Chapter 4 A Winter Wrong

Leaving the room to fly up the stairs, Elizabeth placed the books in her personal trunk and locked the lid. Sliding the key into her pocket, she noticed that a thin, green ribbon had fluttered to the floor and now lay at her feet.

“Oh, Papa!” she sobbed as she delicately lifted the ribbon. It was one of the first bookmarks she had used as a young girl. Collapsing to the floor of her bedroom, she held the ribbon gingerly in her fingertips and replayed the awfulness in the study below. Her fingers nimbly fashioned a sad, little bow with frayed edges. Clutching her treasure, she flicked her slippers off and put on her sturdier walking boots.

As she donned her gray cloak from the hall, she could hear Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy discussing individual books and their worth.

“Oh ho, where are you off to, Missy?” Mrs. Bennet’s voice stopped Elizabeth mid-step in the hall. “Jane has just had a message that Mr. Bingley shall join us for dinner, and I’m off now to extend the invitation to Mr. Darcy.”

Elizabeth whirled around to see her mother in full widow regalia and remained silent. Her red-rimmed eyes were all her mother needed to shoo her least favorite daughter out of the house while she distracted the men in the study.

The weeds of summer lay down in brown crisps as Elizabeth trudged through the very fields she had been quizzed upon. She muttered curses and vexes against Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy as she cried for her own powerlessness. Her father was gone, and with him, her only ally in this world.

Within the half hour, Elizabeth arrived at her destination, and she weaved her way through generations of previous Longbourn residents in the church’s cemetery before she came upon the freshly disturbed earth of her father’s resting place. Dropping to her knees, she bowed her head and uttered the Lord’s Prayer before purging her heart of all of the anger and mean-spirited thoughts she felt pent up inside.

As the golds and rusts of autumn rustled in the branches around her, she felt her prayers and complaints had been rendered to the Lord’s feet, and she prayed once more for her father’s forgiveness that she could not save but a fraction of his most prized possessions. With fresh tears threatening to spill over the edges of her eyes, she very gingerly dug a small hole near the simple wooden cross awaiting a more permanent headstone, marking where her father’s head lay. Placing the ribbon bow she had made earlier into the hole, Elizabeth couldn’t hold back her emotions as she covered it and openly sobbed that she had nothing more substantial to place in her father’s memory.

It was in this condition that a young soldier in regimentals speaking with the local vicar approached Elizabeth, interrupting her uncontrollable keening.

“Elizabeth, my child.” Parson Willoughby reached out his infirm hands to the crying woman he had baptized as an infant. “How is your family?”

Elizabeth wiped her eyes and accepted the vicar’s well wishes. “Mama is strong, and my sisters manage.”

“Pardon me, but may I be of some assistance in helping you home?” Elizabeth blinked a few times and then looked back at the vicar who nodded his approval.

“Lieutenant George Wickham, madam, at your service,” the man said with a flourished bow and a charming smile.

Elizabeth curtsied and gave her name. Surely a soldier spending his off hours at a church could mean her no harm. Yet, her curious nature still asked him why he was there.

“Oh, I was meant for the church, once upon a time. My godfather had sent me to university for that very purpose. And now that I’m a soldier, I still find such a sense of calm in the pews, that I visit the local church at each of our stations.”

The two walked along, and Elizabeth asked the fine Lieutenant more questions to measure the mettle of the man, and his answers were all that a man of the cloth should be. So finally, she asked the question Wickham was waiting most anxiously to hear.

“You seem so suited for the Church. However did you become a soldier?” she asked.

“When the living came available on my godfather’s great estate, the new heir denied me the inheritance, though he was aware of his father’s express wishes.” Mr. Wickham looked away as he shared such a painful memory.

“How awful! Could you not seek remedy from the law? How could a loyal son be so dishonorable to the wishes of his father?” Elizabeth thought of the disloyalty in her cousin to so swiftly sell the prized possessions of his predecessor. She could easily relate to Mr. Wickham’s plight.

Lieutenant Wickham paused and looked down the road ahead of them. He had an idea it would not take much longer to escort this young woman home. Therefore, he shortened his well-practiced tale of woe.

“Sadly Miss Bennet, the relief of the court is too high a price for a pauper such as myself, and the understanding was never directly written out. Old Mr. Darcy never thought there would be a need since his son and I attended Oxford together.”

Elizabeth gasped at the name. It couldn’t be, could it? Had Mr. Darcy also burdened this poor man with his high and haughty ways by making yet another’s will and bequest nothing more than a business transaction?

“I apologize for being so inquisitive, but I noticed you reacted to my mention of the Darcy name. Pray, are you acquainted?”

“I am sad to inform you, sir, that a Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy resides in my father’s study as we speak to assist my cousin in determining the value of my father’s books so they may be sold.” Elizabeth’s voice wavered mid-sentence, but she spat the last word out as if it was the vilest resident of the English language.

Mr. Wickham stopped their progress to take Miss Elizabeth’s hand and cupped it with his own. “I am most heartily ashamed of how my childhood friend has hurt your family, Miss Bennet. I had hopes that only I was to be pained and hindered by his prejudice.” He squeezed her hand and bowed low over it, but did not move so forward as to bestow a kiss.

Slightly cheered in her heart that another could understand her misery, Elizabeth thanked Mr. Wickham as they reached the edge of her home’s garden and she invited him in to meet the rest of her family. She explained that she was but one of five daughters and the name Miss Bennet was reserved for her elder sister, Jane.

“There is no other place I should rather go at this very moment, Miss Elizabeth than to spend another quiet half-hour’s conversation with your lovely company. Alas, I have been away from my regiment for too long and must double-time back for evening muster. I hope we shall see each other again, soon.”

And with another low bow, Mr. Wickham was gone back toward Meryton where the militia quartered for the winter and Elizabeth was forced to face a dinner with both her cousin and Mr. Darcy in attendance. Deciding she would not succumb to the frail position Mr. Collins and others may insinuate she be in, she resolved to plead a headache and take her meal in her room. Since her appearance was still wild and her eyes hopelessly red, her mother happily agreed for Elizabeth to remain upstairs for the meal and socializing afterward.

Elizabeth spent the evening finishing the last of the death notices to family and friends. Despite many attempts, the missive to her aunt and uncle in London still had large, fat tear stains. But she had managed to write a clear direction to Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner of Gracechurch Street.