Elizabeth put her hand to her eyes, her frame beginning to shake and a small sound escaping her.
“Oh, Lizzy, I am sure he did not mean it quite that way!” Jane fluttered helplessly, still uncertainwhatway she could have meant, and why it seemed impossible to mention Mr Darcy’s memory without causing Elizabeth to close down entirely. “Why, I know that you and he were never friends, but he was a good man, after all, and I should think you might have been flattered by the comparison. Oh, Lizzy,dosay something!”
Elizabeth’s fingers worked over her eyes, eventually pinching the bridge of her nose before her hand finally dropped from her bowed face. “I do not wish to speak of Mr Darcy, Jane,” she grumbled. She turned then, and her voice grew with the strength of anger spurred by sorrow. “Nor do I wish to speak to Lydia, or—do forgive me—your Mr Bingley, or anyone else who was close to him! I wish to forget that he ever entered our lives!”
Jane drew back, her lips and cheeks pale. “Lizzy, you cannot mean that! Darling, you must tell me, what is the root of all this resentment toward Mr Darcy? Was he unkind to you when you saw him in Derbyshire? You never did tell me how he first heard of Lydia’s troubles,” she added reproachfully.
Elizabeth turned back to the window, her arms crossed. Her chin trembled, and she blinked several times in rapid succession. “It does not matter now, Jane. He is dead. Nothing can change that.”
“Do you know,” Jane murmured gently, sliding an arm about her recalcitrant sister, “I think that if things had turned out differently, you and he might have become friends. Oh, he was a bit prickly on the surface, but given time, I think—oh! Dearest, you are crying!”
“I am not!” Elizabeth shook her head, cowering behind her hand.
“You are! Lizzy,” Jane grasped her sister’s shoulders and forced her about. “Why—you were in love with him! I see it now! Oh, how could I have been such a fool?”
“No, Jane, you are entirely mistaken.” Elizabeth heaved a fresh breath, drying her eyes. “In love with him! Do not be ridiculous. No more dissimilar souls ever walked this earth. Have I never told you how we always set to arguing when we were in Kent?”
“Yes, and I know how you adore a spirited debate. And he was in love with you, you told me of that once! Oh, Lizzy, to think that he has been so cruelly taken—”
“Stop it, Jane!” Elizabeth stamped her foot, wringing her handkerchief in a clenched fist. “I was not… not in love, as you say! I only… I came to appreciate his qualities, I suppose. I think it so horribly unfair that his life was cut short. His poor sister!”
“You and Charles have both told me of her,” Jane agreed sadly. “She must be devastated!”
“She cannot be otherwise, for she was most prodigiously attached to him. So good to her he was! I am very sorry for her, but also angry when I consider it. To think that it was all the fault of Lydia and Mr Wickham!”
“Lizzy, now you go too far. You sound as if you would accuse them of murder!”
“Not deliberately, perhaps, but their carelessness led directly to…. He would never have gone to such a place if not for… for… oh, Jane!” Elizabeth crumpled the handkerchief uselessly over her face.
“There, dear.” Jane enveloped her sister in an embrace—the sort where the mourner can lose herself to the ravages of grief, where no shadow of condemnation might follow. Elizabeth shook and trembled, her arms clasped tightly to her own breast, for she had not the courage at first to return the affection. Only when the keening sighs—high and utterly beyond her power to restrain—wavered from her lips did she risk embracing her sister. Jane shushed and soothed, stroking Elizabeth’s hair and instinctively rocking to and fro as she would to comfort a babe.
“He—he did it for me, Jane!” Elizabeth choked at last, her hot words crying against Jane’s shoulder. “He went there, looking for them… he did it because of me! I shall bear this guilt forever. The fault was theirs, but the motivation was all my own doing. I was so—so stubborn! I was wrong about so many things, accusing him of the worst sort of malice and pride. Would that I had never spoken so harshly to him! He lost his life trying to help Lydia—stupid, stupid girl! —and to prove that he was not the sort of man I had once thought. How could I have been so blind? He was the very best of all, Jane, and I—I flung him away!” Elizabeth gave up all pretense of control. She sought her sister’s arms now, her slim body racked with anguished sobs and gasping breaths.
“Oh, dear Lizzy!” Jane murmured, awkwardly patting her sister’s back. “I had no idea… little wonder you have had such a frightful time of it these past weeks! I begin to understand now. This is why you speak so little to anyone and why you do not sleep!”
Elizabeth turned her face away, shrugging off her sister’s arms as she pulled back. “I sleep.”
“Not well. You toss and turn most of the night. Have you been having nightmares?”
“No… not exactly. Well, not most of the time.” Elizabeth bit her lip thoughtfully. “I think I had one last night.”
“I heard you cry out. Do you remember it?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No. I just remember darkness, feeling cold and alone, as I have nearly every night of late. Then, there was a sudden panic, like a flood of white light, and I awoke.”
“How dreadful! Lizzy, surely your grief has led you to feel all manner of horrors by night that you will not allow yourself to experience by day. Perhaps if you talked more—”
“No,” Elizabeth retorted firmly. “I do not wish to speak of it.”
“But, Lizzy, do you remember how Aunt Gardiner says it can help?”
“No! I will not waste away my days whimpering and sniveling like some lovelorn kitchen maid! It will change nothing, and I have too much to do. In fact, I ought to be going in to Papa, for we were to look over the household accounts this afternoon.”
Jane sighed, stepping back as Elizabeth swept around for her book. “Do come talk to me when you are ready, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth paused, not missing the reluctance in her sister’s tone. She studied Jane’s sincerity for half a second, with eyes almost willing to see and lips nearly prepared to speak, but swiftly her face closed down once more. “I promise, Jane,” she lied.
Chapter five
