A/N: The second half of this chapter, Elizabeth's conversation with Lydia, has some material some readers might find disturbing, but certainly not above the PG-13 level.

They met almost entirely on accident. Elizabeth, perhaps, elected to walk on those paths she thought him more likely to frequent; but certainly it went no further than that. Nevertheless, with very little trouble, she happened across him leaning against the side of a tree, looking very handsome indeed as he gazed off thoughtfully. No wayward branch interrupted her enjoyment of the view, and after several moments, she announced herself with a bright smile.

"Good morning, Mr Darcy."

"Miss Bennet!" He started, a familiar expression overcoming his severe features as he turned towards her. It was a contentment just this side of joy, and Elizabeth could not help laughing at his transparency. "What an unexpected pleasure." Then, a little slyly, he added, "Almost unexpected, that is."

"Fate has been uncommonly kind to us today, hasn't it?" she said, trying for a look of innocence. He bit his lip. "You may smile, sir, I shan't slap you."

He complied, and said wryly, "I somehow doubted you would. You never have before, even when my behaviour warranted it." A shadow crossed his face at this, and Elizabeth sighed.

"If we were to strike one another every time our behaviour warranted it," she said, "you and I would have probably killed each other by now."

Darcy smiled unrestrainedly this time. "You are very kind."

"Not very," Elizabeth said, accepting the offered escort. "Thank you, sir. Truly, though, I have to constantly guard against unkindness. I am nothing like Jane."

"No," he said, with a warm look, "no, you are not." Elizabeth blushed at the implication, something she had never expected of any man, even him. "I am very fond of Mrs Bingley, naturally -- how one not be? -- but she is . . . perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she is not like you, Miss Bennet."

Her head whirled a little, and she decided to think about the matter at greater length later; but instead of leaving it there, he tried to explain himself:

"There is much to be said for kindness -- for," he hesitated, "selfless consideration for the feelings of others -- " Elizabeth's eyes widened, both at the transposition of her own words and the clarity with which he remembered them -- "but however praiseworthy, it can only go so far. Goodness is more than a tendency to think the best of everyone and a desire to make them all happy, I think -- meaning no affront against your sister and my friend, but there is no struggle there. They will never be less than amiable and kind to those within their sphere; and they will never consider those without it." His head was lowered, his hands fiddling absently, and rather anxiously, with a handkerchief.

"Their perspective is a little narrow," Elizabeth conceded. "Is that what you mean?"

He made a sudden sharp movement with one hand. "Yes -- perhaps -- I do not know. Only -- Miss Bennet, there is something, something more appealing, about one who -- who can, and does, remain true to his -- or her -- knowledge of what is right, when it is not easy, not what he would wish; the goodness of one who fully comprehends what he is doing when he does it -- that is more powerful, somehow, to my way of thinking, than a more thoughtless goodness, that of someone who knows nothing else."

"That," said she, "sounds more like you, sir, than me."

His eyes widened. "Oh no. I am not at all -- well perhaps a little -- I try for that, but I do not always succeed."

"Oh?"

"If I did," said Darcy, "you would probably have one more niece or nephew than you do right now. However, I was not speaking of myself."

Elizabeth frowned. "I am hardly perfect, sir."

"No," he said, with a slow smile, "no, you are not, thank heavens. I do not think I should care to spend a great deal of time with a woman not my equal. I am reminded of my own imperfections often enough as it is, simply by the company of Bingley and your sister."

She laughed outright at this. "Somehow, you always manage to surprise me, Mr Darcy. I never know what is going to come out of your mouth next."

A look she very much recognised passed over his face, as if he longed to vocalise some stray thought passing through his mind, but did not dare. After a moment, he said, restrainedly, "I cannot possibly be as much of an enigma to you, as you are to me."

"I?" She stared a little, then laughed and took his arm (out of regard for his handkerchief, which did not seem long for this world if his movements grew much more intense). "I defy any of our shared acquaintance to acknowledge that, sir."

"Oh!" Darcy shook his head. "You may not brandish the opinions of our acquaintance at me, for they have known you much longer than they have me, and still do not bother to look past what you choose to show them." With an intent look, he added, "You still do not perform to strangers, do you, Miss Bennet?"

"No," she said, far more softly than was her wont, "no, I do not." Then, with a smile: "Have you always been so perceptive, sir, or I am only just noticing?" Even as she spoke, however, she recalled the earnest young man he had been, dancing with her at the Netherfield Ball, and heard his voice, saying gravely, I could wish, Miss Bennet, that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either. The present Darcy, however, actually laughed, a startled rich sound that she did not think she had ever heard before, but which was certainly not unpleasant.

