Chapter Fifteen
Withthreeweekstogo until the wedding and a great deal of preparations to conduct, Mr Bennet packed up his family and prepared to return to Longbourn. He conceded a stay of two days at Mr Gardiner’s house in London, for his wife and daughters to visit the fabric warehouses, but firmly vetoed using London modistes to have Lydia’s wedding clothes made. Whatever could be made by her sisters and the seamstresses in Meryton would have to do.
Lydia accepted these edicts with good grace, far better than her mother, who wailed and carried on until Lydia herself tapped her on the arm and said firmly;
“Now Mama, I am the one getting married and I do not mind in the least; why should you?”
Startled, Mrs Bennet ceased her tears and peered at her youngest daughter.
“You truly do not mind, Lyddie?”
“I do not,” Lydia said stoutly.
“I am proud of you,” Elizabeth whispered in Lydia’s ear, nudging her elbow.
A little startled, Lydia looked at her sister. She had been feeling just the smallest bit wistful; had Elizabeth noticed that? She really could be alarmingly perceptive at times. Shyly, Lydia gave Elizabeth a small smile.
“I’m quite proud of me too,” Lydia whispered back, and was rewarded further when Elizabeth snorted with laughter and put her arm around Lydia’s shoulders. It was a nice feeling, to have this closeness with Elizabeth, Lydia thought.
General Lewes came to bid farewell to Lydia, even asking a few private moments to converse with her. The rest of the Bennet family watched in amazement as Lydia threw her arms about the old general and kissed his cheek with great warmth, even promising to write to him and tell him all about the wedding.
“You do that, my girl, and do not forget that you always have a friend in me,” were his parting words, along with a pat on her head and his hand to help her up into the carriage.
“Who on earth was that, Lyddie?” Elizabeth asked as the carriage door closed and the horses began to move, the old officer cheerfully waving to them and Lydia waving back with a wide smile.
“Oh, my other suitor,” Lydia said, quite seriously. “I should certainly have married him if the colonel had not proposed.”
They all stared at her agape, probably waiting for her to burst into giggles and cry “What a fine joke!” but she remained serious. General Lewes was one of the kindest, noblest men she had ever been honoured to meet, and faced with the choice of a marriage of convenience to him or utter disgrace, well, that was no choice at all.
Mrs Bennet was the first to break the silence. Obviously unable or unwilling to address that topic, she changed it entirely and began to chatter about wedding clothes, until her husband cried out begging her to stop, he could take no more talk of ribbons and lace!
Two days in London passed in a whirlwind of shopping and then they were on the road again back to Longbourn, conveyed in the greatest of comfort in Mr Darcy’s carriage, which he had once again set at their disposal. Kitty and Mary came running out to greet them with cries of joy, followed quickly by Mrs Gardiner and the children, who flung themselves at their father enthusiastically.
Kitty seized Lydia’s hands the moment she stepped down from the carriage, her eyes enormous and her words tumbling over each other in her haste to get them all out at once.
“Lyddie, you must tell meeverything. Jane wrote but she did not say nearly enough and Mama’s letter was all about the wedding clothes and I could not make out what hadactuallyhappened. Lydia, is it truly true? You are engaged to Colonel Fitzwilliam?ColonelFitzwilliam? And he is Mr Darcy’scousin?”
“I am.” Lydia squeezed her sister’s hands and let herself be pulled into the warmth of the house. “Though it is rather a long story.”
“I want to hear all of it.” Kitty drew her close and lowered her voice. “Every single word. Tonight, in my room, after Mama has gone to sleep.”
“After Mama has gone to sleep, then,” Lydia agreed, and felt something loosen a little in her chest at the familiar conspiratorial pleasure of it.
Mary had greeted each of her family with a solemn handshake, even Lydia, and was now eyeing the luggage being unloaded from the second carriage with an expression of mild disapproval at its quantity. Lydia considered telling her that she had not packed most of it herself, and decided it would not be worth the lecture on the sin of vanity.
The house seemed to close around them all like a pair of comfortable arms as the family pushed inside, talking and exclaiming over each other, and Lydia found herself pausing just inside the door for a moment. She had been away perhaps three weeks in total, but Longbourn felt different; or perhaps she was different, which came to the same thing.
I am engaged, she thought, quite experimentally.I am going to be married.
Neither fact had quite resolved itself into anything real, though she had thought of little else for days now. She was still working out what to make of it all when Kitty caught her arm again and dragged her firmly towards the stairs, and she let herself be dragged, and the strange vertiginous feeling faded back into the comfortable noise of home.
It was Jane who noticed the calling-card on the hall table, for Mrs Bennet was still directing the disposal of the luggage and Mr Bennet had retreated with the air of a man who intended to reach the sanctuary of his library before anyone could prevent him, and the younger girls were all still talking at once in the parlour.
Elizabeth noticed Jane noticing it. She watched her sister pick it up, turn it over, see the hand upon it, and go very still in a way that was quite unlike her usual composure; more as though composure had been superseded by something larger.
“Good news?” Elizabeth asked.
Jane looked up. Her face, which had been carefully controlled for most of the journey, was completely open, and Elizabeth was struck by the realisation that she had not seen it like that in rather a long time.
