1. Chapter One #3
Lydia stood so abruptly her chair scraped harshly against the floor. “I would rather die than spend the summer wandering about with my aunt and uncle.”
Mr. Bennet took another bite of tart. “Then I recommend perseverance. Death would inconvenience everyone.”
Kitty made a choking sound suspiciously like suppressed laughter.
Lydia stared around the table in betrayal. “You are all against me.”
“No,” Jane said gently, she alone retaining her equanimity. “we are just concerned for you.”
“There is no difference.” Lydia fled the room again, this time openly weeping. Kitty hurried after her.
Mrs. Bennet rounded upon her husband in outrage. “How could you be so cruel?”
Mr. Bennet leaned back in his chair. “Years of practice.”
“You have allowed Lizzy to poison you against your own child.” Elizabeth flinched despite herself.
Jane interjected, “Mama, surely no one intends Lydia unhappiness—”
“She will be miserable among old people and mountains!” Mrs. Bennet cried noisily.
“I hardly think Derbyshire consists entirely of mountains,” Mr. Bennet replied. “Though perhaps enough to improve Lydia’s volume by scattering the echoes.”
“Papa,” Elizabeth murmured, half reproachful despite everything.
The humor faded somewhat from his expression then, replaced by a tiredness she did not often notice because he usually concealed it beneath wit. Dinner dissolved not long afterward.
Mrs. Bennet retired in distress. Mary retired to her books with renewed conviction. Kitty remained upstairs consoling Lydia. Jane lingered beside Elizabeth near the drawing room windows as twilight deepened beyond the glass.
“You cannot truly regret speaking,” Jane said.
Elizabeth peered down at the unopened pianoforte. “Can I not?”
“Lizzy.” Jane’s tone both comforted and reprimanded.
“She is miserable.” Lydia would make them all feel the same.
“For now.”
Elizabeth folded her arms. “Perhaps I have done exactly what Mama accused me of. Perhaps I simply wished to prevent Lydia from enjoying herself.”
Jane smiled faintly. “You know better than that.”
Did she? Upstairs, muffled crying still drifted intermittently through the floorboards. Elizabeth closed her eyes. Jane glanced toward the ceiling with a weary expression.
They said nothing.
Lydia threw herself face-first across the bed the moment Kitty shut the chamber door behind them.
“This is your fault,” she declared into the bedclothes, though whether she addressed Kitty, Elizabeth, or the universe itself remained uncertain.
Kitty stopped with one hand still on the latch. “Mine?”
“No, not yours.” Lydia rolled over violently enough to disturb the coverlet and send one of the smaller pillows sliding to the floor. “Lizzy’s. Everything is Lizzy’s fault.”
Her eyes still burned from crying, which increased her temper.
She despised crying. It made her nose red, ruined the prettiest expression in the world, and gave everyone else an excuse to speak softly to her like she was a child in the nursery.
Lydia Bennet had not been in the nursery for years.
She was nearly sixteen. Nearly sixteen was practically grown, whatever Lizzy might pretend.
Kitty hovered uncertainly near the dressing table. “Perhaps Papa will change his mind.”
“He will not. Lizzy has poisoned him.”
“Papa does not often do what Lizzy says.” Kitty sounded hesitant.
“He did today,” Lydia said, sitting upright with a jerk. “And on the very worst subject possible.”
Kitty crept toward the bed and perched on the edge of it, her whole expression arranged in deepest sympathy. “Perhaps Derbyshire will not be so dreadful.”
Lydia stared at her in disbelief.
“Not dreadful?” she repeated. “Kitty, there will be hills.”
Kitty coughed nervously. “Well… yes.”
“And sheep.” She hated the stinky, smelly animals.
“I suppose there may be sheep.”
“There will certainly be sheep,” Lydia said darkly. “Thousands of sheep. Endless sheep. Horrid, staring, stupid sheep. Aunt Gardiner will wish to admire waterfalls and old stones and dreadful ancient things while I die slowly of boredom.”
Kitty attempted sympathy. “I do hate old stones.”
“So do I. They are always damp, and someone is always saying they are picturesque.” A pile of rocks could hardly be a sight to be seen, in her opinion.
“Mary would like them.”
Lydia scoffed. “Mary would like anything if it were dull enough.”
With a furtive, guilty laugh, Kitty watched the door, anticipating Mary’s potential appearance with a sermon.
She cast one arm across her eyes. “Brighton was settled. Fully settled. Mrs. Forster already promised we would attend musicales and dinners, and perhaps General Wellington himself might have appeared later in the season.”
Kitty brightened. “Do you truly think so?”
“I know it.” Lydia had no evidence for this beyond a fervent wish but wishes often felt more reliable than facts. “Officers go everywhere worth going. Brighton is full of them. That is why it is Brighton.”
