Page 2 of Wickham Likes 'Em Young
Lizzy lifted her eyes up to the sky, feeling a bit put out about her sister’s strange ability to always think well of every single person, no matter what.
“Yes, one of those young men was very good looking, had blond hair and bright blue eyes, was very drunk, and began to behave improperly. The other two young men rushed to do the right thing, to steer him away from us; one of them had a plain but pleasant face, and the other had dark hair, and this third man used his beautiful dark brown eyes to send us silent apologies as he maneouvred his friend away. And that third man was much, much, much more handsome than the non-gentlemanly fellow.”
Jane laughed. “Well, I have blonde hair and blue eyes, so I will keep the blond-haired blue-eyed one. And you have dark hair and eyes, so you can keep the dark-haired, dark-eyed one.”
Frowning, Lizzy said, “I hope you are not thinking well of a young man who was behaving so poorly, on a public street and in thedaytime! You are years away from being out, so you are very much off limits to men. And he should have known that….”
Lizzy might have gone on and on with her scold, because she really did feel extremely vexed at Jane, but at that moment their aunt returned, and the girls subsided into the happy sort of chatter their aunt was used to hearing from them.
“Oh, Auntie,” Lizzy said, leaning over to give her favourite aunt a kiss on her cheek, “thank you so much for organising ourouting. It was so very nice, until the end. We really appreciate all you have done for us.”
“Yes, thank you,” Jane chimed in. She still had a dreamy look in her eyes, and Lizzy almost shook her head in dismay, hoping she herself would not become so silly in a few years.
CHAPTER 1
15 October 1811
Elizabeth Bennet—also known as Lizzy—was not nearly as excited as her sister Jane, nor her particular friend Charlotte, about the Meryton Assembly. She always had fun at such events, and she was as eager to see almost the entirety of her acquaintance at one time as she was to dance. However, Jane and Charlotte were not just eager, they were practically giddy. The reason for their effusions is that it was rumoured that their rich new neighbour, Charles Bingley, would be coming, and that he would bring other rich guests.
Best of all, to their minds, was that Mr Bingley was young, single, and handsome. Charlotte’s extremely friendly father, Sir William Lucas, had been the first in the neighbourhood to visit Mr Bingley at the estate he was leasing, Netherfield Park, and when Mr Bingley had returned the call, a few days later, Charlotte had actually met the man!
Charlotte was reliable in her judgement of people, so Elizabeth was not sceptical about her descriptions—Mr Bingley seemed to be, she said, in his early twenties, had reddish blond hair and greenish blue eyes, and was entirely affable—but Charlotte seemed to Elizabeth to be almost coldly calculating in the way she spoke of marriage. At age seven and twenty,Charlotte was considered by the matrons of Meryton to be “on the shelf,” and likely to be a spinster all her life; Charlotte seemed quite grim about such a future and often expressed the opinion that none of them should even consider the romantic idea of marrying for love.
And when Charlotte dismissed theromanticidea, Elizabeth thought that she really meant theidioticidea.
Elizabeth was twenty years old and only felt a little bit grim about her own future. Her mother constantly worried—and byconstantly, Elizabeth really meantCONSTANTLY—that, when Elizabeth’s father died, the family would be “cast into the hedgerows.” After all, there was no Bennet son to inherit the entailed estate, and there were five daughters.
Certainly, homeless and poor sounded grim.
Still, Elizabeth was a contented sort of person, and she not only considered a loving marriage a possibility—after all, she knew such marriages existed, because of the wonderful example of her beloved Aunt and Uncle Gardiner—but she also firmly held onto the goal of marrying a man of upright character, someone she could respect. If she could not marry a good man, she was determined not to marry at all.
Even if she had to be a spinster aunt, playing with and caring for her nieces and nephews, and likely teaching them to play the pianoforte very ill—even if she had to become a governess, or a lady’s companion—she would not do as Charlotte recommended, which was to secureanyhusband. “It would be better to know as little as possible about a man’s flaws, before marriage,” Charlotte once said.
To which Elizabeth longed to say, “Dear Charlotte, you need to read more histories, and plays, and novels.”
Because surely it would be better to remain a spinster than to be beaten by one’s husband. Or subject to cruel manipulation.Or even just laughed at and dismissed every single moment of every single day, year after year.
But again, being a contented sort of person, Elizabeth laughed at her own long litany of ways in which women, including wives, were often treated poorly. She held onto her optimism that she and her sisters and even her friend Charlotte might still find happiness and maybe even love.
The evening of the assembly, Elizabeth followed Jane into the hall and immediately sought out Charlotte. Her friend was telling the Long girls about Mr Bingley and his party, which included his two sisters, his brother-in-law, and a friend.
“Mr Bingley has dark blond hair with just a little bit of reddish colour when the sunlight hits it just right,” Charlotte explained. “And his eyes looked very green to me, but I have a feeling that they might appear blue at times.”
“He sounds too good to be true,” Sarah Long said with a sigh.
“Well, he’s true, all right. Oh! And my father found out that his friend is also single, if you can believe it,” Charlotte finished triumphantly.
“Two bachelors are coming tonight?” Anna Long squealed.
“Well, I do not know for certain which members of the Netherfield party will attend tonight, but I hope they will all come,” Charlotte said.
Sarah flipped a long corkscrew curl behind her shoulder and said, “I suppose it is asking too much to hope that Mr Bingley’s friend is as rich as he is.”
Charlotte laughed and said, “Yes, that likely is asking much too much. I hope they will arrive soon. It seems the first dance will begin shortly.”
John Lucas approached the young women and courteously asked Elizabeth to dance the first set with him. She smiled at him and accepted, and they laughed and chatted as they took pleasure in following the patterns of an English country dance.
Halfway through the second dance of the first set, a hush fell over the chattering crowd, rapidly followed by an outbreak of whispers. “Did something untoward occur?” Elizabeth asked Mr Lucas, looking around to determine what had happened.