"Perceptive? I? Now I know you are mocking me, Miss Bennet, and to my face no less. But I may answer your challenge, if you allow me to summon Mrs Reynolds. You quite bewildered her -- and occasionally she will still ask about that strange young woman who stammered and blushed all through her visit at Pemberley, but would not confess to more than a slight acquaintance with me; however I daresay she knows my thoughts as often as not before they have entered my head."

"It was a slight acquaintance," Elizabeth defended herself, but smiling at the last -- "that is, I said that I only knew you 'a little' -- and I was quite right. I scarcely knew you at all, and nearly everything I did know turned out to be false."

Darcy opened his mouth and shut it again. "A necessary caveat, I think," he remarked quietly, and turned as snow began to fall in rapidly thickening flakes. "May I escort you to the house?"

She raised an eyebrow. "I did not know that I intended to return just now."

He looked uncomfortable. "Bingley will probably force me to drink hot milk and sit in front of the fire if I am out too long," he said, and added rather vexedly, "I cannot believe Georgiana actually told him, even only a part."

Elizabeth stared. "Is there something I ought to know, Mr Darcy? Are you subject to fainting spells?"

His start and burning cheeks answered her well enough, and she vacillated between concern and laughing delight at the mental image this conjured. "I hope it was not anything serious?"

"No, not -- my daughter and nephew were both caught in a blizzard, and very ill by the time I found them." His expression was particularly forbidding, until he added, a little sheepishly, "I was only a little tired, but Georgiana has become unreasonably over-protective."

Elizabeth wondered just how unreasonable it was. Once, finding the Bingleys in the parlour, she had overheard Mr Darcy's name, and her attention caught, had stopped in the hall to listen. All she had caught was he drives himself too hard, and will not admit to -- but it had been enough to cause her a moment of alarm, before realising that, her feelings notwithstanding, she did not have the privilege of responsibility for him. But now, she thought, and gave him a stern look.

"If you were that exhausted, sir," she said acerbically, "your sister was quite right to worry."

"Well, yes," he conceded, "but that was then -- an entire year ago -- not now."

Elizabeth frowned, mulling the matter over. His reaction was startlingly like her own, in response to Jane's fussiness, and she was not enough of a hypocrite to press him any further. Nevertheless -- her situation had been almost entirely beyond her control. She certainly had not driven herself to exhaustion! Elizabeth carried on the conversation lightly as they returned to the house, but most of her mind was occupied in stealing sideways glances at him to see how he looked. In most respects he was the same, almost exactly the same, as she remembered him. He was perhaps a little thinner, his expression a little more receptive -- most of the changes were in manner. He was far more anxious to please than she ever recalled, even at Pemberley, but also more thoughtful, and nervous enough to teach her mother a few lessons in that regard. She kept a firm grip on his arm to keep him from destroying gloves, handkerchiefs, or other assorted objects that seemed to find their way into his grasp.

"Lizzy?"

Elizabeth broke off in the middle of a sentence to stare at her sister. "Lydia, what are you doing out here?"

"You are not the only one who gets tired of being imprisoned in that house," she said off-handedly. "And I have not been ill."

Elizabeth sighed. "I was only concerned, Lydia."

"It is a pity you were not concerned earlier," snapped Lydia.

"Mrs Wickham," Darcy said harshly, suddenly every inch the master of Pemberley, "you should not deceive yourself into believing you know everything, or even very much -- of what your family has endured in the last few years. You owe your sister more than you will ever know."

Elizabeth was not entirely certain what this last meant, but stared as Lydia blushed, lowering her eyes. "I beg your pardon, Mr Darcy. I did not mean -- "

"You should not be apologising to me, Mrs Wickham," he said sternly. Lydia chewed her lip.

"Lizzy, I'm sorry. I should not have spoken so -- to you. I'm sure you did as much as you could, in your situation. Mr Darcy, the others, where are they? "

"Susan and Frances should arrive this evening, Mrs Wickham," he replied. "Your mother is leaving in a few hours -- Bingley has purchased the lease on a house in Meryton for her, just across from the Witherspoons' home, so if you wish to spend much more time with her, I would suggest returning to the parlour."

Lydia nodded meekly, leaving her sister uncertain whether to be horrified or pleased at her compliance. Then she stopped and blinked, apparently only now taking in the strangeness of Elizabeth and Mr Darcy taking a walk in the snow, quite alone. Something almost like suspicion entered her dull blue eyes. "You must have met on accident," she said slowly.

"Yes," Darcy said instantly, "yes, we did."

This time, thought Elizabeth.

---

She woke up at a particularly ungodly hour to the sound of light tapping on her door.

"Lydia?" she asked sleepily. "What is it?"

Her sister did not seem to have fallen asleep at all, her hair still neatly braided over one shoulder. "Lizzy," she said, very seriously, "I need to talk to you."

