The Whiskey Wedding Chapter 1
Elizabeth Bennet peeked through the curtains of her father’s study. When the lane outside remained empty, the second eldest daughter of Longbourn sighed and allowed the curtain to fall closed.
“A watched lane never boils, Lizzie” Mr. Bennet continued to play solitaire. The activity required a solo-effort as his favorite daughter refused to play gin while waiting for her aunt and uncle to arrive for their summer journey to the Peak District.
“A watched pot never boils, you’re mixing your metaphors, Papa.” Lizzie took a brief stroll about the room, which amounted to little more than a half circle around her father’s desk and then back again to the window. This time when she tucked back the curtain there was a visitor coming down the lane on horseback. Lizzie scrunched up her nose.
“See, a watched lane does produce a visitor. It looks like a soldier on a horse…” Elizabeth’s voice trailed off as she looked frantically at her father. Her youngest sister, Lydia, had gone to Brighton as the particular guest of Colonel Forster and his wife for the militia’s summer encampment.
“Go and fetch your mother.” Mr. Bennet shuffled the cards to re-stack the deck and tucked it into his desk drawer. The housekeeper, Hill, announced the arrival of Colonel Forster and showed him into the master’s study.
By the time Elizabeth arrived with her mother, Mrs. Bennet neared sounding hysterical with worry over her poor Lydia.
“Oh Colonel, how good of you to come. How is our daughter?” Mrs. Bennet fluttered a handkerchief as she refused to enter more than two steps into her husband’s study. The colonel turned and offered the mother of his houseguest a grim expression.
“As I have just told your husband, Mrs. Bennet, it is very grave indeed. A lieutenant in my unit, Mr. Wickham, has deserted with your daughter and they intend to marry over the border. I have given your husband here a letter that Miss Lydia left for my wife.”
“Oh heavens!” Mrs. Bennet clutched her chest and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Elizabeth and the colonel scrambled forward to catch a fainting Mrs. Bennet before she hit the floor.
“Papa?” Elizabeth exclaimed as her father stood like a statue behind his desk as his wife crumpled to the floor.
Hearing his daughter’s voice startled Mr. Bennet into action. He and a footman carried Mrs. Bennet up the stairs to her bedroom as Hill announced the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner.
“Lizzie, can you and Jane help your mother? I shall go tell your aunt and uncle that your trip must be canceled.” Mr. Bennet placed a kiss on his wife’s forehead as Mrs. Bennet began to stir from the application of her smelling salts. Elizabeth nodded. Her father left the room and Jane entered it to join Lizzie at their mother’s side. The other two Bennet sisters were luckily away visiting the Lucases and therefore spared the dreadful news of Lydia’s flight.
“Oh, you girls are ruined, all ruined. And you, poor Jane, so beautiful. All wasted now!” Mrs. Bennet lamented.
“Do not say such things, Mama. Father and Uncle will find Lydia and make them marry,” Elizabeth said.
“Your father and Mr. Wickham shall have to duel. Your father will be killed! And we shall be thrown out!” Mrs. Bennet turned and slanted her eyes at her second eldest daughter. “Oh why Lizzie, why did you not marry Mr. Collins?”
Mrs. Bennet began to berate Elizabeth over rejecting the cousin who was to inherit Longbourn from an entail on the property. Accepting her mother’s vitriol over the rejected proposal last autumn, Lizzie looked to her sister for help. She received a sympathetic look from Jane before her sister distracted their mother. Elizabeth retreated from the bed and stood by the door so that she could hear the voices from below.
“But must we leave so soon? I am tired, Edward, and the children need a rest,” Mrs. Gardiner said.
“You and the children could stay here, bring the Bennet carriage to London in a few days’ time,” her husband reasoned.
As Elizabeth eavesdropped on the discussion between her father, uncle, and aunt in the entryway, she began to think of an idea. Elizabeth moved over to the bed where her mother lay in another fit of hysterics.
“I shall simply die if I lose my daughter! I will die I tell you! My nerves cannot, they cannot –” Mrs. Bennet’s next statement gargled somewhere into her throat as she pretended to choke on the very sentiment of losing Lydia.
As much as she disappointed her mother on a daily basis, Elizabeth’s heart seized in that moment to see the woman who gave her life in such distress. There had to be more that could be done to find Lydia and she looked at Jane, tilting her head gently so that Jane joined her by the door. Elizabeth opened the door a little wider so that more of what was being said below could be heard above.
