Georgiana Darcy's Diary: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice continued

by Anna Elliott

  Later …

  It’s evening now. I’m in my room—I shall have to dress for dinner soon. My brother has of course invited M. de La Courcelle to join us for the meal.

  I did go out into the garden this morning. Though at the moment I wish I had spent the entire morning with Aunt de Bourgh and M. de La Courcelle. Or darning stockings. Or helping the stable hands muck out the horses’ stalls.

  Anything, in fact, except what I actually did do—which was take my sketch pad and a folding chair out onto the slope of lawn behind the house.

  I had just settled myself in the shade of one of the big Spanish oaks when I looked up to see Edward walking towards me.

  I expected him to pass on—we have scarcely spoken since we as good as quarrelled the night of the masquerade ball. But he stopped beside me. He did not speak, though—not at first. If I had not believed the word could never be used to describe Edward, I would have said he looked uncertain as he asked at last, “Would you … would you object strongly to company?”

  “That depends on the company,” I said. “If it’s yours, I shouldn’t object at all. If it’s anyone else’s—M. de La Courcelle’s, for example—”

  Edward laughed and dropped down on the lawn beside my chair. He’d taken off his coat and cravat. He was wearing breaches and a cream-coloured shirt. He must have been walking for some time; sweat darkened his collar and streaked his bare throat. He leaned back on his elbows, stretching his long legs out before him on the grass.

  “It’s not even the difference in their ages that I mind,” he said. “I’ve always thought of her as ancient—but I suppose Aunt de Bourgh is only about fifteen years M. de La Courcelle’s elder. And of course their marriage doesn’t affect me in the least. I mean to say”—Edward frowned, looking back towards the house, his eyes narrowed against the sun—“I may have a strong urge to kick Courcelle down the stairs every time he starts spouting his flowery compliments. But it’s not as though I’m the one who’ll have to live with the man. It’s more—” Edward’s shoulders shifted under the fabric of his shirt. I could see the outline of the bandage around his upper arm, but the wound didn’t seem to pain him any longer. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “It’s always unsettling, I suppose, to realise how little you really know of anyone else. I’ve known Aunt de Bourgh since I was a boy—and if you’d told me even up until yesterday that she would marry again—and M. de La Courcelle, of all the men in England—I’d have said you’d taken leave of your senses.”

  “I know,” I said. Because that was it exactly, the feeling I could not put into words before. “Remember what you said about Pemberley? That you felt as though nothing changes here. It’s all safe and constant. But I would have said Aunt de Bourgh was just as utterly fixed and unchangeable. I’m not … I’ve never been fond of her. But she’s a constant—or she has been. Now this. She’s not as fierce or as frightening as I thought. She’s not even the woman I believed her to be, if she can be taken in by M. de La Courcelle. I feel just as I did when the old elm tree was uprooted in the storm last summer. As though something ancient and invulnerable had fallen down.”

  Edward was silent a moment. He had pulled a blade of grass and was turning it between his teeth. Then he tilted his head to look up at me. Sunlight slanting through the leaves above us dappled his lean face and dark hair as his eyes met mine. “I never said that I believed things couldn’t change here. Only that Pemberley has the ability to cast that illusion. But it is an illusion. Everything changes in this world. Including ourselves.”

  The shadow I had seen before was back in his eyes, the edge of tension or sadness or worry hardening the planes of his face and tightening his jaw.

  I was unsure what to say—or whether I should even say anything at all. But he looked all at once so different from the Edward I had grown up with—and above all so very alone—that I asked after a moment’s hesitation, “Are you thinking of … the war?”

  Edward didn’t answer, only sat staring down the slope of the lawn, back towards the house. Then finally his mouth stretched in a quick, grim smile. “If only the memories were as easy to dig out as fragments of a musket ball. But yes, I was.”

  “If you should ever wish to speak of it—” I began.

  But Edward shook his head. “I don’t.” He spoke almost sharply. “I don’t even wish to think of it again. Napoleon’s defeated. The war’s over and done. I’m not going to burden you, of all people, with talk of it.” He rubbed his forehead as though it ached. But then he shook his head. “I do owe you an apology, though. For the night of the masquerade. Since I came back, I—” he paused, seeming to search for words. “I can’t always keep from losing my temper. Especially when there’s a threat to anyone I … anyone I care about involved. But that’s no reason I should have acted such a boor with you. I’m sorry.”

  For an instant, I did feel a flicker of resentment, because it felt as though he was still treating me as a child—shutting me out and refusing even to speak of whatever memories trouble him even still.

