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While Jane chose to go directly up to their room, Elizabeth peeked into their uncle’s study, hoping to greet her father.

However, it was soon clear that Mrs. Gardiner was in the midst of quizzing her brother-in-law about Lydia’s activities during the day, and so Lizzy quickly excused herself and followed in Jane’s footsteps.

Meanwhile, the eldest Miss Bennet was receiving a most unhappy surprise.

Jane’s beauty had been admired and commented on for as long as she could remember.

As a result, it never occurred to her to be nervous over whether London Society would deem her worthy of her handsome fiancé.

However, any girl knows that even great beauty cannot protect a lady who is dressed in unflattering clothes from the disdain and ridicule of the fashionable.

Mrs. Bennet’s appreciation of her eldest daughter’s beauty (which was so reminiscent of her own) meant that Jane had always been well dressed.

When packing for their trip to London, she had carefully considered her wardrobe and selected the most fashionable and, above all, flattering gowns and accessories.

The eldest Miss Bennet was not vain, but she enjoyed being pretty and wearing pretty things. Thus, when she opened the door to the bedchamber she was sharing with Lizzy and discovered her carefully packed ensembles torn from the wardrobe and strewn across the bed and floor, she froze in shock.

Climbing the stairs behind Jane, Elizabeth was astonished to hear her normally serene sister shriek as she had never heard before.

Then, Miss Bennet turned on her heel and, stepping across the hall, threw open the door to the bedchamber their youngest sister had taken.

“Oh my God!!! Lydia—what have you done!?!”

Miss Lydia Bennet had grown bored sitting alone in her room, wearing the same, dull, muslin morning dress that she been wearing when she climbed into the gig with Lieutenant Wickham.

The more she considered the fact that her sisters were off visiting the London shops with their aunt, the more convinced she became that, as Jane and Lizzy would soon have entirely new wardrobes, they would have no need for their old clothes.

Having reached that conclusion, Lydia set out to raid her sisters’ trunks without a second thought.

Unfortunately for Jane, Elizabeth’s slender figure meant that her dresses were less likely to fit Lydia’s more voluptuous proportions.

As a result, most of Jane’s favorite gowns were currently strewn about in varying stages of dismemberment, for, although the eldest and youngest Bennet sisters might have dimensions that were similar, their tastes were most definitely not.

After conveying her plunder to her own room, Lydia had happily settled in to rip apart the bonnets and remake the gowns to her taste.

The long sleeves had been detached from a pink muslin morning dress (awaiting replacement with short sleeves when Lydia found thread to match).

Green ribbon (cut from Lizzy’s sage bonnet) had been sewn (crookedly) to ornament the hem of the white day dress that Jane had planned to wear to the engagement party on Thursday.

Worst of all, handfuls of frothy lace (found in a box that the young Miss Gardiners saved for dressing their dolls) had been whipstitched to the bodice of Jane’s favorite evening gown (to be finished later).

If the destruction of finery was distressing, the resulting emotional carnage was beyond anything even Elizabeth had observed among the Bennet sisters. Lydia, having never seen her eldest sibling so angry, continued to lounge on the bed, albeit with eyes slightly widened.

Jane had no practice articulating her thoughts when her emotions were running so high, but her self-righteous fury demanded an outlet.

She began gathering up what was hers while sputtering angrily, “Thoughtless, wretched girl! My blue silk! You’ve ruined it!

!! Spoiled… you are nothing but a horrible, little spoiled child… Lydia—let go! That is mine!”

Elizabeth’s eyebrows had nearly reached her hairline when a tearful, red-faced Jane ripped the muslin from Lydia’s hands and rushed past Lizzy with her jumbled armload of dresses and bonnets.

Unfortunately, the shock wore off almost instantly and Lydia followed on her sister’s heals, protesting loudly. “But Jane!!! That’s not fair! I want to wear those! I’ve already started working on them!”

Miss Bennet stopped sorting her clothes long enough to wipe her tears away with the back of her hand and then turned a furious look on her youngest sister.

