Lydia (22 page)

Friday, 24th July

A
fter days of travelling, we are finally approaching Shropshire. In another few hours, Wickham says, we shall reach Mapperton Abbas, the village closest to Esther's grand estate. We have come a circuitous route – I wanted to go as fast as possible, but Wickham advised caution. There was nothing to be gained from charging after the Comte and Miss Lovett, and everything to be lost by being found, for by now people must be looking for us. Our route has taken us across country, through countless cities and villages. We have travelled by coach and hackney carriage, we have ridden in a farmer's cart, we have even done a stretch of road on foot, Wickham carrying my valise and urging me forward by teaching me sailors' songs he learned when he was at sea. It is a far cry from
Romeo and Juliet
, but it passes the time – no, I will be fair. It is a far cry from Shakespeare, but it makes me laugh.

We take one room wherever we stop, to save money. Wickham sleeps on the floor and I take the bed. At first I worried that he might try to – well,
ruin
me. He is not exactly
as gentlemanly as Alaric – the very fact that he is here with me at all is proof of
that
. But he has behaved very well. How much more space he takes up than Kitty! How much louder his breathing, his snores, and every other sound! He kicks off his boots and they fly halfway across the room. Throws his coat on a chair and causes it to rock. Falls on to the bed (before taking to the floor) and makes the pillows fly. He paces continuously. He burps when he drinks beer.

Yet for all that, when he is sleeping, he looks strangely vulnerable. He takes a blanket, but always throws it off. He lies on his back with his arms behind his head, and his hair, which he keeps so carefully swept back during the day, falls across his face. The first night, I watched it rise and fall softly with his breath. Up and down, up and down . . . He opened his eyes and saw me watching.

“Lydia?”

“You should lie on your side,” I said. “Maybe that way you would snore less.”

At night, in these unfamiliar places, I stare out of the open window and try to picture those scrubbed decks, that bright blue sea. Sometimes what we are doing seems impossible, but we have come too far to turn back. If I do not succeed with Alaric, it will be Longbourn and virtual imprisonment for me, and Wickham says he cannot return to the regiment now that he has run away with me. His whole future rests, he says, on marrying Miss Lovett. He still does not know that I have lied to him. I am trying not to think about how that makes me feel.

“Was I snoring again?” Wickham asked last night as we lay in darkness.

“Snoring? Not at all.”

“And yet you are still awake.”

I rolled to the edge of the bed and looked down at where he lay, tangled in his blanket.

“What if we are wrong?” I asked. “What if Alaric will not come away with me? What will happen to me then?”

“This count of yours, is he a man of honour?”

“Oh, most definitely!”

“And he made you a promise?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Then he will keep it. And you have nothing to fear.”

“He once told me that he and his sister had promised always to look after each other,” I said. “What of that, if he comes away with me?”

“You have to fight, Lydia,” he murmured.

“I'm frightened,” I whispered.

“I know.”

“Wickham?”

“Go to sleep, Lydia.”

“The first time we met – in the street at Meryton – you told me you had sailed the Mediterranean on a ship called
Lydia
. Do you remember? Was that true?”

“Of course it was true! What do you take me for, a liar?”

I didn't dignify that with an answer. “What were you doing on a ship?”

“I had a monstrous gambling debt to pay off to her captain, and no means of doing so other than slaving away for six months on his blasted merchant vessel.”

I smiled in the darkness at the thought.

“Wickham?”

“For God's sake, what?”

I fell asleep listening to him telling me about the Mediterranean.

Saturday, 25th July

W
e have arrived at Mapperton Abbas. They are here – so close! The innkeeper confirmed it – the whole family, Esther and Mrs. Lovett, Theo and Alaric, even the maid Marie.

Esther's estate is ENORMOUS. I don't know what Denny was thinking when he said it was small – it is at least as big as Netherfield. And I bet if Shakespeare himself were to see it, he would spontaneously write whole volumes of sonnets in its praise, because it is lovely. The house is built of pale grey stone and sits in a wide sunny valley surrounded by hills. There are meadows full of flowers and sheep, and paddocks with fat horses, and dairy cows to make Mr. Collins weep. Around the house there are white roses, and lavender and thyme and rosemary and marjoram, and there are woods with cuckoos and blackbirds and robins and doves. There are cotton-tailed bunnies in the fields, and as Wickham and I walked over from the inn this morning, I saw the long twitchy ears of a hare.

