Page 52 of A Mismatched Compromise

The silence lengthened, thick enough to choke on. Elizabeth was still searching for words that explained her behaviour while still concealing her secrets when her father spoke from beside the window.

“I suspect,” Mr Bennet said, his voice cool, “that Mr Wickham might have some particular insight into the comedy of errors that occurred in Netherfield’s library that evening.” His unfriendly stare was fixed on his new son-in-law. “Perhaps he would care to share it before my daughter is forced to continue, as she has these many months, answering for a scheme that was not of her making.”

“I had no scheme, sir,” Wickham said, his voice full of innocence and his gaze clear and level. “I never arranged to meet Miss Elizabeth in the library, or anywhere else, for that matter. I give you my word.”

It was, Elizabeth reflected bitterly, probably the only true thing he’d ever said in that room, and of course it was a statement that made her look worse than she had before. Lady Catherine’s expression took on a tinge of satisfaction, and Charlotte’s hand pressed her arm gently.

Then Lydia laughed.

It was not a small or restrained sound. It made no pretence at delicacy and rang out into the charged silence like a dropped teacup. Everyone’s gaze turned to her, which seemed to delight her enormously. “Of course he didn’t arrange to meet Lizzy, Papa!” she said, as though this were the most obvious and most deliciously amusing thing in the world. “He was supposed to be there to meet me. That’s why I screamed so when I saw you — I thought I’d been caught!” She beamed at everyone, entirely pleased at her own cleverness in correcting what she saw as her father’s misconception. “I couldn’t think why Lizzy would be there, especially not on the floor with Mr Bingley, when neither of them were supposed to be there at all, but rather my dear Wickham…”

Lydia trailed off, apparently finally registering how the silence had changed, and the astonishment in the gazes that met hers. She looked about the room with the faint confusion of an actress who has delivered her lines perfectly to an audience that shows no reaction whatsoever.

“Oh, Lizzy,” Charlotte breathed beside her. “You went to protect her,” she said, her eyes filling with sympathy, even in the face of all the myriad people assembled in that terrible room. “That was it all along, was it not? You didn’t go to meet Mr Bingley, you went because you knew Lydia was to meet Mr Wickham and you went to stop her, and —” She stopped, frowning. “How did you even know, Lizzy?”

Elizabeth sighed, swaying slightly as the weight of the secret she had been holding for so long lifted off her all at once. “I didn’t know it was Mr Wickham at the time,” she said. “A servant brought me a note meant for Lydia — he had been told to give it to the Miss Bennet in blue, and we were all in blue that night.”

“See, Mama, I told you that forcing us all to wear the same shade was absurd,” Kitty said to their mother in a voice that she probably thought was discreet. She was immediately hushed.

“The note was from a gentleman, cancelling an arrangement they had to meet that night in the library. I went there to confront Lydia and try to convince her that her behaviour was not… that it would not end well. I was waiting for her near the door when it opened suddenly and Mr Bingley hurried in. We collided, and I fell, striking my head. He was helping me to rise when Lydia…arrived.” She was silent for a moment, looking around. Her mother’s trembling hand was pressed to her mouth, her eyes wide. Her father looked at once thunderous and pained, Mary looked confused, Caroline Bingley appeared outraged, Colonel Fitzwilliam amused, and poor Anne de Bourgh just looked tired.

Then Elizabeth’s eye caught Darcy, and there was such a calm, steady approval there she immediately felt calmer.

“I had inquired as to where Jane might be, and a servant told me Miss Bennet had just gone to the library. It didn’t occur to me that it might be a different Miss Bennet, and I hurried there to…” Mr Bingley stopped, turning bright red. “I didn’t really think why she might be there, only…” He stopped again, finding that the addition didn’t help him explain himself more clearly.

“Well, that explains that,” Lydia said, as though she had been trying to solve the mystery by herself for months. “We’d met many times by then, but that was to be the first time we met alone, and I was most vexed to have it all ruined by Lizzy and Mr Bingley. I didn’t know he’d changed it, obviously, since Lizzy got the note instead of me.” She looked around again, at all the assembled company staring at her with varying degrees of horror, and seemed genuinely puzzled by their reactions. “I cannot think why everyone is making such a fuss. It all came out perfectly well in the end.”

“It came out well,” Mr Darcy said, “because your sister went to the library to stop what Mr Wickham intended to happen. A grown man of seven-and-twenty who had spent weeks cultivating the attentions of a girl of sixteen, who had arranged to meet her in secret, in a darkened room, entirely unchaperoned. Miss Elizabeth was there to prevent such a nefarious meeting, and has received no thanks whatsoever for either her attempt at sisterly care, or for all that occurred to her as a result. She has only received accusation, disapproval and shame, and that is most unjust.”

Wickham opened his mouth, no doubt to smooth the account into something more flattering to himself, but a glance at Mr Bennet caused him to subside. Elizabeth met Mr Darcy’s eyes and realised that he had received no thanks either, for the part she knew — knew! — he had played in ensuring that Wickham had ultimately married Lydia.