“All reports indicate that Mr. Wickham and Miss Lydia headed to London first. I do not mean to besmirch your daughter, sir, but I don’t believe the character of my soldier to be steadfast. I fear he will abandon her favors just as soon as they reach town.” Colonel Forster explained how another lieutenant, Mr. Denny, testified to him that Mr. Wickham held no designs on the hand of Miss Lydia Bennet.
“If we change my team of horses with yours, Brother, we can leave within the hour back to London,” Mr. Gardiner said.
Elizabeth observed her older sister’s eyes widen with fear. “They are only going to look in London,” she whispered. “That is a mistake. What if they never go to London at all and head straight for the border from Brighton?” Elizabeth wrung her hands as more plans were being made below.
“Papa and Uncle know what’s best. They will find Lydia,” Jane said.
“And if they do not? It is our reputations that are ruined. We shall never have another offer from a respectable man.”
Elizabeth bit her lower lip and thought bitterly of Mr. Darcy, the tall man from Derbyshire who she had rejected out of hand over grave misunderstandings. Her trip with her aunt and uncle was to ride through the hamlet of Lambton and Elizabeth hoped to stop at Pemberley with the intention of renewing the acquaintance. More importantly, she wished fervently to apologize to Mr. Darcy for her utter stupidity in believing the woes and tales of Mr. Wickham. It was true that Mr. Darcy had slighted her first, but Elizabeth had allowed the illogical story of a jilted man to cloud her judgment further.
“What are you thinking, Lizzie?” Jane asked, having her own regrets with Mr. Darcy’s friend, Mr. Bingley. Mr. Bingley had visited the previous autumn and while for a time it appeared he might offer for Jane, the entire party left for London in December with not another word.
Elizabeth shrugged and then stood taller as she realized how they might search in two directions at once. “Come with me and follow my lead. You go to London with Papa and Uncle, and I will go with Aunt toward Scotland in hopes of heading them off if they go there.”
“But the expense?” Jane asked. Elizabeth furiously shook her head.
“There should be very little additional expense, our aunt and uncle already paid for us to travel as far as the Peak District. Gretna Green is just another fifty miles.” Elizabeth ticked off the distance with her fingers as she knew Jane had not studied geography as well as she had. Remnants of a conversation with Mr. Darcy about the trifling matter of traversing fifty miles of good road echoed from some distant part of her mind.
Jane looked furtively back at her mother’s bed as the woman continued to whimper and cry. “Let us go speak to Papa and see if we can offer our aid. But I should stay here with Mama.”
Elizabeth shook her head.
“Nay, if Papa and Uncle Edward find Lydia in London, they are going to need you because our aunt will be with me. You and I both know Lydia will be in a state. I don’t think either man will be equipped to handle her tantrums.”
Elizabeth felt a little guilty to criticize her youngest sister in such a manner, but what she spoke of was true. If Lydia did not get her way, as the youngest of five daughters, she resorted to cries and fits until she found relief. And as she ran away with a man neither betrothed to her nor related by family, Elizabeth reasoned her sister deserved no respect in the present time.
Jane agreed, reluctantly, and the two sisters took the stairs to share their thoughts with their elders.
You have been reading The Whiskey Wedding...
Some love stories are worth forgetting—and remembering all over again…
Elizabeth Bennet had made many impulsive decisions in her life, but marrying Mr. Darcy while concussed might have been the most reckless. If only she could remember doing it.
Her mission had been simple: travel to Scotland, intercept her foolish sister before she eloped with a scoundrel, and save her family from ruin. The carriage accident wasn’t part of the plan. Neither was waking up married to the man whose proposal she’d rejected with scathing words only months before.
Darcy insisted their marriage was real, legal, and—most shocking of all—her idea. He had witnesses, a marriage certificate, and even her own letters explaining everything she couldn’t recall. What he didn’t have was her memory of falling in love with him.
Trapped at Darcy’s Scottish estate while her memory played hide-and-seek with the truth, Elizabeth discovered a man entirely different from the proud gentleman she’d once despised. But as her sister’s fate hung in the balance, Elizabeth had to fall in love with her own husband all over again—this time, knowing exactly what she was choosing.
A whiskey wedding, an amnesia bride, and a husband worth trusting—it’s a story of adventure and love for Our Dear Couple.
