Lydia and the Colonel (Pride & Prejudice Variations)

Chapter One

“Lydia! Lydia, wake up, we’re here!” Harriet Forster’s high-pitched voice startled Lydia from her drowse, and she jolted upright, bumping her head against the inside of the carriage with a wince.

“What? Where?”

“Brighton, you goose!” Harriet giggled loudly. “Look, you can see it just down the hill!”

So they weren’t actually in Brighton, then, just near it. Lydia bit back a snappy retort and sat forward, craning her neck. Harriet had occupied the forward-facing seat for the whole journey, insisting that she would feel nauseous otherwise.

There were few times Lydia regretted her sturdy constitution, but this was definitely one of them. Defiant, she switched seats, forcing Harriet to huff and move over, making room for Lydia. Well, Harriet had woken her to look. She could hardly expect Lydia to break her neck to do so.

Brighton was not so large, but the encampment around it stretched as far as the eye could see. Indeed, they were already passing through a section; not a hundred paces from the road, Lydia could see men lined up for inspection under the eye of a red-coated officer on a white horse.

“Look at that cavalry officer,” Harriet sighed. “Oh, imagine being married to a cavalryman from the regulars, how romantic that would be!”

The officer certainly had a good seat on his horse, Lydia acknowledged aloud, but privately she thought that a white horse would make him a fine target on the battlefield for the enemy’s guns.

Being married to a man with that sort of taste in horses would like as not leave one a widow sooner rather than later.

She did not say so to Harriet. In the two days they had spent solely in each other’s company, Lydia had discovered that Harriet was perhaps not quite so close a friend as she had thought.

Harriet seemed to expect Lydia to act almost as a servant for her, fetching and carrying her belongings, amusing her when she was bored.

There had better be some pretty good parties and balls in Brighton if she was expected to act as an unpaid companion.

Too late to back out now, though, so Lydia clenched her jaw and put on a pretty smile as they passed another troop of soldiers.

None of whom so much as glanced at the carriage, far too disciplined to look away from the officer currently putting them through a marching drill.

Pouting, Lydia slumped back into the seat. “How much longer?”

“How should I possibly know?” Harriet said pettishly. “I’ve never been here before either. I only know that must be Brighton because I can see the sea!”

Lydia’s teeth ground together.

Maybe I’ve made a mistake...

She was answered, somewhat, when the carriage at last rattled down into the town proper.

Brighton was noise and colour and salt-smelling air, all at once.

The streets were crowded with a curious mixture: fishwives with laden baskets, ladies in summer muslins with their attendant servants, men in uniform at every turn, redcoats and blues, marching or lounging or leaning in doorways.

Lydia had scarcely taken stock of one interesting sight before another presented itself.

A whole column of infantry was coming the other way, and their carriage was obliged to wait at a corner while it passed, which gave her ample time to observe, and to be observed.

Two of the younger officers, she noted, observed her very readily indeed.

This was more like it.

The colonel’s billet was a decent sort of house on one of the better streets, with a maid who showed them to their rooms with every appearance of composure.

Lydia’s was small and rather plain, but the window looked towards the sea.

She stood at it after the maid withdrew, watching the distant glitter of water under the July sun, and told herself firmly that she was going to be very happy here.

The week before the regiment arrived was not, in truth, quite what she had imagined.

Harriet, now established as the colonel’s wife, proved to have a great deal of business to occupy her: calls to pay, accounts to arrange, a household to settle.

These were occupations Lydia had never given much thought to, having always assumed that being a married woman chiefly meant being the most important person in the room.

Harriet seemed to be discovering otherwise, and was accordingly somewhat fretful company.

On three separate mornings, Lydia came downstairs to find Harriet already gone out, and discovered an emotion she had never encountered in the whole of her life before: loneliness.

At home there had always been somebody: Mary to tease, Kitty to drag along on errands, her mother to half-listen to.

Even when she had not particularly wanted company, she had never been quite without it.

Here there was nobody to talk to, and so, for want of anything better to do, she looked about her instead, and discovered a new interest in observation.

She occupied herself as well as she could.

The esplanade she liked very much; the shops she liked better, though her allowance made enjoyment of the shops largely theoretical.

She walked, and looked, and made careful note of things.

Officers’ wives, she observed, occupied a particular sort of position in Brighton: the tradespeople deferred to them, the lodging-house keepers more so, and even ladies visiting purely for the sea-bathing seemed to step aside for them in small instinctive ways.

It was a different kind of precedence from anything she knew at home, where everything turned on family and fortune.

Here something else was at work, some gravity lent by the proximity of war and the daily business of being a soldier’s wife.

