Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Off the Record, Page 11

About this chapter

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.