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“Come in and warm yourself by the fire,” their aunt said with a smile.

They were ushered inside and into the family parlour, where a fire was crackling merrily in the grate and a tea tray was being placed for them.

“Now,” Aunt Gardiner said when they were warmed and fed, “your father’s letter was, as usual, rather light on the details, but I believe I have the gist of things.” She met Elizabeth’s eye. “You refused Mr. Collins.”

“I did.”

“And your mother did not take that well.”

“She threatened never to speak to me again,” Elizabeth acknowledged. “She could not stop talking of it.” It was meant as a jest, but her heart was not in it.

Aunt Gardiner nodded. “And so you have come to us three weeks before we were to come to you.”

“We would not have imposed upon you so near your own visit,” Elizabeth added. “Only . . .”

“Only?” Aunt Gardiner asked. “Whose notion was it?”

“To tell the truth—” Jane began.

“Well—” Elizabeth said at almost the same moment.

“Lydia’s,” they said together.

Their aunt drew back. “Lydia’s?” she asked.

“We were as surprised as you,” Elizabeth said. “But she was most adamant, and she managed to persuade Mamma that she was right. She evidently expects gifts.”

Her aunt sighed. “Of course she does.”

“However,” Elizabeth continued, “I did not mind her interference, for to be away for a few weeks just now seemed prudent.”

“Hm,” Aunt Gardiner said. “And what of you, Jane?”

Her sister’s cheeks were flushed a deep pink. The cold, perhaps. “It was the strangest thing, Aunt. Mr. Bingley told me that he was travelling to London and would return in a few days. But not a day after he departed, Miss Bingley wrote to say that they had shut up Netherfield and meant to spend the entire winter in London.”

“And you wish to call on Miss Bingley?”

“We are acquainted, Aunt. It would be impolite not to.”

Her aunt considered this. “Very well, that is one reason. But I suspect between the two of you there is another.”

Jane drew in a deep breath. “If Lizzy is correct and they are not my friends, I would wish to know now. It would spare me the cruelty of hope.”

Elizabeth had been prepared to argue with Jane about Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst, but found she had nothing to add.

“Well, girls,” Aunt Gardiner said, “if this is your intention, I must support you in it. I find it is generally best to face unpleasant possibilities directly and then make your own decisions about how to proceed. Better that than waiting to have those decisions made for you by somebody else.”

“I quite agree,” Jane said.

Elizabeth, who had always lived her life in this way—at times to her detriment—could only say, “I do not know what to do about the fact that Lydia was correct to send us here.”

“You need not do anything,” her aunt replied. “But I advise you never to tell her.”

The next day, Aunt Gardiner set them down in Grosvenor Street.

“I shall return in twenty minutes,” she told them. “And then we shall visit Hatchards.”

Jane enjoyed the bookshop almost as much as Elizabeth did. The visit would be a pleasant diversion after what Elizabeth and her aunt both expected to be a trying interaction.