Chapter Nineteen
Thedresswaswhitemuslin with a sash of pale gold and small seed pearls at the neckline, and it was the most beautiful thing Lydia had ever owned.
She stood before the glass in her old bedroom while Polly put the last pins in her hair, and tried to recognise herself. The girl looking back at her had the same brown eyes and the same curls, but something about the set of her face was different, had been different since Brighton, and Lydia had not yet decided whether she liked it. It looked like someone who knew things. She was not sure she wanted to know them.
Around her, Longbourn was in its full wedding morning chaos. She could hear her mother in the next room delivering instructions at a volume and frequency that suggested she believed nobody would act on them unless told at least four times each, the sound of Kitty’s voice protesting something, Mary’s lower and more resigned underneath it. Downstairs someone was laughing; Jane, she thought; Jane had a certain laugh on happy mornings that Lydia had known all her life.
Carriage wheels rattled on the drive, and within a few minutes the house was quieter. Her sisters were going in the carriage first, and it would then return for Lydia and her parents. She breathed slowly, knowing time was growing short.
“There, miss,” Polly said, stepping back. “You look lovely.”
Lydia looked at herself a moment longer. Then she picked up the small posy of white roses the countess had sent over from Netherfield’s hothouses that morning, and she went downstairs.
Her father was in the hall.
He was standing with his hands clasped behind his back, looking at nothing in particular, with the expression of a man deep in thought he would not readily share. He looked up when she appeared on the stair.
There was a silence, which was not uncomfortable. Her father had always communicated a good deal in his silences, when you knew how to listen.
“You look very well, Lyddie,” he said at last.
It was not much, as speeches went. She knew him well enough by now to understand it was all she would get, and perhaps all she needed.
“Thank you, Papa.” She came down the last two steps. He offered his arm, which surprised her; it was a formal gesture, not entirely characteristic. She took it.
“Are you,” he began, and then stopped, as though he had asked the question but was not sure he wanted the answer. He tried again. “I hope this… that is to say… I want…” He stopped again. Drew himself up. “I want you to know that I am aware I have not always given you the attention you deserved, Lydia. You were always…” a pause, “you were always very much your mother’s child, and I own that I did not look closely enough.” His jaw worked briefly. “I am looking now.”
Lydia looked at the floor, and then made herself look up at him instead. “I know, Papa.”
“Good.” He patted her hand once, on his arm. “Good. Then I shall just say that whatever foolish assumptions anyone may have made about what you are made of, those of us who have been paying attention this summer know rather better.” He looked at her steadily. “Fitzwilliam is getting a good deal more than he may yet realise.”
It was, without question, the longest speech of direct personal feeling her father had ever made to her. Lydia felt her throat tighten and made a firm private decision not to cry before she had even left the house.
“He had better realise it,” she said, which made her father’s mouth curve, and the moment resolved itself back into something manageable.
From above them, Mrs Bennet’s voice descended the stairs at full sail. “Mr Bennet! Lydia! We shall be late!”
Meryton church was fuller than Lydia had expected.
She had known there would be townspeople; Fitzwilliam had been a visible and popular presence in the neighbourhood these past weeks since the banns had begun to be called, and Meryton had opinions about everything and everyone.
Fitzwilliam was waiting at the altar.
His eyes fixed on her as she came down the aisle on her father’s arm, and she watched him look at her, properly look, the way he occasionally did when he thought she was not watching, and something in his face settled.
She took her place beside him. He was very close. She could feel the warmth of him.
“All right?” he said quietly, just for her.
“Yes,” she said. And she was.
The rector began.
Lydia paid attention to the words, which she had not really expected to do. She had assumed she would be too frightened, or too occupied with not crying, or too aware of the hundred pairs of eyes on her back. But the words were very old and very serious and they meant something, standing there beside him, and she listened to all of them.
To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part.
She said them clearly enough to be heard, which she had also not been certain she could manage.
