John took me aside before I retired. “Have you written to Lady Catherine at all?” he said.
I had not. I shook my head; thoughts of my mother made me burn, sometimes with shame for my conduct, sometimes with anger for hers. “I know not what to say to her.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “That is understandable. But you know—she will not be the one to bend.”
I knew that very well. Mamma’s iron will had been one of the essential truths of my life. But then, so was my own illness, and that truth turned out to be so much nonsense.
“I received a letter from my father yesterday. He and Edward and my mother arrive in Town soon, and he is . . . eager for any rifts in the family to be mended. He wishes to invite my aunt to stay with them for a little while.”
I closed my eyes.
“I asked him to wait until Mrs. Darcy is churched after she has her baby,” John said. “Forgive me for saying so, but I know Darcy would not thank me if our aunt were to call while Elizabeth is confined.”
At this, my eyes opened. “The Darcys are in London?” Then I remembered, distantly, that Mrs. Fitzwilliam mentioned this on the day of my arrival; but I was too full of other concerns to admit another just then.
“Yes—the doctors here are more knowledgeable than those in Derbyshire, or so Darcy says. I suppose this time has not been so easy.”
A sudden flash of little Georgiana, mewling and bloody in my bed. Of Aunt Darcy’s plaited hair, the only bit left of her. I winced.
“So Mamma does not come yet?”
“No,” John said. “But things would be easier when she does come, if she does come, if relations are repaired between you.”
I sat that night in the center of my bed, very still, though my nerves jangled like discordant bells. This was not true life; it was a golden season, pinched from time’s hoop and pocketed all for myself. But soon enough, I would have to step back into the turning hoop with everyone else and face my responsibilities.
Mamma’s tender feelings, I told myself fiercely, were not my responsibility; but Rosings Park was. And the estate must be managed. I could do it myself, or I could trust Mr. Colt to do the job properly; but that would be a betrayal of Papa and my younger self, the wisps of us that I still recalled standing before the painting of the old house, speaking of the new house’s future.
I could also marry—and here, the jangling bells rang out all the louder. I could marry, and the estate would pass to my husband, all my responsibility for it neatly abdicated with a few solemn vows and a church ledger signed. Except, of course, for the production of an heir; which would be a problem, no matter what I chose to do.
I knew almost nothing of physical affection. Only my nurse ever discussed such things with me, and in such odd terms that I hardly knew what to think. Men plant a seed in a hole inside their wives, with a special . . . appendage God gave them for this purpose, she said, when we received news of one of Aunt Darcy’s pregnancies. If the seed takes, it becomes a baby.
I imagined babies like saplings inside their mothers, with leaf fingers and rooted toes, their features picked out in the patterns of their bark. But breeding women looked less, I thought, like they grew trees inside their bellies than fruit—grotesque, bulbous fruits.
I rather suspected that my mother and father no longer indulged in anything amorous after I was born, for Mamma said more than once in my hearing that she was grateful that Rosings could pass to a daughter so that, with my birth, her wifely duty was complete. She would, presumably, have enlightened me before my marriage as to what those duties entailed; but of course, the marriage never occurred.
I bent over until my brow touched the tops of my knees. Marriage made me think of Mr. Watters, and thoughts of him were utterly confounding. Mrs. Fitzwilliam made it perfectly clear that she approved of her brother’s attentions to me; but his intentions felt less clear. Though he made it obvious, in the language of admiration that he always used, that he very much esteemed this new version of Anne de Bourgh, who stood up to her mother and learned to dance, there was something glass-like about him, as if his warmth was real enough but contained behind a window. I could see it, but I could not feel it; I slid off of him like raindrops.
And, too, his attentions felt all wrong. They chafed like rough fabric, and there was a wriggling sensation, like earthworms in my palms, when he took my hand this evening to lead me through the dance. And I could not account for it, for he was, as ever, everything solicitous and complimentary; so very different to my cousin Darcy’s lifelong indifference to me.
