Page 72 of A Most Favourable Match

The image flashed into her head again of the two men standing in one another’s arms, their locked eyes full of love. Gradually, her initial shock at the sight was fading and being replaced by other emotions.

There was some anger at the deception practiced on innocent Jane, but also some gratitude for Lord Grantchester’s subsequent breaking of the engagement, and astonishment at the hiding of so important a secret. Elizabeth knew with certainty now that he could never have loved her sister, not as he loved Lord Keeble. Surely no one could look on two people with such a gaze, man or woman.

Elizabeth also felt a twinge of compassion as she realised how frightened both Lord Grantchester and Lord Keeble’s faces had grown when she burst into the room and saw them. Men might love other men in the ancient Greek myths she had read in her father’s library, but out in the modern world of nineteenth-century England, such love could draw only mockery, censure, or worse.

“Oh, pooh to supper invitations,” Lydia thankfully talked across Elizabeth without asking for further details, and was then herself interrupted by Kitty again.

“Our gossip is far more exciting than supper invitations…Oh, Lord Grantchester, did you hear what has happened in Meryton?”

Lord Grantchester had pulled up beside the young women, breathless and in his shirt sleeves ashe had been in the library. He clutched a jacket in his hands, presumably snatched up as he ran after Elizabeth. His anxious eyes turned to her, and she shook her head silently, trying to indicate that he should say nothing before her sisters.

“I…have not…been to…Meryton,” he panted, before bending over to catch his breath, evidently having chased Elizabeth all the way from Belton Manor and suffering from the exercise more than her.

“Stop interrupting, Kitty!” Lydia complained. “I want to tell them. Anyway, you will never guess who has been caught in a scandal at Wickham’s lodgings this morning…Miss Bingley! It’s all over Meryton, and Maria Lucas says that it will be in London by sundown.”

“I dare say her brother is searching for Wickham now and will call him out for a duel!” added Kitty, not to be outdone by her more forceful younger sister.

“No, she will have to marry him,” Lydia contradicted Kitty. “Lucky thing!”

“If this is true, Miss Bingley is not lucky at all, and greatly to be pitied,” Elizabeth declared, horrified both by the tale and her younger sisters’ flippant telling of it. “You had both better hold your tongues and not make a bad matter worse by telling anyone else.”

“You don’t even like Miss Bingley, Lizzy,” protested Lydia. “I heard you say that she was a small-minded social climber of limited understanding.”

“That does not matter,” Elizabeth snapped. “You should not repeat private comments like that either. Have neither of you any decency or good sense?”

“You act as though we are the ones who had been naughty,” Kitty complained, pouting like a child.

“Miss Elizabeth is right,” Lord Grantchester pronounced. “This kind of gossip can ruin lives, if only you were old enough to understand.”

While they glowered under this criticism, the younger girls showed more respect for his view than they had done for Elizabeth’s, or perhaps for the combination of views from two older persons, and at last fell silent.

“Where is Miss Bingley now?” asked Lord Grantchester soberly, but Lydia and Kitty only shrugged.

“We don’t know. We heard she ran away when they were discovered, but it was too late,” Kitty told them.

“Yes, Wickham’s landlady, neighbours and half of the regiment’s officers had seen her alone in Wickham’s lodgings, and Wickham without his jacket or shoes on,” put in Lydia, furnishing all the salacious details she could.

Belatedly, Lord Grantchester pulled on his own jacket, as if reminded by the mention of the potential indecency of a gentleman’s shirtsleeves. He and Elizabeth exchanged a look of understanding at the seriousness of what had passed in Meryton, whether in reality or the public imagination. Either would be equally disastrous for Caroline Bingley.

“Go straight home now and don’t stop to talk to any of your friends,” Elizabeth ordered her youngersisters. “Tell Mother I am speaking to Lord Grantchester and will be home after that.”

They obeyed with a surprising lack of resistance, likely eager to at least tell the dreadful tale to their parents, Jane, and Mary, even if they had been forbidden to tell others.

“We must talk,” Elizabeth said to Lord Grantchester once they were alone. “There are certain matters you ought to explain. I will tell no one else, except for Jane, where explanation is owed most.”

Nodding acceptance, he offered her his arm, and they began to walk slowly together toward Longbourn.

“I suppose I should first thank you for your understanding, shouldn’t I?” he began. “It is not a common thing, you know. I shall also tell you that Matthew and I love one another. We have loved one another for a long time.”

“That is clear to me now,” Elizabeth told him, thinking back over their whole acquaintance and the way she had seen his face light up whenever Lord Keeble entered a room.

“Do you despise me now that you know?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I would have despised you if you had married Jane under false pretences, knowing that you could never love her,” she answered. “As you ended the engagement, I can only be angry at you for stringing Jane along and playing with her feelings.”

“I am truly sorry,” Lord Grantchester told her. “Perhaps, at the start, I hoped Jane would realise my nature and accept me as I am. There are many similar society marriages based on such understandings, some of them even happy.”

“Yes, although I suspect the happy ones were never deceived,” Elizabeth said tartly. She would not let him off the hook quite so easily asthat.