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  “I doubt Colonel Forster is so concerned.”

  “A young lady very nearly the same age as the Colonel’s wife was spirited away in the dead of night by one of his own officers. Every man in their regiment will be considered incompetent. They will get no promotions, the Colonel might lose his command, and officers such as Denny, who spent all their time with Wickham, might even lose their commissions.”

  “Militias are not so honestly run as you seem to think.”

  “I do believe that Colonel Forster is a good man and will insist upon such things because if he does not, then the father of a fallen girl might slander his name to such a degree that it will shame his own family and their reputation. A man does not get to be a militia Colonel without some familial connections of his own. What Wickham has done has the potential to ruin not only Lydia, but every other officer in his regiment and trickle back to his own kin.”

  “And how does that help me now?”

  “It will help you if you help yourself first.”

  “You think I ought to run off to Scotland and make him marry her?”

  “I think that you should be willing to. And if you must, perhaps you ought to be willing to ruin some lives in order to secure it. This is not the time to be passive in the face of difficulty.”

  “You mean as I have always been. Would you have me on the way to Scotland this very morning, or running about Meryton demanding to know if any of my neighbors ever heard Wickham telling of his favorite places to visit in Gretna Green?”

  “In truth, I believe you should sleep. Judging by the letter he sent, Colonel Forster could be here as early as this morning and I imagine that you will want to start off after receiving whatever information he has to offer you.”

  Mr. Bennet didn’t break his gaze out the window now that the morning fog had burned off and all the world was bright and wonderful with the light of summer. Charlotte left him to his shock and his congealed breakfast.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Colonel Forster was a distinguished-looking man who had always struck Charlotte as serviceable. She didn’t imagine that controlling a regiment of soldiers in a peaceful place such a Meryton would require much in the way of skill, only in keeping them fit and away from the young ladies of the neighborhood, a task at which he had failed miserably. Charlotte’s opinion of the man had lowered considerably after she had met his wife, for no man of decent sense could choose such a lady. Although, Charlotte’s judgment on that front was no different than it was generally.

  Charlotte supposed it said something good about Colonel Forster that he arrived the very afternoon after his unfortunate express was delivered. He appeared on horseback, dirty from the road and more frantic than Charlotte thought a man of his profession ought to be. She sent Mary and Kitty to recall Jane from their mother’s room and gave them explicit instructions to do so without telling their mother the Colonel had arrived. To Mary, she couched it in terms of efficiency and to Kitty, Charlotte fixed her with the same glower she always used when the girls needed to be stopped from doing something reprehensible. As usual, Kitty jutted up her chin and pretended to be unaffected, but she would behave. It would be Jane’s responsibility to later tell Mrs. Bennet everything discussed, but the lady of the house being present would only make an already uncomfortable situation almost impossible. This was a time for facts and information, not to be overly concerned with Mrs. Bennet’s nerves, or how she had always known that Mr. Wickham wasn’t to be trusted.

  If the Colonel was surprised to see a Miss Lucas keeping company with the Bennets on a morning such as this, he didn’t show it. While Jane was being retrieved, Charlotte stepped into Mr. Bennet’s office and, with all the strength she could infuse into her voice, urged the man into the sitting room. He could continue staring at nothing so long as he did it in a place where it might encourage the Colonel to answer their questions instead of sparing their feminine sensibilities. Jane handled the introductions and pointed the Colonel to the sofa across from where she and Charlotte refused to be moved. Mr. Bennet settled off to the side, enduring the conversation rather than participating in it.

  “Mr. Bennet, I haven’t the words to offer you my apologies for this situation.”

  Mr. Bennet rallied and replied, “I almost feel as though I ought to be apologizing to you, sir. I had anticipated that Lydia would make a fool of herself at Brighton, but not something like this. I can’t fault you for failing to control her when the rest of us couldn’t manage the task.”

  The Colonel nodded his thanks and immediately handed over the letter Lydia had left waiting in her room for his wife to discover. Mr. Bennet scanned the letter quickly and handed it to Charlotte, who read it alongside Jane.

