CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
IN THE GREY LIGHT
Elizabeth
Jane came in after dawn.She did not knock because my sister never knocked when she was worried.
“You are awake,” she said.
“I have been awake since approximately forever, which I believe falls somewhere between midnight and the Second Coming, though I confess the hours have blurred rather badly.”
“Oh, Lizzy.” She reached for the coverlet and smoothed it over my knees, the way Mama used to when we were small and the world was no larger than the nursery. “I stayed until the very last set. Charlotte’s carriage brought me home, but Mama said you were sleeping, and I have learned not to contradict her until dawn.”
“A sound policy. I shall adopt it.”
I did not ask how the rest of the evening had gone, because asking would mean I cared, which I would never admit, especially since there was nothing left to care about.
“If it will make you feel better, Mr. Bingley danced with me twice. The second set and the supper set. He came to me directly afterGeorgiana’s opening dance and said, ‘Miss Bennet, I owe you an apology and a dance, and I should like to deliver both at once, if you will allow it.’”
“How economical of him. One wonders whether he combines all his social obligations with such efficiency, or whether the pairing of remorse with the allemande is a technique he reserves for special occasions.”
“Lizzy.” Jane tucked her feet beneath her on the bed and turned to face me, refusing my deflection. “I did not come in here to talk about Mr. Bingley.”
“And yet you began with him.”
“Because his news is the easy part, and I wanted you to have it before the difficult part, which is this.” She took my hand. “You look dreadful.”
“Thank you, Jane. Your compassion is a balm.”
“You look as though you have been crying, or refusing to cry, which on you amounts to the same swollen obstinacy. And Mama’s headache was no more real than Lydia’s promise to behave at assemblies, so I will ask you plainly, because I love you and you are frightening me a little: what happened last night?”
The directness landed. Jane was not often direct—she preferred the gentle suggestion and the optimistic reframing that allowed everyone to save face.
“Darcy and I spoke in the entrance hall about Georgiana and the first set.” My voice was steady, hitching only once. “I warned him about Caroline’s aspirations, setting Georgiana up with Bingley, and he didn’t believe me. Told me Caroline was harmless. We disagreed, so I came home.”
“Tell me everything he said,” she urged. “Not the summary but the very words.”
So I told her. The warmth when he spoke of Georgiana asking to attend of her own volition. The pride that was honest and undeniable, and made my chest ache even now in the retelling. His gratitude for my influence and the ginger biscuits in thekitchen. The way my Christian name sat in his mouth as though it belonged there. And then the wall. The instant I named what Caroline was building, what the ivory silk and the first set and the steering meant.
“He said I was making it into something it was not. That Caroline is tiresome but harmless. That no one of consequence would read a country assembly dance as a declaration.” I heard the bitterness and did not soften it. “No one of consequence, Jane. We have lived in this neighborhood our entire lives, and every person in that room is someone we have known since christening, and he called them no one of consequence because on his scale—the London scale, the Pemberley scale—they do not register.”
“And then?”
“He told me to manage my family concerns, and he would manage his. And then he called me Miss Bennet.” I looked at the ceiling because the ceiling did not have Jane’s too-perceptive eyes. “Cold and formal, like I didn’t signify more than what I was—a hired companion.”
“Lizzy, I am not going to tell you he was right, because he was not right to say those words to you, and the Miss Bennet after Elizabeth is not nothing, and I will not pretend otherwise.” She paused. “But I was in that room the whole evening, and I want to tell you what I saw, because you left before you saw all of it.”
“I saw enough.”
“You saw the entrance hall. I saw the assembly. When Georgiana walked onto the floor with Mr. Bingley, her hands were trembling. I could see it from across the room—the way her fingers gripped his sleeve, not in affection but in terror. And Darcy was standing near the pillar by the musicians. He was not speaking to Caroline, though she was speaking to him. He was watching his sister with an expression I have only ever seen on Papa’s face when Mary plays at a gathering, and he is willing her, silently, note by note, not to falter.”
I said nothing because the image was too raw to argue with.
“His eyes did not leave Georgiana until the first figure was complete, and when she executedthe turn without stumbling, he exhaled, like he had been holding his breath without knowing it.” Jane looked at me steadily. “That is not a man playing politics with a first set, Lizzy. That is a man who was frightened for his sister and forgot that the rest of the room existed.”
“He wasn’t too frightened to inform me, the hired companion, that I had no business worrying about his sister.”
“Listen. Please.” She tightened her grip on my hand. “Mr. Bingley told me in the card room, while we sat out the third set, that Georgiana has not been the same girl she was two years ago. Something happened that Bingley does not know the whole of it. Charles knew her as a girl when her father was alive, and she wasn’t as shy, and he saw what you’ve done—bringing out her liveliness. That the spark was back in her eye, especially at battledore. Charles was pleased that she accused him of lobbing the shuttlecock at me. He said Georgiana had been hiding her opinions, looking toward Darcy, who protected and guarded her. That Caroline has been very kind to Georgiana, very attentive, and that Darcy is grateful for it because he cannot—” She paused, choosing her words. “Because he cannot do what a sister or a mother could do. He cannot teach her how to dress for an assembly, fix her hair, or tell her which glove to wear. He needs women around Georgiana, and Caroline has been willing.”
