She gasped, unable to conceive of any endearment more masterful, more seductive, more impassioned than the literal description of her person. The air nigh on crackled in her ears as his lips crushed hers, his ardour rising unchecked to take them both on an altogether different journey than either had anticipated making that day. She surrendered gladly to his fervent caresses, inexpressibly content to be forever more Fitzwilliam Darcy’s woman.
“Will you show me the glade another day?” she later whispered as he lifted her back into her saddle—from which he had detained her long enough that they must now return home if they meant to arrive before dark.
“There is no need,” he replied in a low voice. “It is no longer my favourite place.” He kissed her hand and fixed her with a heart-fluttering look. “This is.”
Sunday 2 August 1812, Derbyshire
It was a moment after Miss Darcy played the last chord of her aria before Mary recollected herself and applauded. Rarely had she heard the pianoforte performed with such proficiency and elegance of expression. So great was her awe that she was unusually reluctant to accede to Mrs Gardiner’s suggestion that she play next. “I cannot but think the comparison would show me to great disadvantage.”
“That is easily resolved,” Elizabeth announced, standing up. “I shall play first, and then all subsequent comparisons will be favourable to you.”
Mary felt a swell of gratitude then a twinge of sadness that her sister was forever gone from Longbourn. As all eyes followed Elizabethto the instrument, she took a deep breath to compose herself. She had arrived with her aunt and uncle the previous afternoon. It had been an unnerving day, for her new brother was a formidable man and Pemberley vast. This afternoon, the gentlemen had left the women on their own and gone fishing. Two hours of feminine conversation had returned Mary to some semblance of equanimity, but it did not require much to remind her how far removed she was from her usual sphere. She marvelled that her sister showed no sign of being similarly daunted. To all appearances, she was as well settled as though she had lived her entire life in such grandeur.
Elizabeth fudged and faltered her way through a minuet before calling upon Mary and Miss Darcy to join her in playing a trio. After but three bars and thrice as many mistakes, however, she threw her hands in the air. “’Tis no good! You two had much better play without me.”
“You did not play so very ill, Lizzy,” Miss Darcy hastened to assure her.
Mary said naught. Her earlier gratitude notwithstanding, she had dearly wished to impress Miss Darcy and would have made no mistakes at all had Elizabeth not forced several upon her. She would have thought, with an instrument as fine as this to play and a husband as grand as Mr Darcy to please, her sister might trouble herself to practice more often.
“Mary does not agree,” Elizabeth said with a wink as she stood to rummage through the sheets of music atop the piano. “What say I find a reel, that we might all dance a little?”
“A reel, Lizzy?” Mrs Gardiner said with a raised eyebrow and a smirk. “Hardly a dance befitting the mistress of Pemberley.”
“I daresay nobody will be surprised,” Elizabeth replied. “Very little of what I have done thus far befits the mistress of Pemberley.”
“I have seen you do nothing improper,” Miss Darcy said. She sounded more than a little alarmed, reminding Mary how unaccustomed she must be to Elizabeth’s teasing.
“I agree,” she added, more for Miss Darcy’s sake than Elizabeth’s. “You seem remarkably capable to me.”
“You are both invaluable as sisters, discerning none of my mistakes, but I assure you the servants have noticed.”
Mrs Annesley, Mary observed, had picked up her hoop and was too busy attending to her stitches to contradict Elizabeth as shedescribed the butler’s horror the first time she returned home from a walk, caked in countryside.
“Though I believe it was my attempt to come into the house via the kitchens that most horrified him. I would have been better advised to trample the clean carpets than his sensibilities.”
“Oh, is that why Cook was in a lather on Wednesday?” Miss Darcy enquired.
“No. That was due to my trespassing in her domain to hang some flowers to dry.”
“You are not supposed to go below stairs at all?” Mary queried.
“I only think I need to announce myself in future. I had on an apron, cap and old walking dress, and the poor woman mistook me for a maid. She served me the sharp edge of her tongue before she recognised me.”
“Oh my! What did you do?” Miss Darcy exclaimed fretfully.
Mary was unsurprised to hear her sister say she had only laughed.
“Might I suggest you make an effort not to shock your poor staff with such regularity? You would not like to sink any further in their esteem,” Mrs Gardiner ventured. Her tone, which verged on admonishing, caused a fluttering in Mary’s stomach, for it made her wonder whether Elizabeth had not been teasing when she decried her performance as mistress.
“No, indeed! I have mortified them all enough,” Elizabeth agreed. “I thought my lady’s maid would faint when she caught me mending my own chemise. Still,” she added, looking up from her search and grinning at them all, “if my husband can tolerate my unfashionable independence, I am sure the staff will grow accustomed to it in time.”
Mary knew not whether to be diverted or dismayed. That her sister should be struggling to adapt to her new life would have been vastly distressing but for the fact that Elizabeth did not seem in the least perturbed by her professed insufficiencies. She had no time to do aught more than frown over it. Having found a piece of music to her satisfaction, Elizabeth edged behind the piano to set it on the stand, knocked into a pedestal by the wall, and sent the very expensive-looking miniature bust atop it sailing to its demise.
Nobody spoke as all five women congregated around the shattered figurine.
“Whose likeness was that, Georgiana?” Elizabeth said quietly.
“I am not sure. Nobody I knew.”
