Chapter 12
Elizabeth
The militia arrived in Meryton on a Tuesday, and Kitty and Lydia lost their minds.
This was not unusual. Kitty and Lydia lost their minds with some regularity, over hats and ribbons and whatever scrap of gossip had drifted within earshot.
But officers were a different category of excitement.
Officers wore red coats and carried swords and walked through the village in groups, and Lydia treated their arrival with the single-mindedness of a foxhound who has caught the scent.
"There are at least twenty," she reported at dinner, breathless. "A Captain Carter, and a Mr. Denny, and a lieutenant whose name I did not catch but who has the most wonderful whiskers."
"Whiskers are not a basis for character," Mary said, turning a page of her book with the weary patience of a woman surrounded by philistines.
"They are a basis for interest," Lydia said, "which is more than your sermons have ever been."
"There is also a Colonel Forster," Kitty added, with the air of a person contributing vital intelligence. "He is married."
"That is useless, Kitty," Lydia said. "Married officers are of no interest whatsoever."
Mrs. Bennet, who might have been expected to moderate this conversation, was instead calculating aloud how many unmarried officers could be seated at the Longbourn dinner table and whether they could be invited before the Lucases got to them first.
Elizabeth ignored the bickering. She was tired.
The Netherfield ball felt like a lifetime ago, though it had only been a fortnight, and in the days since, Collins had proposed, been refused, been charged by a pig, and departed, and Charlotte had accepted him, and Elizabeth had lost her best friend to a comfortable parsonage in Kent.
She had not stopped thinking about the dance.
She had not stopped thinking about Mr. Darcy's apology, delivered between the figures of a country dance as though the words had been sitting in his chest for weeks and had simply chosen that moment to escape.
I was wrong, and I have thought about it every day since, and I am sorry.
She did not know what to do with the apology. She did not know how to hold it alongside "not handsome enough to tempt me." The two truths sat in her mind like mismatched bookends, each propping up a different version of the same man, and she could not reconcile them.
She walked to Meryton the following morning with Jane, Kitty, Lydia, and Truffles.
Mary had been persuaded to join on the grounds that the bookseller had received a new shipment, though she walked behind the others with the air of a woman being marched to her own execution.
The air was sharp with the first real cold of autumn, and the hedgerows had turned russet and gold.
Truffles trotted ahead, her snout working the ground for scents, her ears flopping with each step.
Lydia and Kitty vanished into the milliner's shop the moment they reached the high street, pulling Mary with them to adjudicate a dispute over ribbon colours. Jane and Elizabeth walked on with Truffles.
They encountered several officers near the draper's shop.
The high street had a different air now, the red coats adding splashes of colour to the grey autumn morning like poppies in a field.
Introductions were made. The officers were young and cheerful and deferential to Jane's beauty and openly charmed by the pig.
A Captain Carter asked if Truffles was a Gloucestershire Old Spot.
A Mr. Pratt said he had grown up on a farm and had never seen a pig follow a person so faithfully.
Truffles accepted their attention with her usual composure, sniffing boots and twitching her curly tail and allowing herself to be scratched behind the ears.
Elizabeth smiled and made conversation and found the officers pleasant enough, if somewhat indistinguishable in their red coats and their easy manners.
Then Mr. Wickham appeared.
He came around the corner of the high street with Mr. Denny, and Elizabeth noticed him immediately because it was impossible not to.
He was handsome in a way that was immediately, effortlessly apparent.
Dark hair, bright eyes, a smile that seemed to arrive before the rest of him.
Where Darcy's handsomeness was severe and architectural, Wickham's was warm and inviting, the difference between a cathedral and a fireside.
"Miss Bennet, Miss Elizabeth," Denny said. "May I introduce Mr. Wickham? He has just taken a commission in the regiment."
Wickham bowed. His bow was easy and graceful, nothing like Darcy's stiff, formal inclination. "A pleasure. I have heard a great deal about the Bennet family."
"Only the good parts, I hope," Elizabeth said.
"Is there another kind?" His smile widened. He had very white teeth.
