Chapter Three
Brighton was a great deal less enjoyable than Lydia had expected.
Every social event the Forsters were invited to seemed to be exclusively for senior officers and their wives, and all the wives were years older than she and Harriet.
While they were perfectly polite, Lydia could tell they didn’t approve of her.
Jealous old cats, she privately termed them; jealous of her youth and beauty, and the way the single officers (and even some whose wives were present) fawned over her. Indeed, if she had been inclined to catch a husband of senior rank, it would have been the easiest thing imaginable.
Instead, she spent her days being squired about by men older than her father for the most part, fending off their enthusiastic attentions with firm disclaimers that she was far too young to think of marriage.
The one exception was, to her great surprise, Colonel Fitzwilliam. He had called the very day after their first meeting and asked if he might escort her for a promenade along the seafront, chaperoned by the maid, of course.
Lydia had no way to gracefully refuse, and she did want to go for a promenade along the front, she reminded herself. Harriet was almost beside herself with excitement, insisting on re-tying Lydia’s bonnet ribbon three times to achieve the perfect jaunty bow before she pronounced her fit to be seen.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was rather nice, Lydia had to admit as they walked. He was certainly an easy conversationalist, listening as she chattered away and actually asking questions which showed he had been paying attention to her words, which was really quite surprising.
At one point, having remarked that the wives of senior officers seemed to occupy a peculiar kind of precedence in Brighton, one that had nothing to do with family or fortune and rather more to do with proximity to the possibility of loss, she immediately wished the words unsaid.
He had gone quiet for a moment, and she had thought she had offended him.
“That is very astutely observed,” he said instead.
Lydia blinked, not quite sure whether she was being flattered or taken seriously, and suspecting it might be the latter, which was a disconcerting novelty. She filed the moment away without quite knowing why, and moved the conversation on to safer ground.
Still and all, as a marriage prospect he was entirely out of the question. An earl’s son would never marry someone from her station in life, so she saved her smiles for the younger captains and lieutenants who eyed her admiringly as they passed.
At one point she was sure she spied Wickham, but he turned abruptly from their path and disappeared down a side street.
He was already gone from sight by the time she could peer along the street after him, and she could hardly ask Fitzwilliam to chase after him, so she sighed inwardly and rued the missed opportunity to ask him what he thought of her new bonnet, the one she had so cunningly trimmed all by herself.
Fitzwilliam waited until after he had delivered her back to an excited Harriet to thank her for her company and ask if she might care to walk out with him again the following day.
“Oh, I think we might have a prior engagement,” Lydia tried to demur, but Harriet immediately overrode her.
“No, no, Lydia, it was only a morning call on Mrs Garmond. I can quite happily go by myself, and you will enjoy a walk with the colonel far more, I am sure.” Harriet dimpled at Fitzwilliam, somehow managing to convey the impression that she would definitely rather be walking out with him than attending some dull tea.
Lydia was forced to admit Harriet was quite correct, though. Walking out with Fitzwilliam was indeed preferable to a morning tea with an old lady who watched her every move with a gimlet eye. So she thanked him prettily and agreed that he might call for her the following day at ten.
Lydia had been in Brighton a full fifteen days before her first ball, and was quite sick of smiling prettily for gouty old men who thought she’d make a fine wife.
Honestly, it was perfectly dreadful that Colonel Fitzwilliam was the only man she actually liked who paid her any attention, and he wasn’t really interested in her, she was sure.
He treated her rather like a younger sister who needed an eye kept on her to make sure she didn’t do anything silly, not responding even when she flirted with him out of sheer desperation.
“Wickham,” she almost gasped with delight when his handsome face was one of the first she saw at the ball. “How wonderful to see you; I have been just dying of boredom without you!”
Wickham smiled down at Lydia and said how happy he was to see her too, not mentioning that he had every opportunity to call but dared not while Colonel Fitzwilliam was sniffing around her.
He had only attended the ball tonight because he had discovered Fitzwilliam had been sent off to London with important dispatches that afternoon, and would not return until the morrow at the earliest.
“Darling Lydia, I have missed you so,” he said, doing his best to sound lovestruck. In truth, it was not difficult to sound enthusiastic for her company. The thought of stealing her from under that prig Fitzwilliam’s nose was utterly delicious. He’d play the devoted swain as much as she wished.
“Oh, Wickham.” She gazed up at him as he led her to the floor for the first dance. “I have missed you. You would not believe the deadly bores I have had to be polite to, this last week!”
She was already half in love with him, Wickham thought.
Pushing her over the edge into full-blown infatuation should be a simple matter.
By the end of the evening he’d have her eating out of his hand, especially if he judiciously spiked the punch he brought with her supper with a little brandy from his pocket flask.
“You know I can’t,” Lydia giggled when Wickham importuned her for a third dance after supper. Colonel Forster was eyeing her narrowly, and she had learned he was quite a stickler for propriety, especially when more senior officers were present. “I’d be locked up in the house for a week!”
“I can’t bear to see any other man touch you!” Wickham claimed, wondering if he was doing it up too brown. Lydia had imbibed plenty of spiked punch, though, and gazed up at him through soft brown eyes, drinking in every word.
“I hate to see you dance with any other woman too, Wicky. I hated Mary King so much, why ever did you ask her to marry you?”
“A man would be a fool to pass up a fortune dangled under his nose,” Wickham said dryly, before recalling himself.
“Would that I had a fortune!” Lydia sighed dramatically.
“Your fortune is in your beauty and charm, my darling. You have certainly enchanted me.”
Lydia giggled and cast him a slanting, mischievous look under her lashes, a look he’d seen on many a lady before. Wickham smiled.
