Lydia Read online

  I suppose they must be married, though he is so very young.

  We went to dance tonight at the Ship Assembly Rooms, which is a very grand establishment on the seafront, with rooms for cards and assemblies and a new ballroom that is the finest I have ever seen, painted all blue and gold, with double rows of seating at either end and an excellent dance floor, and because it is my birthday and I said I had never tasted it, Denny ordered champagne. “When the war is finished,” he said as he filled my glass, “we will all go to France and bathe in the stuff. But for now, we must content ourselves with merely drinking it, because it is a great deal more expensive here than it is over there.”

  I defy anyone not to look inelegant when they take their first sip of champagne. I was completely unprepared for it. Bubbles exploded on my tongue and up my nose, making me snort, then sneeze, then burst out laughing.

  “Good?” Denny grinned.

  “Wonderful,” I admitted, and he refilled my glass.

  Until tonight, I had not spoken to Wickham since the evening at the theatre, when I disclosed that I knew the truth about Georgiana, and he has not sought me out. As I sipped my champagne, I was aware of him watching me across the room. I turned away, but soon enough there was a light touch at my elbow, and he was standing beside me. The orchestra was striking up after a pause, a tune I did not know.

  “Will you grant me a birthday dance?”

  It is not easy to be haughty with Wickham, because he never really appears to notice, but I tried.

  “I find I do not care to dance.”

  “Well, I know that is a lie. Lydia Bennet, not care to dance!”

  “I do not care to dance with you.”

  “Ah, that is more serious.”

  I glared at him. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, but he looked grave.

  “Come, Lydia,” he said. “We are old friends, are we not? I apologise, sincerely and without reserve, for any harm I have done you.”

  “Not only me.”

  “You, or any other person.”

  “And you promise that you will not try to ruin any more young ladies.”

  “On my honour, I promise.”

  The dancers were taking their places. The music was irresistible.

  “I find I do not care much for your promises,” I murmured.

  “Lydia!”

  “Just one dance,” I said, and he led me on to the floor.

  I hate to say it, but I had forgotten what fun it is to dance with Wickham. The dance was a waltz, which is quite new, even in Brighton. You have to stand very close to your partner, and he holds your hand and places his other hand around your waist, and you go round and round until your pulse is racing and you feel quite giddy. It is considered extremely shocking, but I honestly think all dances should be like that, always.

  “Well?” Wickham smiled as it ended. “Am I forgiven?”

  He was a little breathless, his hair out of place. Suddenly, I saw him just as I had at Longbourn, that afternoon when he first taught me to ride, pacing about the paddock in his shirtsleeves, patiently exhorting me to sit straight and not to grip so tightly, and I almost relented.

  “I will think about it,” I said.

  The orchestra had abandoned the waltz, and changed back to more familiar reels. I danced with Denny and Carter and Pratt and several others whom I did not know. I danced until my feet hurt and I moved from scarlet coat to scarlet coat until I no longer saw their faces. At one point, I stumbled, thinking I glimpsed a head of dark curls, a red scarf, but when I looked again it was not the poet from the beach but someone altogether different.

  What a year it has been since my last birthday, when Mary gave me this diary! How much I have had to write!

  I was very much in demand this evening, and I did not speak with Wickham again, but – if he behaves himself and even though he is awful – I think I may forgive him. After all, no one dances as well as he does.

  Sunday, 14th June

  Last night I had a dream. The whole world was green, and I was underwater with Wickham, trying to waltz, but I couldn’t breathe. A hand plunged into the water from above. I thought it must be Janet’s and clung to it, but as it dragged me into the light, fire took the place of water, which turned into swirling locks of bright red hair, and a voice told me there was nothing to be afraid of. I smiled in my dream, thinking the voice belonged to the young lady from the beach, but then it became Darcy, saying “The seaside is dangerous, Lydia,” and I was back in the sea of green, which now was the flooded woods of Longbourn, and the red-haired young lady was swimming away with her mermaid strokes, and the forest stretched for miles as my voice echoed from tree to tree, calling for her to come back. I woke with a single thought – that I must go to the sea and learn to swim.

  Harriet says she never sleeps well after champagne. “It is the acidity,” she says, though I think it is more to do with how many gallons she drank. Either way, she has forgotten her vow to swim every day and would not stir from her bed this morning.

  “Then I shall go alone,” I declared.

  Well, that did not go down well. What would she say to my poor mother, Harriet cried, if a French frigate came suddenly into the bay and sailed away with me to Calais? The French were notorious kidnappers! Or what if Janet should take it upon herself to drown me? With no one to attend me, I could be dead or gone for hours before she found out.

  “And besides,” Harriet added. “How shall I amuse myself when you are not here?”

  “Do you mean when I am dead and drowned, or just while I am bathing?”

  “Oh, Lydia!”

  She is beginning to sound exactly like my sisters.

