A/N: Thanks to eagle eyes after scene 38 published here, one fix of a timeline turned into a new start for the story that I think gives a stronger justification to Elizabeth's running away in Scotland, more understanding for Mr. Bennet's depression, and more screentime for Jane and Richard. This chapter is altered from it's original posting. We no longer start in London but at Longbourn.
XOXOX
Elizabeth Ann West
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Elizabeth Bennet peeked through the curtains of her father's study. When the lane outside remained empty, the second eldest daughter of Longbourn sighed and allowed the curtain to fall back closed.
"A watched lane never boils, Lizzie" Mr. Bennet continued to play solitaire. The activity required a solo-effort as his favorite daughter refused to play gin while waiting for her aunt and uncle to arrive for their summer journey to the Peak District.
"A watched pot never boils, you're mixing your anecdotes, Father." Lizzie took a brief stroll about the room, which amounted to little more than a half circle around her father's desk and then back again to the window. This time when she tucked back the curtain there was a visitor coming down the lane, on horseback. Lizzie scrunched up her nose.
"See, a watched lane does produce a visitor. It looks like a soldier on a horse…" Elizabeth voice trailed off as she looked frantically at her father. Her youngest sister, Lydia, had gone to Brighton as the particular guest of Colonel Forster and his wife for the militia's summer encampment.
"Go and fetch your Mother." Mr. Bennet shuffled the cards to re-stack the deck and tucked it into his desk drawer. The housekeeper Hill announced the arrival of Colonel Forster and showed him into the master's study.
By the time Elizabeth arrived with her mother, Mrs. Bennet was already in near hysterics worried about her poor Lydia.
"Oh Colonel, how good of you to come. How is our daughter?" Mrs. Bennet fluttered a handkerchief as she refused to enter more than two steps into her husband's study. The Colonel turned and offered the mother of his houseguest a grim expression.
"As I have just told your husband, Mrs. Bennet, it is very grave indeed. A lieutenant in my unit, Mr. Wickham, has deserted with your daughter with intentions to marry over the border. I have given your husband here a letter that Lydia left for my wife."
"Oh heavens!" Mrs. Bennet clutched her chest and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Elizabeth and the Colonel scrambled forward to catch a fainting Mrs. Bennet before she hit the floor.
"Papa?" Elizabeth exclaimed as her father stood like a statue behind his desk, his wife crumpled to the floor.
Hearing his daughter's voice awakened Mr. Bennet into action. He and a footman carried Mrs. Bennet up the stairs to her bedroom as Hill announced the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner.
"Lizzie, can you and Jane help your mother? I shall go tell your aunt and uncle that your trip must be canceled." Mr. Bennet placed a kiss on his wife's forehead as Mrs. Bennet began to stir from the application of her smelling salts. Elizabeth nodded. Her father left the room and Jane entered it to join Lizzie at their mother's side. The other two Bennet sisters were luckily away visiting the Lucases and were spared the dreadful news of Lydia's flight.
"Oh, you girls are ruined, all ruined. And you, poor Jane, so beautiful. All wasted now!" Mrs. Bennet lamented.
"Do not say such things, Mama. Father and Uncle will find Lydia and make them marry," Elizabeth said.
"Your father and Mr. Wickham shall have to duel. Your father will be killed! And we shall be thrown out!" Mrs. Bennet turned and slanted her eyes at her second eldest daughter. "Oh why Lizzie, why did you not marry Mr. Collins?"
Mrs. Bennet began to berate Elizabeth over rejecting her cousin that was to inherit Longbourn due to the entail. She received a sympathetic look from her sister Jane. Jane distracted her mother as Elizabeth retreated from the bed and stood by the door so that she could hear the voices below stairs.
She heard the discussion between her father, uncle and aunt in the main entryway, and began to think of an idea. Elizabeth walked back over to the bed as her mother lay in another fit of hysterics.
"I shall simply die if I lose my daughter. I will die I tell you. My nerves cannot, they cannot –" Mrs. Bennet's next statement gargled somewhere into her throat as she pretended to choke on the very sentiment of losing Lydia. As much as she disappointed her mother on a daily basis, Elizabeth's heart seized in that moment to see the woman who gave birth to her in such distress. There had to be more that could be done to find Lydia and she looked at Jane and tilted her head gently so that Jane joined her by the door. Elizabeth opened the door little wider so that more of what was being said below could be heard above.
"All reports that we have are that Mr. Wickham and Miss Lydia headed to London first. I do not mean to besmirch your daughter, sir, but I don't believe the character of that soldier to be steadfast. I fear he will abandon her favors just as soon as they reach town." Colonel Forster explained how another lieutenant, Mr. Denny, testified to him that Wickham held no long-term designs on the hand of Ms. Lydia Bennet.
"If we change my team of horses with yours, Brother, we can leave within the hour back to London," Mr. Gardiner said.
Elizabeth looked at her sister Jane, her older sister's eyes wide with fear. "They are only going to look in London. That is a mistake. What if they never go to London at all and head straight for the border from Brighton?" Elizabeth whispered as more and more plans were being made below.
"Father and Uncle know what's best. They will find Lydia," Jane said.
"And if they do not it is our reputations that are ruined. We shall never have another offer from a respectable man again." Elizabeth bit her lower lip and thought bitterly of Mr. Darcy, the tall man from Derbyshire who she had rejected out of hand over grave misunderstandings. Her trip with her aunt and uncle was to ride through the hamlet of Lambton and Elizabeth had planned on asking to stop at Pemberley in hopes of renewing the acquaintance. More importantly, she wished fervently to apologize to Mr. Darcy for her utter stupidity in believing the woes and tales of Mr. Wickham. It was true that Mr. Darcy had slighted her first, but Elizabeth had allowed the illogical story of a jilted man cloud her judgment further.