“You know better, Lydia! Had you asked me, I would have loaned you something. Instead, you sneak in and… and rip apart all my prettiest dresses!” The tears began again as Jane’s voice rose to a wail.

“But you have so many nice things and I haven’t a stitch to wear!”

“And why is that, Lydia? Hmmm? Perhaps because you left all your friends and family without a thought and threw your reputation away on the ridiculous lies of a… a…” Jane fumbled to find a word bad enough to describe Mr. Wickham and finally settled on “blackguard!!!”

Not finding an easy response (for she had indeed climbed into Wickham’s gig with nothing but a few farthings in her reticule), Lydia stormed out of the room. Elizabeth watched the door slam behind her and went to comfort Jane .

Meanwhile the youngest Miss Bennet turned down the stairs, wanting to be far away from her cruel sisters.

Had she considered the matter at all, Lydia would have realized that none of the adults she was likely to meet in the Gardiner household were likely to have the least sympathy for her plight.

However, when she neared the drawing room door and heard strange male voices, she grinned, forgetting the dresses entirely.

Jane and Lizzy could act as superior as they wished—Lydia was quite certain that no one could flirt as well as her.

Lydia caught the flash of red coats just inside the open door and felt a thrum of excitement at the thought of officers.

Thinking to reconnoiter the company before presenting herself for their admiration, she flattened herself against the wall to eavesdrop; unfortunately, on this occasion, her overhearings were not at all to her purpose.

Normally, Lydia would have been thrilled to discover that she herself was the main topic of conversation among a group of men. On this occasion, however, the uncensored discussion occurring just within quickly crushed those remaining delusions that not even her sisters had been able to affect.

“My daughter wrote these? All of these? To Mr. Wickham?” Her father’s voice sounded so broken that it touched even Lydia.

“Yes, sir. We found them in his satchel with a packet of other letters—he appears to have been using them to blackmail various people. I fear that the penmanship was so poor that we did not recognize the authoress at first…” Mr. Darcy trailed off.

Lydia was thoroughly indignant. How dare he criticize her handwriting!

?! Of course she could write the best of all her sisters if she wanted to!

It was only that pretending to have poor handwriting saved her from having to help write invitations and thank you notes and all those other dreadfully dull chores.

And how dare they read her private letters, anyway! ?!

Just before she stormed into the room, however, a voice that Lydia recognized as Colonel Forster took over the conversation, sounding angrier than she had ever heard him.

“I apologize, Mr. Bennet. She was sending them to my wife in Bristol and then Mrs. Forster was passing them on to Wickham. I had no idea what was happening until I found this last one mixed in with some bills when Becky arrived in Meryton; she had not finished packing up the house when the regiment had to march, so I left her behind with a squad of soldiers to help, commanded by Lieutenant Wickham, Lord help me.”

Too furious to guard his tongue, Colonel Forster went on, “Take comfort, Mr. Bennet—at least it is clear from your daughter’s letter that, though she was eager, Wickham had not yet had the chance to sample her charms…

unlike my wife .” This last was said in such a bitter snarl that even the other gentlemen were disconcerted.

The Colonel’s vocabulary can perhaps be excused by the fact that he was a career military man and believed himself to be speaking to a purely masculine audience.

“Oh dear Lord…” Mr. Bennet was thoroughly appalled, and for once, Lydia’s feelings were not far different from her father’s.

“Sirs,” interrupted Mr. Darcy. “Let us remember that this particular disaster has been averted. Miss Lydia was found before Wickham could ruin her; her letters have been recovered and shall be destroyed. Finally, Colonel Fitzwilliam assures me that there are enough charges against the Lieutenant that she need not be mentioned at the trial on Friday, much less called to testify.”

There was a pause before new voice spoke up. “Darce, that is fine for now, but…”

“Richard, we shall protect her.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam snorted. “You cannot protect the girl from herself! I have not met her, but everything I have heard thus far tells me that your method of protection shall not work in this case. Darce—she’s not like Georgiana.

You cannot surround her with eagle-eyed servants and companions and keep her closeted away from any man with less than innocent intentions. ”