"Oh," Elizabeth said blankly, "come in and sit down, then." Although midnight talks with her sister were not a wholly unprecedented experience, never had it been with Lydia, even when they were both girls.

She looked positively girlish in the candlelight, but her unsteady step gave her away, as did the worried expression on her face. "Lizzy, I had to talk to someone, and Jane -- oh, she wouldn't understand, would she? What does she know of it?"

Elizabeth rubbed her eyes, and sat on the bed. "Lydia, I don't -- "

"She never asked, or did anything, and even now whenever I try to talk about it she says I ought to pity him -- something about it not being his fault. And if it isn't his fault, whose is it?"

"Lydia -- "

"And of course I wasn't sure if I could talk to you, your being an old maid and all -- even if you won't wear a cap -- but what Mr Darcy said made me think -- he always does, and it's so unpleasant -- but I am, I think -- I think things might have been very bad, worse than they were, I mean, without him, so I always try to do what he wants." Elizabeth felt a moment of gratitude that it had not been a less scrupulous man who had "saved" Lydia. "Mr Darcy says I'm to go to Ireland, and that I shan't have to see Wickham again. Is that true, Lizzy?"

Elizabeth looked at Lydia's weak, vulnerable face, and felt tears pricking at her eyes. "Yes, Lydia, it is."

Lydia sighed. "Oh, I am so glad. I don't know what I might have done, you see, if I had to. He did things to me -- oh, Lizzy, I shouldn't say, but, but you won't tell?"

Confusedly, Elizabeth said, "Of course not."

"I liked it at first," Lydia confided. Elizabeth suddenly realised what she was about to hear and flushed deeply in the candlelight, grateful that this would not be her first exposure to the subject. "It was so -- well, you wouldn't be able to understand. I don't think you've ever even been in love, have you?"

"I -- "

"Anyway, it was so pleasant at first, I suppose I thought it would always be like that, but apparently men can't be satisfied with just one woman, at least, that's what Wickham always said. And he liked some rather odd things, but I didn't mind, at first. And I think I must have conceived before we were married, Betsey was born so early, but anyway, when we found out I was going to have a baby, he didn't really care, but I saw less of him, and I heard . . . things -- apparently he visited brothels, and there was a lieutenant's wife -- well, I didn't think anything of it at the time, but of course, later, I guessed, but that was fine, because he became very rough later on and -- "

The conversation proceeded in like vein for at least five more minutes, Elizabeth listening in mute horror. When Lydia had finally exhausted her supply of reminiscences, she said, "Lydia, I -- I'm so sorry -- "

"Oh, it's not your fault," Lydia said breezily. "But I really didn't think I could manage it another day. I kept imagining doing some dreadful things to him -- not that kind of thing -- hitting him with the vase or something -- or maybe shooting him with his own gun. That would have been rather funny, wouldn't it? Except I'm sure bad things happen to you if you kill your husband, don't they?"

Elizabeth felt something of Anne Darcy's astonishment that she, Jane, and Lydia should all be sisters. "Yes," she said, not trusting herself much further.

"Anyway, that night, that was the first time I thought of Mr Darcy. Of course I knew that he couldn't be that bad after all if Wickham disliked him, and at the wedding -- well, if he knew what Wickham was like -- that's probably why he tried to keep me from marrying him." The flow of words halted, Lydia looking pale and despondent suddenly. "I, I wish I had listened to him, Lizzy."

Elizabeth thought of any number of remarks in response to this, but instead held her sister's hand and said, "I'm sure you do."

"Anyway, I thought of him -- and he always seemed -- so respectable -- even if he wanted things, because Wickham said all men did, that they wouldn't do anything without being -- paid, in some form or another, and of course I had no money and the children -- anyway, I thought they couldn't possibly be half so bad as living with Wickham, so I went to his house. I had to walk a bit, of course, but Jane had sent some money that Wickham hadn't spent yet, so I used that, and of course he wasn't there, and his servants were the proudest, most disagreeable people -- " She took a deep breath. "But, Lizzy, I don't understand, and I thought you might explain it, because you're so clever, and you seem to talk to Mr Darcy quite a lot, even though you don't seem well -- I don't think it's very warm at all."

Elizabeth bit her lip. "What do you not understand, Lydia?" she asked patiently. Lydia wrung her hands.

"Mr Darcy was, he was . . . kind," she said, trying out the last word as if it were in a foreign tongue. "And I don't understand why. He hates Wickham and he said that he wasn't helping me to upset him and I don't think he likes me much -- but he didn't ask for anything, and when I offered -- "

Elizabeth stared, horrified. "You didn't -- Liddy, you did not -- surely you did not -- proposition Mr Darcy!"

