“No,” Mr Bennet said, with an expression that might have been a smirk. “I imagine she was rather a surprise.”
“She is.” He looked at the fire. “She is impenetrable, sir. Everything correct, everything warm, everything perfectly managed. I cannot find a seam in her anywhere. I have been trying for two months.”
Mr Bennet was quiet for a moment, in the manner of a man deciding how much to say.
“Lydia,” he said, “was always the one I found most difficult to understand. Not because she was incomprehensible; quite the opposite. She was rather too comprehensible, if I am honest, which is not always comfortable in a child. Too loud, too much, too present. It was easier to be amused by her than to attend to her, and I am afraid I took the easier option rather consistently.” He looked at the fire. “She has her mother’s feelings and my brains, which is a combination I failed to appreciate at the time.”
Fitzwilliam said nothing.
“She never applied herself to anything at Longbourn,” Mr Bennet continued. “Her mother’s fault partly, mine partly; we did not expect it of her, so she did not expect it of herself. But when there was something she truly wanted to learn, or truly wanted to become, she was capable of an application quite unlike any of her sisters.” He paused. “I have wondered, in the past two years, watching her letters change, and watching her when she is here; I have wondered what it was that drove it. Your parents and the Darcys gave her the opportunities, yes. But Lydia has never in her life worked this hard for other people’s approval.” He looked at Fitzwilliam steadily. “She must have truly wanted to make you proud.”
The fire settled.
Fitzwilliam sat with it for a moment; the full weight of it arriving not quickly but with the slow, comprehensive force of something that had been true for a long time and had been waiting to be said.
Mr Bennet did not press the point. He picked up the book nearest to hand, looked at its spine with interest, and said: “Ah. I have been meaning to read this,” and the conversation moved on to other things, and he stayed another half hour, and was very pleasant throughout, and said nothing further of any significance.
He did not need to.
The Bennet carriage departed at ten o’clock the morning following, and Mrs Bennet filled the time before it arrived with instructions, embraces, and a comprehensive list of everything she expected to be kept informed of, in approximately that order. Mr Bennet bore this with the patience of long practice and said his goodbyes with the brevity of a man who has made his peace with the fact that anything he says will be followed immediately by his wife saying it again, at greater length. Mary made her way quietly around and farewelled everyone in turn while her mother was fussing over someone else.
Lydia watched her father with Fitzwilliam as the carriage was brought round.
They were standing a little apart from the main business of departure, not talking, in the easy silence of men who have arrived at some understanding she was not party to. It sat in her chest in a way she could not account for: something small and uncomfortable, watching her father’s ease with her husband. He had never had that ease with her. Even now, with pride said and meant and more generosity between them than she had ever expected, there was an effortlessness in the way he stood with Fitzwilliam that she could not remember him standing with her, not once in her whole life.
She looked away before either of them noticed her looking, and smiled at Mary, who had come to embrace her.
“I look forward very much to meeting your Mr Pearce, Mary,” she said. “I am sure he is very worthy. Of you.” She phrased it humorously on purpose, and was pleased to see Mary laugh.
Mrs Bennet embraced Elizabeth at length. She embraced Georgiana. She said goodbye to James three times. She embraced Lydia last, and held on rather longer than usual, and said “write to me, darling, I mean to hear everything” in a tone that she had not heard from her mother before and found she could not speak in response to, so simply held on in return.
Mr Bennet kissed Lydia’s cheek. “Take care of yourself,” he said, which he had never said to her before either. “And take care of the other matter.” She knew what he meant, and felt the guilt of it, and nodded.
He shook Fitzwilliam’s hand. There was a look exchanged that she could not read, and did not like not being able to read, and then her father was in the carriage and her mother was calling from inside it, and the door was closed, and it was moving away up the street.
The household stood on the steps a moment longer than was necessary. James, held on Elizabeth’s hip, watched the carriage until it turned the corner and disappeared, and then turned his attention to a pigeon on the opposite rooftop with the same focused interest.
Elizabeth and Darcy went inside. Georgiana followed.
Lydia stood a moment more, watching the empty street. Beside her, Fitzwilliam had not moved either.
“Your father,” he said quietly, “is very proud of you. I believe you should know that he told me so.”
She looked at him.
The carriage was out of sight and the street was cold and the ordinary surface of things had not reassembled itself yet, and what was underneath it she did not know what to do with. He was looking at her with an expression she had not seen from him before and could not immediately name.
She opened her mouth to answer.
A rider came clattering up the street and pulled a sweating, steaming horse to a halt right in front of them. The butler came hurrying down the steps to receive the letter the rider offered, brows raising as he looked at the direction on the front. He handed a coin to the rider, who clattered off again in a great rush.
“Forgive me, Mrs Fitzwilliam,” the butler said. “A note has arrived. From Richmond.” He held it out, and something in Lydia went suddenly very still. The hand on the outside was not Lewes’. She did not recognise it.
She broke the seal.
She read it once. Then she read it again, because the first time had not made sense.
The cold of the step came up through her shoes. The street was very quiet. She was aware of Fitzwilliam beside her, very still, watching her face, and she could not, for once, do anything at all about what her face was doing.
General Lewes had died peacefully in the night. His heart, the note said. Very sudden. He had not suffered.
The paper was in her hands. The street was empty where the carriage had been.
She stood on the step in the cold and did not perform anything at all.