  But perhaps that is not fair. Sometimes talking does not do any good. And I know when I’m upset or grieving, I want to run away to a corner by myself and hide, not speak of my feelings to anyone else.

  “I’m sorry, too,” I finally said.

  Edward offered me his hand. “Friends again?”

  I put my hand into his. “Friends.”

  For a moment, there was quiet between us. I’d been sketching, so I wasn’t wearing gloves—and neither was Edward. I had to work to keep my pulse from racing at the feel of his palm against mine, to keep my heart from throbbing. Friends, he had said. He had taken my hand as a friend, that was all. He would not feel even a flicker of the fire that seemed to be coursing up and down my arm.

  Edward’s eyes were on mine. The sunlight still gilded the stubble of beard on his jaw as his fingers tightened around my hand. “Georgiana, I …”

  Just for a moment, I felt a tiny spark of hope flicker to life. Maybe he was about to tell me that the engagement to Miss Graves was a false rumour—or had been broken off. Maybe—

  Then Edward stopped. Dropped my hand to rub his forehead again. “I’m not sure how to put this. I’m not sure whether I even should. But I . . . I think I have to say this. I”—he raised his head to look up at me—“I do care about you, Georgiana. I—”

  My pulse stopped racing and even the fire died to ash as my stomach gave a sickening drop. The tiny, irrational spark of hope I had felt only made it worse—because I knew as certainly as though I had a true gypsy fortune teller’s gift what Edward was about to say next: I do care about you, and it hasn’t escaped my notice that you seem to be in love with me. And since I don’t want to hurt your feelings or lead you on, I feel it only right to tell you that I’m engaged to someone else.

  And I absolutely couldn’t sit there and listen to another kind, honourable, and above all, humiliating word.

  I jumped to my feet and said, “That’s so very kind of you, Edward, thank you, but it’s getting late, now—I should get back to the house.”

  I said it so quickly that I think actually what came out of my lips was more like, soverykindthankyouit’sgetting lategetbacktothehouse.

  But I didn’t care. Anything was better than sitting there and listening to him explain exactly how not in love with me he is.

  Edward looked—I’m not sure how he looked. Taken aback? Puzzled?

  At least he was too polite to look relieved that I’d spared him the trouble of finishing his speech. He just sat there a moment. Then he offered to carry my folding chair for me.

  He scarcely spoke at all as we walked back across the lawn. And when we reached the house, he didn’t come in—just said ‘good day’ very quietly and walked off, back towards the woods again.

  Friday 27 May 1814

  After yesterday, I feel as though I should have used up all my capacity for being shocked. But apparently I have not, because I am utterly shocked again no
w. Shocked and grieved—because this is yet another tangle that I cannot see any way of making right. Or not entirely right, at least.

  This morning, M. de La Courcelle arrived just after breakfast to call on Aunt de Bourgh. I truly don’t know what to think, seeing the two of them together. Aunt de Bourgh isn’t so very much older than he, as Edward said. And she is handsome, in her stately, strong-featured way.

  But it is still so utterly strange to see M. de La Courcelle kissing her hand … or murmuring soft words into her ear as he adjusts the cushions at her back. My aunt accepts all the attentions as her due, so far as I can see, and preens a little every time he looks at her. But it makes me feel … I don’t know. Embarrassed for her, I suppose—and very awkward and uncomfortable about being in the same room with them.

  I could see even Elizabeth felt the same. After just a few minutes of sitting with them in the morning room, our eyes met, and then almost at the same moment, both Elizabeth and I stood up. Elizabeth murmured something about allowing M. de La Courcelle and Aunt de Bourgh to continue their visit in private. And then together she and I went out.

  Without even needing to speak of it, we agreed on leaving the house entirely, pausing only to gather up our shawls and bonnets in the hall.

  Elizabeth drew a long breath of relief as we stepped out into the open air and began walking towards the path through the woods. “Oh, that’s better,” she said.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked her. “Is the … illness worse this morning?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “No, it’s a little better, if anything. Especially here, outside, where I can breathe fresh air.” She smiled a little and rested her hand on the front of her blue muslin gown. “Maybe the infant’s decided I’ve suffered enough.”

  I looked down at where her hand rested, though of course there’s no sign of her expectations yet. “Do you suppose it’s a boy or a girl?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know! It is fascinating to think of, though, isn’t it?” Elizabeth said. She tilted her head back to look up at the canopy of leaves above us, letting her shawl slip down from her shoulders. “It’s all possibility, now. Boy or girl. And whom he or she will most look like.” She looked at me and smiled. “Maybe if it’s a girl, she’ll look like you. People say I resemble my Aunt Phillips, a bit.”