"Well, not exactly. I am a lady, Lizzy," Lydia said indignantly. Elizabeth could scarcely hide her incredulity at this, and was forced to look away. "I supposed he would want something, though, and he didn't -- I meant that I offered -- well, I implied that I would be willing to -- oh, never mind. You're an old maid, you can't understand."

Elizabeth could only imagine how subtle one of Lydia's implications would be -- rather akin to having an anvil thrown at one's head. "What did he say?" she asked, trembling at the thought.

"He was really very gracious about it. He just said, 'Thank you for the compliment, Mrs Wickham, but I am not in the habit of ravishing my houseguests' " -- Lydia's gift for mimicry almost made Elizabeth smile at this -- "and asked me not to mention it again. He seemed very surprised, really."

Elizabeth wondered how she would ever look him in the face again. "What do you wish me to explain?" she asked, clinging to the shreds of her composure. Jane, I have never properly appreciated you before.

"Well, I simply don't understand why he should help without getting anything in return. And then I thought -- he was the one who did everything for my wedding, and he didn't ask for anything then either. But Wickham said that all men -- "

"Lydia," Elizabeth said firmly, "you should forget anything Wickham ever told you, particularly about what men are like or what they want, because he was -- is -- a selfish, depraved man who assumes everyone is as bad as he is."

Lydia tilted her head to the side, considering this, and Elizabeth almost laughed, for it was exactly the same gesture Darcy used when thoughtful. "Oh," she said, after a moment. "I did know that they weren't all quite like Wickham -- some men are not really -- they don't like to hurt things. There was a merchant in Newcastle, he always missed whenever he hunted, not because he was a poor shot -- he missed on purpose -- but because he couldn't stand to kill anything, even spiders and things. His wife told me that he liked to fish but always let them go. That's why I decided to go to him, you know -- Mr Darcy, not the merchant -- because I didn't think he was the other sort, like Wickham. I never heard him raise his voice or anything, even when mamma practically insulted him to his face, so . . ." She shrugged.

"Mr Darcy helped you, Lydia, because he -- because he felt that he ought to." Lydia simply looked blank at that, and Elizabeth struggled to simplify the matter still further. "Mr Darcy is a little like Jane. Do you know how, when something bad happens, she always seems to think it's partly her fault, that she should have done something about it before it happened?"

"Oh yes. She's very silly that way," said Lydia thoughtlessly, and Elizabeth felt her head begin to ache from clenching her teeth together so long.

"Silly or not, that is the answer to your question. He feels responsible for what happens to the people around him, and he tries to help."

"Oh." Lydia chewed her lip. "Well, it is silly, but it's . . . rather nice too, isn't it?"

Elizabeth took a deep, steadying breath. "Yes, Lydia, it is."

"I think he likes you, Lizzy." Elizabeth blinked, thrown a little off by the incomprehensible turn of subject.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I think Mr Darcy likes you. Just -- the way he looks at you -- it's not the way Wickham looked at me, before we went off to London, but a little bit the same -- interested, I suppose. He is really a nice person even if he is a man, and of course if you mean to be married it will have to be some man or another, and it would be very unpleasant if he fell in love with you and you still disliked him."

Elizabeth looked at her sister's vacant expression, and got to her feet, her patience nearing its end. "Lydia," she said firmly, "I think we have talked long enough."

"You should think about it," Lydia said off-handedly, flipping her braid over her shoulder. The sudden movement was so like what she had done as a child that Elizabeth felt a brief surge of tenderness and pressed her lips against her sister's forehead.

"If it gives you any comfort, dear sister, I am madly in love with Mr Darcy, and I know that he loves me, and if anything comes of it I shall write you directly."

Lydia's face was suddenly wreathed in smiles, and she hugged Elizabeth tightly. "That would be lovely, Lizzy. I should like to see you happy. You see how happy Jane is, after all, and she is only married to Mr Bingley."

"Good night, Lydia," said Elizabeth.

---

Hwa-shih: I always respond -- sometimes very lengthily. Oh, thank you. Well, yes, although of course I won't show every conversation etc. More angst will indeed ensue -- for Darcy, probably the greatest angst of all. I did, thanks.

elen: Hi. Thank you. You're welcome.

June W: You caught that! Good. Elizabeth simply does not consider that Anne is a motherless, siblingless little girl -- but they do not, after all, cause Anne herself much pain, so perhaps she (Elizabeth) may be excused in dismissing that. Well, as I have said at HG at least, it's more of a mutual courtship. She did not intend to be invited at all -- was simply trying to figure out how much time they would have together. Thank you.

Zohra: Thanks. No, they aren't, at least not very much. Wickham is not long for this world. You're welcome.