Page 2 of Dear Friend

Elizabeth entered the drawing room already dressed for walking, her bonnet tied and her gloves in one hand. Her father sat near the fire with a newspaper open before him, while Jane worked quietly at her embroidery beside their mother.

“I am going to visit Julia, Mama,” Elizabeth said, drawing on her gloves. “I shall be home before supper.”

“Julia again!” Mrs. Bennet cried. “Upon my word, Lizzy, you have scarcely remained at home for an hour together these several months. I begin to think you have quite forgotten that you possess a family.”

Her mother had made much the same objection nearly every day since Julia’s arrival in Meryton had ceased to be a novelty and her friendship with Elizabeth had become an established fact.

“I assure you, Mama, I remember you all perfectly well.”

“One would never suppose it, the way you are forever running after that girl. Jane, at least, is content to remain at home and keep her mother company.”

Jane looked up from her needle work, but Elizabeth answered before her sister could be drawn into the dispute. “Jane remains with you because she likes your company, Mama, which is a very different thing from being denied everybody else’s.” She smiled as she fastened the second glove. “Besides, Julia’s aunt has been unwell of late, and I promised to call upon them. It is a very small kindness.”

“A small kindness! You have been paying small kindnesses nearly every afternoon this month. What you can possibly find to say to one another for so many hours, I cannot imagine. You have known Miss Harding scarcely four months, and already you are more intimate with her than with Charlotte Lucas, whom you have known all your life.”

Mr. Bennet, who had until then appeared wholly occupied by his newspaper, lowered it sufficiently to regard his wife. “You mistake the matter, my dear. Their attachment is perfectly natural. Were it not that Lizzy has something of your looks and rather too much of my disposition, I might begin to suspect Miss Harding of being a daughter I had somehow mislaid and neglected to mention.”

“Mr. Bennet!” His wife turned upon him at once. “How can you say such a thing? I wonder you can take pleasure in vexing me so. And what if somebody were to hear you? What would Lady Lucas say?”

“I imagine Lady Lucas would say a great deal,” Mr. Bennet replied, returning his attention to the newspaper. “She generally does.”

“I will not have you make a jest of it. The resemblance is extraordinary enough without your putting such notions into people’s heads.”

“My dear, I flatter myself that Meryton requires very little assistance from me in putting notions into its head.”

Elizabeth concealed a smile. Jane was less successful, bending her head over her embroidery with suspicious haste.

“It is not the resemblance that concerns me,” Mrs. Bennet continued. “It is your being forever at that cottage when you have a family of your own who might wish to see you occasionally. Morning or afternoon, it is always Julia. Julia wishes to walk, Julia wishes you to call. I wonder what is to become of us all.”

“I expect you will survive my absence until supper.”

“There! You see how she treats me, Mr. Bennet? But you never correct her. You encourage her in everything.”

“Not everything, my dear. Only when she amuses me.”

Elizabeth judged this an excellent moment to retreat. “I shall be home before supper, Mama.”

“You had better be. And do not remain out if it rains. You know how the lanes become, and I will not have you bringing half of Hertfordshire into the house upon your shoes.”

“I shall endeavour to leave the county where I find it.”

“Lizzy!”

Elizabeth laughed as she escaped into the hall, and a moment later the front door closed upon her mother’s renewed complaints.

The amusement remained with her as she set out towards Meryton, though her thoughts soon turned, as they had done with surprising frequency of late, to Julia. Four months ought scarcely to have been sufficient to produce so settled an intimacy. Elizabeth had known Charlotte Lucas nearly all her life, and Jane possessed a place in her affection which no new acquaintance could threaten; yet Julia had somehow passed, with astonishing ease, from stranger to friend.

The remarkable likeness between them had first awakened Elizabeth’s curiosity, but curiosity alone could not account for what had followed. Julia was clever without wishing to display it, lively without being foolish, and possessed a humour sufficiently like Elizabeth’s own that an hour in her company seldom seemed an hour at all.

Four months was a very little time in which to know another person. Yet Elizabeth had begun to feel as though Julia Harding had been absent from her life far longer than she had been present in it.

Chapter Two

October 1810

London

Darcy