Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
The initial fears that almost seemed to strangle Elizabeth upon her arrival in London ebbed after a few days' calm.
When no carriage carried Papa to the Gardiners' door, when no rumors of a runaway Hertfordshire bride reached their circles, Elizabeth finally allowed herself to stop looking constantly over her shoulder for the specter of Mr. Collins, marriage license in hand.
This morning, a full week since her arrival, she'd even ventured to walk by herself to purchase some buns from the talented baker down the street.
And then Jane's letter arrived.
"She begs us to assure her that you are here," said Aunt Gardiner, teary-eyed, the letter still in her lap, as the adults gathered in the back parlor. "The way she worries, Elizabeth, I do not know if we can bear not to offer some assurance."
Elizabeth swallowed the tea that had suddenly grown bitter in her mouth. Her hands trembled slightly as she slid her cup onto the table. Her peace never was meant to last. "Is she frightfully worried?"
Uncle and Aunt Gardiner exchanged a private look before the former responded, "I can only say that I fear for her sanity if we do not at least assure her you are still in the land of the living."
Elizabeth sniffed. Her worries for herself, and her own chosen path of deliverance, suddenly appeared impulsive at best and selfish at worst in light of Jane's concern. She turned in her seat, her ankle no longer an impediment to full movement, though she still took care to be cautious.
"Can we safely inform her of my whereabouts without Papa and Mama knowing as well?" she asked quietly.
Aunt Gardiner sighed. She slipped Jane's letter into her skirt pockets. "I have always considered you my favorite niece, Elizabeth, and I have no qualms about coming to your aid in your direst time of need. But to harbor you indefinitely, like a fugitive, is not a way for any of us to live."
Elizabeth sniffed. She had no right to feel rejected, not when her aunt's words brimmed with their usual sense and practical wisdom.
But since her first charge out of Longbourn, since those first few hundred steps before she'd turned her ankle, she was coming to realize the world was a much wider place than she'd thought it might be.
She still refused to marry Mr. Collins, under pain of death.
But was fleeing her home the right thing to do?
"May I read her letter?" asked Elizabeth.
Again, her uncle and aunt exchanged glances.
A moment passed before Aunt Gardiner replied, "Perhaps it would not be wise."
"And why is that? Jane is my dearest sister, and she—"
"We do not wish to distress you further.”
Elizabeth frowned. "What could she possibly have said that—"
"Madeline," said Uncle, his voice gentle yet firm, "perhaps we must tell her."
"Tell me what?" Elizabeth's eyes darted between her two relatives—her last two relatives that she had hoped to rely upon.
"Jane mentions Mr. Bingley having departed from the neighborhood, for an unknown period of time."
"Oh, that is unfortunate."
"Quite."
"Madeline," Uncle Gardiner said with a more beseeching tone.
Elizabeth turned back towards her aunt, who sighed long and deep before saying, "She mentions that the banns are being read. Your parents expect you and Mr. Collins to wed as soon as they can find you."
And suddenly, the specter loomed once more.
It did not take long for a second letter to come—and this one, from Papa.
"Is he very angry?" Elizabeth asked once the Gardiner children had been ushered away.
"Worried, to be sure," Aunt Gardiner suggested, though the look from her husband, the one who'd actually read the letter, contradicted her optimism.
"He demands to know if we have any information about Elizabeth's whereabouts.
I am disinclined to tell him, yet equally disinclined to lie.
" Uncle Gardiner pinched the bridge of his nose after laying the letter on his desk.
"What should concern us more is what he says he will do if we do not respond. "
Elizabeth breathed in sharply. "Does he threaten legal action? I may yet have reached my majority, but I am hardly a child."
"My brother-in-law says he will come, license in hand."
"He cannot mean it." Elizabeth sniffed.
Uncle Gardiner met her eyes with a compassionate look. "I would rather we not find out the hard way."
Elizabeth managed to swallow a threatening rush of emotions. She'd wept enough over her ridiculous family. It was time to brace herself for survival.
"I cannot marry Mr. Collins," she said.
Aunt Gardiner took her hand. "While we might agree with you, dear, we cannot expect to dissuade your parents quite as easily."
"I have to leave."
"Leave London?"
"Perhaps there is a distant relation somewhere? I can stay with them and find employment. Perhaps someone requires a companion or a governess or—"
"It need not come to that yet, I think."
Elizabeth watched as her uncle and aunt exchanged the communicative looks only those long married, and harmoniously married, could share.
They knew that Elizabeth had been trying to find her way in London—that anyone respectable wished for references, or letters of introduction that Elizabeth did not possess.
They alone knew the full direness of Elizabeth's situation.
"Perhaps," Aunt Gardiner spoke a moment later, "if we could have you stay with a friend or another unrelated acquaintance for a week or so, then we can honestly tell your father that we do not know your whereabouts. And then he might set his search elsewhere."
It was an imperfect plan—but it was a plan, something that Elizabeth most certainly did not possess at this moment.
"Very well." Elizabeth collected herself. "Allow me time to pen a letter or two."
"We would be happy to have you back after," said Aunt Gardiner, though Elizabeth could not help noticing the hesitation in her eyes.
Her relatives cared, but expecting them to carry on a prolonged deception on her behalf was not the best way to reward their concern. She could understand that much.
Elizabeth forced a smile. "You need not worry for me."
She left the room before her face could betray how little she believed her own words.