Page 28 of Friendship and Forgiveness (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #7)
The day after Elizabeth returned to Longbourn, Lydia begged to be one of the party when she and Mr. Darcy made off for their walk. “Please, please. Can we go by a shop? Papa does not let me go anywhere ! Not even to Aunt Phillips’s or a shop, or to talk to Maria, or Harriet or anyone ! It is not fair .”
Elizabeth shared a glance with Mr. Darcy.
They both considered the restriction on her sister entirely reasonable and deserved.
Seeing that gaze, and correctly interpreting its significance, Lydia stamped her foot several times. “It's not ! I decided on my own to not go with Mr. Wickham.”
“Ah, but,” Darcy said cautiously, “speaking as one who is not a member of your family yet, but as part of the general community, most would consider simply making the initial plan, no matter how changed your sentiments would eventually become, to be disreputable.”
“Well they are wrong ! And I don’t see what business it is of everyone anyways if I did decide to marry that awful man. It would have been bad for me certainly. But it is nobody else’s business — can I come on the walk?”
Elizabeth laughed, and seeing no reason to not allow her to be with them as a chaperone in addition to the dour Mary, who had already proven that she did not have the sort of blind eye that a better chaperone would, she said, “Of course you might. We’ll even stop by the hat shop, and I’ll buy you a new bonnet.”
“Oh! Yes. I want to find one that is particularly ugly — to see if I can make something worth wearing out of the parts. La! It is so boring . Boring, boring, boring — and by the time Papa is done with his snit, the officers will be gone, and I’ll die of boredom.”
The three of them left out the door, and went down the street.
“I had not known that was a fatal curse,” Darcy said solemnly, as Elizabeth suppressed her giggles. “Might I inquire how frequently members of your acquaintance have shuffled off the mortal coil due to boredom?”
“Oh piles and piles! Half the girls in my school die of boredom once a month. Or twice that often. I myself have died of boredom near a hundred times, only this last year.”
“Oh my. You mean to say you have returned from the life beyond so frequently? — and what is it like past the veil?”
Lydia smiled as she theatrically shivered and said, “When one dies of boredom, it is impossible to remember precisely what happens between then and the recovery of life, but it is always a horrid memory of endless dullness, and one will do anything to avoid suffering so once more — oh it so unfair! I shall miss all the officers.”
“Papa once observed to me,” Elizabeth said, “that life is not always fair. An odd fact, and one that ought to be corrected if at all possible. Perhaps next time you die , you might attempt to speak with the Almighty, and suggest that he rearrange this realm so that everything is in fact fair?”
Lydia pushed Elizabeth’s arm. “You do not take me seriously at all. Nor what I suffer.”
At the way Elizabeth looked at her in reply to that speech, Lydia giggled. “Fine, fine, fine. I shall not literally die. But it is most unfair. And just because I am young.”
“And because you nearly eloped with Mr. Wickham.”
“He was so cruel! He grabbed me and dragged me. I tried to fight him off. He hit me.” Lydia tapped her cheek where the fading yellow bruise was still visible. “I was never so delighted as when I heard that your cousin had killed him.”
Elizabeth knew from how Darcy sighed that, rather than bringing him any joy, this reminder of Wickham’s death again made him think about how he had now permanently lost a man who had once been one of his dearest friends. She placed her hand on Darcy’s arm and rubbed a small circle around.
He looked back at her with that sweet, heart stopping smile of his. Those serious eyes that were so appreciative of her.
“Oh, you two are so saccharine! Like doves and other love birds. Everyone says you are as pretty a couple as Charlie and Janey. But I don’t think so.”
“No?” Elizabeth asked with a laugh.
“Jane is quite too angelic, I know you , Lizzy. I remember that time you substituted the salt for the sugar just as a joke. Janey would never have done that.”
“No!” Elizabeth cried. “Do not reveal my every poor deed to Darcy.”
Darcy looked at her with those eyes that he had when he wanted to kiss her.
But in addition to Lydia, Mary was also trailing them, wearing a light dress due to the warmth of the day, and holding a book out in front of her. She’d glance up every half a minute or so, both to check her footing, and to ensure that the two of them were not engaged in any behavior that was unbecoming a couple which had not yet made the marital oaths to each other.
“I have loads more stories about Elizabeth,” Lydia said cheerfully to Darcy. “But I shall only reveal them if you buy me a ribbon. Papa isn’t even letting me have the rest of my allowance for the month.”
“Despicable,” Darcy replied solemnly. “Not even your allowance?”
Lydia shoved him too, rather like she had shoved Elizabeth. Elizabeth smiled to see how she was starting to treat Darcy as also a member of the family, and she liked to see how Darcy accepted that gesture of disrespect as the friendliness that it was, rather than becoming offended or awkward.
A minute later he said, “It is very difficult for your father, you know.”
Lydia harrumphed.
“You have learned a lesson, and you know that you learned the lesson. And besides, in the end you did not choose to go with the scoundrel, yet at the same time you must confess that you showed that your judgement lacked something.”
