Now that we were certain to have escaped the hedgerows, the question of how she had failed to ask Mr. Darcy to name the date of our triumph became Mama’s constant lament.
“I intend to make him tell me on Monday; else, I shall go distracted,” she said, lying back in her chair with her scented handkerchief pressed to her nose.
I could not break the news that she had gone distracted some years prior, so I said in a voice of reasonable calm, “He will consult with me, and I shall ask that we wait until Miss Darcy has had her presentation.”
“Wait?” she screeched, sitting violently upright. “Wait until after the Queen’s birthday?”
The notion terrified her. He could somehow slip out of her…um…my grasp! Long engagements were fatal, did I not know it? Poor Charlotte did not even warrant a second look on her wedding day, so disinterested had her bridegroom become!
“You must secure him while he still looks at you with admiration, Lizzy,” she warned in all seriousness, and I wondered whether she had also felt Papa’s indifference on her wedding day.
I held firm. And what is more, I trusted Mr. Darcy to do just as I wished in this regard. He may have forced my hand in the primary instance, but having won his point, he would willingly step aside and grant me any wish I could subsequently name. Such was his nature.
With something akin to a shock, I realized that Iknewhim. I knew him as well as I knew anyone in my family, as though he had already crossed over some invisible line and we were intimate—inseparable and secure. For a certainty, I knew he wouldnotlook upon me with indifference on my wedding day or at any other moment in the entirety of our marriage. He never had!
The realization of why he had stared me out of countenance from the very beginning forced me out of doors so I could release a demented laugh in the company of the willows. They danced joyfully in the first wind of April and seemed to laugh alongside me.
Chapter Forty-Five
When the decisions with regard to the contents of my trunk had finally been made, I turned my attention to those I would leave behind.
Mary looked slightly appalled, no doubt mourning on my behalf the inevitable loss of my maidenhood since I apparently did not have the modesty to do so myself. Meanwhile, Lydia was burnt to charcoal by her jealousy. Even worse for her than the fact that I would marry first was the grim realization that I had ascended to the position of first daughter in our mother’s esteem, and if I so much as asked her to lower her voice, she was sent to her room in disgrace by a woman who, until very recently, had caressed her liberally for such high spirits.
“I have half a notion to run away with Captain Carter,” she said between clenched teeth on Sunday after church where I had been swarmed by our neighbors and had mopped up the entirety of everyone’s attention. We had met by accident in the second-floor hall after Lydia had been forced to the onerous duty of bringing me a lace fichu sent over as a gift from our Aunt Philips.
I felt a jolt of alarm, for such was Lydia’s nature that she was capable of any mischief in order to regain Mama’s attention and earn the notoriety she so longed to possess. Rather than allow her to blight our happiness under a cloud of ruin, I made the instantaneous decision to enact a drastic measure.
I took her arm, gently pulled her into my room, and said, “I know this must be miserable for you, Liddy. But consider that I have lately been thinking I shall ask Mr. Darcy to find you a horse and have you taught to ride. You must have something to do or else you will go mad. What will it be? A chestnut or a dapple gray?”
She was disinclined to like anything I said to her.
“A horse!” She snorted in disgust. But her posture of resistance suddenly became quite limp as she considered the implications. I could almost see the pictures that flashed through her mind. She would be freer than she was, she could make a spectacle of herself, she would have a riding costume and a plumed hat, she would have some poor groom trailing behind her, and she would be notorious in Meryton! What admiring stares she would earn from the young men she met!
“Yes, a horse. Unless you do not like the—”
“I would prefer a black one,” she said with her vision still turned inward. “Unless a white one would better show off my costume. Oh, Lizzy, I knew you could not be so lucky for no reason! Wait until I tell Kitty! She will die of—” She came to an abrupt halt in her effusions, her face contorting into a scowl. “Mr. Darcy would not gethera horse as well, would he? Say he will not!”
“No, of course he would not, particularly when I tell him riding would not suit her in the least. Trust me, I shall do something very dull for Kitty.”
Had I not been to Pemberley and seen for myself the depth of Mr. Darcy’s fortune, I would not have dared to spend so much of it before it was rightfully mine to share. However, I felt little compunction about promising my youngest sister a horse, the funding of its keeping, the employment of a groom for her, riding lessons, and even, if need be, a modest enlargement of the stables at Longbourn. Once again, I trusted Mr. Darcy, not only to listen to my motivation for such an extravagance but to support my reasoning and provide for this preemptive remedy against Lydia’s wilder impulses.
Naturally, Kitty was much aggrieved by the news and little mollified when I pulled her aside and said, “Hush, Kitty. I have plans for you as well, only I shall wait to tell you what I have in mind. Let it suffice that you will be well pleased, I think.”
My mother, never patient with her complaining, told Kitty to take her sulks upstairs if she could not be pleasant and went back to looking at riding costumes with Lydia in one of last year’s pattern books.
Seeing Mary sitting alone and pouring over references to chastity, I went to her. “When you are in London, I wonder whether you would enjoy the services of a music master, Mary. Mr. Darcy employs such a man for his sister, and he is reputed to be quite good. Well, do not say no just yet, but perhaps when you have heard what wonders he has done for Miss Darcy’s playing, you may yet change your mind.”
“But the expense, Lizzy,” she said despairingly.
“My dear sister, I shall marry a rich man, and we must make use of our fortune somehow lest it go to waste.” I kissed her reluctant cheek, adding, “You must do your part and suffer my charity though you will not like it.”
“Oh, Lizzy, I shall miss you so much!” she said, almost on a sob.
This shocked me almost to tears. We had never been close in my estimation, but to her, I must have been more than I knew—a friend, perhaps. I gave her a crushing embrace and poured warm assurances into her ear.
“And I shall miss you, but we shall be closer than ever, I promise. Forgive me for neglecting you as I have. Aunt Gardiner is kind as can be, and you may find that you quite enjoy being away from home.”
I spent half an hour in the kitchen with Mr. and Mrs. Hill, talking of creamed soups and the proper storage of roots, and even crossed the line of proper distance by giving them both light embraces, using for my excuse the unlikelihood Mama would give me a moment to say goodbye after my wedding. There were many such farewells as I ritualized the separation of going to Brighton for a few days as a preparation for my actual final departure, and it was a period ripe with the strange admixture of melancholy and joy.