Everything about him ought to be appealing. He had pale hair and summer-blue eyes, smooth cheeks and full lips. His manners were exquisite, his mind sharp. He pressed my hand, adjusted my chair nearer the fire. He escorted me everywhere. But I was unmoved by all these things; I could not get past his glass veneer, and was not sure whether I even wanted to. If I did, and I liked what I found there, should I encourage his courtship? For that was surely what it was, subtly and carefully though he was going about it. That was what people did, was it not? I’d been spared the pressure of standing at auction, both by my illness and by the assumption that Fitzwilliam and I would someday come together, but now . . .
Tension crept upward from my shoulder blades, crawling across my shoulders, climbing my neck to nudge, bruisingly, at the back of my skull. I had a duty to the estate, to care for it, and ensure its continued health after I was gone. But I had not even written to Mr. Colt yet, and Mamma, as far as I knew, was still taking charge of everything. Inside my head, I saw my motherless newborn cousin again, and Miss Hall whispered, Even Lady Catherine cannot live forever.
All these things clamored and crashed inside of me, and I lay down flat upon the mattress and clenched the pillow in both my fists. “What should I do?” I said aloud; but this time there was no answer.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Mrs. Darcy has been safely delivered of another son,” John said, coming into the breakfast room on the morning of Lady Clive’s ball.
Mrs. Fitzwilliam fixed a smile in place. “How wonderful. Have they chosen a name?”
John glanced down at the missive he held. “George,” he said. “After my uncle Darcy.”
“I shall send them a note for today,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam said after a moment. “And of course we will call as soon as Mrs. Darcy is accepting visitors.”
John rested his eyes upon her with such weight it looked like a caress; and then Mrs. Fitzwilliam swallowed and looked away.
The book room door sat partly ajar, and I had already raised my hand to tap on it when I was checked by a strange noise coming from within; a gasping, choking noise that could be distress or smothered laughter. I did not think at all, just peered around the edge of the door; and then the sight before me was so startling that I did not remember to look away.
Mrs. Fitzwilliam stood before John, her face pressed to his shoulder. He cupped her head as gingerly as if she were made of eggshells. The sounds I heard were her sobs, raw as weals but muffled by the blue wool of his coat front.
“Hush now,” he murmured, searching with his free hand in his pocket. He drew out a handkerchief and held it up to her; she took it, drew back from him a little, and buried her face in it, scrubbing like a child.
“Forgive me,” she said after a moment. “I should not begrudge them their happiness. It is only . . .”
“I know,” John said.
Almost, I betrayed my presence with a sound, but I swallowed it before it emerged. I curled my fingers around the edge of the doorframe, bracing myself against understanding that did not quite come.
But now she tilted her face up to his. “We have not tried in far too long,” she said, very softly. “There can be no reward without endeavor.”
I could not see her expression, but I could see John’s, the lines of his face blurred and softened. When he cupped her head again, it was with purpose.
I stepped away, my heartbeat so thunderous to my own ears th
at I feared they must hear it as well.
When my new gown was delivered from the modiste’s shop the day before the ball, Spinner touched the fabric with the greatest care imaginable.
“This color suits you, ma’am! And it will be lovely with your amethysts,” she said. “And perhaps the silver bandeau for your hair?” Then she took the gown away to press it, before I could say that I’d had exactly the same thought about my jewelry the moment Miss Amherst showed me the pale muslin with its print of deep purple flowers.
Now, as Spinner helped me into the gown, smoothing the skirt so it hung properly, I stared at myself in the glass—raised my hands to the gown’s wide, low neckline, brushing over the miles of exposed skin.
Despite the thrumming changes I’d lately experienced, it was still my face in the glass; my face, but subtly altered, so that I actually looked a little more like my own portrait in Rosings’s drawing room. I would never be tall like Mamma or robustly sturdy like Mrs. Darcy; but the shadows were gone from my cheeks, and with my cheeks’ new fullness, my dipping Fitzwilliam nose no longer seemed quite so overwhelming.
