Sleepless
Disclaimer: Not my characters.
("It would have spared her, she thought, one sleepless night out of two.")
Elizabeth sits curled up by her window, a shawl drawn tightly around her shoulders, staring out into the darkness. It is not her first night of wakefulness since Lydia's flight. In this she suspects she is not alone, recalling her father's haggard face and the dark circles under Jane's eyes on recent mornings.
But it is not quite the same for Elizabeth. For it has not always been Lydia occupying her thoughts.
Since she finally recognized her true feelings for Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth has sometimes thought she might never sleep again. She leans her head against the window and closes her eyes, wondering how she could have been so wrong about so many things.
She wonders, too, how she could have wasted her time flirting with any other man. Colonel Fitzwilliam, even Wickham—the thought of him now causes her to draw her feet up under her, as if avoiding some loathsome thing. How strange that the man she once joked about with both of them has become the one man in the world for her.
For Mr. Darcy, she reflects with a wry twist of the lips, is the only man who has ever cost her a night's sleep.