Chapter Two
Longbourn was in uproar. Poor Mrs. Hill had been late in waking Mrs. Bennet, having been detained by her son Johnny, who had sprained his ankle earlier that morning.
Mrs. Bennet loudly lamented this news, for the housekeeper’s strapping son had been meant to protect Longbourn in the Bennets’ absence.
“The manor shall be set upon by bandits, I am sure it shall,” the lady of the house wailed as she made ready.
“All the other servants have abandoned us while we were asleep in our beds!”
“Beds which we were meant to be out of two hours ago,” Mr. Bennet huffed with a shake of his head.
He led his wife down the stairs, carrying her large valise for her.
“Do not begrudge our servants their holiday, Mrs. Bennet—concern yourself with our own travel arrangements, for we must be off directly. I have wagered your brother ten shillings that we shall make it as far as Bedford by nightfall.”
Mrs. Gardiner attempted to corral her four rowdy children into some semblance of order as her husband loaded their trunks onto the baggage cart. “We ought to have been nearly to Luton already,” she tutted.
The chaos of the house soon overflowed onto the front drive, where the footmen and drivers did their best to hastily prepare the four carriages and baggage cart for the departure of the family caravan that was to travel north.
The Bingleys, Bennets, Gardiners, and Phillipses managed to haphazardly organize themselves, though they were all of a mind to grumble through the disorder.
The air had grown colder, and the wind picked up as they prepared to embark on their journey.
Mrs. Bennet had not ceased her fussing for a moment since waking, scolding everybody into haste as she continued to fret over the absence of her servants, Johnny Hill’s injury, and the near-certainty that Longbourn would be overrun by brigands the instant her family left the place.
“La!” Lydia laughed, despite the tension that hung in the frosty air. “Did not the colonel call yesterday to assure us that all will be well in Meryton? The regiment will look after everything, though ‘tis a pity we shall not be here to look after them.”
“Indeed,” Kitty agreed. “Such a shame we must part with the officers for a whole month. I do not know why we bothered hanging mistletoe in the parlor, if we shall not be home to entertain them.”
Lydia brightened with triumph. “Oh, but Wickham and I made the most of the mistletoe when he called yesterday.”
“Lydia!” Jane swatted at her sister, but shielded the girl from their parents’ notice. “You must not say such things. Besides, are you not eager to see the home Charles has taken for us?”
Kitty snorted with laughter. “What a fine joke that it should be so near Pemberley! But it would serve Lizzy right if that odious Mr. Darcy should be calling on us while we are visiting MacAllister Manor!”
Mr. Bingley joined them; Jane breathed a sigh of relief that her handsome new husband had not heard her sister’s unkind remark, and she shooed the younger girls toward the Phillips’ carriage.
“But where is your sister Lizzy? I had thought to ask her to ride with us.”
Jane looked about as her relations began to clamber into the carriages. Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen. “Perhaps she is riding with Papa? Let us ask Mary to join us, and perhaps my little cousin Emily?”
Mr. Bingley agreed at once, and set about ensuring his beautiful bride was made comfortable in his fine carriage, with a warm blanket about her and, beneath it, a hot brick at her feet.
Mrs. Hill came round to each of the equipages and handed in baskets of fruit, pastries, and cheeses to compensate for their rushed and sparse morning repast. The harried-looking housekeeper wished them all a safe journey, accepted the good wishes from all for her dear lad’s recovery, and she waved them off as the caravan was at last underway.
After a half-hour of raucous noise consuming the house, a calm fell over Longbourn.
Mrs. Hill remained long enough to relish the rare and precious peace, and to stoke the fires in the parlor and the study, for she meant to return that afternoon and see to a thorough cleaning of the house from top to bottom.
A strange sense of something being not quite right troubled her as she made her way to her cottage at the end of the lane, to look in on her injured son, but the practical woman decided most expeditiously that she had enough to think of without seeking out any further trouble.
For another hour, the crackling of the two small fires and the rattling of the wind in the windowpanes were the only sounds at Longbourn. And then, up in the attic, Elizabeth Bennet sat up and groaned.
