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Lydia is found — but the phone call that ends the worst week of Lizzie's life opens a worse question: someone else got to her sister first, and nobody will say who. The Bennet house swings from terror to relief to Mrs. Bennet's giddy wedding-planning inside a single morning, while Uncle Ed relays 'terms' nobody can explain and Mr. Bennet, hollowed out, announces he will be repaying his brother-in-law for the rest of his life. Lizzie does the arithmetic in the small hours with Jane and it does not work: Uncle Ed does not have that kind of money. Then Lydia sweeps home unrepentant, sunglasses up, bags in hand, and holds court at the kitchen table — and lets one name drop into the story like a stone: Mr. Darcy was there, obviously. She claps a hand over her mouth, refuses to say another word, and Lizzie is on the stairs before the chair stops rocking. Alone in her room, she asks her aunt Maddie for the truth, and it arrives in pieces: he found them in two days, he paid for all of it, Uncle Ed only put his name to the papers — and he asked them never to tell her. Lizzie ends the chapter where she began it, at the foot of the same staircase, holding the same phone, undone by a man who did everything and wanted no credit for it.
Page 1
Page 1. A wide shot of the Bennet family's narrow front hall in the small hours, every lamp burning: dark floorboards under a patterned red-and-cream runner, cream wainscot panelling, the staircase rising on the right, a console table with a lamp and framed photographs on the left. Lizzie Bennet stands at the foot of the stairs in her olive-green utility jacket and jeans, a phone pressed to her ear so only its flat back is visible, her face pale and stunned. Behind her, framed in the kitchen doorway, Jane, Mrs. Bennet and Kitty stand frozen mid-step in their nightclothes, watching her. Caption: 'Nine days of nothing. Then, at three in the morning, the phone rang.' Lizzie: 'Wait — someone else got to her FIRST?'
Page 2
Page 2, two stacked panels. Panel 1. The Bennet front hall. Mrs. Bennet has collapsed forward into Jane's arms, sobbing, her floral blouse rumpled and her beaded necklace askew. Jane holds her calmly with both arms. Kitty stands beside them in a pink cardigan, crying, one hand on the stair rail. Mrs. Bennet (shouting): 'She's safe! My girl is SAFE!' Panel 2. Mr. Bennet sits down heavily on the third stair in his brown cardigan, reading glasses on, hands loose between his knees, staring at the floorboards. Mr. Bennet: 'Nine days. And someone else did it in two.'
Page 3
Page 3, two stacked panels. Panel 1. The Bennet kitchen in grey morning light, cream cabinets and a butler sink under the window, a dark metal dome pendant hanging low over the heavy dark-wood table. Lizzie and Jane sit at the table with mugs in front of them and a dark-olive phone lying face-down between them on speaker, both leaning in to listen. Caption: 'Uncle Ed, on speaker, picking every word like a stone across a river.' Caption: 'She is staying with him. It is settled. There are terms.' Panel 2. A tight close-up on Lizzie across the table, jaw set, eyes hard, one hand flat on the tabletop. Lizzie: 'Terms cost money, Jane.'