We went at daybreak, to survey the land before any of the
family rose. My boots and the hems of my dress and petticoat were soaked with dew, but the sky was pink and blue and gold, and the sun was already warm on our backs.

“It feels like the world is just beginning,” I said to Wickham.

“The start of your new life.” He smiled.

We walked through the woods on a white gravel path that opened on to a lake, with a rowing boat painted a bright buttercup yellow. A wicked gleam entered Wickham's eye as he led me to the water.

“We can't!” I said. “It is Esther's boat!”

“Esther will never know.”

And oh, the joy of cutting through with your hand trailing in the water, when the mist is still rising, and all about you there are lilies, and frogs are jumping and birds are singing and a heron is fishing among the reeds! If life could be always like that, I would be absolutely happy.

My stomach rumbled as we rowed back to shore. Wickham tied the boat to its mooring post and produced an apple and a roll.

“Don't you want any?” I asked as I fell on them.

“I'm not hungry.”

He lay back on the bank, careless of the morning dew, and tilted his face towards the sun.

“One day,” he murmured, “all this could be yours.”

“Not mine.” I spat out an apple pip. It landed on his nose, and he brushed it away with an exasperated sigh. “It is Esther's, remember? I am for the tea plantation in India.”

“I should like to see you on your plantation,” Wickham said with a smile. “Riding about on your elephant.”

I spat out another pip. “You can't ride about a plantation on an elephant,” I scoffed. “It would trample everything. I shall have a dear little pony . . .”

“Someone's coming.”

He was on his feet like a cat, dragging me away from the bank and into the shelter of the woods. I craned my neck to see.

“It is only a servant,” Wickham whispered. “But the household is waking up. Come, let us go. We have an idea of how the land lies, and we can form a plan.”

Wickham has gone, to find a housemaid he will bribe to take a message to Alaric. Oh God! I know now why Mamma complains so about her nerves – I think that I am going to be sick.

Alaric will come . . . I will speak to him . . . I will remind him . . . When he sees how far I have come, all that I have done . . . He will stand up to his sister. Yes, that is what will happen. We may not have to run away at all . . . He will see me, and he will tell Theo we are to be married, and we shall ride back to Longbourn together, and oh, how impressed they will all be.

When Alaric comes . . .

Three o'clock

I am sitting close to where we hid this morning, in the trees beside the lake, and I am waiting for him.

Wickham found a housemaid. She would not take a message for him, but she gave him some information, and Wickham told me exactly what to do.

“Every afternoon, at about half past three, your young man goes to our yellow boat to read,” he told me over luncheon –
more bread and cheese. “The lake is easily reached from the village via a water meadow. There is a side gate, which is not locked during the day.”

I still felt I was going to be sick.

“Thank you,” I stammered. “You have been . . . You are actually very good to me. When all this ends well, I will tell Colonel Forster, and Father, and everybody . . . I will explain that this was all my idea . . .”

“I am not entirely unselfish in all this, you know. Miss Lovett is my principal reason for being here.”

“Oh, you are . . .”

He put a finger to my lips. “Now, are you ready?” he asked. “Got your bonnet, your best frock, your walking shoes? Look at me – very pretty. No man could resist you, Miss Bennet, be he the King himself. Go, hurry – do not keep him waiting.”

The path from the village wound round the meadows, bordered on either side by rushes and pink flowers, so tall in places they formed an arch over my head. Mapperton Abbas, with its cottages, church, inn and pastures, disappeared from view, and for a few minutes I was completely alone in the wood. Then the vegetation thinned, the path disappeared, and I found myself standing before a gate. It was open, as Wick-ham had said it would be. I entered, walked a hundred yards to the lake, came to this bush, and waited. Am I ready? These last days have been so unreal. Part of me feels I never want them to end. But that is fear, nothing more.