She had always been told she was too young to notice much about the world. On the whole, she thought this assessment was not quite accurate.

The Forsters’ parlour held perhaps twenty people when she entered it that afternoon, which made for quite a crush in a room so small: officers and their ladies, a scattering of civilians, and two very senior gentlemen near the window whose coats were so encrusted with braid and decoration as to suggest a long and eventful acquaintance with the army.

Harriet was already presiding over the tea table with rather more assurance than she had managed anywhere else this past week, which was something.

Colonel Forster stood with the senior men and looked in excellent spirits. Nobody took the least notice of Lydia.

She accepted this as temporary, fixed her posture, and set about surveying the room, wondering if there might be a spare seat anywhere.

“Miss Bennet,” a cultured voice said, and it took Lydia a few seconds to realise she was the one being addressed.

How well it sounds, to be addressed as Miss Bennet. Jane must feel like this all the time. No wonder she finds it easy to be gracious and elegant... it must be something that comes with being Miss Bennet.

Cultivating a gracious, elegant smile, Lydia turned unhurriedly about. At once, her smile broadened.

“Wickham! You’ve finally arrived.” They had been in Brighton almost a full week waiting for the men to march in.

Of course, the officers could have come by coach or on their horses, but apparently Colonel Forster was of the opinion that his officers should march with the troopers, which was quite ridiculous according to Harriet, but Lydia rather thought it made sense. Not that she had said so, of course.

“I did, and now the long, wearying march has been entirely worthwhile, to see your beautiful smile at the end of it.” Wickham picked up her hand and kissed it gallantly. “How are you enjoying Brighton, Miss Bennet?”

“Oh, very well,” she said, “though we have been quite dull waiting for you to arrive. Mrs Forster does not really know anyone, you see.”

“No doubt the colonel will be eager to rectify that matter. He has talked of little but his anticipation of their reunion, and his plans to show her off at every social event in Brighton.”

Lydia just hoped she was also to be included in those plans. Smiling coquettishly up at Wickham, she cooed; “You will dance with me everywhere, won’t you, Wicky darling? I shan’t know a soul...”

He laughed heartily. “Miss Bennet, you are a beautiful, single woman in a town overrun by the army. Generals and colonels will queue up to reserve your dances; you will have no time for a mere lieutenant.”

“I will always have time for you. Who cares for old, fuddy-duddy generals and colonels anyway?” Lydia wrinkled her nose, thinking that she would far rather dance with a handsome young officer like Wickham than some old man.

How Harriet Forster tolerated her husband’s attentions was quite beyond her.

“The first dance at every event we both attend, Wicky. I insist upon it.”

He looked amused, but bowed acquiescence. “As you wish, Miss Bennet.”

“La, do stop calling me that; you make me feel old and fuddy-duddy!” Laying her hand on his arm, she fluttered her eyelashes at him. “My name is Lydia, as you well know.”

“Indeed. May I bring you some tea, Lydia? I see Mrs Forster is pouring.”

Lydia reflected, as she watched Wickham walk away and two of her other officer friends descended to greet her, that it was very nice not to have to share their attention.

Especially with Jane and Lizzy not here for all the officers to be sneaking glances at.

While Lydia knew she was pretty enough to attract plenty of favourable attention, Jane was extraordinarily beautiful, and Lizzy had an indefinable quality about her which seemed to draw all men’s eyes.

Indeed, the very first question Captain Carter asked was about the health of her sisters, and Lydia ground her teeth. Was she always destined to be last? Just once in her life, she wanted to be first, in a man’s attention, in something.

Spotting Harriet Forster holding court across the room, Lydia thought how nice it would be to be married before any of her sisters. To a handsome officer in a red coat, of course.

Harriet was just then handing Wickham a cup, with a teasing smile and a laugh. Wickham smiled perfunctorily in return before looking around and catching Lydia’s eye on him. His smile widened, and he winked.

Emboldened, Lydia winked back. Wickham had never been quite as responsive to her flirting as some of the others – he’d spent far too much time gazing wistfully at Lizzy, in Lydia’s opinion, and then courted Mary King – but he was looking at her now as though she was the most fascinating woman of his acquaintance.

Ignoring Carter and the faithful Denny, she walked away from them to meet Wickham in the middle of the room. He placed her teacup tenderly into her hands, their fingers brushing, and even through her thin gloves she felt the heat of his skin.

Lydia had long since learned to blush on cue, and she did so now, lowering her lashes and peeping prettily up at Wickham. George, she thought. It was a nice name. A regal name. How well they should sound together, Lieutenant and Mrs. Wickham!