“What did he tell you?”
“Well, you’ll think I’m a fanciful girl, clinging to silliness, but he was ever so attentive, you know, Will? I was not accustomed to anyone being so attentive to me.” She was wistful as she looked off into the distance.
Across the room, my cousin Richard spoke up. “I say, can we not hear our own Miss Darcy play the piano?”
My sister smiled, getting up. “Oh, of course I shall play.” She left me alone as she went across the room.
I felt deeply ashamed of myself. Here I had been, gallivanting around, trying to solve the problem of Georgiana’s husband from the perspective of her reputation, and she had gotten into this predicament because of my behavior. I had neglected her. She had been susceptible to that awful man because I had been neglecting her. And obviously I had been neglecting her further. Not accustomed to anyone being so attentive?
Damnation.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I spoke to Elizabeth about bringing my sister back to stay with us on the carriage ride home. I went into the entire conversation, what she had said about attentiveness, all of it. “So, anyway,” I concluded, “I think she must feel as if she has been shuffled this way and that and hidden in corners and left to her own devices, and she must quite be very lonely, and I wish to bring her to live with us. I wished to inform you of my decision.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Oh,” I repeated. “That is all you have to say?” I had poured my heart out a bit there, and she was usually more likely to respond in kind.
“Well, you are simply informing me of what is already decided,” she said. “I don’t suppose my opinion is needed.”
“You don’t wish my sister to come and stay with us?”
“I did not say that,” she said. “Obviously, I would not object to such a thing. But even if I had, would it matter?”
“Obviously it would matter.”
“But you would make the decision yourself, in the end.”
“It’s my house. She’s my sister. It’s my decision to make.”
She was quiet.
I thought about how that must sound from her point of view. “If there is something that you do feel strongly about, of course,you must feel that you can come to me, and I shall consider your point of view, and—”
“Make whatever decision pleases you?”
“No,” I said. “That is not what I shall do. I shall make the best decision I can for everyone involved.”
“This is because of what I said about you in front of your family, is it not?”
“No,” I said, because I had quite forgotten all about that part of the evening.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I knew it wasn’t kind to poke fun at you, but I was ever so nervous, and it was difficult to stop when everyone was laughing, I suppose.”
“I am fine,” I said, a bit affronted. “I can handle a bit of teasing, of course.”
She looked at me in the darkness of the carriage, nodded once, and then looked away.
It was quiet.
“When will your sister arrive?” she said.
“I do not know,” I said. “I shall have to arrange it all, but I shall be sure to tell you of it once I know when.”
“All right,” she said.
And then it was quiet again.
