The Curious Case of the Kentish Clergyman, Chapter 31. Narrated by Elizabeth Bennet Darcy.

The maps were gone when we came back to Gracechurch Street.

They had lived on my uncle's desk for five days, and I had come to hate them with a warmth ordinarily reserved for people. My father stopped in the hall with his hat still on. A house that has held its breath for a week does not go quiet in the same way twice, and this quiet was new.

My aunt came out to us before the maid could. "There you are. Supper has been put back. Come into the study, both of you."

My uncle stood at his desk, looking triumphant but bewildered, as if a difficult ledger had balanced more easily than he expected. "I have been in touch with Mr. Wickham," he said. "He will call here tomorrow at ten."

My father sat down. I did not.

"How?" my father asked.

My uncle hesitated for a moment before he said, "Through a man who knew where to ask. The how of it will keep." He took a folded paper from under the inkstand and did not open it. "I have Lydia's direction as well."

I thought of a young heiress found sick with poison after Wickham had abandoned her and my hand went involuntarily to my throat.

My uncle saw the gesture, and tried to reassure me. "She is lodged in town, and well enough, by every account I could get."

"And he will come?" my father asked. "To this house? Of his own accord?"

"He is willing enough to call. Men in his situation generally are, once they are sure it is worth their while to be found." My uncle said it without heat. "Now, I have been thinking how tomorrow ought to go. I will receive him here and settle the terms. You and Lizzy might go to Lydia while it is being done. She will want faces that are kind to her, and the fewer of us across a table from that man, the better the morning will run."

It was reasonable. It was all of it reasonable.

"I should like to be here when he comes," I said.

My uncle looked up at me.

"I have better cause than anyone in this house to know what he is," I said. "I want to hear the terms set. I want to see his face while they are set." I had been carrying what I knew of him from Kent to Derbyshire to London, sewn in like a coin in a hem, and I wanted at last to be in the room where some of it might be spent.

My aunt looked at my uncle. I had my next argument ready, and the one behind it, and a third in reserve for the appeal to propriety that any such request must bring on.

"Well," said my uncle, turning his pen over once. "If you feel you ought, Lizzy."

"There can be no harm in it, I suppose," said my aunt.

And that was all. Nobody appealed to my nerves, or my youth, or the coarseness of the business. Nobody produced a second reason to set beside the first. I had braced my shoulder for the door, and it swung before my hand ever reached it, the way a door swings when no one is holding the other side.

My father had said nothing through any of this. He said it now, from the chair, to the inkstand.

"Well. This quest for Lydia has certainly shown me my own measure. I believe I could sit an hour with my most foolish daughter and conduct myself tolerably. I am quite certain I could not sit five minutes with the man who carried her off and conduct myself at all. Your uncle shall have Mr. Wickham, and you with him, Lizzy, since you are so set on it. You were always better than I am at hating a man to his face. I shall go to Lydia, and say to her whatever will bear saying."

So it was arranged. My uncle and I at home at ten, to Mr. Wickham and the terms; my father to Lydia's lodgings, to be the kind face. My aunt kissed me at the stair and said tomorrow would be a long day and I must sleep.

I went up with every point won and not one of them fought for. Nobody had refused me anything. I slept badly on the victory.