Page 12 of In the Eyes of Lord Lingley

“No! No! There is no time! We must hurry to the church! You may eat at the wedding breakfast. The cook was told not to provide breakfast; it is your own fault for not requesting a tray!”

“Mama,” Kitty whined, “I need new slippers! These are at least six months old! Lydia never wore hers longer than a month! It is not fair!”

“What do you wish for me to do at this late date?” Mrs. Bennet squawked as they descended the stairs. “Your sisters are gone, and nothing of Mary’s would do for you.”

“I would not wear it even if they would fit!” Kitty sneered. “Everything Mary owns is hideous! Even her new things would be better on a maid than I!”

Mary sighed silently as tears blurred the words of her book. It was nothing worse than she had thought herself, but it still caused pain. She ignored them as they entered the room, averting her face to avoid comments from her mother. They continued to bicker as her father checked his pocket watch and frowned.

“Ungrateful girl!” Mrs. Bennet cried, peeking her head out of the door to check the stairs. “How will it look this morning if she is not there when he comes with the cows!”

“He will not come,” Mary declared, making all three of them jump.

“Goodness, Mary!” Mr. Bennet cried, holding his heart. “Why did you not announce yourself when we entered?”

“I assumed you saw me sitting in full view of the room,” Mary muttered back.

“No one cares for your sarcasm, you,” Mrs. Bennet snapped. “I would not blame him if he did not come! If he had offered me a cow that gave sour milk, I would have accepted it gratefully!”

“Did you not hear them? They laughed! They mocked me. You will see! He will not come, and I shall be a laughingstock!”

Mrs. Bennet grabbed her husband’s arm tightly. “Could it be?”

“Never in the history of England has a bridegroom changed his mind after the bargaining,” Mr. Bennet insisted, patting her hand.

“Never in the history of England has a man paid eight cows for a bride!” She screeched, her lacy handkerchief making an appearance. “He over-promised and regretted it the moment he left Meryton! He will never return, and our family will be ruined!” Her voice had risen further with each word until a shrill wail whistled through the house.

“I will admit that it seems incredible,” Mr. Bennet rolled his eyes at her antics. “Mary’s head is filled with straw, but maybe this once she is right. Perhaps he will not come. And I could have been a rich man…”

The wails grew even louder, and she threw herself onto a sofa and began to gasp for air, intermingled with demands for her salts. Kitty rolled her eyes and went to ring for the housekeeper, while Mary stared out of the window and Mr. Bennet laughed.

“Should we not be on our way, Mrs. Bennet?” he asked, his sarcasm lost on his wife. “Should we be wrong and he actually appear, then it would not do for it to be us which jilt the man.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Bennet popped to her feet, nerves completely forgotten. “Yes! We must go! Shoo! All of you! Out to the carriage!”

She drove them all before her out of the house and into the ancient carriage which awaited them at the door. Not one for silences, she kept up a running dialogue of excited exclamations and many prognostications of a terrible day. Kitty tittered in response, and Mary attempted to breathe through her gathering anxiety.

Several of their neighbors were already standing about in the green, awaiting the arrival of the most prestigious man who had ever appeared and his unheard of eight cows. The Bennet’s arrival did not even raise a whisper among the crowd, so dogged was their attention to the London road. Gossip said that Lingley had yet to arrive at Netherfield, so the London road was the only direction from which he could appear. As time stretched on, the gathering grew, and the murmurs and speculation as well.

“Mary! Mary!” Kitty cried, pointing down the road toward a far-off figure.

“Mary-Hannah! He comes, he comes!” Mrs. Bennet screeched, grabbing at Mary and nearly pulling her from her feet.

“It is likely a stray, or some single horse and rider.” Mary pulled away and stepped out of her reach. “Oh, it is the mail!”

The large mail coach barreled into town and pulled to a stop before the inn, and the crowd turned back to the road with even greater anticipation. Mary’s mortification grew with each moment, and she was tempted to run for the woods and to keep running until exhaustion or the Good Lord took her. T’would be a relief!

“La! Mary, how awful you look! Are you to be sick?”

“It needed only this,” Mary groaned.

“LYDIA!” Mrs. Bennet screamed, throwing her arms about her youngest daughter, who was hanging off the arm of a handsome, smiling man in regimentals. “And our dear Wickham! How well you look. What an excellent surprise!”

“How could we resist?” Lydia giggled and pawed at her husband. “Never would I have thought that Mary would marry so well! Can you imagine her pin money? And the jewels? We wished to come and help her settle. It is only right that I accompany her. Wickham cannot possibly do without me, though, so he asked for several months’ leave and it was approved! Is that not wonderful?”

“No, no, it is not!” Mary’s eyes were comically wide.

“Wonderful!” Mrs. Bennet crowed over her. “You shall have the most beautiful things. What use could Mary have for such luck! She would not know what to do with it!”