28. What Changed, Lizzy?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
WHAT CHANGED, LIZZY?
The carriage turned onto the Longbourn lane at half past one. Elizabeth pressed her face to the glass, her breath fogging the pane. Beside her, Nettle had abandoned all dignity, bouncing between the cushions with a frantic, whining joy that made Elizabeth’s own chest ache.
We are returned, she thought, and found her mouth inexplicably parched, as though Hertfordshire air had grown rarefied in her absence and now demanded a toll for reentry.
“The hedgerows need trimming,” Mary observed. “Papa has let them go again.”
“Papa lets everything go,” Elizabeth murmured.
The words were meant to be dismissive, but they caught in her throat.
The hedgerows were the same—tangled, unruly, thick with the scent of damp earth—but they looked smaller, shabbier.
The lane, rutted from the winter rains and yet to be smoothed, felt like a journey back in time.
Outside, Darcy rode his black stallion with a straight-backed, chilling composure. He hadn’t looked at her once since leaving the White Hart. He had been a silent, grey-clad ghost, riding just ahead of the horses, his eyes perpetually sweeping the horizon.
She wondered what she would say to him, and what he might say to her. She wished the lane were either longer or shorter, or that it led anywhere but Longbourn, where her father and Kitty awaited, and the complications of home would swallow whatever fragile clarity she reached the night before.
“The gates,” Jane whispered, and her hand tightened on Elizabeth’s wrist.
The gates to Longbourn’s drive sagged on their hinges, one rusted and the other completely gone. Elizabeth recalled them standing tall and straight. Hill had complained about the rust, and her father had promised to see to it, only he hadn’t because it would have required him to leave the library.
“We have not been away so long,” Mary frowned, looking at the overgrown drive. “How has everything fallen apart so quickly?”
“It was always falling apart,” Elizabeth said, her voice brittle. “We simply didn’t notice, because we were living inside it.”
The carriage rounded the final bend, and Longbourn appeared—smaller than she remembered, the kitchen chimney smoking despite the mild weather, a flock of geese congregating near the front steps, guarding the threshold with an aggressive, hissing indifference.
The carriage rattled to a stop on the uneven drive, and Darcy dismounted, handing his reins to old Sidney, who had emerged from the stables looking like a bewildered relic of a bygone age.
He stared at Darcy—at the fine leather, the fine horse, the intimidating stillness of the man—and Elizabeth felt her heart hammer against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Hill met them at the door, her face creased with the frantic joy of seeing familiar faces.
“Miss Elizabeth! Miss Jane! Miss Mary!” She bustled them inside like they were obedient ducklings. “And Mr. Darcy, welcome.”
“Hill,” Elizabeth said, her voice tight, “is Papa…?”
“In the library, miss. He has hardly emerged since your mother departed.” Hill lowered her voice, her eyes darting toward the stairs. “And Miss Kitty… she is still abed. She has been poorly. Low spirits, she says, but she will not eat, and she will not speak of anything but the village.”
Elizabeth’s chest tightened. “Then we must go see her.”
“After speaking to Papa,” Jane said. “To the library.”
Mary, untouched by the drama of Wickham, drifted toward the pianoforte. In moments, the hallway was awash in scales, each note a gentle rebuke to the silence and a reminder that, in matters of music and morality, Mary would always have the last word.
Elizabeth exchanged a glance with Jane as they walked to the library door, which she and Papa had once bolted shut against Mrs. Bennet’s matrimonial onslaughts.
Hill knocked on the door and called out, “Mr. Bennet, Miss Bennet, Miss Elizabeth, and Mr. Darcy are here to see you.”
“Enter,” came her father’s voice—softer than she was used to.
Elizabeth stepped into the familiar gloom, where the air was thick with the scent of old paper, pipe ash, and the sort of stillness that accumulates when a room is left to its own devices.
Mr. Bennet sat behind his desk, surrounded by a pile of books and papers. He peered over his spectacles, his expression pinched with wariness. The express letter they had sent from London lay open on a pile of ledgers.
“Lizzy. Jane.” His gaze traveled to Darcy, standing tall behind his daughters. “And Mr. Darcy, whom I believe we have not seen since he delivered the extraordinary news that my daughter was an heiress. To what do I owe the pleasure? I trust the house has not been repossessed.”
“Papa.” Elizabeth sat in the chair she had claimed since childhood. “We have intelligence about Mr. Wickham.”
Mr. Bennet’s expression sharpened. “Wickham. The charming law clerk who has been paying such flattering attention to your aunt Philips.”
