“I was heedless and stupid, just as you have always told me I am, Lizzie, and I put the reputations and the futures of every one of my sisters at risk as well as my own.” Lydia hung her head penitently. “I have been luckier by far than I deserve, to escape unscathed.”
“Escape unscathed?”burst from Elizabeth, her expression incredulous, and Lydia hastily added;
“Far more than that, I am fortunate indeed that Colonel Fitzwilliam is willing to marry me.”
“However did this come about, Lydia?” Elizabeth begged, obviously unable to fathom the colonel and Lydia as a couple. “Ihaven’t the slightest understanding of what’s going on. How are you and Colonel Fitzwilliam even acquainted?”
“It’s a long story,” Lydia said. “You’d best sit down.”
There was nowhere to sit but on the bed, so Elizabeth and Jane took their seats on either side of Lydia. She took a deep breath before beginning her story.
“I met Richard a week or so after our arrival in Brighton, at a party for senior officers, and I must confess at first I did not like him at all. He called and took me out for a promenade along the front several times, though, and I discovered quickly how very pleasant a companion he can be.”
Why?Elizabeth had to wonder as Lydia talked on, explaining shame-facedly how she had fallen for Wickham’s scheme. Fitzwilliam intercepting the elopement seemed nothing more than an exceptionally fortuitous coincidence, but why had he sought to further an acquaintance with Lydia in the first place? She could not imagine her silly, empty-headed sister holding the intelligent, insightful officer’s interest for long.
Yet, Lydia seemed to have aged in maturity several years in the last few weeks. She assessed her own actions with a clear-eyed, devastatingly honest accuracy, pinpointing the consequences she and the rest of the family would have suffered in the various scenarios which might have transpired had she run away withWickham. None of the outcomes were good, of course, but Elizabeth was truly shocked Lydia had thought of some of the worst, and by the time Lydia finally finished enumerating the dreadful things which might have very possibly have befallen her, Jane was white and shaking.
“Oh, Lyddie,” was all Jane could say, practically falling on Lydia’s neck, holding her tightly. “Thank the good Lord you are safe.”
“I truly did not expect this of you,” Elizabeth said finally, once Jane had settled. The three sisters sat close, almost crammed together, arms around each other’s waists with Lydia in the middle. “You have grown up, Lydia.”
“It was about time, wasn’t it?” Lydia said, with a little flash of her old cheek. “I had no choice.” She sobered quickly. “And now, I cannot bring shame upon Richard. He has sacrificed the chance of marrying well to save me; I owe him everything, not least my respect and my best efforts to be respectable, myself.”
Elizabeth gazed at her for a moment before saying, a little choked up “I don’t think I’ve ever felt truly proud of you until just this moment, Lydia.”
Lydia ducked her head bashfully. Jane hugged her without speaking, and Elizabeth reached to embrace her as well. For a few minutes, the three sisters sat in silence, and for the first time in her life, Lydia realised she truly felt included. She sat a little straighter, held her head high when Elizabeth and Jane let go.
It was up to her now, to both uphold the honour of the Bennet sisters and prove herself worthy to marry into the Fitzwilliam family. And she wouldnotfail.
