Page 30 of A Different Impression

“Mrs Bennet, enough of your hysterics,” Mr Bennet commanded. “I have had enough of them, and such displays will no longer be permitted. You must learn to control yourself.”

Mrs Bennet continued to lament her treatment until Bennet quietly turned away. He had spent too many years yielding to such performances, mistaking indifference for peace. That would not happen again.

He instructed Hill and his daughters not to sit with her and encourage her complaints. If his wife wished to indulge her nerves, she would do so without turning the entire household into her audience.

Later that night, a ruckus outside his room startled Bennet awake. Voices echoed through the house, followed by the unmistakable sound of breaking glass. Throwing on his dressing gown, he hurried into the corridor just as Hill and several servants emerged from their own rooms.

“Mr Bennet!” someone called. “Miss Lydia has got out!”

Bennet reached the landing and looked upward. The window of the old schoolroom stood open, its glass shattered. Dresses and petticoats had been knotted together and lowered from the opening, forming a makeshift rope that fell well short of the ground and swung past the window of Elizabeth’s bedchamber on the floor below.

Then he heard Elizabeth cry out.

He hurried back downstairs and entered her bedchamber just as she caught Lydia by the arms and hauled her in through the open window. Only then did the full danger of what had happened strike him: his youngest daughter had come perilously close to falling and suffering a serious injury.

Relief lasted scarcely a heartbeat before anger took its place. Bennet rounded on Lydia.

“Have you entirely lost your senses? What possessed you to attempt such a foolhardy scheme?”

Lydia opened her mouth to protest, but one look from him silenced her. Bennet really had little wish to hear what thoughts passed as reasoning in her head.

He turned to the servants. “Retrieve those dresses. Then board the schoolroom window. Miss Lydia is not to be left unattended until morning. Bring one of the lads from the stable to sit outside her door, and have someone else sit below her window.”

As the servants hurried to obey, Bennet glanced at the heap of gowns. Several had stretched beyond repair, and others had torn at the seams. It was an expensive lesson, but far preferable to burying a daughter.

Lydia, thoroughly chastened, was escorted back to the schoolroom with considerably fewer gowns than she had possessed an hour earlier.

Mr Bennet remained standing in Elizabeth’s room for a moment after everyone had gone. Had Lydia fallen, the consequences scarcely bore contemplating. For years he had trusted that time would somehow correct what he had neglected. Tonight had proved how mistaken he had been.

Before he finally retired, he made up his mind. The girl would be in school within a fortnight, whatever effort or expense it required.

CHAPTER 13

Counsel and Courtship

Darcy knew something extraordinary had occurred before Elizabeth spoke a word the following morning when she and Miss Kitty met him atop Oakham Mount. Though she smiled at his greeting, the smile never quite reached her eyes. There was a tension about her that made him step closer, his own amusement fading almost at once.

“You look as though you have not slept,” he observed quietly after greeting both ladies.

She gave a rueful laugh and clasped her hands together before her. “I have not, at least not after midnight. Lydia attempted to escape from Longbourn.”

Darcy went still. For a moment, he could only stare at her, certain he must have misunderstood. “Escape?” he repeated.

The single word conjured a dozen alarming possibilities. Had Elizabeth been in danger? Had Miss Lydia been hurt, or could she have injured one of her other sisters in her attempt to flee?

Elizabeth inclined her head with a grimace, and only then did he look fully into her face and realise she stood before him entirely unharmed.

Without thinking, he reached for her hand. Realising himself just in time, he checked the impulse and offered her his arm instead. When she accepted, he drew her a little nearer than strict propriety allowed and covered her hand with his own where it rested upon his sleeve.

Her grateful smile eased something in his chest, and he recognised how anxious those few moments of uncertainty had made him.

As they began their walk, Elizabeth recounted the events of the previous night, from the broken schoolroom window to Lydia’s makeshift rope of dresses and petticoats, concluding with her father’s determination to send the girl away to school without delay. Darcy listened in growing astonishment. By the time she finished, he found himself wondering whether Miss Lydia had any appreciation of how narrowly she had escaped serious injury.

“I think Papa was more frightened than he wished anyone to see,” Elizabeth admitted softly. “He was certainly angry enough after it was all over.”

“I cannot blame him,” Darcy replied. “Another few moments, and the consequences to your sister might have been far worse. It is fortunate she was uninjured.”

Elizabeth’s gaze drifted towards her sister seated some distance away.