“I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.”
“The set of mistakes that it is possible to make is quite wide. A promise that you would not make any given mistake is not sufficient to make your guardian happy. It is hard… The thing is, Lydia, your father would feel it deeply in his heart if anything really bad happened to you — he likely already does, even though nothing very bad happened.”
“Yes, but can’t he just trust me? I swear, I won’t do anything like that again.”
Darcy smiled. “It is his duty to worry and be scared. You should be a little tolerant of him.”
With a huff, Lydia groaned. “But it’s not fair .”
Elizabeth laughed again.
Later that afternoon, after ribbons, gloves and bonnets had all been purchased for Lydia, they walked back towards Longbourn, with Lydia and Maria Lucas walking ahead of them in close conversation. Mary still trailed slowly behind them, her nose still in a book of sermons — Elizabeth really did not understand how she could find that particular book to be so fascinating as to be worth reading on a walk, but she did not begrudge her sister. After all, Elizabeth had been known to walk about the gardens more than once, or more than even a hundred times, with her nose in her own book.
She snuggled herself close to Darcy, holding his arm, and smiling as she felt a deep sort of satisfaction and delight at being seen by everyone in the neighborhood walking by the side of such a handsome and tall suitor. “I was delighted to see you made an effort to cultivate even Lydia’s friendship.”
“She is a perfectly fine girl,” Darcy replied. “Merely young and with an excess of high spirits.”
Elizabeth took Darcy’s hand and kissed it. “And you seem well on your way to becoming friends with Papa — sitting with him in the book room, going shooting, the two of you with Charlie.”
“He says you are his favorite, and I gain the sense that though you love both your parents, that—”
“I confess my mind is a bit more similar to my father’s.”
“I have in truth always rather admired your mother since that morning at Netherfield, while Jane was sick, when she gave us the tale of those years in Manchester.”
“In truth? I rather would expect you to despise us for the connections to trade — I know Caroline expected you to. She was most embarrassed to have you hear such a tale directly.” Elizabeth flushed. “I confess that I might have been a little embarrassed also.”
Darcy smiled at her. “Let me think how I might say this — I do not, even now, really understand your father’s choice to enter and remain in trade — but it is impossible to not admire anyone who will sacrifice and work consistently in the name of some aim they find important. Someone who chose to live under reduced circumstances for an extended period of years so that he could achieve something great at the end of it. Besides, it is clear that for him there was joy in the whole thing.”
Elizabeth nodded. “That is how I always thought of that story.”
“You shall not,” Darcy proclaimed, “ever be ashamed about your connections with trade. They are who your family was, they are part of how you grew up, and where you come from. I will despise anyone who looks askance at you in such a way.”
“No, no, no,” Elizabeth said laughing, though also touched. “I do not want you to despise anyone for my sake. But if you look at them very sternly on occasion, that would be quite sufficient for what I need.”
“I can sternly look at anyone,” Darcy replied with confidence and a subtle smile.
Elizabeth laughed, and she wanted to hug and kiss him again.
He then said, as they wound close to Longbourn, “I like your father. He reminds me of you — I see how you learned your tendencies of thoughts and ways that I love so much. And he is authentically concerned with your wellbeing, and intelligently so.”
“Oh, no!” Elizabeth blushed. “I hope you do not mean to say he gave you a particularly difficult time when you asked for his consent.”
Darcy actually laughed. “He gave me a difficult time, but I simply explained to him that I had already listened to you upon the same point, and that was enough for him.”
Elizabeth giggled. “Details! But of course Papa would accept your proof that you listened to me as a reason to accept you as a suitor for me. He knows how wise I am.”
“Precisely — chiefly what he spoke on was the importance of forgiveness, not holding grudges. And he seemed to be oddly convinced that you will on occasion annoy me and not always be a happily submissive and obedient wife.”
Another gurgled giggle from Elizabeth.
Darcy nodded his head decidedly. “Precisely. I am shocked too that he misunderstands your character on this point.”
“So you mean to say that rather than being concerned about how you shall treat me, he wished to assure himself that you understood how I shall treat you .”
That lovely wry grin. Elizabeth really wished to kiss Darcy, so she leaned up on her toes, and did kiss him briefly.
Mary shouted from behind them, “No! You cannot do that.”
“Defeated in my schemes once more by your attentive eye.” Elizabeth laughed.
“I’ll tell Mama and Papa that you were kissing,” Mary said, “if you do it again.”
Lydia turned back from her conversation with Maria. “Don’t be such a sour rag, Mary, Mary quite contrary! If anyone was willing to kiss you, you’d like it too.”
“I assure you that I do not want anyone to kiss me. And I am wholly satisfied that if they did, I would not enjoy it.”
“Would too!”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes at Darcy.
He smiled back at her, with that seductive look that made shivers go through Elizabeth’s stomach.
She could hardly wait until this time of engagement was done — though the period had its joys — and they entered into Holy Matrimony, and were socially not merely allowed, but expected to do everything they might imagine with each other.