  “Just don’t name her Georgiana,” I said. “It’s the most awful name to grow up with, because it’s so suited to being stretched out for full effect when you’ve done something naughty. All those syllables! I can still hear my governess’s voice when she was displeased with me: Georg-i-AN-a!”

  Elizabeth laughed. “You, do anything you oughtn’t? I don’t believe it. Not even when you were small. I, on the other hand, used to go down to the farm at Longbourn and get into all sorts of mischief. Once I was balancing on the rail around the pig pen and fell in—head first, straight down into the mud. You should have heard my mother’s shriek when she saw me, if you want to talk of hearing your name stretched out to full effect: E-LIZ-a-beth Anne BEN-net! I’m sure she wished she’d given me more than one second name so that she could have drawn it out still more.”

  I laughed, too—and then I heard it: from around a bend in the path up ahead, a rustle of leaves and low sound, half snuffle, half unsteadily drawn breath. Like someone in pain—or out of breath from running.

  My heart stumbled—because my first thought was that George Wickham might have come back, and I could feel cold fear sliding all through me at the thought of meeting him like this, so far from the house.

  But it wasn’t Wickham. When we rounded the curve in the path, we saw Caroline Bingley, trying to scramble up from where she was sprawled on the ground.

  Elizabeth drew in a quick breath of alarm and hurried forward. “Miss Bingley! What’s happened? Are you hurt?”

  Caroline must have heard us coming and been trying to run away, I think—but she had tripped on a root that grew up above the soil in that spot. The lace on her half-boot was broken, and the front of her dress was all-over dirt and leaf-mould. She was crying, too—great, wrenching sobs that sounded as though they were being torn from her chest. Her eyes were swollen and red.

  She flinched away from Elizabeth’s touch, scrabbling backwards in the carpet of fallen leaves. “Don’t touch me!” her voice broke on another sob. “Don’t look at me! Just go away and leave me, can’t you?”

  “Of course we can’t leave you.” Elizabeth crouched down beside Caroline and spoke softly. “Not like this. Where have you hurt yourself? Do you wish one of us to summon someone to carry you back to the house?”

  “No!” Caroline’s voice was almost wild, and she caught hold of Elizabeth’s wrist. Even just by looking, I could see how hard Caroline’s fingers were digging into Elizabeth’s skin. “No, I don’t want anyone, do you hear me! Not anyone!” She covered her face with her hands in a fresh burst of sobbing and then said, her voice almost a moan, “Oh, why can’t you just leave me alone? Can’t you understand, you’re the last person I want to see me just now.”

  Elizabeth looked up at me and gave a small, helpless little shrug. I moved to kneel beside Caroline, as well, and put a hand on her arm. “Caroline?”

  She didn’t respond, not even by a twitch or a stiffening of muscles, so I shook her arm, just gently. “Caroline, what is all this? Can’t you tell us what’s the matter?”

  “The matter? The matter?” Caroline raised her tear-stained face and looked from me to Elizabeth. Her blue eyes were glaring, and her voice was all at once almost angry. “The matter is that Jacques is engaged to Lady Catherine de Bourgh. He’s actually going to marry that … that dried up, desiccated old woman! Just because she has an estate and a title. And I—” the anger vanished as Caroline’s face crumpled into tears again. “And I love him!”

  “Shh, shh.” Elizabeth put an arm lightly around Caroline’s shoulders. “He’s not worth your crying this way for him. Especially not if he made you believe he cared for you, then got engaged to Lady Catherine behind your back.”

  “You don’t understand!” Caroline drew a sobbing breath. “You don’t understand at all. You don’t know what I’ve done for him.”

  I saw a shadow of worry cross Elizabeth’s face at that—and I felt the same alarm. With a little twist of fresh anger, as well. Because what I said to Edward is true: if Caroline had … what is the euphemism people usually use? If she had surrendered her honour, it is she who would suffer for it, not Jacques de La Courcelle.

  Aloud, though, Elizabeth only said, as gently as before, “Tell us, then. Maybe we can help you.”

  “Help me.” Caroline gave an angry shake of her head and then looked up at Elizabeth. “I was going to show you—you and Darcy both. You took Darcy away from me. And he didn’t want me. Well, too bad for him, that’s what I thought. I’d marry Jacques and be happy and show the both of you how little I cared! And now Jacques is going to marry an old woman for her money. And you offer to help me. Well I don’t want your help.” Caroline’s face twisted and she almost screamed the words. Her hair was coming down and her shoulders were still shaking with sobs. “I don’t want you, Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy! Just go away and leave me alone!”

