“I’d be happy to,” Joe said.
“Oh, no, no, no!” Mrs. Bennet shouted. “Mr. Tarantello must never leave Jane Street!”
“I might,” Joe said.
The sisters looked at one another.
“But I will never leave Mary Bennet,” Joe said.
The sisters cheered. Their husbands had a laugh. Mrs. Bennet was smug. And Mr. Bennet was relieved.
Mary Bennet, for her part, was happy—the kind of happiness that’s bigger than any dream, bigger than any house, bigger than Christmas—the kind of happiness that lasts.
What Georgiana WantsKAREN DUKESS
“My sister, who is more than ten years my junior, was left to the guardianship of my mother’s nephew, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and myself. About a year ago, she was taken from school, and an establishment formed for her in London; and last summer she went with the lady who presided over it, to Ramsgate; and thither also went Mr. Wickham, undoubtedly by design; for there proved to have been a prior acquaintance between him and Mrs. Younge, in whose character we were most unhappily deceived; and by her connivance and aid, he so far recommended himself to Georgiana, whose affectionate heart retained a strong impression of kindness to her as a child, that she was persuaded to believe herself in love, and to consent to an elopement. She was then but fifteen, which must be her excuse; and after stating her imprudence, I am happy to add that I owed the knowledge of it to herself. I joined them unexpectedly a day or two before the intended elopement, and then Georgiana, unable to support the idea of grieving and offending a brother whom she almost looked up to as a father, acknowledged the whole to me.”
Jane Austen,Pride and Prejudice
Georgiana Darcy, the younger sister of Fitzwilliam Darcy, is critical to the plot developments inPride and Prejudice. Only after reading a letter from Mr. Darcy about Georgiana’s near elopement with George Wickham does Elizabeth Bennet begin to understand that her quick judgments about Wickham, as well as about Mr. Darcy himself, were wrong. And it is knowledge of what nearly happened to Georgiana (as well as his love for Elizabeth, of course) that propels Darcy to act on behalf of Lydia Bennet.
Yet despite her centrality to the novel, Georgiana Darcy has no voice within its pages. She appears only as others describe her and her words are never directly heard, only quoted by others. Georgiana Darcy is truly an unsung lady in waiting. It was an easy choice, and a great pleasure, to imagine her as a young mother looking back on her choices and pondering both what she has gained and what she has lost.
Not the Handel, please. Anything else.”
At the pianoforte, my daughter, Anne, looks at me with an expression of petulance far beyond her seven years.
“But Mama, I’ve been practicing. I play it nicely now.”
She sits up taller and shakes her head, golden ringlets glinting in the sun. She smiles at me and turns away, flips the sheet music as if she’s not playing only the right hand and by memory. She is both pretty and defiant, a combination that amuses me now, but may bring us trouble when she is older.
Anne starts again, her playing halting but correct. I’m tempted to leave the room to be alone, but that will only make it worse. And the music didn’t start this; the thoughts gripped me again this morning, shortly after I awakened, when the pleasant blur of my dream—bare skin, entwined legs, lips on my neck—clarified into a face, a figure, and a name.
Anne strikes a wrong note, bites her lip, and carries on. Her playing is slow and stiff, but still, it is too much to bear. Under my breath, I recite the tasks to which I should attend today—a letter to Lizzie, a dress fitting with the seamstress, a basket for that poor family with the sick child. Letter, dress, basket. Letter, dress, basket. Anne starts the song again. It’s no use. Physically, I am here at Headsworth, where I am wife to the dependable Edmund and mother to Anne and Thomas, but in my head and my thrumming body, I am on holiday in Margate, just shy of sixteen years old, sitting on an unfamiliar piano bench beside George Wickham, under the watchful eye of my companion, Mrs. Younge.
“Position your hands,” George had said, his silky, dark hair falling over his eyes. “Show me how to play.”
I placed my fingers on the keys, curving them as I’d been taught. He rested his hands on mine. His scent, warm and earthy, was strangely familiar.
“Now,” he said. “The minuet again. Handel.”
“Like this?” I looked down at his large hands, which concealed my own. A sea breeze drifted through the open widow. It was warm, but I shivered.
“Yes, like this.”
As I played, George’s hands stayed with mine, barely touching but moving along the keyboard as if he knew where my fingers were going to travel. When we went up the scale, his shoulder leaned in. When we came down, he pulled back. I touched the right notes but barely heard the song, so overtaken was I by the catch in my throat, the tingling up my arms, the warmth in my seat. When we were finished, I didn’t dare face him. Across the parlor, Mrs. Younge set down her needlework, stood up, and left the room. My heart hammered like a woodpecker—as it does now.
In front of me, Anne jumps down from the bench, slips, and falls.
“Ow, my knee!”
I help her up from the floor. She hops on one foot.
“You’re fine,” I tell her. “Run along and find your little brother. I think he’s in the library with Miss Rookwood.”
I take Anne’s place at the pianoforte and practice scales, starting with the majors as always, C, then G, D, and A. Briefly, my mind is at ease. The pattern of the music calms me. I continue through E, B, and F, and then I start over, but the task is too slow and doesn’t require enough concentration. A lock of hair tickles my shoulder where George once fingered a tendril that had fallen loose from my bun. I start the scales again from C, but play faster. Yet even as my fingers fly up and down the keyboard, my mindswirls with memories of those afternoons in the parlor—and the evening when George took my hand, turned it over, and pressed his lips to my palm.
“Annie! Come play with me!” I hear Thomas in the library. His excitement is palpable; he adores his older sister.