  “MY DEAR HARRIET,

  “You will laugh when you know where I am gone, and I cannot help laughing myself at your surprise tomorrow morning as soon as I am missed. I am going to Gretna Green, and if you cannot guess with who I shall think you a simpleton, for there is but one man in the world I love, and he is an angel. I should never be happy without him, so think it no harm to be off. You need not send them word at Longbourn of my going, if you do not like it, for it will make the surprise the greater, when I write to them and sign my name ‘Lydia Wickham.’ What a good joke it will be! I can hardly write for laughing.

  “Pray make my excuses to Pratt for not keeping my engagement and dancing with him tonight. Tell him I hope he will excuse me when he knows all, and tell him I will dance with him at the next ball we meet, with great pleasure. I shall send for my clothes when I get to Longbourn but I wish you would tell Sally to mend a great slit in my worked muslin gown before they are packed up. Goodbye. Give my love to Colonel Forster. I hope you will drink to our good journey.

  “Your affectionate friend,

  “LYDIA BENNET.”

  “At least we have confirmation Lydia intended to marry him. Small though it is, that is something.” Charlotte said. “Did neither of them give any indication that they had such intentions?”

  “I suspected some partiality towards one another, particularly from Miss Bennet towards the lieutenant, but she is young and he is charming. Nothing about the behavior on either side suggested to me any serious sort of attachment. If I may speak bluntly, during his time in my regiment I have seen the lieutenant almost wed several times and Miss Lydia did not strike me as a girl with the sort of… qualities that I have seen Wickham value in a woman. Their partiality seemed born of the situation rather than anything to give me cause for alarm.” Charlotte supposed it was some sort of honesty to only imply that Lydia lacked the funds necessary to hold Wickham’s interest rather than state it outright.

  “Pardon me, Colonel,” Jane said. “You said in your letter that you had hoped to set upon them before they made it to Gretna Green. Did you find any sign of them?”

  The Colonel flinched and glanced towards Mr. Bennet as though he expected to be stopped. Poor Mr. Bennet looked as though he had squandered all his strength and returned to the stupor of last night. “I am afraid the signs I found were not what I had hoped. Before I undertook my journey I questioned Denny and the other officers that are often in Wickham’s company.” The Colonel paused, and Charlotte was not in the mood to let him avoid the conversation any longer.

  “Upon which I assume he informed you that Mr. Wickham had no intention of marrying.”

  The Colonel braced himself and declared, “Mr. Denny denied knowing anything of their plans and refused to give me his opinion on whether or not he believed Wickham intended to wed.”

  “And you didn’t secure his opinion nonetheless?”

  “I considered him too good a friend to Wickham to betray anything and moved on to the other officers. Lieutenant Pratt informed me that Denny had mentioned to them that he believed Wickham never meant to go to Gretna Green or to marry Miss Lydia at all. With that information, I was on my way directly to try and catch their carriage or some word of them. I traced them easily to Clapham, but I am afraid I could do
no further. According to my knowledge, they dismissed the chaise that had brought them from Epsom and removed to a hackney coach. It took considerable persuasion on my part to discover that they were seen continuing on the London road. I am so late in coming to speak to you because I have been making every possible inquiry from here to London at every turnpike and inn that I came across, but I had no success. They were not seen to pass through.”

  “So you suspect that they have taken refuge in London?”

  “It is the only place where they might be so well hidden.”

  “I still have my hopes that when we find them they will be married,” Jane said. “Their circumstances, his finances, and the truth that her family and his commander will undoubtedly be following them, especially after Lydia no doubt revealed that she had left behind a note, might make it more eligible for them to be married privately in town rather than pursue their first plan.”

  The Colonel shook his head. “I begin to fear that lieutenant Wickham is not a man to be trusted.”

  “Not just because of this incident, I assume?”

