“Naturally,” Elizabeth said soothingly. “Your husband’s manners are very good —perhaps the best I have seen. But is there not something that caused you concern? I am glad to listen, if Lady Catherine was not.”
“Well, yes,” Georgiana admitted at last. “But it is nothing, really.”
“Of course you need not tell me if you do not wish to,” Elizabeth said gently. “But I always find it a great relief to speak my feelings aloud. Even, or perhaps especially, if they are significant of nothing in particular.”
“You are always so easy to talk to,” Georgiana sighed. “I suppose this is what it is like to have a sister.”
“Sometimes,” Elizabeth told her, thinking of Jane, but also of Lydia, Kitty, and Mary. Not for worlds would she have confessed some of her more confusing thoughts and worries toher younger sisters. “Indeed, it is always a relief to unburden my heart to my older sister.”
“It is only that — he seems distant, sometimes,” Georgiana said all in a rush. “Something is on his mind, but he says he does not wish to trouble me. And then there are the letters…”
“Letters?” Elizabeth inquired. “Letters of business?”
“I do not know,” Georgiana replied. “Likely I would never have thought of them, except that — well. Except that it seemed almost as though he did not wish me to see them.”
“I understand,” Elizabeth replied slowly. “No wonder you are concerned. That is odd, to be sure.”
“It is nothing, surely,” Georgiana said, in what seemed more an attempt to convince herself than anything else. “My brother never showed me his letters either.”
But,Elizabeth thought to herself,neither does Mr Darcy deliberately conceal them.Aloud, she said only “No, indeed. I suppose we all wish a little privacy with our correspondence.”
“That is true,” Georgiana said with relief, seizing on the mild excuse at once. “Yes, I shall dismiss that from my thoughts. Perhaps Mr Wickham was only distant because he knew how difficult it has been for me to be estranged from my brother, and was too kind to say anything against him. He has often told me he never would, for nothing could justify criticising a brother to his sister, even though Iamhis wife.”
“I see,” Elizabeth said mildly. In fact, she saw a great deal, including that Mr Wickham seemed to have criticised his brother-in-law in the same breath as vowing not to do so.
“Then, too, there are his money worries. Mr Wickham was so hoping we would receive my full dowry! No doubt my brother is only being prudent, but I do think him a little over-cautious. Do not you?”
“To be quite honest, I do not know,” Elizabeth told her. “I see such opposing principles in the case that I am not sure what I believe.”
Georgiana looked a little confused at this, but thankfully did not inquire. “In any case, thank you for talking it over with me. Aunt Catherinemeanswell, but I confess I have always found her rather frightening. And I know my actions deserve reproach — just think, eloping! I still cannot quite believe I did it — but all the same, it is done now. I wish Lady Catherine would not speak so of my husband.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“I think I shall go and play the pianoforte, if you do not mind,” Georgiana went on, a little shyly. “A little music will be just the thing to help me recover from such an ordeal. I have never been so embarrassed in all my life. Why, I can still feel the blood in my cheeks!”
“Yes, as can I,” Elizabeth said with a laugh. “And of course you must go and play the pianoforte. I think it a capital idea.”
“Very well then, goodbye!” Georgiana said gaily, and hurried off, walking with a skip in her step. Elizabeth looked after her, feeling a little sad. At such times, Georgiana looked like the innocent schoolgirl she had been such a short time before.
Thank goodness that Mr Wickham, whatever his faults, was at least treating her with gentle courtesy. Yet Elizabeth could not accept his actions so unquestioningly as Georgianahad. Privacy in one’s correspondence was one thing, but concealing it was quite another.
What was Mr Wickham up to? The gentleness of his manners and the excellence of the principles he espoused suggested that it was nothing of which he need be ashamed. For Georgiana’s sake, Elizabeth hoped it was so. Yet Mr Darcy’s dislike and distrust of his brother-in-law suggested otherwise.
Elizabeth sat long in thought. Lady Catherine’s confidential lesson had indeed been enlightening, if perhaps not exactly in the manner she had envisioned.
Chapter 23
Suppers at Pemberley had long been rather quiet affairs. In the years since their father’s death, Darcy and Georgiana had most often sat alone at the long table — and since Georgiana’s elopement, Darcy had been entirely alone or, on many nights, had forgone a formal supper entirely in favour of a tray in his study.
Not so now. The long table was alive with light and laughter. Before the meal, Darcy had felt rather unsure about some of Elizabeth’s placements of their guests. Darcy himself, almost inevitably, was at the head of the table, but rather than taking the foot herself, Elizabeth had placed Lady Catherine there. To be sure, his aunt would enjoy having the seat of importance second only to his own, but it belonged by right to Elizabeth.
Still, arranging their guests was likewise her right. Darcy had therefore kept quiet about his doubts, a choice that had proven wise. Elizabeth’s choices had proven successful indeed. Not only was Lady Catherine mollified by the gesture of respect, she was at one end of the long table, and therefore less able to monopolise the conversation. With Fitzwilliam onLady Catherine’s right hand, and Elizabeth herself on her left, two of the people least likely to be ground under by Lady Catherine’s forthright manner were well-placed to help guide the conversation.
Despite his many sins, Wickham had an undoubted golden tongue and way of guiding others into conversation, a skill he was now exercising on an unusually voluble Anne. Indeed, she looked to be better entertained than he had ever seen her before.
Georgiana, placed at Darcy’s right hand, was still shy of him. He could hardly blame her, still less as he could not think of what to say either.
But this, too, Elizabeth noticed, and soon smoothed over.