“Pay a visit to the retiring room,” he murmured in her ear, “and when you come out, turn right instead of left. I’ll be waiting for you in the last room at the end of the passage.”
She giggled again and was gone in a swirl of skirts and bouncing curls, leaving Wickham to wander around the ballroom for a few minutes before discreetly following.
He’d only been in the deserted library a scant minute when Lydia rushed in and practically flung herself into his arms.
Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Wickham kissed her.
Despite her flirtatious ways, he knew at once that Lydia had never been kissed before; her inexperience was obvious.
He set about teaching her a few things, though with one eye on the door and his ears open for the sound of anyone approaching.
Being caught with her like this would end up with him being forced to marry Lydia, and that was no part of his plans.
At last he set her down, smirking inwardly at the starry-eyed look she gave him. “Darling Lydia. How it will grieve me to leave you!” he sighed dramatically.
“Leave me!” She practically screeched it, and he winced, shushing her hastily. “Why would you leave me?” Lydia continued, at a marginally more moderate volume.
“I’m leaving the militia. There is an opportunity for me in London I cannot pass up, my darling.”
Lydia fell for it hook, line and sinker. “Take me with you! Oh, Wicky, I should like to live in London above all things, do take me with you.”
“We’d have to be married first.” He played reluctant. “It would take more than a month, to have the banns called, and...”
“Not if we went to Gretna Green!” Lydia’s eyes sparkled at the thought of such an adventure. “We could go there first, and thence to London!”
He pretended to consider, tugging at his lower lip. “I am due in London in a fortnight... we should have to leave immediately, to get to Scotland and back. Tonight.”
Lydia never even hesitated. “Then tonight it shall be.”
The chit really was infatuated with him, Wickham reflected as he told her to meet him at two o’clock, at an inn just along the street from the Forsters’ house.
The ball was due to end by midnight, so two hours should be ample time for her to get home, see the Forsters asleep and pack her valuables.
He impressed on her that she could only bring what she could carry, but to make sure she brought any money or jewellery she happened to have with her.
After all, she would have no need of it where she was going.
He had certain connexions in London, people who paid well for introductions of this particular kind, and Lydia was precisely the sort of girl they valued: pretty, well-spoken, country-bred, and entirely without resources once she found herself abandoned and alone in an unfamiliar city.
It was a reliable enough arrangement. He had made use of it before.
And though it might be tempting to indulge in what she was so freely offering, if he could just restrain himself and pass her over untouched, he might two hundred pounds or even more for her.
Enough for him to disappear and begin afresh somewhere else.
His fellow militia officers were becoming a little strident in pressing for him to settle his debts; it was time he made himself scarce.
Lydia presented the perfect opportunity to enrich himself and thoroughly annoy several people he disliked all in one diverting episode.
The thought of Fitzwilliam’s face when news of Lydia’s disappearance reached him was almost more satisfying than the money.
Almost. Wickham entertained himself briefly with the notion of writing to him once it was all settled, and to old Mr Bennet, and perhaps to Elizabeth, who had thought herself too good for him.
Let them all know what had become of their precious Lydia.
Yes, this was definitely his best scheme yet.
Excited beyond bearing, Lydia barely restrained herself from blurting out their plan on the carriage ride home.
Only the certain knowledge that Colonel Forster would forbid her to go kept her lips sealed, and she would certainly have told Harriet everything had the Forsters not repaired directly to their room on their arrival at the house.
Well, Lydia would just have to write Harriet a note.
Wickham had told her not to tell anyone, but even at her most heedless, Lydia didn’t want Harriet to worry about her.
Besides, she had to fill the time until she could leave the house somehow, and it took a scant ten minutes for her to change her gown, pack two more in her carpet-bag and tuck what was left of the pin-money her father had given her into her reticule.
She was already wearing her only jewellery, a silver cross set with moonstones and a matching pair of moonstone and silver earbobs she had received for her sixteenth birthday.
Sitting down at the little writing-desk in her room, a single candle illuminating the page, she was almost too excited to write.
Three pages were fed to the flame before she was satisfied her opening lines were legible.
Finally, though, she had a clean copy written out with Harriet’s name printed on the folded page, and there was nothing left to do but sit and wait as the candle burned through the quarter-hour marks she had made with her fingernail.
Unaccountably, her thoughts drifted to Colonel Fitzwilliam.
Somehow, she did not like to think about how disappointed he would be when he came to collect her for their next promenade, only for Harriet to tell him that Lydia was gone to Scotland with Wickham.
He would be far too late to do anything about it, of course, but for a brief moment Lydia entertained a little daydream of Fitzwilliam riding hell for leather to catch up with them and stop the marriage.
How gallant he would look! And how gentlemanly he would surely be; after he had struck Wickham down with a single blow for daring to aspire to Lydia’s hand, he would take her in his arms and kiss her gently, tenderly, not roughly like Wickham had done. ..
A dog barking outside the window startled Lydia from her reverie. Whatever was she doing, daydreaming about Colonel Fitzwilliam! She should be thinking about Wickham, about how pleasant it would be to be Mrs. Wickham, feted and adored, the toast of London!
The candle had burned past the mark which should indicate a quarter to two.
Blowing it out, Lydia picked up her carpet-bag and reticule and crept quietly from her room, tiptoeing down the stairs.
She did not go to the front door, which she knew from experience was both heavy and noisy, grating loudly on the doorstep.
There was a small door off the pantry onto a side alley, and she could slide the bolt and slip out silently with none the wiser as to her departure.
Closing the door behind her, Lydia took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She was off on the biggest adventure of her life, and then a brand new life as a married woman.
There was absolutely no need to feel a sense of impending doom at all.