  “One of the reasons why his fellow officers didn’t believe Wickham intended to marry Miss Lydia was because it seems that he left Meryton greatly in debt. Wickham has never been a wholly prudent man, but I had hoped it was only a matter of his being new in the militia and that time alone might be enough to balance his temperament. I imagine that when I take more time to discuss Wickham’s behavior with his fellows we will discover all manner of unfortunate information about his conduct here.”

  “I hope this may be false.”

  “It speaks well of you that you cling to such hopes, Miss Bennet. Though for the sake of honesty, I must warn you to prepare yourself for the worst. I’m afraid that I must be back at Brighton tomorrow evening, but I will spend every minute that I can in between in London in the hopes I might discover them.”

  “I will join you.” They were the first words Mr. Bennet had spoken in at least ten minutes. Were the circumstances different, Charlotte would have supposed that he had fallen asleep with his eyes open. Colonel Forster agreed and accepted their offer of a meal while Mr. Bennet packed a small bag so that they might be off as quickly as possible.

  Jane followed hard on her father’s heels out of the room and up the stairs. “But father, where will you go?”

  “To Epsom first, and see if anything can be made from them from there.” Whatever else his plans might have been, Charlotte would have to wait to hear them because she was left to guide Colonel Forster to the dining room and see to his sustenance.

  The Colonel startled when Charlotte set down across from him at the table, having expected to be left on his own for at least a moment while the rest of the family ran about and prepared to send him on his way with their father. He started to rise, but Charlotte waived him back to his seat. “Colonel Forster, I would appreciate whatever truth it was you tried to spare Mr. Bennet from hearing.”

  “Miss Lucas—”

  “Colonel Forster, under normal circumstances Miss Elizabeth Bennet would be the person sitting here asking you all manner of uncomfortable questions about the truths that you consider too impolite to share in mixed company and before a stricken father. However, Miss Elizabeth is currently away from home and I am sure she has not yet received our letter asking her to come home and offer aid. As her friend, it is my responsibility to act on her behalf and to ask those questions that her family cannot. Now, I ask again, what it is you were concerned about sharing with Mr. Bennet?”

  The Colonel took a long drink while he steeled himself to answer. “According to my officers, Wickham was in debt to all of them. None of them were particularly concerned about that matter, because sharing funds to help those with a lack is common among young, unmarried officers.”

  Charlotte did not ask why, if it was so common, the Colonel was so concerned. She let him take another bite while he summoned his courage to go on.

  “They all believed that they would be paid back, for Wickham has been good about that sort of thing the entire time they’ve known him. However, it seems that Wickham has been far worse at paying back those outside of our regiment. Wickham is in a rather noticeable level of debt to more tradesmen then my officers can name. I know neither the number of tradesmen nor the amount of debt that he has incurred just here in Meryton, let alone in Brighton.”

  “And your officers were not concerned about this behavior?” It hardly seemed like the kind of thing Colonel Fitzwilliam would allow among his own regiment. Although, perhaps that was the difference between a true gentleman commander and one who had been appointed to the station. Though Charlotte could hardly judge all men by the Colonel Fitzwilliam standard since none thus far had reached that man’s height.

  “It is the nature of men to be more concerned that their own debts are settled. So long as he continued to repay them, the officers weren’t concerned with his debts towards other people.”

  “Foolish though I consider it, I can understand such logic in young men on a fixed income. If he does marry Lydia, the responsibility will fall on Mr. Bennet to settle his degenerate son-in-law’s debts.” The Colonel nodded in agreement, but he looked so hesitant that Charlotte knew there had to be more. “Colonel? I promise you, it is better that I be informed of this than the family be surprised when they hear it from their neighbors.”

  “The more upright of my men have informed me that Lieutenant Wickham had a habit of securing his loans not from the tradesmen themselves, but rather from their daughters.” Charlotte neither flinched nor blushed, leaving her expression so unmoved that the poor Colonel felt the need to clarify that Wickham’s charms had extended into seductions.

  “Multiple?”

  “Enough that my men could not name any specific names.”

