Page 61 of Near Pemberley

“Now, Miss Lydia,” he said at last, drawing a chair opposite her, “you must tell me exactly how you came to be here.”

She seemed barely capable of beginning. Her fingers twisted helplessly together in her lap while fresh tears gathered continually despite her efforts to restrain them.

“I thought he meant to marry me,” she whispered at last. “Truly, I did.”

Darcy said nothing.

Encouraged perhaps by the absence of immediate reproach, Lydia continued in broken fragments.

“We eloped. I thought it exciting. I was flattered. At the beginning, everything seemed… happy. Wickham said we should go north for a little while until Papa became less angry. He laughed at my fears and said everybody would forgive us once we were married.”

A bitter stillness settled over Darcy’s expression.

“We stayed at an inn first,” Lydia continued. “Nearly two weeks, perhaps more. I did not think anything wrong then. He came and went often, but he always returned, and he said there were only difficulties about money.”

Darcy listened in silence, though inwardly every word deepened both his anger towards Wickham and his understanding of Elizabeth’s misery.

“One morning he left again,” Lydia said, her voice trembling violently now, “but this time he did not come back.”

She stopped altogether for several moments before forcing herself onward.

“I kept making excuses for him.” For the first time, something sharper entered her voice. “He always had one himself.”

The bitterness vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

“I thought he had merely been delayed. Then the innkeeper demanded payment.” She swallowed hard. “I told them Mr. Wickham would settle everything when he returned, but they laughed at me.”

Darcy’s hand tightened slowly upon the arm of his chair.

“He took all my money. When I wished to leave, they would not allow it. They said the bill had not been paid and that I could not go until someone settled the debt.” Her breathing grew uneven again. “Then a lady came.”

Darcy looked at her piercingly.

“She said she could arrange everything for me. She warned me that I could not return home now in any case – that I was ruined already.” Lydia’s voice broke almost entirely upon the word. “She said no respectable family would receive me after… after…”

Unable to continue, she pressed one trembling hand against her mouth.

Darcy felt his composure strained almost beyond endurance. Not merely because of Lydia herself. But because he could now imagine with terrible clarity exactly what Elizabeth must have suffered in learning all this while powerless to prevent any part of it.

She stared at him helplessly. “I thought…” She broke off with a choking sob. “I thought Wickham only meant us to hide a little while until Papa became less angry.”

Darcy closed his eyes briefly.

Of course she had believed him.

“Did you send no word to your family?”

Lydia looked up at once. “But I wrote!”

The desperation in her voice startled him.

“I wrote twice.” Fresh tears gathered in her eyes. “I was ashamed at first. But then I wrote.”

“No one came?”

She shook her head. “I thought Papa would come.” Her lip trembled violently. “I did not understand why nobody answered. I was told they would not know me now.”

Darcy could say nothing at all for one terrible moment. Of course, those letters were not sent.