“Yes, but you will have a hot bath, tea on a tray, and be tucked up in your bed very shortly if I know anything.”
This was, in fact, precisely what was in store for my sister, and at the very instant we stepped in the side door, she was swept up like the victim of an accident. The scolding she anticipated, however, was reserved for me.
“What a mad day to take that child out, Mr. Darcy,” Mrs. Reynolds said sternly. She scowled at me as she had when I was twelve.
“Was it?” I looked humbly at the floor as though pondering the justice of her accusation. Then, with a tinge of mischief, I raised my eyes to face her. “I thought it the perfect time since she had just wept out her heart for the loss of her friend. It did her a world of good, ma’am.”
“Well, sir, let us hope your ‘world of good’ did not kill her,” she grumbled before remembering she had yet another child to cluck over. “And you! You are wet to the skin. I shall send Carsten with the hot water this minute.”
I sank gratefully into a hot bath, sat in luxurious idleness over a tray of food, and even indulged in a brief nap. My days of listening intently to every whisper and attending to the smallest of details—my watch duty—had come to an end.
Inevitably, the scandal of Elizabeth’s parting had radiated through the house, yet I easily ignored it. I really had no interest in what might be said of her or of me, of whatever titillating conclusions were reached with regard to our private meeting in the gallery, or of her tear-stained march of broken dignity back down the stairs and into her uncle’s custody.
The maids were so often caught whispering their romantic ideas that Mrs. Reynolds was forced to call a halt to such conferences. Parker’s face, too, became slightly sterner than on his stiffest days, and I pitied the poor footman who dared to snicker at the gossip, for he would surely face a purring enquiry of whether he might be happier in service to the squire.
In the wake of such lurid speculations as abound in a large country house under the circumstances, there came a kind of settled boredom. No, I had not ridden off after herventreàterre—a matter of relief for a few and disappointment for others since even the lowliest member of my household had an opinion on the match. Whether for her or against her, however, no one could deny that Elizabeth’s presence had been such that her absence was felt as a kind of gaping void.
As I reflected in a state of repose, she was on the long and uncomfortable journey south, no doubt also deep in reflection. There was little to do when confined in a carriage and jolted from one change of horses to the next except to think, and to think hard about one’s life. I hoped I featured largely in those thoughts.
Meanwhile, Georgiana was distracted by yet another inevitable loss in her life. Mitten had slipped out the kitchen door and was nowhere to be found. She did not cry, but she was sad and could not help but see that her kittens were quickly becoming cats.
“I shall have to do something with them,” she admitted to me over cards.
She pondered the problem for several days, and I let her come to her own decision. They were, after all, her kittens. In the end, the toms would be sent to the cottages and the stables, and three of the females were to be kept in the house, one to be groomed as Button’s genteel replacement, one to patrol the attics and maids’ quarters, and one to rule the stillroom. Georgiana then looked up at me a little sheepishly and admitted there would be a long hiatus between litters.
“I have come to the same conclusion in the kennel,” I replied, also sheepishly. I verily hated sending pups to new owners, but I could not justify keeping twenty dogs, particularly when the hunt was Sir Hugh’s domain.
We enjoyed the common and ordinary moments, commiserating on the miserable bits and enjoying the pleasurable ones, close as any brother and sister anywhere. If I never saw Elizabeth again, she would have left her indelible mark on us in this regard at least, and though we never spoke of it, we were acutely aware of it and continued to attend to Mrs. Jennings as though her niece was still with us.
The poor lady had not known Elizabeth from anyone else precisely, but her great-niece had a perceptive power to anticipate her needs greater than any of her other caregivers. She was often frustrated of late, and though Mrs. Jennings did not have sufficient memory to be sad in a particular way, she knew that her principal support had gone away. Slowly, Ruth would learn to sense her moods and intervene before they took hold, but in the meantime, the lady sat at the window for hours, staring down at the walled garden and the meadow beyond.
***
March came and, with it, a respite from the worst cold. The days of iron frost were behind us; ahead, April and May stood ready to receive us when we ventured out into the world again.
My readiness for this eventuality began steadily to grow into an almost ungovernable urge to fly south. Georgiana, however, was confronted with her debut that, as Elizabeth had so astutely guessed, was as welcome as a visit to the tooth drawer. Still, she was far more ready than she would had she not followed Elizabeth’s example, discovering that a mixture of charm and stubborn persistence, dignity in the face of embarrassment, and laughter in the face of absurdity could be beneficial for a girl.
Her court dress and ball gowns had been sewn before we left London, and our aunt wrote with increasing frequency, urging us to come for one grand event or another. But from the beginning, Georgiana had made it clear that she would not make a frantic dash to every ball on offer as did many debutantes who were anxious to wed. She would make the minimum required appearances, bow to the Queen, feature in her own ball at Lord Matlock’s house, and call the thing done. As Mrs. Annesley began to ink these dates into my sister’s calendar, I sensed Georgiana striving to emulate Elizabeth’s example. She was willing to try, at least, to be brave, which was as much as I could have asked of her. As she contemplated her future and the necessary travel it required, something else occurred to her—a question I had known all along would come eventually.
“Do you think Elizabeth meant it when she told me not to visit Longbourn?”
It was late in the evening, and perhaps because she missed her friend, she had asked whether I would sit with her in Mrs. Jennings’s little parlor after Ruth had taken the old lady to bed.
After a pause, I said, “I do not think there is anything she would like more than to see you, dearest. She is only concerned that you will be disgusted by her family.”
“Truly? But they cannot be so bad that she is ashamed of them.”
“They have often mortified her, I am afraid. What she told you was quite accurate though she managed to make a joke of it. They are quite different people than you are used to, Georgiana.”
“Well,” she huffed, “I hope I am not quite as critical as…” She drifted into silence as she had the grace not to name names.
“I would doubt very much whether she thought you are like other ladies she has met; only, consider that she loves her sisters and her parents in spite of and perhaps even because of their foibles. She would want to shelterthemfrom the damning opinions of people she holds in esteem, and she would want to shieldyoufrom an uncomfortable judgment. Do you see?”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “I had not thought—I do not want to make her uncomfortable.”
“But if we went for a quick visit and made a determined effort to show her we did not come to find fault, perhaps she would not be made too unhappy?”
The notion took hold, and I nurtured it with a delicacy I did not know I possessed. Of a surety, we would stop in Hertfordshire on our way to London, even if it were only for an hour. But I had a deep plan, one that required patience and an openness of mind, because in truth, I did not know how this dream would end.