Kitty nodded, accepting this reasoning.
“And now,” Lydia continued, pressing the back of her hand against her forehead in what she hoped was a tragic manner, “Lizzy has ruined everything because she cannot endure seeing anyone enjoy themselves.”
Kitty hesitated. “I do not think she meant—”
“Oh, do not defend her.” Lydia snatched up a pillow and hugged it fiercely against her chest. “She has always thought herself wiser than everyone else. Forever lecturing and looking knowing whenever I laugh too loudly or flirt a little.”
“You do flirt a little.”
Of course, she did! That was why the officers preferred her to any other lady. “A girl must do something for amusement in Hertfordshire.”
Kitty could not argue with that.
Lydia slid off the bed and began pacing the room, her slippers scuffing against the floorboards as she crossed from window to fireplace and back again.
Her chamber, usually a place of ribbons, discarded gowns, half-finished schemes, and affectionate disorder, now looked insultingly ordinary.
Nothing in it understood tragedy. Her blue sash still lay across the chair where she had tossed it that morning.
Her bonnet sat on the small table, trimmed with ribbon she had specifically intended to wear at Brighton. Brighton ribbon. Wasted ribbon now.
She seized the bonnet and dropped onto the chair before the mirror. “I was going to wear this upon the Steine,” she said bitterly.
Kitty came to stand behind her. “It is a very becoming bonnet.”
“Of course it is. That is why Lizzy could not bear it.”
Kitty’s eyes widened. “Do you think that is why?”
Lydia swiveled in the chair with immediate interest. “What else can it be? She knows I look well in blue. She knows Mrs. Forster likes me best. She knows officers like lively girls.”
Kitty leaned nearer, now fully engaged in the theory. “And Lizzy has been strange ever since Kent.”
“Exactly.” Lydia tapped one finger against the bonnet brim. “She walks alone and says clever things in that tone of hers and looks at everyone in a manner that says she knows some great secret.”
“Jane says she is tired.”
Lydia doubted that very much. Lizzy had boundless energy. “Jane says kind things because Jane cannot help being angelic at inconvenient times.”
Kitty considered the proposal and deemed it equitable.
Lydia faced the mirror again and adjusted the bonnet experimentally.
Even through swollen eyes and temper, she appeared dressed to every advantage.
That should have comforted her. It did not.
Looking pretty in a bedroom at Longbourn was useless when she had been robbed of the opportunity to be admired.
“She thinks me foolish,” Lydia muttered. “I know she does. They all do.”
“Mama does not,” Kitty offered unhelpfully.
“Mama thinks me delightful.”
“Because you are.”
For a moment Lydia softened. Mama understood.
Mama had always understood that admiration mattered, that officers were interesting, that dullness was a kind of death, and that a new bonnet could restore a person from almost any affliction.
If Mama had commanded the household, Lydia would already be packing for Brighton and Kitty would be begging for a place in the trunk.
Then Lydia remembered that Papa commanded the household whenever he could be bothered, and Lizzy had somehow convinced him to be bothered.
Her temper came back with vigor.
“I ought to have known Lizzy would interfere,” she said. “She has always liked spoiling things.”
“She does not spoil everything.” Trust Kitty to support both sides of the argument.
“She spoiled Mr. Collins.”
Kitty frowned. “How?”
“By refusing him. If she had married him, she would be mistress of that horrid parsonage in Kent and too far away to ruin Brighton.”
Kitty’s mouth dropped open, then she began to giggle. “Lydia!”
“It is true. And then Charlotte Lucas might still be here, though I do not suppose that would improve matters much.”
“Charlotte would never go to Brighton.”
“No, but she would not prevent me from going either. Charlotte minds her own business. Lizzy minds everyone’s.” Lydia huffed and swiped at her eyes again.
Kitty drifted back to the bed and sat cross-legged upon it, a habit Mrs. Bennet detested whenever she caught them at it. “Perhaps Lizzy is unhappy because she was never asked by anyone interesting.”
This notion delighted Lydia so much she removed the bonnet and set it in her lap. “Oh!” she cried. “Perhaps she is.”
“Mr. Collins proposed to Lizzy.”
“Yes, but no one truly counts Mr. Collins. Being proposed to by Mr. Collins is more punishment than compliment.” Lydia bent over with sudden laughter, then caught sight of her red eyes in the mirror and stopped, because tragedy ought not become unbecoming.
“Still, she may be cross from disappointment generally. People grow very disagreeable when disappointed.”
Kitty’s eyes shone with the importance of their discovery. “And she could not endure that you should go to Brighton and be admired while she remained here.”
“That must be it.” Lydia rose, clasping the bonnet to her chest. “She is jealous.”