“Do I look . . . changed to you?” I said to Spinner, avoiding her eyes in the glass.
She paused, pins in one hand, long locks of my hair in the other, and she did not answer for so long that I began to feel ridiculous, as if the faint alchemy I’d felt working upon my form and features were entirely imagined.
Then Spinner raised her brows and the corners of her mouth all at once. “As changed as if a fairy came to rescue you, ma’am,” she said, and I smiled.
A moment later, she added, “Mr. Watters will be pleased to see you in such fine looks,” and my smile dropped away.
I could scarcely look at my cousin and his wife when we gathered in the entranceway to await our carriage. My embarrassment at having witnessed such unexpected intimacy between them persisted in the hours since I had spied on them in the book room. Watching from the edges of my vision as John helped Mrs. Fitzwilliam into her wrap, all I could see was two pairs of touching lips, two pairs of desperately grasping hands, two bodies bending toward one another like saplings in a high wind.
The carriage ride itself was short. Mr. Watters, seated beside me, complimented my gown, but I scarcely heard him, my heart tapping against my breastbone as frantically and arrhythmically as a woodpecker on a tree. “The Amhersts are going to be here?” I said to Mrs. Fitzwilliam, and she blinked.
“They said so,” she said, and then raised one brow, as narrow and golden as her brother’s. “You would know better than I, Miss de Bourgh, surely—you have been so much in Eliza’s company of late.”
I lowered my eyes, grateful when, a few moments later, the coachman guided the horses to a stop outside a handsome town house. Lady Clive was another of Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s acquaintances from school, a wealthy young woman who married an even wealthier old man. Their house rose taller than John’s, and extended farther back, and as we handed our wraps to a footman and followed the flow of guests toward the ballroom, I had to stop myself from fidgeting with my long gloves. At the swell of music coming through the ballroom’s double doors, my stays felt suddenly uncomfortable, and the toes of my slippers seemed to pinch.
The ballroom was smaller than ours at Rosings Park, which put me a little at ease. Our host and hostess greeted us as we passed through; Lady Clive grasped Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s hands in her own, and they bared their teeth at one another, and it was nothing like watching my cousin’s wife with the Amherst ladies; this was more like two peacocks exhibiting their plumage before a peahen, but in this case the peacocks were socially conscious young women, the peahen all the rest of society. It was with relief that I saw John take his wife’s elbow, his eyes merry, and steer her away from the receiving line.
The room was already crowded and hot, yet still more people came through the doors. I had thought a private ball would be less intimidatingly bursting with guests than a public one, but it seemed Lady Clive had many acquaintances who simply could not be excluded. I was too short to see over the heads of the taller guests, all of whom seemed to know one another already, crying out glad greetings. John and Mrs. Fitzwilliam were swallowed up by the crowd like fish down the gullet of a great seabird, and Mr. Watters was waylaid by another gentleman; though I was happy enough to be free of him for a moment, I almost wished for his arm to lean on, his laughing guidance. I stood on my toes, seeking one particular face in the throng.
But I could not find her. Disappointment made my eyes sting; I was a fool. I looked down at my fine new gown, which was entirely of Miss Amherst’s design, from the fabric to the sleeves, and brushed my hands over the skirt, and upward to where my necklace—a glimmering circlet of purple stones—lay against my collarbones. My body burned; I’d wanted her to see it. To see me, in all my imagined splendor. To see her handiwork.
It was a simple gown, as far as evening dresses went; but, as Miss Amherst regretfully said as we made our way down a crowded pavement to the draper’s, there would not be time to order anything elaborate before the ball. She was entirely at home among the bolts of cloth when we entered the shop, and was not shy about asking to see this bolt or that one. She showed me the sheen on a striped pink silk, and then held this printed muslin up to my cheek, that I might feel its softness and she might see how well it suited my complexion.
