A/N: Again, sorry for the multiple chapter postings, trying to get this all out there. :)
The journey to Brighton might have put Elizabeth Bennet off travel altogether if she had never ventured beyond Longbourn before. The pace had been slow, Lydia had been especially irksome, and Elizabeth's patience was at an end. However, the seaside town's architecture stood unlike anything Elizabeth had ever seen apart from brief glimpses of the most fashionable parts of London.
She watched, unbothered, out the window as the houses transformed from closely bound, short wooden terraces that looked practically weary from decades of standing up to the sea's unrelenting winds and waves. Brighton, as a town on the way up, boasted new home construction as the carriage neared the fashionable town home to be their residence for the eight weeks Elizabeth expected them to remain with the regiment. The town changed so swiftly, that Elizabeth found she could not consult her guidebook quickly enough to recognize the sights she spied, apart from the Prince Regent's grand royal residence.
Upon arrival, Lydia proclaimed an immediate desire to take a promenade on the wide walk along the shore and breathe in the sea air. Even though she agreed with Lydia's desire, Elizabeth managed to convince her younger sister their priority must be to unpack. Lydia, averse to any kind of labor when an opportunity to play presented itself, only agreed to the task when Elizabeth reminded her they were expected to begin dining and dancing that very night.
"What would you wear this evening if all of your frocks are horridly horribly wrinkled and unsuitable?" Elizabeth challenged her sister.
"La, you are already unpacking your trunk, why not unpack mine? I can then keep our hostess occupied, and you may avoid conversation like you did most of our journey," Lydia suggested, not bothering to look at the astonished expression on her older sister's face. Instead, she gazed at herself in the simple mirror hanging upon the wall, adjusting the curls that framed her face. The more she tugged and touched them, the curls became loose and softened in the spiral.
Elizabeth slammed the lid of her trunk down in anger. "You need to work on your humor, dear sister. For it must've been a jest to think that I would unpack your trunks. Mrs. Forster is very likely engaged in seeing to her belongings with her maid," Elizabeth explained and sighed. Her anger had been rather silly. With chagrin, she reopened her trunk, and pulled out another carefully folded gown from the luggage, and therefore minimally wrinkled.
Lydia stomped her foot, then spun on her heel to face her sister properly. "You're no fun!"
Her older sister shrugged. "I'm not here to amuse you, nor please you," Elizabeth paused, and then made her aims clear. "I only came to keep you out of trouble."
"I do not need a mother, or Papa would have sent Mama. I know what I'm about and if you would just get out of my way, I shall be the first to secure a husband. You had your chance, so you really must be jealous of me that the officers find my company superior to yours." As Lydia spoke, her voice sounded so sure of herself. She pushed, twisted, and fought with the lock on her trunks. When she finally managed to open the lid, she promptly walked over to one of the two small beds in the room and laid down.
Elizabeth stood frozen, utterly perplexed by her sister's words. Lydia truly believed she was in Brighton to find a husband? She was not yet sixteen! The entire prospect of Lydia becoming some soldier's wife had not been their father's plans. Elizabeth realized she had been tricked out to the seaside to be nothing but a full parent. Still, there was nothing to say to Lydia that could change her sister's mind nor did Elizabeth wish to begin a discussion about proposals from soldiers.
After a quarter-hour, Elizabeth had placed most of her belongings in their proper place, in the pleasant room of two beds on the backside of the home. There would be no romantic views of the sea from their window, but that also meant only the back alley used by the servants to navigate the avenue was there to distract. Elizabeth doubted very much that her sister would find much reason to languish in their modest lodgings, and that suited her plans just fine.
The last part of unpacking she needed to do included supplies for her toilette, including a hairbrush and comb set. She had also unwrapped a few bottles of lavender water in a luxurious dressing robe that was a birthday gift from her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner. She smiled briefly that none of her favored scent had broken across such a long journey. Just before leaving Lydia to finish up solitarily, Elizabeth suddenly reasoned out what her sister's plans had likely been all along.
"You may have borrowed a gown or three from Jane when you did not see to your own attire, but you forget that I am three inches shorter. If you do not act in your interest, you'll be forced to wear a hemline that will make you look utterly ridiculous to other ladies tonight, and possibly prevent you from going at all with your ankles bare," Elizabeth warned.
Lydia whined in frustration at her sister's logic. "I should have told Papa that I wanted Jane to travel with me, not you!" Lydia complained. "Or at least, we should have brought a maid!"