  I never was more fidgety in my life than lazing about the house this morning. The need to be outside, to shake off the dream, was like an itch. I could not lie on Harriet’s bed to read to her as she requested, or lounge on the sofa in the parlour, but paced about the tiny house and twitched the curtains and was all in all so successfully irritating that after an hour Harriet begged me, please, “to go out and not come back until you can be still”.

  “You are quite impossible,” she groaned.

  “You are not the first to say that,” I admitted as I fled.

  Down the street I hurried, clutching my bundle of bathing things (I have quite done away with the cumbersome basket). Along East Cliff, where a brisk wind whipped my skirts about my legs, towards the beach. The sea was another colour again today. Darker blue, with sharp frilled crests and spray blowing everywhere and a thick blue band on the horizon. For a moment, I forgot all about the young lady and gentleman and green dresses and dreams. That is the way, I am finding, when you look at the sea. There is only . . . it. Even though I have had several swimming lessons now with Janet, I still can’t quite shake away the fear. I tightened my grip on my bundle and headed towards the steps, but I never made it to the beach.

  I had to step aside at the top of the steps to make way for a lady coming up. As I waited, I chanced to look over my shoulder, and I saw – them. I recognised him first. In his fitted blue coat and with the red scarf still about his throat, he is unmistakable. She no longer looked like a mermaid, but wore an elegant striped dress of dark corbeau green and white, with a trim jacket of red velvet, her hair coiled and twisted beneath a large white hat fastened beneath her chin with a matching red ribbon. Together they came out of the apothecary’s shop, and walked across the street to where a local boy stood holding a plain black trap hitched to a single grey mare. The gentleman held out his hand as the young lady sprang lightly on to the high seat, then climbed in after her and took the reins. The mare set off at a trot towards the Steine.

  “Don’t go,” I whispered. And then, like the answer to a prayer, a very smart dark-grey curricle drew up beside me and a familiar voice called down.

  “Miss Lydia Bennet! What are you doing out by yourself on this fine morning?”

  I looked up. Wickham, very politely, tipped his hat.

  “Help me up!”
I cried. “And follow that trap!”

  For all his faults, I must admit that Wickham is excellent in emergencies. His reaction to girls leaping into his curricle and ordering him to give chase to perfect strangers is not, as a normal person’s would be, to ask “Why?” or “Are you quite mad?” Not in the least. Wickham’s reaction to my dramatic appearance by his side was to crack his whip with a merry “Aye-aye, Captain!” and immediately obey.

  It was not easy. In the time that passed between the trap driving away and Wickham and I giving chase, every other vehicle in Brighton appeared to have come out into the street – farmers’ carts and fishmongers’ trolleys, fashionable landaus and heavy-looking coaches, gentlemen on horseback and ladies in open carriages – the whole lot of them. I had to stand up from my seat to keep the black trap in sight.

  “Wickham!” I cried, pointing down Marine Parade. “They are getting away!”

  “Hold on to your bonnet,” he said, and then, I don’t know how he did it, but Wickham is obviously a horse-handling genius, for by nudging and shuffling and barging his way forward, with a flick of his whip here and a slap of the reins there, with a smile and a tip of his hat and a series of cheery apologies, he had us clear of that jam and on to the open road in no time at all.

  “Faster now, my beauties!” Wickham cracked his whip, and we tore along at a smart trot. I squealed. People stared. As the traffic thinned, he urged the horses on again and faces and buildings became a blur.

  “Excellent sport!” Wickham called over the wind. “I must rescue you more often!”

  “Can you see them?” I shouted.

  “Straight up ahead! We are gaining on them. What’s the plan, Lydia?”

  “I don’t know!” I cried. “Just keep chasing!”

  “Whoa, there!” Wickham pulled on the reins. The horses slowed to a trot. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Lydia, what are we actually doing here?”

  I realised that I hadn’t a clue.

  The horses settled into a walk. Wickham assumed a pious expression that did not suit him.

  “I really don’t think I can allow this behaviour, Lydia. As an old friend, I have a duty to your family . . .”

  “Be quiet!”

  Up ahead, the trap was turning.

  “I am merely trying to protect you . . .”

  “No, be quiet. Look! They are leaving the road! Oh, Wickham! Hurry!”

  “Only because I am curious,” he said, and whipped the horses into a trot again.

  The turning was a narrow climbing track. Wickham peered at it dubiously.

  “Take it,” I ordered.

  “This is not my curricle, you know,” he said. “It’s Denny’s new toy. I beat him last night at whist, and this was his stake.”

  “His curricle?”

  “Just for a few days. If I damage it I shall have to pay, and those hedgerows look monstrous close.”

  “Wickham, please . . .”

  He sighed, and clicked his tongue at the horses.

  The track was dark from overhanging trees, and very steep. I found myself leaning forward as the horses climbed, willing them on until at last the incline softened and the trees thinned, and we found ourselves on a wide and level track at the top of the hill, with the downs spread out on either side of us, beyond hedgerows bursting with poppies and daisies and cow parsley.