  Charlotte swallowed back her mortification at what must be asked. “Are there any children?”

  “No! No, thank heavens! If there was a pregnancy none of my officers have heard a word about it.”

  “I believe they are correct in that, at least. There have been no whispers of any young ladies abruptly leaving the neighborhood.”

  “A small favor we can be grateful for, I suppose. I would like to think that he has perhaps only broken hearts and not robbed any young lady of her virtue because that seems the sort of thing that cannot be kept concealed for very long and the other young ladies would have been informed.”

  “That is a lovely supposition, Colonel. It is one I have never seen in effect in the real world, but it is nice to think of nonetheless. But you are correct, at least something in this situation had to have gone in our favor.”

  Mr. Bennet left with Colonel Forster, despite the vehement objections of his wife that he was only riding off to duel Wickham and be killed for the trouble, leaving them all destitute and to be turned out into the street. Mr. Bennet snapped back that he was willing to take that minuscule chance in order to protect the one daughter he knew would be turned out. Not a single Bennet woman had a thing to say against that and he strode out the door with more strength then he had managed since the express arrived. Charlotte wondered if that strength would do much more than see him on his way.

  Despite Charlotte’s efforts to keep things quiet, there was no keeping an affair such as this from the servants, or keeping the servants from talking to the neighbors. That very afternoon Mrs. Phillips arrived to make herself of use to her nieces. Charlotte’s mother sent Maria to ask if their family could be of any more help under the circumstances, but Charlotte declined on their behalf. It was already all Charlotte could do to keep things quiet with Mrs. Phillips coming and going. Adding Charlotte’s family and younger siblings would only make matters worse, no matter how much she might like to pretend otherwise.

  There was little they could do in this situation beyond wait for a letter from Mr. Bennet updating them or for some sign from Elizabeth, but neither came. Charlotte was informed that Mr. Bennet had always been an unreliable writing companion, and they all as
sumed that Lizzy wouldn’t waste her time writing back when she could simply come home. Without word from London, all their efforts were aimed at preserving silence, a feat that took all Charlotte’s skill despite it likely being a waste.

  For Charlotte, the worst part of the affair was not the waiting, or the silence, or Mrs. Bennet voicing all the worries that she was being kept from sharing with the outside world, but Charlotte’s own guilt. Not that Lydia had not been properly informed about Wickham’s poor behavior—it likely would’ve thrown her into the man’s arms even sooner—but that there was a small, vicious part of her that was relieved. It was growing ever more unlikely that Lydia would come back to them married, and with a fallen sister Elizabeth would never be married either. That meant Elizabeth would be like Charlotte now. Jane was still so beautiful and sweet-natured that some gentleman wouldn’t mind that she had a tainted family, but Elizabeth and her sharp tongue would never be free of Wickham’s shame. In her worst moments, Charlotte began imagining them living in a house off their shared income, only increased by her Charlotte’s brothers and her sisters’ husbands anxious to have their houses to themselves. Charlotte ruthlessly silenced those thoughts, for they were cruel when the Bennets were still struggling to save their family. But still, the dreams persisted and still, they waited.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Charlotte returned home to Lucas Lodge past dark after her fourth day of aiding the Bennets. She had intended to spend at least a little time with her own family that night, discomfited to be without her sisters after the last few months in their constant company. But as Charlotte had been about to step out the door, Mrs. Bennet had decided to rejoin her family at the table. She spent the entire meal weeping over her plate and disparaging her daughters’ attempts at cheer. There was no enjoying the meal or escaping it until such time as Mrs. Bennet decided they all understood her pain and she could sleep well with the certainty that every remaining member of the household knew the details of her fluttering nerves and spasming heart. They were all trapped there for the extended duration of dinner, Mrs. Bennet refusing to be consoled, Jane failing to understand that such refusal was rather the point, and Charlotte trying to silence Mary and Kitty with no more than the power of her eyes since neither realized that every word they spoke only drove their mother deeper into hysterics.