Page 81

The door swung wide with a cheerful rattle, and Hannah bustled in bearing a heavy silver-plated tea tray.

“Oh, ma’am, I am so exceeding glad to see you up and about and looking quite the thing! And in Miss Georgiana’s room, too, which is vastly more cheerful than keeping to your bed with a hot stone and your nerves in ribbons.”

“Thank you, Hannah, if you could place the tray on the writing desk.”

“Will you be wanting more of those biscuits?” Hannah deftly deposited the heavy tray on the writing desk while kicking aside several heavy volumes and sweeping up a gaily colored shawl. “Mrs. Reynolds asked me to bring up another tisane of chicory root and lemon balm, but I told her, Mrs. Darcy has too much spirit to be kept down by a mere spasm, and here you are as bright as a new sixpence!”

She cleared away the half-eaten biscuits near the wash basin and asked Georgiana where she wanted the petticoat draped over the arm of the settee. All through the bustle, Georgiana’s Neapolitan doll surveyed the activity with glassy indifference.

“Thank you, Hannah, your solicitude is quite overwhelming,” Elizabeth said, rising smoothly to intercept her overzealous maid before another stack of linen could be disturbed. “Pray leave the sorting of Miss Darcy’s wardrobe to her own maid, or failing that, to Miss Darcy herself, who has an artistic eye for organization.”

Georgiana bit her lip, suppressing a laugh behind her handkerchief.

“Yes, ma’am,” Hannah said, her chin giving a slight, good-natured quiver as she collected her empty basket. “I am ever so happy to see both Mrs. Darcy and Miss Darcy in such blooming health, and I shall shut the door quietly behind me, ma’am, so you can confer sisterly-like.”

Elizabeth allowed Georgiana to pour tea since they were in her bedchamber, and after each had a sip or two, she continued her gentle inquisition.

“Gigi, you must know by now that the only people I mock are reserved, brooding gentlemen who lurk around drawing rooms casting the most disagreeable disapproval on the gayest of all young ladies. Now, I am exceedingly curious how a musical performance became a journey to Derbyshire without your guardian’s consent?”

Georgiana’s eyebrows lowered, and her lips curled with resentment. “I politely wrote Brother when he was in Hertfordshire busy courting you, that Mr. Ashworth would like to write him and request an audience; I did not say it was about marriage—I thought Brother would ask, would want to know more—but he never replied except to say he was too busy with his own wedding arrangements.” Georgiana’s jaw tightened with a resentment Elizabeth recognized from her own younger sisters. “Seeing how James must set sail between April and June—otherwise the gales blow over the ocean, and ships are endangered—he must speak to my brother before then so we can marry and I can sail with him.”

“We are in April already,” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Surely, you will not marry in three weeks!”

“You and Brother did, and if I do not marry Mr. Ashworth soon, he and his sister will be on the other side of the world saving souls while I am stuck at Pemberley squinting at my embroidery stitches!” Georgiana’s voice rose to a pitch that would have done credit to Lydia at her most theatrical.

“Not the worst of all lots compared to seasickness, fever, and salt pork,” Elizabeth muttered. “Gigi, tell me, if Mr. Ashworth is such a gentleman as you say, why would he ask a girl of sixteen to endure such privation?”

“I am not a child, and I have a calling. I cannot answer it from Derbyshire!”

Elizabeth lowered her teacup to the saucer with a gentle, deliberate clink. “A calling is a very fine thing, my dear. Yet hasty weddings contracted in corners and frantic dashes across county lines rarely end in anything save bruised reputations and bitter regret. Unless, of course… there is some other circumstance pressing upon your mind? Some other reason why a marriage must be huddled together before the month of May is out?”

Georgiana coughed on her tea and her face reddened alarmingly. “I have never done anything improper. Mrs. Annesley is my witness, and James would never—” She broke off, her fingers digging into the settee. “How could you think—we read the Bible together, Elizabeth. We pray. We discuss his calling and how I might support it. We were never—I would never—” She pressed her hands to her burning cheeks. “Mr. Ashworth respects me. He would not dream of taking liberties.”

“Then he should understand when both of your guardians urge you to wait,” Elizabeth said. “Although I suppose their methods differ, they agree on that point. That the passage of time would clarify Mr. Ashworth’s character as well as his resolve and love for you.”

“But neither you nor my brother can observe him when he is halfway around the world,” Georgiana said. “I have already written Miss Amelia Ashworth and invited her and her brother to Pemberley. Of course, I told them, you as mistress of Pemberley, would welcome them.”

Elizabeth froze as a cold wave of horror washed over her. “You have invited them? Without consulting your brother, without so much as a nod to your guardians, and… you wrote in my name?”

“Well, what choice did I have?” Georgiana slumped back against the bolster, her petulance flaring to mask her panic. “Brother wants me to stay here penned up at Pemberley with you playing jailer, or as he termed it, a kindly, well-meaning elder sister. He refused to let me go to London with Cousin Richard, and I would have preferred the Colonel—who at least enjoys a dance and a card party—to being buried alive. No offense to you, Lizzy, but I should be bored hiking around the grounds with you.”

“Your brother wishes me to… guide you?”

“He wishes to make you my guardian instead of the Colonel,” Georgiana said it as casually as if she were discussing a change in dinner arrangements. “They have been fighting about it for days. Richard thinks you are—well, I do not know precisely what he thinks, but he does not approve, and Brother will not hear a word against you, and yesterday he said that your judgment was worth more than Richard’s suspicious nature and Lady Matlock’s social machinery combined.”

Elizabeth curled her fingers into the Kashmir shawl she had rescued earlier, the embroidered peacocks pressing into her palm. Darcy trusted her over the Colonel?

“And what does the Colonel say to that?” Elizabeth could not imagine Richard taking the insult to his mother in stride.

“Richard thinks—” Georgiana hesitated. “I do not know precisely what he thinks, but he has been making insinuations about your family, about your uncle, about whether your marriage was—I do not understand half of it. But Brother will not hear a word against you. They had a terrible row about it. I heard them shouting in the study, and Brother said that you were blameless in whatever scheme Richard imagined, and that he would not permit anyone to impugn your character, and that Richard should remember whose side he was on.”

Elizabeth pressed her hand to her chest, where something was expanding painfully against her ribs. Darcy wanted her as Georgiana’s guardian. Darcy had defended her judgment.

“Then I believe your brother is honorable in a way I hope your Mr. Ashworth is.”

“Oh, but he is. Brother looks at him with suspicion because of another man who… well, he was not quite a gentleman, but I am not reckless, Lizzy. I told Brother about him before we got into his carriage to—well, nothing came of it, but Richard thinks I am naïve, but he does not wish to confine me to Pemberley, and my aunt thinks I have been led astray by a fortune hunter who cannot even afford his own parish, and nobody—nobody—considers the possibility that James might simply love me.”

“The possibility has occurred to me.” Elizabeth chose her next words with care. “It has also occurred to me that love and wisdom do not always travel in the same carriage, and that a gentleman who truly loved you might demonstrate that love by waiting until your brother’s blessing could be properly secured.”