Her mind turned yet again. This time, she went from a sentimental scene in church to a vision of her family eating dinner and then gathering in the parlor. Mary would be playing some plunking, dour hymn, Kitty would be adding a yellow ribbon to a bonnet with her ugly stitches, and Jane would be staring out the window and thinking of Mr. Bingley who was long gone. Lizzy was off on a pleasure trip to the north, but Mama would be jabbering in her chair about what she would tell Mrs. Philips when she saw her in the morning, and Papa would have his nose in a book about Roman history. All of this would be going on with Lydia starved and frozen under a potato cart on the Worthing Road! They did not miss her, she thought darkly. They did not even really love her! If they loved her, they would have found her by now!
Feelings of injustice were fortifying enough to Lydia that she spent the night tending the flames of her indignation. She recounted her catastrophe in the theatre of her imagination. She had disappeared on Friday night. Saturday morning, she would have been discovered missing, and Colonel Forster would have ridden out to find her. Surely he did. How had she missed him passing? Perhaps she was lying in Scoot’s barley field. At any rate, Colonel Forster would follow the trail to London, discover Wickham, and kill him on Sunday morning in a duel. Hmm. Perhaps men did not duel on Sunday. Well, then Monday morning would see Wickham in a pool of blood in the grass.
Meanwhile, Papa would have had an express, thrown on his coat, and he would have posted down to Brighton at a thundering pace. He would begin methodically to look for her. He would talk to the awful porter at the Red Lion and the sniffy monk. He would stop at the parsonage where the housekeeper bought potatoes, and at that other farm, where everyone stared at Lydia as if she were a leper while Parch sold seed potatoes. And then Papa would find her on the Worthing Road. First thing Tuesday morning.
Yesterday was Tuesday. If she lived through the night, it would be Wednesday. She would have been lost five whole days! Papa was probably still shut up in his study with the unopened express on his desk. Lydia could well imagine Cora Forster, who was barely eighteen years old and stupid as a swan, speaking to her husband, the militia colonel, late on Saturday afternoon. “La, Harold,” Cora would say, “what do you think has happened? That Lydia has gone off to marry Wickham. Ha! I suppose you had better write to her family. No doubt Mrs. Bennet will be glad to have at least one of those five girls off her hands.”
This scenario smacked of too much reality to be discounted. The reason no one looked for Lydia was because everyone believed she was married to Wickham by now, and they had crossed her off the list of their present concerns. Had she been standing, Lydia would have staggered with the realization that her disappearance was as nothing to anyone in the world! She felt, for the first time since her disastrous decision to throw her lot in with Wickham, well and truly lost.
Chapter 7
Longbourn, Hertfordshire…
In some ways, Lydia’s imaginings were correct. By Wednesday morning, not one member of her family suspected she had been abandoned by George Wickham. All, even cynical Mr. Bennet, expected that, if the man had taken the trouble to sneak away with her, he would marry her and come sauntering into Hertfordshire looking for an advance on her thousand-pound expectation, which was one fifth of Mrs. Bennet’s legacy. If he were a real cad, he would send a letter threateningnotto marry Lydia without some financial incentive. Either way, Lydia would have to marry the man.
And when Colonel Forster was seen riding up the drive, the family—less Mrs. Bennet, who could not get out of bed for the grief of not seeing her daughter married—gathered in the parlor to hear news of the elopement. Colonel Forster rushed into the room, his expression and bearing a mixture of urgency, embarrassment, and imposition. He had been in charge of the girl, and the fault was his, but he could hardly bear it given that Lydia Bennet was such a hoyden she would run away with a scapegrace.
“Let us speak in private, sir,” Colonel Forster said grimly.