Elizabeth yawned and stretched; she rolled her shoulders, for she had slept very poorly indeed on the old chaise in the attic.
In her fit of pique the previous evening, she had punished only herself, and fresh vexation simmered within her.
Hoping her mother and Lydia had slept very ill indeed, she ventured downstairs, expecting to find the household in a state of upheaval as her family prepared to travel.
Instead, Longbourn was silent.
Elizabeth moved through the second floor corridor in a state of bewilderment, for never had she seen her home so still.
She drew her shawl about her shoulders and descended down to the ground floor; the disarray in the parlors was nothing out of the ordinary, but the complete want of noise was something she had never experienced at Longbourn.
For the first time in all her twenty years, Elizabeth was home alone.
She made a complete circuit of the sitting room, the music room, the dining room, and even peeked into her father’s study; all were empty.
Standing in the front hall in her stockinged feet and nightdress, shrouded in a shabby old shawl, Elizabeth briefly wondered if she was still asleep—perhaps it was all a strange dream.
A laugh bubbled from Elizabeth’s throat as she moved toward a window looking out on the front drive.
There were deep ruts in the gravel, where so many carriages had assembled, and the front gate had been left wide open.
This was no dream—she supposed it was rather meant as a punishment.
“Well,” Elizabeth said with a stubborn snort, a smile tugging at her lips.
“This is just what I was wishing for yesterday. I shall not repine at all.” Trusting that Hill was about somewhere, Elizabeth headed down to the kitchen to pilfer whatever sweets were left over from yesterday, and perhaps a cup of tea.
Jane sighed and stared out the window of her husband's carriage as the village of Luton disappeared in the distance.
By unspoken agreement between all the carriages in their family convoy, there had been some rearranging when they stopped to refresh the horses, and Jane had hoped to exchange one sister for another.
For above an hour, she had listened to Mary squabble with their eldest Gardiner cousin about the book of sermons Mary had read aloud to them until Emily had most obligingly chucked it out the window.
While Mary had gone to ride with the Phillipses, who she was sure would hear her out, Emily returned to her parents’ carriage.
Her dear husband would not hear of Jane exchanging the comfort and warmth of the carriage for the chill of the thoroughfare, and offered to seek Elizabeth himself.
But first he would take advantage of their solitude, for the newlyweds had managed no more than a few chaste kisses since returning from their honeymoon.
Their ardor was interrupted by howls of laughter from Kitty and Lydia, who clambered into the Bingley carriage uninvited, declaring that they should be vastly more comfortable in their new brother’s barouche than they had been riding with their parents.
The Bingleys were far too amiable to argue with the girls, and it would have done little good if they had, for they were underway once more before Jane could give Elizabeth a second thought.
Amidst the chatter of lace and finery, and all the hints that Mr. Bingley ought to give a ball at his new home, Jane smiled at her husband’s kindness to her sisters and then allowed her thoughts to turn to the happy musings of what her new home would be like.
With each mile, Longbourn became a distant thought indeed.
For the next few hours, Elizabeth wavered between considering that her abandonment was the consequence of her ill-humor the previous day, and wondering if her family could truly have forgotten her.
It was true that none of her relations awoke with the same alacrity as herself—indeed, several of them were entirely useless for the first hour of every day—but surely somebody would have thought of her.
It must have been by design that they had left her behind, thinking to teach her a lesson for her churlishness.
They must think her a greater fool than Lydia, if they imagined she would be distressed at being alone for a few hours.
Every moment she was expecting her family’s carriage to return.
Her mother would think she had taught Elizabeth a lesson and her father would simply laugh at his wife’s charade, and then they would all be on their way in earnest.
Elizabeth was resolved that she should be the one to teach them a lesson, for she had no intention of being ready to travel when they returned for her.
“If they wish me to believe they have abandoned me, I shall oblige them,” Elizabeth said to the fat orange cat she had retrieved from the barn.
The mouser blinked up at her and mewed before returning his attention to the saucer of cream she had set atop her father’s desk.