Page 105 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

Georgiana had got as far as the doorway, and stuck. The hoop was wider than the door.

"Sideways, dearest," said Elizabeth, from the landing. "Like a crab. Tilt it. Lady Matlock showed us."

"I am tilting it!"

"Tilt it more."

Georgiana tilted it more, very red in the face. The hoop swung up on one side like a bell, and there was a brief alarming glimpse of white silk stocking and a great deal of petticoat, and Hannah and Georgiana's maid, who were holding the train, both shrieked. Then she was through, and out on the landing, and the hoop dropped back into place with a whump, and the three plumes on her head swayed dangerously, and steadied.

She looked at Elizabeth. Elizabeth looked at her. They were both dressed exactly alike, in white and silver, from their plumes to their slippers, like a pair of enormous wedding cakes.

They began to laugh at the same moment, and could not stop.

They laughed until Georgiana had to lean against the wall, which made her hoop tip up again, which made Hannah shriek again, which made them laugh harder. Elizabeth laughed until she thought her stays would burst. It was not very dignified. She did not care. She had not heard Georgiana laugh like this, helplessly, like a child, since the morning she flew down the stairs at Darcy House in March. She thought it was worth any number of cracked stays.

"Ladies," said a voice from the stairs, very coldly. "You are not at a pantomime."

Lady Matlock was coming up, in grey and silver, with her own plumes nodding and her own four-yard train carried behind her by two footmen, and her face as severe as a magistrate's. Lady Catherine was one step behind her, in black and silver, with plumes of a height that Elizabeth privately thought must be a danger to the chandeliers.

They both stopped at the top of the stairs and inspected the two girls on the landing, from plumes to slippers, for a long silent minute.

"Georgiana," said Lady Matlock at last. "Turn round."

Georgiana turned round, very carefully, like a ship coming about.

"Elizabeth. Walk to the end of the landing and back. Slowly. Do not look at your feet."

Elizabeth walked, slowly, not looking at her feet. The hoop swayed. The train whispered behind her on the carpet. She reached the window at the end of the landing and turned, and came back, and stopped in front of the two old ladies, and waited.

They looked at her. Then they looked at each other.

"Well, Audrey?" said Lady Catherine.

"Well, Catherine?"

"She walks," said Lady Catherine, "like a woman who has been doing it all her life. I cannot think where she learned it."

"In the mud," said Elizabeth. "Three miles of it. To nurse my sister."

Lady Matlock's severe mouth did something very slight at one corner.

"The curtsey," she said. "Once more. Both of you. Just as I showed you. All the way down, and hold it, and all the way up. And then backwards to the door without turning, and without treading on your train. If either of you treads on your train in front of the Queen, I shall have to go and live in Wexford with Theodosia."

They curtseyed. All the way down, in a great soft collapse of white and silver, until their knees were almost on the carpet and their plumes were bowed in front of them. Then they held it, one, two, three, as they had practised every morning for a fortnight in the hall with Pearce being the Queen. Then all the way up, slowly, without wobbling. Then backwards, three steps, and kick the train aside with the heel, and three more.

Neither of them trod on her train.

Lady Matlock watched them come up out of the curtsey, and did not say anything for a moment. Then she stepped forward, and put her gloved hand on Georgiana's cheek, and then, after a small hesitation, on Elizabeth's.

"You will do," she said, and her voice was not quite steady. "Both of you. You will do very well." She turned away briskly, and pretended to adjust her lappets. "The carriage is at the door. Come down. Fitzwilliam is waiting in the hall, and has been these twenty minutes, and is making Pearce very nervous."

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Darcy had been standing at the foot of the stairs for twenty-two minutes, in full court dress, and he was fairly sure that he looked ridiculous.

The gentlemen's version was not as bad as the ladies'. There was no hoop. But there was a coat of dark blue cut velvet embroidered at the cuffs and collar with silver, and a white satin waistcoat, and knee breeches, and white silk stockings, and buckled shoes, and a lace jabot, and a dress sword in a silver scabbard that knocked against his leg whenever he moved, and a flat black bicorne hat that he was obliged to carry under his arm because nobody had ever found a way of wearing it on the head without looking like a pantomime admiral.

He had not been to court since he was one-and-twenty. He had hated it then. He expected to hate it now.