Page 40 of The Engagement at Longbourn

“No. It looks dull.”

“It is.”

Kitty gasped. “Mr. Darcy!”

He looked at her gravely. “Until you begin winning.”

Kitty laughed.

Lydia had stared. Wickham said Darcy was cruel. Darcy could be proud. He could be stiff. He spoke as though every sentence had been considered in advance and occasionally looked at Lydia as if she were a cannon pointed at the furniture.

But he had thanked her when she carried books to his room. He had listened when she described Mrs. Forster’s new pelisse, though he plainly had no interest in pelisses. He had once sent a servant after her with a cloak because she had run outside in the frost without one.

Cruel did not fit.

Lydia looked again at Wickham’s letter.

For the first time, secrecy felt less like romance and more like a locked room.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Younger Miss Bennet Thinks

Thinking did not come naturally to Lydia Bennet in the sense that it came to Mary or Elizabeth.

Lydia thought quickly, brightly, and often about whatever stood immediately before her. She knew which officer had the best shoulders, which shop stocked the prettiest ribbons, which road became muddy first after rain, and how to make Kitty laugh when she was sulking.

She could remember the details of a dance six months later but forget a warning six minutes after receiving it. What she had rarely done was sit alone and ask whether someone she liked might be lying to her.

She did so now.

Wickham’s fifth letter arrived two days before Christmas.

He wanted her to meet him.

Not at the camp. He could not leave without permission.

He wanted her to create a distraction in Meryton on the night after the regiment’s pay chest arrived. Nothing dangerous, he assured her. Only a bit of excitement near the Red Lion. Perhaps she might persuade several young people to gather for an impromptu supper and induce someone to set off fireworks behind the inn. Colonel Forster and the senior officers would be drawn into town. Wickham and his friends would take advantage of the confusion to “settle an injustice” and leave.

Lydia’s hands began to sweat.

Even she understood what “settle an injustice” meant when the pay chest had been mentioned twice.

The letter ended: Once I am free, dearest Lydia, I shall send for you. Think how romantic it will be to escape all those who treat you as a child. You and I might go anywhere.

A month earlier she would have read only the last sentences. Now she read the whole letter.

She thought of Darcy’s broken leg. She thought of Elizabeth sitting beside him. She thought of Mrs. Bennet saying an unpaid bill took food from another household. She thought of Wickham asking a sixteen-year-old girl to help him steal soldiers’ wages.

“La,” she whispered to herself, but there was no laughter in it.

She hid the letter in her sleeve and went downstairs. Elizabeth was in the library with Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam.

Richard had returned from Netherfield after luncheon, carrying a paper parcel of books and a bottle of brandy Mr. Hurst had sent “for medicinal purposes,” though no one believed the medicine was intended for Darcy.

Lydia stood at the door. “Lizzy.”

Elizabeth looked up. Something in Lydia’s face made her rise immediately. “What is it?”