Page 100 of Twice Chosen

Lydia returned from Brighton tanned, louder, and unruined.

Elizabeth nearly crushed her.

"Lizzy!" Lydia protested from somewhere against her shoulder. "Let me breathe."

"No."

"You're wrinkling my gown."

"I don't care."

Lydia laughed. "You are so strange."

Elizabeth released her and looked carefully at the face she had once seen too late in a London drawing room: defiant, over-bright, clinging to a marriage she had not understood because the alternative was ruin.

This Lydia had freckles across her nose and a ribbon tied badly in her hair.

Kitty demanded stories before Lydia had removed her bonnet.

There were hundreds.

Officers. Dances. Mrs. Forster's awful hat. Mrs. Bell's rules. A picnic ruined by rain. A bathing machine Lydia declared the stupidest invention in England. Three proposals made in jest and one young lieutenant who attempted to kiss her behind a pavilion.

Elizabeth went cold. "What happened?"

Lydia grinned. "I slapped him."

Mrs. Bennet gasped. "You did not!"

"I did."

"Why?"

Lydia looked offended by the question. "He had not asked."

Elizabeth laughed.

Then, humiliatingly, she cried.

Lydia stared. "Why are you crying?"

"Pride."

"Oh." Lydia brightened. "Miss Harcourt said I did exactly right. Mrs. Bell did too, though she said I ought not to have been behind the pavilion with him in the first place."

"Also correct."

Mr. Bennet, who had been standing in the doorway, looked at his youngest daughter. Something in his face softened. "Well done, Lydia."

She glowed.

Elizabeth saw.

There.

One sentence from a father.

How hungry Lydia had always been for praise.