Page 8 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

He almost smiled. The first of the day. "Good for Mr. Bingley!"

"It was the most impressive thing he has ever said to me."

"Then perhaps there is hope for this wretched morning after all."

The coach jolted through a rut. He reached across and steadied her arm. She let him keep it, his thumb resting on her wrist where the pulse ran quick and strong.

CHAPTER 3

Elizabeth stepped down from the coach and stood in the drive. The Longbourn house looked smaller than it had when she was a girl. Nonsense! Houses did not shrink. She had simply grown used to higher ceilings. She resented the observation the moment she made it. Longbourn was home, and home ought not to shrink no matter whose halls one slept in.

Her husband came to stand beside her and said nothing. He had learned, somewhere in these last months, when she wanted silence and when she wanted words. Fitzwilliam was rarely wrong about which was which.

The front door opened and Hill appeared. "Mrs. Darcy." Her face was composed. Her eyes were red. "Your father is in his study. He has been there since Mrs. Bennet left."

"Has he eaten?"

"I brought a tray. He has not touched it."

"And Kitty?"

"In the sitting room, ma'am. Crying since breakfast."

Elizabeth turned to her husband. "Go to my father. Tell him what we know. All of it."

"The Georgiana story."

"Yes. He must understand what Wickham is. Not a rake. A predator, and a practiced one."

His mouth tightened, but he nodded, and he went, with the particular set of his shoulders that meant the errand would cost him. She loved him for going. She hated that it was necessary. Both at once, and no room to sort them.

She climbed the stairs.

Lydia's door stood ajar. Mama had been in already, no doubt. What did a mother look for when her youngest vanished in the night? Elizabeth pushed the door open. The room breathed out rosewater and cheap perfume, the sweet kind sold at any market stall.

The bed was made.

When had Lydia ever made her bed without threats? She had made it because she knew she was not coming back to it, and that small tidy deliberateness disturbed Elizabeth more than the gaping wardrobe did.

She took stock. The sprigged muslin gone, and the green sash with it. The second-best pelisse. A shawl. The jewelry and the good brush swept from the dressing table. Lydia had packed light, believing her husband would buy the rest. Nobody had told Lydia that with George Wickham, the rest never came.

Elizabeth knelt and reached under the bed, fingers along the floorboards until they found it. The locked box. Mahogany, brass clasp, a padlock hardly bigger than a thumbnail. She set it on the coverlet.

The lock was the sort sold at fairs, made to defeat a curious sister and nothing else. It had defeated her for a fortnight! That stung.

Now. Where would Lydia hide a key?

Top drawer: handkerchiefs, ribbons, a dried flower from some assembly or other. Second drawer: stockings, a mended shift, a pamphlet on Brighton with passages circled in pencil. Brighton! Circled, no less, with more care than she had ever given her lessons. The one subject upon which Lydia had ever taken notes.

Third drawer, the deep one: winter things, mothballs, and a bonnet Elizabeth had never seen. New straw, pink ribbon. Bought to be pretty for somebody. She turned it over, ran her fingers along the lining, and there, stitched into the seam behind the right ear, a small hard lump.

She unpicked the thread with her thumbnail. A brass key dropped into her palm, warm from its hiding place.

The lock turned. The lid lifted.

Letters. A stack tied in blue ribbon, and the sight of the ribbon caught her under the breastbone, for she had given it to Lydia herself, for her birthday.

Elizabeth read the first letter. Then the second. Then the third.