mr Bennet had allowed the engagement to go ahead...
“Good Lord, notWickham!“ Mrs Bennet looked aghast. “Did you not, then, receive your cousin’s letter before departing Pemberley? I assumed that was why you were here!”
“Mycousin?“ Darcy only had three cousins, Anne de Bourgh and the two sons of his uncle, the Earl of Matlock.
“Why, yes! Colonel Fitzwilliam!”
He could not quite put together what Mrs Bennet was saying, couldn’t make the pieces fit into something that made sense. He felt Elizabeth’s hand on his arm and sat down beside her on a couch at her subtle urging.
“I don’t think we have all the information here, Fanny,” Mr Gardiner said in what Darcy considered quite a remarkable understatement. “All we know is what Thomas wrote in his letters to Jane, which were sadly thin on details. Obviously the, uh, situation with Wickham was averted.” He shot a sideways glance at Mrs Forster, who rose unhurriedly to her feet.
“If you will excuse me, I will go and see if I can find Lydia. No doubt she will be delighted to see her sisters.”
Mrs Forster knew exactly what was going on, Darcy realised, but she had the good sense and discretion to excuse herself. His estimation of the young woman rose a notch.
Elizabeth managed to contain herself until the door closed behind Mrs Forster, and then she burst out, “Mama, please start from the beginning. We have had an exhausting and distressing few days, worrying about Lydia.”
“Lydia,” Mrs Bennet said in a rather tart tone, “appears to have the happy knack of landing on her feet like a cat. I was quite displeased when I heard of her hare-brained scheme to run off to Scotland with Wickham! Why, it is not the done thing at all. And it turns out that Mr Wickham was not at all what we thought him, either; he has debts from here to Derbyshire! I must apologise for misjudging you, Mr Darcy,” she turned to him. “Mr Wickham was terribly convincing with his tales of woe, but your cousin has apprised us of the true version of events regarding the living Wickham claimed he was owed. Shocking, most shocking!”
“So Fitzwilliamishere,“ Darcy said. His cousin was one of very few who knew the full details of that matter and could have set Mrs Bennet straight.
“Didn’t I say so? Why, Mr Darcy, we owe Colonel Fitzwilliam more thanks than we can ever repay, for not only did he intercept Wickham in the very act of eloping with Lydia, he then offered for her himself!”
