“What a lovely idea, Caroline. Miss Darcy, will you play for us? I was utterly enchanted on the one occasion I was privilegedto hear you play at Netherfield. Miss de Bourgh, will you turn pages?”
It was done so smoothly, so pleasantly, that Caroline could not object without appearing churlish. Georgiana sat at the instrument. Anne took her place beside her. Caroline was left standing by the pianoforte with her offer to play gently, immovably, redirected.
Elizabeth watched her sister with something close to awe. Jane had always been kind. She had always been good. But somehow since her marriage, Jane had acquired an additional quality that Elizabeth could only describe as steel wrapped in silk. She did not argue with Caroline. She did not confront her. She simply occupied the ground, pleasantly, refusing to move. Caroline could not work out how to get past her without appearing rude, which was the one thing Caroline could not afford to be in this company.
It was, Elizabeth realised, the same quality Lady Matlock possessed: the ability to manage people without them noticing they were being managed. Jane had been watching Lady Matlock since the Bingleys’ arrival, and Lady Matlock had been watching Jane, and Elizabeth suspected they recognised each other. Two women who understood that real authority did not need to announce itself.
“Your sister,” Nana said, appearing beside Elizabeth’s chair, “is rather magnificent. I like her. And I quite see why you speak of her so fondly.”
For once, Elizabeth agreed with Nana entirely.
Caroline tried once more, later in the evening, approaching Darcy by the fire to ask his opinion on some matter or other. Jane appeared at Darcy’s other side, asked him whether he had written to Mr Gardiner about the fishing, and drew him into a conversation about trout that Caroline could not possibly contribute to without betraying her complete ignorance of country sport. Caroline retreated to the sofa, where Mrs Hurst was dozing. She sat with her back rigidly straight, her face perfectly composed, her eyes moving around the room, looking for another opening.
She did not find one. Jane had closed them all.
“Elizabeth,” Georgiana said quietly, as they went up the stairs together a little later. “Your sister Jane is terrifying.”
“Jane? Terrifying?”
“In the nicest possible way. Miss Bingley does not know what to do with her.”
“No,” Elizabeth said, and she smiled proudly. “She doesn’t.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Theballconsumedeverymoment of Elizabeth’s time, as the day approached.
She spent the morning of the first day in the ballroom with Lady Matlock, who had produced a list of requirements so long it needed both sides of the paper. Lady Matlock read aloud while Elizabeth took notes, the notes multiplying: which families must be greeted first (the Ashbournes, because Lady Ashbourne was the county’s oldest dragon and would take lasting offence if she were not); which local worthies required particular attention(Sir Edward Morris, deaf in one ear, who must be spoken to from the left; his wife, not deaf but pretending to be whenever the conversation bored her); where the carriages should queue so that guests arrived in the correct order of precedence; why the musicians must be fed before the dancing began, because musicians who thought about supper played badly.
Mrs Reynolds had the house in hand. The ballroom was opened and aired, the chandeliers taken down and cleaned crystal by crystal by a team of maids who had been at it since dawn. The floors were polished until they shone. The kitchens operated at full capacity. Mrs Reynolds moved between the cook, the housekeeper’s pantry, the wine cellar, checking stocks, issuing instructions, maintaining the tireless calm of a woman who had overseen Pemberley’s entertainments for thirty years. She was not about to let standards slip for the new mistress’s first ball.
Jane appeared at Elizabeth’s elbow whenever a decision was needed. Should the supper be served at half past ten or eleven? Eleven, Jane thought, because the receiving line would take a long time and the first set could not start until it had concluded, and they must have time for enough dances before supper. Should the card room be opened as well as the yellow drawing room for those who did not dance? Yes, because Mr Hurst would complain bitterly if it was not, and he was not the only gentleman who preferred cards to cotillions. Jane deflected the questions that could wait, escalated the ones that could not, and within a day the household had accepted her as Elizabeth’s deputy without anyone formally naming her so.
