“Mamma.” Elizabeth hastened to intercept her mother before she woke Lady Sophia, who had taken Nettle to her room, the stray suddenly acquiring bedroom privileges due to her cornering of a rat in the kitchen.
“Four stories!” Mrs. Bennet seized Elizabeth’s hands and held them at arm’s length. “You are thin. You are not eating. London has made you thin. Jane! Jane looks well, Jane always looks well, but you, Lizzy, you have always been too fond of walking and not fond enough of pudding, and you must eat, for no gentleman wants a wife who looks as though she has been?—”
“Mamma.” Elizabeth wrestled her hands for her mother’s grasp. “You did not write. We would not have known except for Papa’s express.”
“Write! Why should I write? A mother does not require an invitation to visit her own daughter’s house. Your house, Lizzy. I have been confined to Longbourn for months while my daughters gallivant about London without me, and your father will never part with his books, and so I have come on my own, for I am not a woman who sits and waits while her daughters need her.”
“We are managing quite well, Mamma.”
“You are managing without your mother, which is not managing at all, it is—Lydia! Lydia, come in from the street, you are gawking at the houses like a country person.”
Lydia burst through the door with the explosive energy of a fifteen-year-old released from a convent. “Lizzy! This street is astonishing. The house next door is even grander than yours. Whose is it? And I saw a very tall gentleman through the window. Is he a viscount? Jane! Oh, Jane, you must tell me everything about the balls. Have there been balls? Are there officers? Where are the officers quartered? Is it far?”
“There are no officers in Mayfair, Lydia,” Elizabeth said. “Please, lower your volume. Lady Sophia is still abed.”
“Resting! At this hour! But it is already—” Mrs. Bennet consulted the clock on the mantel and appeared briefly confused by its testimony. “Well. I suppose we did travel through the night. Your father insisted, you know, insisted that we depart immediately once the money arrived. Seventeen pounds, Elizabeth! From the lottery! I said to your father, this is Providence, this is a sign that we must go to London at once and see what our daughter has made of herself.”
Nettle’s bark and scrabbling paws announced Lady Sophia’s descent. She surveyed Mrs. Bennet’s frayed pelisse, Lydia’s ribbons, and Elizabeth’s face in one sweep—missing nothing, as usual.
“Mrs. Bennet,” Lady Sophia said. “What a delightful surprise.”
“Lady Sophia! How kind. I have heard so much about you from Mr. Gardiner’s letters. Your generosity, your condescension, and I must say, the house is magnificent, quite the finest house I have ever entered, and I have entered some very fine houses, for Sir William Lucas has a parlor that seats twelve.”
“How truly delightful,” Lady Sophia said. “For a parlor that seats twelve is indeed a magnificence hardly able to be imagined.”
“Yes, and I have some very particular thoughts about how this household ought to be managed, what with Elizabeth, so newly wealthy—she is to have excellent guidance from me, as I have often imagined a great deal about furniture, linens, and such.”
Lady Sophia’s cane tapped toward the breakfast room. Jane slipped her arm through, steering her past Mrs. Bennet, who remained blissfully unaware she had been snubbed.
“Mamma.” Elizabeth took her mother’s hands, partly in affection and partly to prevent her from ambushing Lady Sophia with her assessment of the curtains. “Where is Kitty? And Papa?”
“Kitty is at home. With your father. She did not deserve to come, for she has been sulking abominably, and besides, your father said that two daughters were sufficient disruption and that he would keep Kitty as—what did he say?—as surety against my good behavior. As though I require surety! As though a mother visiting her daughters in London is anything but natural.”
“Kitty is well, though? At Longbourn?”
Mrs. Bennet waved a hand with the dismissive authority of a woman for whom Kitty’s well-being was a settled matter requiring no investigation. “Kitty is always fine. She sits about, coughs, reads, and wishes she were anywhere but Hertfordshire. I cannot blame her, for Hertfordshire is very dull when one’s sisters are in London attending balls and wearing silk gowns. Lydia! Come down from those stairs this instant!”
But Lydia was already two flights up, her voice floating down the stairwell with the delighted volume of a girl who had discovered treasure. “Lizzy! This gown, Mamma, come and see, it is ivory with gold thread—may I try it?—and this one! Whose is the rose one? It is divine!”
“That is Mary’s,” Elizabeth called up the stairs. “Lydia, stay out of our bedchambers.”
“But what are sisters for if I cannot borrow?” Lydia descended the stairs with a cascade of fine scarves and Elizabeth’s ivory silk with the gold threads—the same gown Mr. Darcy’s hand had rested on throughout the waltz. “Lizzy, this gown is heavenly. I mean to wear it to the next ball.”
“Lydia, you are too tall for the gown.” Elizabeth watched aghast as Lydia held it up against herself, spinning to make the gold threads catch the flickering candlelight.
“You must get it altered, or commission one for me.”
Mary appeared in the corridor, drawn from the music room by the cessation of anything resembling peace.
“Where is Kitty?” she asked. “I heard Mamma and Lydia.”
“Everyone in Mayfair heard,” Jane said, arriving at Elizabeth’s shoulder, having locked Lady Sophia in the safety of a comfortable chair. “I shall take Mamma to the morning room and order tea, and she will tell me about Meryton and Papa and Kitty.”
“I shall do no such thing.” Mrs. Bennet waved dismissively. “Not until I see that odious Mr. Darcy.”
“Mamma, please,” Elizabeth took hold of her mother’s elbow. “Into the breakfast room with the door fast shut. Mr. Darcy’s townhouse shares a common wall.”
Mrs. Bennet thumped her parasol against the wall, but Jane and Elizabeth herded her into the breakfast room—safer ground, with the garden view and a door that could be shut.