At home, the five Bennet daughters shared one maid, a woman hired when Jane came of age to be "out" at thirteen. Their mother had accelerated her favorite daughter's trek to adulthood, partly because Jane's beauty made her needlessly worry about her daughter's future, and the behavior of the young men around her. Mostly though, Mrs. Bennet wished a companion to go with her on social visits in their small hamlet, and Jane behaved serenely while Elizabeth remained stubbornly the daughter of her father.
Eighteen months younger than Jane, and without any interest in the activities of her mother, Elizabeth managed to avoid her social responsibility until sixteen. By then,their maid had developed a stronger bond with Jane. A year later, Mary joined adulthood mostly for the pursuit of musical performances. The following spring, Kitty and Lydia demanded to be out, throwing fits over their exclusion until their parents relented.
As Elizabeth had not insisted on a maid for herself, and Mary joined their ranks in a bad harvest year, the Bennet family had never hired another. Lydia learned early on that the girls' maid, Betsy, would work her way down the line of precedence from Jane to herself. Any time the call to dress was made, she languished about feigning an inability to take care of herself. This produced the expected result of making the family routinely late for their social engagements, angering Mrs. Bennet.
Therefore, a new arrangement came where Betsy saw to her normal routines, and Mrs. Bennet's maid, Lucy, would begin with Lydia and work her way back up the line of daughters. After Lydia's outcry of selfishness, Elizabeth could see how her refusal to push for precedence after Jane in all things had opened the door for her youngest sister's sense of entitlement. But it was too late to close that Pandora's box.
"I suppose you could ask Mrs. Forster if she can spare her maid after she's done, but you risk your appearance at tonight's dinner and ball," Elizabeth said, then excused herself to begin her letter to Jane at the desk in the downstairs parlor, that she would finish in the morning after the night's revelry.
Walking down the stairs to the front parlor, Elizabeth noticed that Colonel Forster had taken the small room off the hall as his office. The door stood ajar, and she spied two men moving inside. In Meryton, the Forsters had quartered with her aunt and uncle Philips. She understood they enjoyed a luckier set of circumstances for the orders to Brighton: the owners of the town home had vacated the property for other summer plans. Elizabeth believed that perhaps the colonel had merely forgotten he still had house guests and gently, she closed the door to give the colonel his privacy.
Spinning around the front parlor, Elizabeth finally felt a modicum of happiness for her predicament. Yes, Lydia was by far the worst sister to take on as a responsibility. But as she sat at the small writing desk in front of the open window, hearing the ocean waves and the calls of gulls, soon settled her mind. The salty air tickled her nasal passages and she began to capture every detail for Jane. Mrs. Forster soon appeared in the front parlor, asking Elizabeth if she had all that she required.
"Yes, how could we need anything more in such a haven?" Elizabeth asked, waving her hand towards the sea. Mrs. Forster giggled and for once, Elizabeth allowed a girlish giggle to escape her lips as well. The two women exchanged their first true bonds of friendship not overshadowed by Lydia's need for constant attention.
Mrs. Forster knocked on the door to the colonel's office, and Elizabeth returned to finish her letter. When Colonel Forster opened the door, Lieutenant Denny exited and made his farewells to Mrs. Forster and Miss Bennet. Elizabeth offered the minimal acknowledgment of his niceties, while Mrs. Forster reminded him to save a set for her.
"It is tradition, Mr. Denny. Do not leave me for the last set of the night," she teased, and Mr. Denny took the chiding with good humor.
After a short interview with Colonel Forster, Mrs. Forster excused herself to retire to her room. Half an hour later, Elizabeth finished with her tales to Jane for the time being and returned to her room to check on Lydia's progress. Three frocks were unpacked and hanging in their shared wardrobe. Her sister left the remaining work for another time.
Yawning, Elizabeth assumed her missing sister prevailed upon Mrs. Forster's good nature and welcomed the quiet. With the evening's demands looming over her to inspire no small amount of anxiety and anticipation, she laid upon the bed closest to the window to take a proper rest. The small bed on its own merits boasted little, but to Elizabeth, it was the first time she could sleep properly. It was not a camp cot or a louse-infested mattress of a less-favored inn, all indignities she had suffered since she had left Longbourn. Not one to believe herself spoiled, more than a week of poor sleeping conditions had made her eternally grateful for the comforts around her.
Snuggled down below the quilt sewn in hues of blue to reflect the home's affinity to the sea, Elizabeth allowed her naturally positive disposition to dream of an evening full of delights and diversions. True, her charge to chaperone Lydia would be an enormous task. But the second eldest daughter of Mr. Bennet of Hertfordshire never met a challenge she didn't rise up to beat.