  “You see!” I said. “It’s pretty.”

  “Very.” Wickham smiled. Though the trap before us had only one horse, its driver had the advantage of knowing the road. There was no sign of it when we crested the hill. I stood up in the curricle, leaning on Wickham for balance and, shielding my eyes from the sun, surveyed the horizon, but I could not see them anywhere.

  “Whoa!” Wickham brought the horses to a sudden halt, and I fell back hard on to the seat.

  “What did you do that for?”

  He pointed. “Look.”

  We had stopped by a simple wooden gate, with peeling paintwork, flanked by two pillars on each of which sat, somewhat incongruously, a small stone elephant. One was almost entirely obscured by foxgloves. The other elephant bore a wooden sign about its neck that read “Tara” – presumably the name of the property that lay beyond. Underneath, in black paint, someone had added the words, “Enter, traveller, if ye dare.”

  I made Wickham hold the horses steady while I stood again in the hope of seeing more. A track led away from the gate through an overgrown meadow, and disappeared over the brow of the hill.

  “Will you tell me now who it is we are chasing?” he asked.

  “I don’t honestly know,” I admitted. “Do you think we can go in?”

  “We can,” he said. “Though with no invitation and no idea who we are going to see it might not make a good impression.”

  I sat back down and sighed. Beside me, Wickham was chuckling.

  “What are you laughing at?” I snapped.

  “You, Lydia. You never cease to surprise me. You are a young lady of mystery.”

  “Oh, stop being ridiculous and drive.”

  He took up the reins. “Home?” he asked. “Or while we are out, shall we explore?”

  I hesitated, thinking of Harriet, and the dark parlour with the smoking fire.

  “If you are very good,” Wickham said, “I may even let you drive.”

  We did explore, and Wickham did let me drive. The wind up on the downs unsettled the horses, and they sprang into a gallop at the merest tickle of the whip. I cannot imagine how loud my screams must have been – very, I think, from the look on Wickham’s face. By the time he took the reins from me to slow us down, my bonnet was hanging by its ribbons, my hair was all undone, and I was quite out of breath.

  Wickham hitched the horses to a tree and together we walked to the edge of the cliff. It was not very high – a dozen feet at most. I thought that the drop to the sea would be sheer, but when we looked over the edge I saw that some of the land had dropped already, and fell away in tiers towards the water. It was beautiful: white chalky soil, bright green grass, gorse in full golden flower, the clear blue of the sky and a wide cove of sapphire water so clear I could see right to the bottom.

  “It is like a completely different sea,” I breathed.

  “It might not be England at all,” Wickham said. “It is just like the Mediterranean.”

  “Is it really?”

  “Yes and no. Fancy a swim?”

  His gaze met mine, wicked and amused. When Wickham looks at you that way, as if he is laying down a challenge, it is almost irresistible. For a second, I thought I might do it – scramble down the cliff to throw myself into that beautiful sparkling sea. But then – and probably just as well – there came the sound of bells and baaing and a hundred cloven feet, and a flock of sheep came round the bend in the road, followed by a dog and a shepherd. Wickham ran to move the horses. The shepherd touched two fingers to his cap. Wickham responded with a good-natured salute, and we climbed back into Denny’s curricle.

  “Enter, traveller, if ye dare,” I said as we passed the gates to Tara. “Don’t you think that’s intriguing?”

  “Most,” he agreed.

  It was only as he drove away, with a flourish of his whip, after he set me down again near the Battery, that I remembered what he called me when we first saw the gates.

  A young lady of mystery.

  I like that.

  Longbourn,

  Thursday, 11th June

  Dear Lydia,

  Happy birthday for Saturday! We are so busy here trying to console Mamma and Kitty for your absence, and I have so much to do to prepare for my own trip north (Aunt and Uncle have invited me to join them in a tour of the Lakes and we set out in a fortnight), that I fear this may not reach you in time. I hope you had a very happy day! Sixteen years old! I hope that you are behaving yourself, now that you are all grown-up. I am enclosing a pretty scrap of lace – I hope you like it better than last year’s ribbon!

  Seriously, Liddy. Kitty says you are having a splendid time, a
nd are learning to swim, and that Brighton is all you hoped it would be (she cried quite a lot as she told me – perhaps another letter soon, with some seaside trinket to cheer her up?). But I hope you are being sensible. You know you are so easily led, and with no big sister to watch over you, I do worry. Please promise your head will not be turned by the first person you happen to admire.

  Write again soon, with details of bathing! We are vastly envious.

  Your affectionate sister,

  Lizzy

  Tuesday, 16th June

  I thought of burning Lizzy’s letter. Then I pasted it into my diary to remind me how annoying she is.

  Tonight was cards in the Ship Assembly Rooms, and Harriet insisted on dressing me. She pretended it was a friendly gesture, but I know very well that it was actually a secret act of revenge, because she is annoyed with me for “making a spectacle of myself”, as she has it.