Elizabeth was about to reply when she felt it. A pressure against her ankle. Truffles had stopped moving. The pig was pressed against Elizabeth's leg, her entire body rigid, her ears flat against her skull. She was trembling.
Elizabeth looked down. In all the months she had owned Truffles, through all the pig's adventures and escapades and encounters with strangers, she had never seen this.
Truffles, who adored Darcy on sight. Truffles, who tolerated Mrs. Bennet's shrieking and Lydia's attempts to dress her in bonnets and Mary's pianoforte with equanimity.
Truffles, who had never met a person she would not approach.
Truffles was afraid.
Wickham, who was still smiling, reached down to pet the pig. "What a charming creature. A piglet, is it not?"
Truffles snapped at his hand. Not a playful nip. A real snap, teeth bared, accompanied by a squeal that Elizabeth had never heard before, high and sharp and frightened. The pig scrambled backward, pressing herself against Elizabeth's opposite leg, as far from Wickham as she could get.
Wickham withdrew his hand. His smile did not falter. "Well. Animals can be unpredictable."
"I am so sorry," Elizabeth said, mortified. She picked up Truffles, who was shaking, and held her against her chest. The pig burrowed into Elizabeth's neck. "She has never done this before. I cannot imagine what has come over her."
"Please, think nothing of it. Some animals are nervous around strangers." He was gracious. He was perfectly, disarmingly gracious.
They walked together along the high street.
Wickham fell into step beside Elizabeth, and the conversation unfolded with a naturalness that she found instantly appealing.
He asked about Meryton, about her family, about the neighbourhood.
He listened. He laughed at her jokes. He responded to her wit with wit of his own.
He was, she thought, everything Darcy was not.
Open where Darcy was closed. Warm where Darcy was cold.
Easy where Darcy was stiff and painful and impossible.
Talking to Wickham felt like walking downhill, natural and effortless, after weeks of climbing a steep, stony path that led nowhere she wanted to go.
Truffles remained pressed against Elizabeth's chest the entire time, her body rigid, her face turned away from Wickham. Once, when Wickham's hand came close to Elizabeth's arm in conversation, the pig flinched.
Elizabeth noticed. She filed it away. She did not examine it.
The conversation turned to Darcy. Elizabeth was not sure how. Perhaps she mentioned the name, or perhaps Wickham steered toward it with the skill of a man who had been waiting for the opening.
"Mr. Darcy," Wickham said, and something changed in his voice. It was subtle. A careful flatness, like a stone skimming across water. "You know him, then."
"He is Mr. Bingley's friend. He has been staying at Netherfield."
"Ah." Wickham was quiet for a moment. "I knew him once. As boys. Our fathers were great friends. His father, the late Mr. Darcy, was my godfather. He was the finest man I have ever known."
Elizabeth waited. The story that followed was delivered with the quiet pain of a man unburdening himself of something he had carried alone for too long.
The promised living. The denial. The cruelty of the son, so different from the generosity of the father.
Wickham's voice was steady but his eyes were sad, and Elizabeth, who was already disposed to think poorly of Darcy, felt her indignation rise like a tide.
"He denied you the living," she said. "His father's express wish."
"He did. I do not tell you this to gain your sympathy. Only to explain why I cannot look upon Mr. Darcy with the warmth others might expect."
"You have every right to look upon him with whatever feeling you choose."
"You are very kind, Miss Elizabeth." His eyes held hers.
They were warm and sincere and faintly wounded, the eyes of a man who had suffered an injustice and borne it with grace.
"I confess I was surprised to find him in Hertfordshire.
He does not usually venture so far from the company he considers worthy of his attention. "
"He came for Mr. Bingley's sake, I believe. Not for the neighbourhood."
"Ah, yes. Poor Bingley. A good man, attached to a friend who does not deserve his loyalty." Wickham shook his head with a regret that appeared entirely genuine. "I should not speak of it. I have said too much already."
But he had said enough. The story sat in Elizabeth's mind like a key fitting a lock, and everything she had observed about Darcy clicked into place.