Elizabeth, watching Jane direct a footman where to place the card tables in the yellow drawing room, thought: she was wasted at Longbourn. We were all wasted at Longbourn.
Nana, meanwhile, was everywhere. Elizabeth could not enter a room without finding her already in it, arms folded, inspecting. She had declared the flowers wrong before the vases were half filled, pronounced the candle arrangements inadequate before they were lit, and sent Elizabeth back to Mrs Reynolds three times about the musicians’ gallery, which she insisted needed dusting despite the fact that Elizabeth had watched two maids dust it with painstaking care that morning.
The real difficulty was the curtains. Nana wanted the ballroom curtains drawn back to show the grounds by moonlight, which was a fine idea, but she wanted them drawn back to a precise degree that Elizabeth could not communicate to the footmen without revealing her source. Elizabeth spent twenty minutes adjusting the left curtain by inches while Nana stood behind her saying “More. More. No, that is too much. Back a little. There.”
“She is enjoying herself,” George observed, drifting through the ballroom on one of his restless circuits of the house. He paused to watch Nana direct Elizabeth’s curtain adjustments, his mouth twitching, which was as close to a smile as George Darcy ever came. “She has not been this animated since the last ball, which was before Anne died. This is her natural element. Pemberley’s reputation as host of the county’s premier events was entirely built during her lifetime.”
Elizabeth, who was balancing on a footstool adjusting the curtain tie while Lady Matlock waited patiently behind her with the seating plan, could not respond. She gave George a look that she hoped conveyed both acknowledgment and a strong desire for him to go away. He took the hint and drifted on.
Caroline Bingley, having been outmanoeuvred by Jane repeatedly, adjusted her strategy. She could not dominate the older women: Lady Matlock outranked her, Lady Catherine ignored her, Jane blocked her at every turn, and Elizabeth was mistress of the house. But the younger women, Caroline clearly reasoned, were another matter. Kitty was a country nobody. Georgiana was shy. Anne was sickly and sheltered and could not possibly have anything interesting to say.
She found the three of them in the music room after breakfast on the second day, where Georgiana was practising, Anne was reading, and Kitty was writing a letter. Caroline claimed the settee without hesitation, spreading her skirts as though the room had been arranged for her comfort.
“I do hope you are all looking forward to the ball,” Caroline said. “It will be your first real introduction to society, for some of you. Georgiana, of course, has been to London, but Miss Bennet, Miss de Bourgh, you must be quite overwhelmed at the prospect.”
“I am not overwhelmed,” Kitty said, without looking up from her letter. “I have been to assemblies. And indeed, the ball your brother hosted at Netherfield, a year past.”
“Assemblies in Hertfordshire,” Caroline said, with a smile that made it clear what she thought of assemblies in Hertfordshire, and conveniently ignoring the latter part of Kitty’s remarks.“This will be rather different. Three hundred guests, the principal families of Derbyshire. One must know who is who, of course. Lady Ashbourne will certainly come; she is the grande dame of the county set, terribly exacting, and one must be very careful not to offend her. And Lord and Lady Vernon, naturally, from Chatterton. And I understand Sir Peregrine Howe and his family are in the neighbourhood; I met them in London last Season, at Lady Jersey’s. Delightful people. The second son is said to be looking for a wife.”
She delivered this catalogue with evident authority and looked around for the expected admiration.
Anne turned a page of her book. “Lady Ashbourne is my great-aunt, on my father’s side,” she said mildly. “She and my mother have corresponded weekly for many years. I believe she is bringing her granddaughter Clara, who is about Georgiana’s age; a very sweet girl who plays the harp. I think you and she might make a duet, Georgiana, which would be charming. The Vernons I have known since I was a child; they came to Rosings every autumn for the shooting until Papa died. As for Sir Peregrine, his father and mine were at school together. The second son, Frederick, has a stammer and is very shy, and he is not looking for a wife; he is looking for a living, which my cousin Fitzwilliam has promised to provide when the next one falls vacant.”
Caroline stared at her. Her smile set like plaster.
