Page 103 of Miss Bennet's Dragon
My father shifted his hand to hold mine firmly, as if we were two gentlemen. As if we were equals. “Lizzy, your mother is distraught. Jane is ill. I rely on your courage and good sense. You must be the rock of Longbourn until I return.”
I swallowed against a lump in my throat and nodded.
The morning dawned with a miracle.
“Lizzy!” Jane’s voice was concerned. “What has happened to your face?”
I blinked groggily. Exhaustion and my own bed had provided my first proper sleep in days. “That is a long story. I am most happy to be home.”
“Your hair is frightful.” A brush pulled. But the stroke trembled.
Remembering, I sat up in bed, astonished.
Jane was frowning at my tangles. “Had you no maid?”
Her face was more shocking by daylight. Her cheeks clung under her cheekbones. Only her lips remained full, suspended too prominently by her teeth.
But her eyes were focused and loving, and she held a brush, just as we sometimes brushed each other’s hair when we were younger.
“It is good to see you more yourself,” I said. After Mr. Darcy’s warnings, I was intoxicated by relief.
“I feel much better,” Jane said. “It was gray while you were gone. There was mist even in the house.” She brightened. “Shall we see if breakfast is out?”
Our cook, who scowled until noon, cooed and fussed over my bruised cheek. When Jane suggested—with no mention of fairies—that I must be hungry from my trip, she vanished toward the kitchen, crying, “It’s grand to have our two eldest down for breakfast again!”
“I believe we shall be served more than toast today,” I said. A tremendous pounding of pots and scolding of scullery maids had risen.
“Good. I am hungry,” Jane said.
After crumpets, soft boiled eggs, sausage, and strong tea, Papa departed north by hired coach to meet Colonel Forster in Taddington, the town that the Gardiners and I had planned to visit before we were turned aside by the sandy-haired man wearing a slovenly militia uniform.
That was another mystery—French spies in the center of England seeking books onl’enfant du lac, the child of the lake. But I had enough puzzles without speculating about the war between England and France.
I touched a finger to my cheek. Seconds after he struck me, the sandy-haired man was dead, killed by Mr. Darcy. The last mark of a man’s life was a fading bruise on my cheek. That seemed sad.
At luncheon, I opened a jar of water from Pemberley lake, poured some in a teacup, and gave it to Jane. She drank it.
“How does it feel?” I asked breathlessly.
“Like water?” she offered, eyeing me like I was mad.
Days ticked by in the settled routine of home. I played my role by rote, unconvinced any of this was real. Layers of worry cocooned me—for Jane, for Lydia, for Papa—and beneath that, buried as deep as I could force it, there was a canker of selfish loss.
Mamma kept to her bed, raving of her nerves and ranting of Mr. Wickham “who was so handsome in his red coat.” Kitty, chagrined and sad, sat with her often. Kitty had been profoundly reprimanded by my father after she confessed knowledge of Lydia’s plan from their private letters.
On the third day, Jane became frightened by the shadows under the laurel hedge and ran inside to hide. On the fourth, she cried that fairies were spitting foulness on her food. On the sixth, she refused to come down for meals, and ate a slice of toast in our room, crushing it into a mass she hid in her hands while her eyes darted.
Mary and I cajoled and begged for a quarter hour to have her take her spoonful of medicine. I convinced her by saying Mr. Bingley had sent it as a gift. A minute after she swallowed, she collapsed into a moaning slumber.
Mary left and returned, settling herself in our room and stacking three books beside her chair.
“Lizzy,” she whispered. “Go and rest. I shall watch her.”
I had been staring blankly.
As I went down the stairs, a letter arrived from my father.
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