It is just my nerves. The thing is not to let Theo see me.
She
is the enemy here. It is
she
who has taken Alaric away, I am quite sure of it. All will be well, as soon as I speak to him.

Someone is coming!

Seven-thirty

It is all over. I am back at the inn – in bed, with a blanket about my shoulders and a glass of brandy on the table beside me brought by Wickham.

Alaric appeared at half past three, just as the housemaid said he would, but he was not alone.

Esther Lovett walked beside him. No – Esther Lovett walked
with
him, on his arm.

I don't want to write of what came next. Of how Alaric rowed into the middle of the lake and then put down the oars. Of how the boat rocked as Esther came to sit beside him. Of how she rested her head on his shoulder – how he put his arm about her waist . . .

I gasped. My movement startled the heron, which took off in a great flapping of wings and came to settle with much commotion across the water from where I hid. I am mistaken, I thought. It is only a friendly gesture – between two people broken-hearted – a cousin consoling a cousin . . .

Alaric shaded his eyes to watch the heron. Esther pointed. The ring upon her finger glinted in the afternoon sun.

Esther – who never wears jewellery, who balked at the plainest pearl earrings before a dress ball – was wearing a
ring
. . .

And now it is all confirmed. Wickham found the housemaid again and made further enquiries, and learned that they are engaged, and plan to marry soon. Alaric is not to go to Oxford after all – or India, or anywhere else. He is to stay here with Esther and run the estate. They have great plans, the housemaid said, of improving the workers' cottages. She has seen his drawings, while she cleaned the study.

“It is all Theo's doing!” I sobbed in Wickham's arms. “I see it now – she never liked me, from the very first time we met at the Chalybeate Spa. He pressed me to come to Tara, but she did not want me to. And when we went swimming – I thought she was being so friendly, but she was trying to warn me off – she said she would do everything she could to protect him. I did not realise she meant from me! All the time, it has been Esther, Esther, Esther – all that time he was ill! He said himself it was only a little cold, but she forced him to stay behind so he shouldn't see me – so that he should see only her! And those dresses!” I burst into fresh sobs as I thought of Esther, tiny and ethereal, so much more elegant than me. “But why?” I wailed. “Why does she hate me so much?” Furious now, I paced about the room. Wickham put out a hand to still me, drew me to him.

“Lydia, calm down.”

“He loves
me
!” I wailed. “And now he is engaged to Esther Lovett!”

There was a knock at the door. My heart beat wildly, thinking it might be him, but it was only a serving girl bringing supper. I burst into tears again and flung my arms about Wick-ham's neck.

“Darling Lydia,” he murmured as the serving girl left. “We have to leave this place.”

“I won't go home!” I cried.

“Well, there is nothing for either of us to gain by staying in Mapperton.”

“You're right.” I gazed over his shoulder out of the window. Evening already! Hours since I saw Alaric and Esther, but at this time of year the sun was a long way from setting. If the
weather was like this at Longbourn, they would be taking tea out on the lawn – just as they always did, just as they always would. The very thought filled me with horror.

“What should I do?” I asked.

“I have to go to London,” he said. “I must find some money, and it is the best place.”

“I will go with you,” I said.

“Lydia . . .”

“I shan't be a burden! I will think of something to do, soon enough. I don't know what yet, but I will think of something! And if I don't . . . well, if I don't, I suppose I will have to go back to Longbourn.”

Wickham sighed. “Very well. I have spoken to the innkeeper. The next Shrewsbury coach passes on Monday afternoon. From there, it is but two days' travelling to London.”

I felt drowsy after my tears. The food on the table was growing cold, but I did not move.

“Thank you,” I said.

He tightened his arms about me. I fancy he even dropped a kiss on my head.

“I'm sorry about Esther,” I said. With Wickham being so nice, I felt guiltier than ever for lying to him. “I promise that when I last saw her, she was still madly in love with you.”

“Well, that's a comfort at least.”

So off we go tomorrow, and I have to think of what to do . . . I have to think of something . . .

But what?