Thus, the sisters sat in trembling expectation of news—of relief from the worst of their feelings of uncertainty. Half an hour later, the colonel left without taking refreshments, and Mr. Bennet remained in his room. After another interminable quarter hour, Jane went to her father. What she heard was this: it had taken days, but Colonel Forster had traced Wickham’s movements all the way to the edge of London where he stepped, alone, off the coach and went into a tavern. When the coachman, impatient for having his horses standing, sent the postilion in to collect his passenger, he discovered that Wickham had stepped out the back door and dodged his obligation to pay his way. There was no girl with him—of that, everyone was certain, and each would swear to it.
Upon closer questioning, the coachman and postilion had said they began with a young lady but could not say when or where she decided that the gentleman was not to her liking and stepped off. It was dark, and it was all they could do not to run the team into a ditch. By necessity, they had been plodding along, and they could not be expected to keep track of the doings inside the coach. Why, at any stop along the road, the girl could have gone off, and why would they take note? The horses must be changed and looked after. A person could not keep an eye out in all directions. Besides, they had not even been paid and could not be held accountable for some chit who did not have the sense to stay at home where she belonged.
“She is lost?” Jane whispered.
“Utterly and completely,” her father sighed. “I only wonder how I shall tell Mrs. Bennet.”
Jane paced in front of her father’s desk, tears coursing down her cheeks. “Oh, poor Lydia! Where can she be? Surely, she will find her way back to Brighton!”
“You are free to think so, Jane, if it gives you comfort. But it has been five days now. I do not expect her to magically reappear.”
“But what will you do, Papa?”
“I am going to Brighton, I suppose, to see what I can find out. No, no, Jane, do not get your hopes high. I expect I shall hear very little if anything to the purpose, but I must do something.”
“We must ask Uncle Gardiner to help. Will you not send him a letter?”
“I see no reason to do so. What can he do about it? But if you wish to have Lizzy home, I shall not object. Write the letter, my dear. I shall go upstairs and pack.” He pulled a small purse from his desk. “Here is some means, daughter, for you to conduct our affairs while I am gone. It is scurrilous of me to do so, but I leave the matter of your mother in your hands. I cannot spare the time or the energy to explain to her what has befallen our youngest daughter.”
Chapter 8
Pemberley, Derbyshire…
Elizabeth did not like agreeing with Caroline Bingley about anything, but she could not help but concede that Pemberley was the most beautiful place she had ever beheld, and the estate was perhaps deserving of even more gushing praise than Caroline had given it. The sight of the house, standing at the far edge of a magnificent park framed by wooded hills that retreated into the distance and mirrored in a stream-fed lake, caused a gasp of surprise from Elizabeth.
With a mixture of wonder and trepidation, she followed the housekeeper on a tour with her aunt and uncle, conscious that everywhere she stepped, Mr. Darcy had stepped, that everything she looked at was deeply familiar to, and of use to, him. When they had taken in all the elegance, refinement, and artistry of the interior, the housekeeper directed them to enjoy the gardens and public paths, and it was just this side of a formal rose garden that Elizabeth stepped around a giant elm and abruptly came face-to-face with Mr. Darcy.
“Mr. Darcy!”
“Miss Bennet!”
Elizabeth’s embarrassment nearly overcame her. She stammered and stuttered incoherently. “We were assured, Mr. Darcy—I-I would never have dreamed of imposing! You must not think I came here to-to—”
Mr. Darcy seemed equally discomposed, and he stammered and stuttered incoherently at the same time. “I am very glad to—you are very, that is, of course you are welcome… What-what brings you here, Miss Bennet?” He excused himself abruptly before hearing her answer, leaving Elizabeth panting with shame and distress.
“Oh, Aunt!” cried Elizabeth. “The worst has happened! Uncle, we must go at once! I cannot stay here another minute!”
Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner exchanged a look of dawning understanding and obligingly turned back to where their coach stood on the north side of the house. While a groom went to fetch the horses, Elizabeth paced, wild to be gone, and her aunt and uncle politely pretended not to notice her agitation. As if to solidify and thoroughly underscore Elizabeth’s extreme mortification, who should then burst out of a French door and run down the stairs toward them but Mr. Darcy?
