The part of my education that taught me to be obedient was far from dormant. Even if my time living with Darcy and Elizabeth had encouraged me to carry myself as an equal, and time with Kitty had eroded the finer points of my deportment training, I was still Georgiana Darcy, and I knew exactly what behaviour was expected of me. The trouble was, I much preferred being Kitty’s George.
Despite clearly revelling in holding court, Lady Catherine stayed only long enough to look me despairingly up and down and instruct me to make myself more presentable for breakfast in the morning. Once she’d swept out of the room, I finally let myself breathe.
“Ready for bed?” Emma asked, stepping forwards from where she’d been holding perfectly still at the edge of the room.
I nodded, allowing myself to be led upstairs to a room lacking all my favourite things: no piano, no chessboard, no stack of books. No Kitty. Even when I was tucked under the sheets, my toes heated by the residual echo of a warming pan, I knew sleep would take its time to come.
It was the kind of night most productively spent in the library, ideally with Kitty at my side. Rosings had such a room, but I wasn’t confident I could find it, especially in the dark, and I doubted I would be particularly welcome there, even during the daylight hours. There was only one book in the bags I’d brought with me, and I climbed out of bed to dig around for it in my valise.
The Disposition of an English Ladycame everywhere with me, so I’d taken it to Meryton without a second thought. Between my initial confusion over Kitty’s feelings and my contentment once things had settled, the book had not even come out of my bag. Now, left alone at Rosings, I craved its familiarity. I had memorised every word inside with how much I’d read and reread it over the years, but it was still a comfort to hold the volume knowing my mother had done the same.
I couldn’t help but wonder whether she’d agree with my aunt in thinking that I was uneducated and conducted myself poorly. I found it hard to imagine her disapproving of Darcy’s marriage to Elizabeth in the same way Lady Catherine did, not when they were both so clearly in love and all the happier forit. My mother existed for me only in my head, conjured out of the pages of this book, but I could not imagine her to be cruel.
Despite my best effort, I had strayed far from every rule in the book. I wanted desperately to believe that my mother would understand, but she’d found the rules important enough to underline and annotate, her writing cramped into the margins. They mattered to her, perhaps in a way that would eclipse the way Kitty mattered to me. The question would never be answered, so I doubted my guilt over the matter would ever fully subside. I was not the woman my mother would want me to be.
Setting the book down on the table beside my bed, I curled up underneath the blankets and waited for my exhaustion to overwhelm me, my fingers knotted around Kitty’s ribbons at my wrist.
I tried to reassure myself that this was not what my forever looked like, but I knew it could be. If Darcy never let me move back to Pemberley, this was all I had. It was not an asylum like I had feared, but it wasn’t much better. My aunt seemed to take so much joy in the power she got from being unattached to any man, but her sole aim was nevertheless to see me shackled to an eligible suitor I did not love. The incongruity was bitter and biting. She seemed happiest unmatched, but unwilling to consider that I might be, too.
The tears that fell onto my pillow were silent but heavy, and hot with suppressed anger.
Breakfast at Rosings was far more formal than at either Pemberley or Longbourn House. I had taken Lady Catherine’s words to heart and implored Emma to help me look my best. Walking around in a chemise and an old coat with my hair loose around my shoulders was not an option unless I wanted to invite abject criticism. I needed to do what I could to make this stay bearable. When I was shown into the dining room to find Anne de Bourgh already dressed to receive visitors, I knew I had made the right choice.
“Miss de Bourgh,” I greeted her, as formally as I had addressed her mother the night before. “I hope you are well?”
I had never known her to be well. Despite being cousins, we had socialised little together when I had been younger, owing to Anne’s weak constitution. It was, on occasion, hard to tell how much of her sickness was genuine and how much was a figment of Lady Catherine’s imagination, but the result was the same. Anne spent much of her life resting, unable to travel or go to balls or even hold a stimulating conversation.
It was no secret that my aunt had hoped for Anne to marry Darcy. Financially, it would have been a most convenient arrangement, but I never could imagine this pale, fragile girl as my brother’s wife, and nor, I was sure, could he. She shared too many of my features—the dark hair, the harsh jaw, the thick brows.
Marrying Anne was a notion Darcy had never entertained, but Lady Catherine seemed to blame Elizabeth solely as the reason her plan could now never come to pass. Unless, of course, she was hoping for the current Mrs. Darcy’s death.
Anne’s own opinions of a potential marriage to my brother had never been clear to me, but her smile when she saw me suggested she did not entirely share her mother’s newly intensified disdain for the Darcy name.
“Miss Darcy! I was delighted to hear you’ll be staying at Rosings,” she said, beaming up at me. It brought some colour to her cheeks, reviving her complexion.
“Your mother was very kind to take me in,” I said, focusing on graciousness rather than my anger at being sent away.
“What brings you here at such short notice?”
Explaining Kitty was out of the question, but I could have at least vaguely sketched out the circumstances with Wickham. I would not be the first woman to flee a county to avoid the pursuits of an unrelenting man. Still, I didn’t seek to embarrass Lydia for the poor behaviour of her husband and wasn’t sure I could tell the story without being talked out of anonymity. So I opted for a carefully constructed lie.
Over toast and jam, I explained the crowded nature of Longbourn and how, in the Bennets’ hour of uncertainty regarding the fate of the head of their household, an extra visitor was unnecessary strain. Anne listened intently, eyes wide as she nodded at each line. It was hardly a daring tale of adventure, but she seemed so desperate for a new story or two that she was willing to entirely invest in mine. I almost felt bad for not giving her the vastly more eventful truth. I avoided the questions on her tongue only by the arrival of Lady Catherine.
She swept into the room with a demeanour carefully constructed to silence conversations. Anne and I were both onour feet immediately, heads inclined in place of the curtsies the table prevented.
“Sit,” Lady Catherine ordered, but only to Anne. When she turned to me, her lips pursed as if she’d tasted something sour. “Turn.”
She waved me away from the table and gestured for me to spin. Feeling like I was being judged for my presentation at court rather than over cold cuts and warm bread, I did as I was asked. For a long moment, there was silence—until my aunt finally spoke.
“Passable,” she said, with no note of confidence. “Except this.”
When she reached out and grabbed at my wrist, I thought perhaps she was going to find fault with my nails, but when I looked down, I realised it was Kitty’s ribbons. I snatched my arm back, holding it behind my back in protective instinct.
“It’s fine,” I protested.
Lady Catherine’s only tell for anger was a slight flaring of the nostrils, but I still felt her discontent in waves.
“You are far beyond the age of childish trinkets,” she admonished. “Ribbons are for dresses, bonnets, and hair decorations, not for playthings and distractions.”
