They found one another in the corridor after dinner, when the gentlemen were still with their port and Mrs Bennet was holding court for the countess on the subject of wedding preparations, and Lydia caught Elizabeth’s arm.
“Did you see Miss Bingley’s face,” Lydia said, in a low voice, “when Lord Matlock told his story about the hunting party and mentioned how often Richard will be at Heatheridge once he has sold out?”
“The future seat of a future earl and countess,” Elizabeth murmured. “Yes, I saw.”
“She has been so agreeable all evening,” Lydia said, with a precision in her tone that Jane would absolutely have called unkind. “It must be exhausting.”
“I think she is finding it so.” Elizabeth looked back towards the drawing room. “But I am also a great deal more interested in what Lady Matlock said to you over the soup. You looked…” she considered, “as though you had not expected whatever it was.”
Lydia was quiet for a moment. “She told me,” she said, “that Richard had spoken of me in his letters. Not – not of the situation.” She seemed to be choosing her words with care. “Ofme. What I had said. What I had noticed.“ She paused again. “I had not known he had written home about me in those terms.”
Elizabeth looked at her youngest sister, who was composing her expression with some effort and mostly succeeding. “I see,” she said.
“It was only a small thing,” Lydia said, a little too firmly. “I do not make too much of it.”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “Of course not.”
They stood together quietly for a moment in the corridor.
“The white was the right choice,” Lydia said at last, straightening. “Do you not think?”
“Absolutely the right choice,” Elizabeth agreed, and offered her arm, and they went back into the drawing room together.
The countess found Lydia in a brief moment of solitude near the end of the evening, when the company had rearranged itself and somehow contrived to leave her standing alone near the fireplace. She came to stand beside her, unhurried, her dark eyes taking in the room with a quiet attention that Lydia recognised.
She notices things, Lydia thought.Just as Richard does.
“I am very glad we have had this opportunity to become acquainted before the wedding,” the countess said. “I confess I was rather more anxious about this evening than I care to admit.”
Lydia turned to look at her in genuine surprise. “Youwere anxious?”
“Oh, I had painted all sorts of pictures in my mind,” the countess said serenely, with a little smile of amusement that acknowledged she understood Lydia’s astonishment. “Richard’s letters were very informative, but letters are not people, after all.” She paused. “I am happy to report that you are considerably more yourself than any picture I had painted.”
Lydia was still working out whether that was a compliment when the countess took her hand and held it, briefly, in both of hers.
“I hope you will look on Matlock as your home while Richard is away,” she said. “We will take good care of you, my dear. And I think you will take better care of yourself than you perhaps know.”
She moved away before Lydia could answer, which was perhaps as well, as Lydia was not entirely certain she could have found the right words.
She stood by the fire for a moment longer, feeling the warmth at her back, and thought of Richard’s letters going north to Matlock, carrying not just news of a situation managed, but something more than that. A good opinion of her that she had not realised he possessed.
Across the room, her father caught her eye and gave her a small, dry nod of acknowledgement, exactly as he had in the library, and Lydia felt it settle alongside the other things she had been collecting: General Lewes’s hand on her arm in the summer, the countess’s brief warm clasp just now,Lyddiein the dark. The knowledge that Richard had written to his parents in such terms that they were disposed to think well of her despite the situation, her youth, her lack of connections or dowry.
She was, she thought, rather richer than she had known.