“Wickham is not an honorable law clerk,” Darcy said, withdrawing the investigator’s letter from his pocket. “I have evidence that George Wickham has been disgraced from Lincoln’s Inn after preparing forged documents and test results. His clerkship with Mr. Philips is a fraud.”
Elizabeth watched as her father read, the habitual indolence draining from his features. His eyes moved over the letter, and she saw the precise instant his fingers began to tremble—not with age, but with the slow, dreadful comprehension of what Kitty’s hours with Wickham might have cost.
“We need to notify Mr. Philips immediately,” Mr. Bennet said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to clean his spectacles. “This is a grave matter, Mr. Darcy. But why have you come all the way from London to tell me this? A letter would have sufficed.”
“Because there is another matter, Papa. One that could not be trusted to a letter.” Elizabeth held his gaze. “Mamma mentioned—in the course of a social grievance—that Wickham preferred Kitty over Lydia. She could not understand the slight to the taller sister.”
“I have observed the preference,” Mr. Bennet said slowly. “I assumed it was a matter of taste. Kitty is quieter. Some men prefer quiet.”
“But if Mr. Wickham is a fraud, then he should not be allowed to call on her,” Elizabeth protested, her patience fraying.
“I do not recall permitting it at all,” Mr. Bennet snapped, reaching for his brandy. “Kitty spends her time visiting her aunt in Meryton and borrowing books from the lending library. I see no harm in that.”
“Except Mr. Wickham clerks at the Philips house,” Elizabeth warned gravely. “Where can he target our Kitty for her Consols.”
Darcy took a step forward. “Kitty’s share of the fortune makes her a target for a man like Wickham. I have encountered his methods before, Mr. Bennet. He is charming, he is patient, and he is entirely without scruples.”
Papa’s lips pursed with the gesture of wishing he had disappeared ten minutes ago. “Kitty is safe upstairs. I believe you should inform Mr. Philips and the magistrate.”
“We will.” Darcy collected the investigator’s letter. “If there is nothing else I need to provide, Mr. Bennet, Miss Bennet, Miss Elizabeth, I shall pay the magistrate a visit.”
“It is Sir William Lucas,” Mr. Bennet said. “You’ll find his home not more than a half mile from here.”
With that, Darcy bowed and wished them well, departing before Elizabeth’s wit could land a remark.
Jane and Elizabeth found Kitty in the garden.
She was sitting on the bench beneath the elm tree, wearing a morning dress.
She looked up from the letter she was reading, and, briefly, it seemed as if she hoped another person would appear.
A shadow of disappointment crossed her features before transforming into joy.
“Lizzy? Jane?” She shoved the letter into her pocket and rose, her hands fluttering. “You are home! And Mamma and Lydia? Are they well?”
“They are well, but staying in London,” Elizabeth said, her heart sinking as she saw the sheer, brittle intensity in Kitty’s eyes. She sat on the bench and patted the space beside her. “But Kitty, tell me—are you well? You look… troubled.”
“Oh, Lizzy, Jane, I am the happiest girl in the world!” Kitty sat, and Jane settled on her other side.
“I have the most wonderful thing to tell you, and you must promise not to tell Papa. Mr. Wickham says we must wait until he has established himself, but he wants to marry me. Can you believe it? He chose me over Lydia, and Lydia left in high dudgeon.”
“Well, that is certainly news,” Jane said. “But if a man wants to marry you, shouldn’t he address Papa first?”
“He cannot, because he needs to secure a respectable position first. Uncle Philips gave him a reference, and he is going to London to be established, and he said—” Kitty’s flush deepened with the innocent happiness of a girl recounting the most important thing that had ever happened to her.
“He said I was the prettiest of the Bennet sisters. He said Lydia was too loud, you were too clever, Jane was too perfect, Mary was too serious, and I was just right. Nobody has ever said I was just right.”
“He has been courting you at the Philips house?”
“Every time I visit. He is so attentive. He brings me tea and asks what I think about things, and nobody asks what I think, Lizzy, Jane, you know they do not. And he says that when he has earned enough money, he will speak to Papa, but that takes time, and he had an idea.” Kitty’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.
“He said that the Consols you gave me, if I could access them, we could go to London together and start a new life, and he would not have to wait years to earn a position.”
Elizabeth exchanged a glance with Jane, reading the same grave concern in her sister’s eyes.
“I need to ask you a question. Did you give him permission to access those funds?”