It confirmed everything. Every cold word, every stiff response, every moment of pride and silence and distance. He was not shy, as Charlotte suggested. He was not kind, as the pig insisted. He was a man who wielded power carelessly and hurt people who could not fight back.
She looked at Wickham and saw a victim. She looked at Darcy, in her memory, and saw a villain.
Truffles pressed against her neck, making the thin, high squeal she produced when she was frightened. A small, distressed sound.
Elizabeth held the pig tighter and did not listen.
They parted at the end of the high street. Wickham bowed with his easy grace. Jane, who had been walking ahead with the other officers, rejoined Elizabeth.
"He seems very pleasant," Jane said.
"He is more than pleasant. He is everything a young man ought to be." Elizabeth paused. "And he has been very badly treated by someone we both know."
"By Mr. Darcy?"
Elizabeth told her the story. Jane listened with growing concern and the soft, troubled expression she wore when presented with evidence that a person she wished to think well of had done something unforgivable.
"There must be some misunderstanding," Jane said. "Mr. Darcy cannot be so bad as that."
"Mr. Darcy is exactly so bad as that."
They walked home. Jane was quiet, thoughtful, turning the story over with the careful deliberation she applied to all information that challenged her desire to think well of people.
Elizabeth was not quiet. Elizabeth was angry, the clean, bright anger of a person who has had a suspicion confirmed, and she talked about Wickham and Darcy and injustice and privilege with a fluency that surprised even her.
"He apologised to me at the ball," she said. "For the insult at the assembly. He said he was wrong and that he had thought about it every day."
"That speaks well of him," Jane said.
"It speaks of guilt, not goodness. A man can apologise for one cruelty while committing a hundred others." She paused. "He denied Wickham a living. His own father's wish. What kind of man does that?"
Jane had no answer. Elizabeth did not need one. She had already decided.
Truffles did not settle. She remained in Elizabeth's arms, her body tense, her eyes fixed on the road behind them as if watching for something. She did not relax until they were through the gate at Longbourn and the door was closed behind them.
Elizabeth set the pig down. Truffles went immediately to the hearth and pressed herself against the warm stones. Her ears were still flat.
It was strange. It was very strange. The pig who loved Darcy, who followed him through houses and sat on his boots and slept outside his door, was terrified of this man, this charming, wronged, perfectly pleasant man.
Elizabeth looked at the pig. The pig looked at the fire.
She chose to believe the charming man. She chose his story, his wounded eyes, his easy warmth, over the trembling pig and the memory of Darcy's hands, gentle and sure, lifting Truffles at the ball.
She told herself she was being rational.
She told herself the pig was an animal, with an animal's instincts, and that animals were not oracles.
Truffles loved Darcy because he had saved her once and smelled of horse leather.
She feared Wickham for some reason that had nothing to do with character and everything to do with scent or sound or some unknowable animal logic that Elizabeth could not decipher.
A quieter thought followed, one she did not welcome.
The pig had been right about everyone else.
Truffles adored Jane, which was only sensible.
She tolerated Mr. Collins with the resigned patience of a creature who knew he was not worth the effort of avoidance.
She had chosen Darcy from a roomful of strangers and been proven right about his character underneath the stiffness.
Her judgment, absurd as it was to call it that, had been faultless.
Except about Wickham. Or except about Darcy. One of them. It could not be both.
Elizabeth folded the thought up and put it away. Because if the pig was right about Wickham, then the pig was right about Darcy, and Elizabeth was not yet ready to be wrong about Darcy.
But that night, when Elizabeth climbed into bed and Truffles curled at her feet on the folded blanket, the pig did not settle into her usual easy sleep. She lay with her head up, her ears pricked, listening to something Elizabeth could not hear. Her dark eyes gleamed in the candlelight.
"It is nothing," Elizabeth told her. "Go to sleep."
Truffles did not go to sleep. She watched the door until Elizabeth blew out the candle, and even then, in the dark, Elizabeth could feel the pig's alertness, a small tense body at the foot of the bed, standing guard against something Elizabeth had chosen not to see.