She heard voices from the parlour. Kitty’s, bright and faintly exasperated, and next to it—quieter, thinner, but present—Lydia’s.
Elizabeth’s hand tightened on the doorframe.
She crossed the narrow hall and stood at the threshold. Kitty was on the settee, her legs folded beneath her, a basket of mending between them. Lydia sat beside her. She held a stocking stretched over her left fist, a needle in her right, and she was attempting a darn.
The stitches were dreadful. Crooked, too loose, the thread pulling at odd angles. Kitty would have to unpick every one and redo them. But Lydia’s head was bent over the work, her brow furrowed, her lips pressed in concentration. She was in the light, downstairs, doing work.
“You are pulling too hard, Lyddie. Ease the tension or you will pucker the whole heel.”
“I am not pulling too hard. The needle is defective.”
“The needle is perfectly sound. I have darned forty stockings with that needle.”
“Then the stocking is defective.”
Elizabeth pressed her back against the wall and closed her eyes. Her chest ached with the small, stubborn miracle of Lydia Bennet arguing about thread tension.
She composed herself, stepped inside and smiled. “Good morning, ladies.”
Kitty sprang up and threw her arms around her. Lydia raised her head. The smile she offered was not the brittle, effortful thing Elizabeth had braced for. It was small, tired, but real.
“Lizzy. You are early.”
“I am. The streets were clear.” She crossed the room and kissed the top of Lydia’s head. “Are you mending?”
“I am destroying. Kitty is too polite to say so.”
“I am not remotely polite,” Kitty corrected. “I simply value my remaining stockings too highly to offend the person holding the needle.”
Lydia’s mouth twitched in a small smile.
Elizabeth sat and joined the mending for half an hour. She threaded needles, turned heels, answered Kitty’s questions about Anne’s latest philosophical pronouncements. Lydia merely listened. She did not contribute much—a word here, a half-finished observation there—but she was in the room. She was occupying space without apology, and for her, that was a continent crossed.
Mrs Bennet appeared from the kitchen with tea. She set the tray down, surveyed her three daughters, and said, “Lydia, your stitches are an abomination. Let Kitty help you before you ruin it entirely.”
“Yes, Mamma.”
“And sit up straight. Posture does not cost money.”
She swept back to the kitchen. Lydia straightened her spine by a fraction and caught Elizabeth’s eye. The glance held a flicker—wry, faintly conspiratorial—and Elizabeth’s chest tightened again.
She waited until Kitty left to fetch fresh thread from upstairs, her footsteps quick on the narrow staircase. From the kitchen came the scrape of Mrs Bennet moving a pot, and beyond the window, a cart rattled past.
Elizabeth set her mending down.
“Lydia.”
Her sister’s hands stilled on the stocking. She did not raise her head, but her shoulders drew inward, a small protective contraction. She knew this tone. She had heard it before—in doctors’ visits, in her mother’s careful questions, in every conversation that began with her name spoken gently and followed with information she did not want to hear.
“I need to tell you something. It will not be easy to hear, but you deserve to know it, and I will not keep it from you any longer.”
Lydia set the stocking in her lap. Her fingers pressed flat against the wool. She met Elizabeth’s eyes. The steadiness in them was new; hard-won, brittle at the edges, but present.
“Tell me, Lizzy.”
“Wickham is dead.”
The word landed in the parlour and the air left the room.