An Unlikely Acquaintance

Part 16

"Are you quite comfortable, Jane?" Elizabeth asked, when the delicate features of her sister's face contorted in something that might have been pain. The features quirked again, this time into a smile.

"Quite comfortable, thank you." She tugged at a crease in her skirts. "At least as comfortable as I was five minutes ago when last you asked."

Lizzy chuckled, not a bit affronted to have her concern remarked upon. She turned back to the book she was only half-reading and turned a page before wondering if she ought to offer some service to the sister that was still bound to remain seated until her ankle was completely healed.

"Perhaps you would like -"

"Perhaps I would like nothing but the silent pleasure of your company!" Jane shot back before Lizzy could even finish her comment. "Truly, Lizzy, you need not fuss over me as if I was an invalid."

A memory came back to Elizabeth, then, of the last time she had fussed over Jane when her sister had taken ill at Netherfield and Lizzy had marched the three miles to attend to her without a second thought. The two sisters' eyes met, and Lizzy wondered if Jane's memory had taken the same turn. Before either of them could say another word, though, there was a flurry of activity in the corridor and the door to the quiet Longbourn parlour flew open to admit an excitable, rosy-cheeked Kitty.

"What do you think, girls! Mr Wickham is to come -"

"I'm telling it!" Lydia burst in, elbowing her sister sharply in the side and delivering the news in a rush before any more of it could be taken from her. "Mr Wickham is to accompany Colonel Fitzwilliam to dine this evening." She beamed, triumphantly, as if she was singly responsible for this particular development. Lizzy, having witnessed her sister's forthright behaviour at the barracks was forced to acknowledge that this was very possibly the case.

"Mr Wickham?" Jane glanced at her sister and Lizzy did her best to ignore her. How she wished she had never confided to Jane the idle reflection that Mr Wickham could be quite charming when he wished to be. Her sister had spun the whole thing into an affection that did not exist and had never ceased from teasing Lizzy about the charming Mr Wickham.

"Do not sound so surprised, Jane!" Lydia said, flopping into a chair before the fire and pulling off her gloves before stretching her hands out towards the heat of the flames. "Mr Wickham is our friend. Why should he not come to dine here?"

"Why, indeed," Jane said, her gaze still dancing amusedly at Lizzy, who had suddenly taken a very great and all-consuming interest in her book.

"Colonel Fitzwilliam asked after you," Kitty put in, finding, at last, a strand of conversation that could be all her own. She beamed, stepping a little further into the room and claiming a chair nearest Jane. "He was pleased to hear that you are a little on the mend."

"How kind."

Something in Jane's voice made Lizzy look up and she was surprised to see a tinge of pink dart across her sister's cheeks. She frowned, wondering when she had last seen her sister struggle to restrain a smile when the realisation dawned on her. Mr Bingley had been the last person to make Jane blush and smile and pretend not to. Mr Bingley is not here... she thought, turning over the idea that was just beginning to form in her mind. But Colonel Fitzwilliam is!

Perhaps all was not lost in the wake of Mr Bingley's flight to London. Lizzy had been so determined to call him back, to somehow reunite the two lovers parted by circumstance - or by the interference of friends, Lizzy was not entirely sure who to hold responsible for Jane's heartbreak - that she had not fully considered before now that his absence left Jane's heart open for another.

Settling back into her seat, and angling her book so that her face might be obscured from scrutiny by the pages she did not read, she watched Jane carefully as she quizzed the two younger Bennet sisters on their afternoon in Meryton, the way she strove not to mention Colonel Fitzwilliam by name, but still succeeded in steering their conversation back to him.

Could it be that Jane was a little in love with the colonel already? She had lost her heart to Mr Bingley quickly enough, and whilst Lizzy thought it nigh on impossible for herself to fall in love twice in quick succession - she marvelled at the notion of her exacting standards ever being met once in a man - she supposed she was not her sister. Jane's tender heart is already two-thirds lost to any person she meets, she reminded herself, conscious of her defects when it came to such openness. And Colonel Fitzwilliam has been seen to be not only handsome and charming but gallant too. Who could forget the way he had insisted on seeing Jane home when she turned her ankle - carrying her as easily and comfortably as if she had been nothing.

A sly smile crept onto Lizzy's face and she quite forgot to turn a page, betraying to anyone who cared to notice that her mind was not lost in her book at all but turning over just how she might succeed in securing for her sister, not the hand of absent Mr Bingley but the heart of the very-much-present Colonel Fitzwilliam.

Jane deserves to be happy, she thought. And if not with Mr Bingley, then with someone altogether more deserving of her! True, her life wold perhaps not be quite so comfortable as the wife of a colonel as it might have been wed to a gentleman, but there were far more important things in life than mere money.

Quite by chance, her mind taunted her with the image of Mr Darcy and she was forced to acknowledge that he, more than anyone she had met, embodied the maxim that money could not buy happiness.

"Don't you think so, Lizzy?"

Elizabeth flinched, realising, too late, that Kitty had posed a question demanding of an answer, and she hurried to offer one.

"Oh! Indeed. Yes."

Jane glanced at Lydia and the two burst into laughter, directed this time at Elizabeth.

"I do not believe you heard a word we have been saying," Jane remarked. "No matter, for doubtless if you had been listening you would have offered your own opinion of the absent friends we discuss. Let us merely agree that it shall be pleasant to have guests again. To think, Lizzy, we nursed the private fear that January would be very bleak indeed. How wrong we were! Now, dear, you were so eager to be of service to my poor, prone self. I don't suppose I could ask you to work up the fire a little? It has got a little chilly since Kitty and Lydia came back. And maybe we should rouse Mama to join us in a spot of tea..."