Hyde Park blossomed around Elizabeth Bennet as the early floral armies of spring marched forward, brashly breaking the earth around them. Attended by a maid employed by the Gardiner household named Anna, Elizabeth was dismayed that the warmer weather and start of the London Season brought more patrons to the park.
Standing before a gigantic shrub carved into the shape of an elephant, Elizabeth stopped walking and giggled.
“Miss?” Anna, who had been conspicuously walking behind her charge, lost the short distance between them when Miss Bennet abruptly stopped.
“Sorry, Anna. I was merely remembering the first time Mr. Darcy and I walked these gardens. He makes a most impressive elephant,” Elizabeth explained.
“Yes, miss.” Anna demurely nodded and continued walking after her employer’s niece. Twice daily walks were an exercise the other maids eschewed, but Anna did not mind Miss Elizabeth’s jolly spirit and energies. It certainly was more pleasurable to exercise than it was to scrub chamber pots.
On their second circuit, Elizabeth spied a handsome fellow wearing the robin’s breast red coat of His Majesty’s Army. The tall, stocky fellow with reddish-brown sideburns nodded to her and touched the brim of his cap. It was the sign Elizabeth looked for every day. It meant the man, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, had news, and would be along shortly to call upon her at her relations’ home in Cheapside.
“Come, Anna, we must hurry home.” Elizabeth slightly lifted her skirts to walk briskly towards her uncle’s carriage, with poor Anna nearly needing to run to keep up. But the joy was positively too overwhelming for Elizabeth to keep under good regulation. Perhaps Richard had a letter from her Fitzwilliam? Perhaps he at last had leave and could go to Kent to free her fiancée from this scheme of theirs to play the family false.
Breathless, Anna managed a return to the carriage long after Elizabeth had entered and settled herself. Catching back her calm, the maid, who was a few years older than Miss Bennet, gazed sternly at the woman whose love life had caused such uproar in the household.
“Miss Bennet, you frightened me that you would have left me behind. I did not know ladies could dart so in public.”
Elizabeth left her vigil of the window to watch the Colonel’s progress to his own horse to smile broadly at the maid. Anna’s kindness and care had nearly transformed her into a personal maid of sorts, and Elizabeth would genuinely miss her constant companion when her new life with Mr. Darcy began. “No one knows me here, I can afford a bit of reckless abandon now and again.”
Absent-mindedly, Elizabeth flexed her left foot, the very ankle she broke last autumn diving out the way of Mr. Darcy’s horse, Alexander. “Besides, I still so desperately cherish my abilities to walk and ramble. Trust me, once you lose your ability to walk, even for a short time, you remind yourself to not take your health for granted again!”
The maid nodded sagely as the Gardiner carriage gave a lurch and stopped only to lurch again to turn onto the main road connecting Mayfair and Cheapside. The Colonel’s horse followed the carriage in a lazy, disinterested manner and Richard was careful to take a number of detours to disguise his destination. As he led his horse Sampson down a less-traveled alleyway to round the block, the stench of London’s daily life assaulted his senses. Careful to remain in the middle as much as possible, Richard hoped he was not mucking with the beast’s natural sense of direction with all of these obscured routes.
Two ladies with extravagant costumes, just a touch too fashionable for the hour, strolled the path of Hyde Park with a nanny and babe behind them. One wore a dark blue gown in an attempt to hide her body’s changes from recently giving birth. The other wore a garish gown made of a gold and orange Indian sari, with matching plumage in her hair.
“I was correct, I told you it was that upstart Elizabeth Bennet talking about Mr. Darcy! Louisa, we must call on Darcy House this very afternoon.” Caroline Bingley whispered hoarsely to her sister.
“Curious, I believe that was his cousin who left around the same time. Perhaps it is he who is interested in Eliza. We both know the Bennets love their red coats.” Louisa Hurst gave a laugh that most carefully sounded like a snark.
So angry to see her adversary, in London, with connections of some kind to Mr. Darcy, the feathers in Caroline’s head bobbled furiously from the shudder of her clenched jaw. Narrowing her eyes to see the last of the carriage rolling away towards the less fashionable side of town, incidentally the same direction of the Hurst town home though that home was not so far as to be labeled as Cheapside, Caroline stomped her slippered foot in exasperation. Too many times Darcy had slipped through her fingers, and Caroline was determined to not let it happen again.
“I feel a headache coming on.” Louisa touched her forehead for effect.
“You always feel a headache coming on. I want to call on Miss Darcy, forgive me, Mrs. Wickham, as soon as we are able.”
Louisa frowned at her sister and with a swish of her skirts, began walking towards her own equipage. “Allow the poor woman to return to London, if you please. I have no interest in running to our brother in Bath.”
Caroline pulled a fan from her reticule and snapped it open to cover her expression of utter disgust should they pass a lady of importance on their departure. She had not been taken on Charles’ wedding trip with Jane, a manipulation she instigated, as an attempt to ensnare Darcy at Netherfield Park after Charles’ departure. Instead, she had missed the opportunity to ingratiate herself further with Darcy’s younger sister who was coincidentally in the same town enjoying her wedding trip. The world was patently unfair and Caroline refused to think for one moment if she only ceased trying to dictate her own fate, perhaps Providence might shine more favorably upon her.