“Thanks?” Lady Catherine repeated. “Darcy, I cannot believe you are claiming that this girl deserves thanks for shielding a sister — no, a family — whose conduct, from top to bottom, has been nothing but a scandal and a disgrace. Thanks! For hiding immoral conduct, for acting herself outside the bounds of propriety, and for maintaining falsehoods for months? You, I know, have had better grounding in proper behaviour than to think that such behaviour is anything better than an utter disgrace, much less laudatory!”

At that insult, Mrs Bennet lost her patience entirely. She had endured a great deal in her drawing room over the years — her husband’s vague assurances and poorly concealed indifference, Mr Collins’ endless pronouncements, the sneers of the Netherfield ladies, years of general disapproval from friends and neighbours who thought her nerves an affectation and hinted that her daughters were poorly brought-up. She had endured it, not quietly or without complaint, but she had persevered, fighting always to ensure that her daughters would have futures of comfort and security. And now she had a woman of rank sit in this room, in her own house, and speak with such scorn of her children and her family, and something in her, long overdue, gave way.

Mrs Bennet rose to her feet. “I will not,” she said, in a voice loud enough to be heard in Meryton, “sit in my own home and hear my daughters called an utter disgrace by a woman who has no knowledge whatsoever of them, our home, or our family, however expert she may have proclaimed herself on all subjects!”

A faint cheer rose from Colonel Fitzwilliam, but he subsided when Mr Darcy glared at him.

“I know a great deal more about your family than I have ever wished to,” Lady Catherine returned, rising as well, so that the two matrons stood face to face across several feet of Aubusson carpet like a pair of generals meeting across a battlefield, “and every fact that I have learned has confirmed my worst apprehensions. You are clearly a family with no sense of propriety, no notion of gentility, and rather than teach your children proper behaviour as a mother should, you encourage every manner of forward, undisciplined behaviour in your daughters and —”

“Undisciplined!” Mrs Bennet’s colour had gone past red to something approaching purple, Elizabeth noticed worriedly. “Undisciplined? My Lydia is married, Lady Catherine, married, which I note that your daughter is not, and her husband has a commission beside. Jane is engaged to a man with five thousand a year who adores her, and if my Elizabeth has had the great misfortune to attract the notice of a nephew of yours, I hardly see that it is her fault that he cannot keep himself from proposing to her!”

Elizabeth closed her eyes, unsure whether she wanted to laugh or cry as another hoot of laughter emerged from Colonel Fitzwilliam. She opened her eyes to see Mr Darcy regarding her, and was more amazed than she ever had been in her life when he gave her a small, wry shrug, as though conceding her mother’s point.

Lady Catherine was not amused. “You would do well to hold your tongue,” she said, with awful, glacial warning, “when speaking to the daughter of an earl, a woman whose husband’s family has held Rosing for six generations and —”

“I have held my tongue for my entire life, madam, and I find I am quite finished with it! You may hold your Rosings, and your six generations, and take yourself back to Kent with them, but you will not come into my house and tell me that my girls are not good enough for anybody, especially when your own nephew clearly feels my Lizzy is quite exceptional indeed!”

It was not, by any measure, a genteel exchange. Lady Catherine had a far more scathing vocabulary, and the ability to deliver her calculated insults with the icy intensity of long practice, but Mrs Bennet had considerably more volume and the passion that came with defending one’s own children, along with an absolute disregard for how she looked in delivering her part of the tirade. Mr Collins appeared to be in the midst of a terrible internal crisis, caught between his patroness and his family; Elizabeth half-thought he might faint. Charlotte was clearly trying her best to suppress her amusement, and was closer to failing at it than Elizabeth had ever seen her.

It was Mr Bennet that finally ended it. He crossed the room, unhurried, and took his wife’s arm, standing in front of her, blocking her view of her adversary.

“Well done, my dear,” he said, his voice quiet but warm as he reached up to right her cap, which had gone somewhat askew in the heat of battle. He continued to hold her arm as he turned toward Lady Catherine, and Elizabeth watched her father, who had spent her entire lifetime avoiding just this sort of confrontation, regard the daughter of a peer of the realm with an expression of calm, unbothered composure.

“Lady Catherine,” he said, coldly polite, “you have travelled quite some distance to accuse my daughter of ambition. I confess, I find it a very great compliment to her that a woman of your consequence should trouble herself so extensively over the private affairs of a country attorney’s granddaughter. I had not realised that we were of such importance.” He paused and looked down at his wife. “I shall have to write and tell my brother-in-law Gardiner that we have attracted such noble attention. He will be very gratified, do not you think, my dear?”

Lady Catherine’s eyes narrowed, and she drew herself up in preparation to reply. But whatever she had intended to say was never revealed, for at that moment the sound of yet another carriage reached them from the drive.