"What are you thinking, Lizzie?" Jane asked, having her own regrets with Mr. Darcy's friend, Mr. Bingley. Mr. Bingley had visited the previous autumn and while for a time it appeared he might offer for Jane, the entire party left for London in December with not another word.
Elizabeth shrugged and then stood up taller as she realized how they might search in two directions at once. "Come with me below stairs, and just follow my lead. You go to London with father and uncle, and I will go with aunt toward Scotland in hopes of heading them off if they go there."
"But the expense?" Jane asked but Elizabeth furiously shook her head.
"There should be very little additional expense, aunt and uncle already paid for us to travel as far as the Peak District. Gretna Green is just another fifty miles." Elizabeth ticked off the distance with her fingers as she knew Jane had not studied geography as well as she had. Echoes of a conversation with Mr. Darcy about the trifling matter of traversing fifty miles of good road filled her mind.
Jane looked furtively back at her mother's bed as the woman continued to whimper and cry. "Let us go speak to father and see if we can offer our aid. But I might should stay here with mother."
Elizabeth shook her head. "Nay, if Father and Uncle find Lydia in London, they are going to need you because Aunt will be with me. You and I both know Lydia will be in a state. I don't think either man will be equipped to handle her tantrums." Elizabeth felt a little guilty to criticize her youngest sister in such a manner, but what she spoke of was true. If Lydia did not get her way, as the youngest of five daughters, she would resort to cries and fits until she found relief. And as she has currently runaway with a man neither betrothed to her or related by family, Elizabeth reasoned her sister deserved no respect in the present time.
Jane agreed, reluctantly, and the two sisters took the stairs to share their thoughts with the older adults.
To Elizabeth's surprise, it did not take a great deal of convincing from her or her sister Jane for the family to agree to search in two directions. In fact, Elizabeth's aunt had congratulated her niece on thinking of such an elegant solution, though the tone Mrs. Gardiner used made Elizabeth a bit suspicious that perhaps her aunt was not so happy to have her trip back on, with a more frantic pace and without her husband.
As Jane went upstairs to direct their shared maid, Betsy, to begin their packing, Elizabeth was called into her father's study for a private interview.
"What is this really about, Lizzie? I appreciate your eagerness to recover your sister, but is there any other reason you wish to travel?"
"If you are accusing me of a selfish endeavor, Papa, I have none. I do not intend to go sightseeing with aunt in between the inn stops. It just seems to me that if there is a search party going to London, there ought to be one heading to the border. What if Colonel Forster is wrong?" The good Colonel had already left as he needed to go to London and begin the search for his deserter.
"So you do not think Col. Forster is a man to know his own business?" Mr. Bennet took his seat as his daughter still stood before his desk. But Elizabeth shook her head.
"The fact remains that a girl of sixteen years of age managed to slip his notice and run away from his home. He might have interviewed Mr. Wickham's comrades, but Lydia is also very smart. If she has her hooks in Mr. Wickham, I do not suspect that he is going to shake her very easily."
Mr. Bennett laughed in spite of himself at Elizabeth's frank description of his youngest daughter. The stress of the situation weighed heavily upon both of them and the daughter that performed most like a son might in a family dynamic, realized she had her father support and that he was merely checking her logic.
"And what of Jane? I know you convinced her to join in this mess. She should remain here and see to your mother." Mr. Bennet opened his drawer and pulled out parchment and a five pound note.
Elizabeth eyes widened as her father scribbled a few lines and signed his name then folded the letter around the note and handed it to his daughter Elizabeth.
"Papa?"
"That is a line of credit, Lizzie. I do not like the idea of sending you so far away and had planned to give you such before your trip with your aunt and uncle, regardless. But if you find yourself in any kind of trouble, no daughter of mine will be without means of getting herself out of it."
"But Papa, it is too much." But Mr. Bennet shook his head.
"Take it, and tell Jane when you go above stairs to stop her packing, she will stay here."
Elizabeth clutched the letter in her hands that showed her father held so much trust in her. She raised her face to his and jutted out her chin. "Jane must go with you. I know you and uncle will search high and low for Lydia. But there are some places you may search that a lady can gain entry into before a gentleman, such as the dressmakers or a ribbon shop. If Lydia is indeed in London, it will not take very long before she finds her way to old habits. She would think that they stopped there to buy wedding clothes before heading to Scotland."
Mr. Bennett furrowed his brows and listened intently to what Elizabeth said. "How have you thought so much about this? Did Lydia speak to you before she went to Brighton, you did warn me not to let her go."
Elizabeth stomach clenched at the accusation. "I did warn you not to let her go and Lydia never said anything to me about planning to elope with Mr. Wickham. But she did not hide the fact she was going to Brighton to find a husband. I'm afraid Mama did little to persuade her otherwise." Elizabeth did not add that she knew of another young lady Mr. Wickham had once tried to run off with, Mr. Darcy's youngest sister, Georgiana. Elizabeth had thought a great deal about what might befall Lydia on the trip to Brighton thanks to the letter from Mr. Darcy after she rejected his proposal in Kent.
"Oh very well, help Jane pack and finish your own. I know your aunt is eager to get to the first inn before evening. You will be taking Peter, your uncle's manservant instead of one of our own." Mr. Bennet folded his hands underneath his chin as Elizabeth skipped around his desk and planted a kiss on his cheek.
"Don't worry, Papa. We will find her. One way or another," Elizabeth said as her father shook his head.
"I'm afraid, my dear, you do not appreciate we are searching for a speck in a haystack."
Elizabeth shrugged and left her father to see about her own packing. She did not scold him for again mixing up his anecdotes as this time she believed he meant what he said.
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This is actually 2 scenes smushed together into 1 to minimize the adjustments I had to make on Fanfiction.