“I like the ivory against your skin,” she said, “and the purple print makes your hair and eyes all the more wondrously dark. And,” with an earnest look, “it is fine enough as it is to do without embroidery or netting, so the seamstresses should just about be able to finish the gown in time.” She raised her eyebrows in question, as if I might have some objection to her choice.
“I yield to your superior knowledge,” I said, and she clapped her hands.
“Mind you, if you intend to remain in London very long, I would like to see you in a truly magnificent evening gown. I saw just the thing in Ackermann’s.” And she was off, choosing fabrics for not only a future evening gown but also a new morning gown, two walking gowns, and a pelisse in green that made me think of moss and cool, shaded places.
I thought of her hands, nudging me forward, encouraging me to make my own tastes known to the modiste. Her head, bent to mine, smiling in gentle amusement when my tongue stumbled. The brush of her fingers against the insides of my arms.
I shook my head, stepping back out of the way of the guests still coming into the ballroom. The dancing had already begun, couples lining up for the first set, the opening notes rushing out over the crowd. I pressed my back to the wall and caught glimpses between the people standing in front of me.
“There you are,” said a voice beside me, and I looked up to find Mr. Watters standing, hand extended. “I am terribly sorry, my friend Rogers caught hold of me and I quite lost sight of you. Do you forgive me?”
“There is nothing to forgive,” I said unthinkingly.
“Then will you honor me with this dance?” And when I stared at him, frozen, he wheedled, “You know these steps—it is but a simple country dance.” A smile, and he leaned closer, lips almost brushing my ear. “I would do nothing to embarrass you.”
My hand was in his without my quite understanding how it happened, and we were taking our place at the bottom of the set, which was long enough that the dance had not yet moved along its entire length. As if I had succumbed to the desire for oblivion and taken a dose of medicine, everything felt suddenly very removed; I heard the music only faintly over the rushing of my own blood and the rasp of my breath, and stared down the set, watching like one doomed as the dance moved inexorably nearer. The elaborate chalk arabesques that covered the dance floor were already disturbed, smudged and smeared by so many pairs of feet. Distantly, I saw John dancing with a woman to whom I was introduced at a card party some weeks ago, and a little nearer the top of the set Mrs. Fitzwilliam was partnered with a rather dashing young man. I watched the steps of the dance and heard Miss Amherst’s voice in my ear, low and patient, c
ounting them off.
Still, I was caught off guard when my turn came, and was a beat off from the music when I recalled myself and stepped forward, my feet self-conscious in their execution of the steps. But I took Mr. Watters’s gloved hands firmly when he reached for me.
“Thank you,” Mr. Watters said. He took my hand again in his to lead me from the floor. “You honored me. And you acquitted yourself well! One would hardly have known it was your first time dancing in company.”
I shook my head, shifting out of the way of other couples as they moved past us. “You flatter me. I still have much to learn.”
“There is no better place than at a ball among friends.”
These were not my friends, not even the ladies and gentlemen whom I had previously met. I felt their curious glances like thorn pricks, and the heat suffusing my body had little to do with the crowded room. I shook my head again, glancing around us. A number of young ladies eyed Mr. Watters, his calves in their white stockings, the fine cut of his coat, the curl of his hair; but Mr. Watters appeared entirely unaware that he was the object of so much female attention.
He licked his lips. “Miss de Bourgh,” he began, but John interrupted him, appearing beside us flushed and grinning.
“Anne!” he said. “I never thought to see you out there.” He smiled between myself and Mr. Watters, radiating good cheer. “I am . . . I hope you will forgive the implied condescension, but I am just very . . . glad for you.” He bounced a little in place. “I don’t suppose you would honor me with a dance?”
“Oh—no,” I said. “I am sorry but—one dance was enough for me this evening.”
John looked as if he might protest, but finally nodded. “Very well.”
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