  Elizabeth watched her a moment, then slowly got to her feet. She really is good—because she did not look angry or offended, only pitying. “I think I’m doing more harm than good here, Georgiana,” she said to me in an undertone. “Why don’t you stay with her and see if you can get her to talk to you? I’ll walk on a little way”—she gestured to the path ahead—“but I won’t go too far, just in case you do need help.”

  For a second, I felt a moment of panic—some of the old feeling of being intimidated by Caroline Bingley to the point of being almost afraid of her. I had no idea what I could possibly say to her that would help. And it felt as though apart from Elizabeth, I must be the very last person in the world she’d want to have try.

  But then I looked down at Caroline, huddled and sobbing on the ground, her blon
de hair all tangled around her face and her skin reddened and splotched with crying. I nodded to Elizabeth. “All right. I’m not sure she’ll speak to me, either. But I’ll try.”

  I waited until Elizabeth was out of sight, then sat down beside Caroline, drawing my feet up and hugging my knees. “Do you … do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” I asked.

  Caroline did not answer. She did not even look up.

  “It’s something more than M. de La Courcelle’s engagement to my aunt, is it not?”

  Caroline was still silent, her shoulders hunched in stiff resentment.

  I let out my breath. “You are not being entirely fair to Elizabeth, you know,” I said. “She didn’t take my brother from you. He was never yours to be taken.”

  I am not sure it was exactly the right thing to say—but it did get Caroline to speak to me. She raised her head again and gave me a sullen glare through her wet lashes. “I could have made him fall in love with me, if she hadn’t come along.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  Caroline just glowered. But then her shoulders slumped and her eyes fell.

  “Besides,” I said. “Is that really what you want? To be with a man who’s been made to care for you? Wouldn’t you rather … wouldn’t you rather that he loved you with his whole heart, and of his own free will?”

  Caroline wiped her eyes with her fingers—though her gloves were quite grubby and left smears of dirt on her cheeks. “Oh, what could you possibly know about it, Georgiana? What do you know about falling in love with someone—wanting him to care for you in return so desperately you feel as though your heart is going to burst with it every time you see him? And then having to watch him turn away from you and marry someone else.”

  For an instant, a vision from yesterday flashed before me: Edward leaning back in the grass beside my chair, legs stretched out before him, muscles pulling tight against the linen of his shirt. “What, indeed,” I muttered. Caroline gave me a suspicious glance, and I said, before she could ask or say anything more, “Why don’t you just tell me straight out exactly what it is you’ve done for M. de La Courcelle? You’ll feel better if you confide in someone.”

  Actually, I did not know anything of the kind. But to my surprise, Caroline didn’t argue.

  She drew a slow breath and let it out again, and then said in a low voice, her eyes fixed on the ground, “I stole Lady Catherine’s necklace.”

  I had been afraid, all the time we were speaking, that Caroline was going to tell me she was going to have Jacques de La Courcelle’s child. And I truly did not know what words of comfort I could have given her then. But as it was, this revelation stunned me even more.

  “You did what?” I said.

  “I stole Lady Catherine’s necklace!” Caroline’s gaze lifted again, her chin jutting out in a challenge. “Well, now you know. I’m a thief. Are you going to tell your brother? He’s Justice of the Peace here, isn’t he? Do you want to tell him to have me brought before the magistrate and put on trial?”

  “Of course not!” I was still trying to take in full import of what she had told me, but I shook my head impatiently. “I just … why in the world would you do such a thing?”

  “He said he needed the money.” Caroline’s voice was sullen once again. She traced a trail in the dirt with the tip of one finger. “He was going to buy Kennelwood Hall, as I told you. Only there was another party bidding on the property, and Jacques said he needed extra capital, and quickly, or he’d lose his chance at the place. So he asked me to take the pearls.”

  “He asked you to steal my aunt’s pearl necklace?” I repeated. “Just like that?”

  “Yes. But it wasn’t—it wasn’t like you make it sound.” Caroline looked guilty and defiant, both. “Jacques was going to give them back. He just needed them to show the estate agent as proof that he had the means to buy the place. Because there wasn’t time for him to draw on the property he has still tied up in France.”

  For a moment, I could only stare at Caroline. Did she actually believe what she said? I still do not know, even writing this now. I am very sure that she wished to believe it, at least—and it is frightening what lies people can make themselves certain of, just because they are determined to accept the lies as true.

  “Have you spoken to M. de La Courcelle since he and my aunt announced their engagement?” I finally asked Caroline.

  “Of course not! He’s nothing but a fortune-hunting mercenary and I never want to see him or speak to him again!” Just for a moment, there was a flash of Caroline’s usual self in her words and look. But then her chin trembled and fresh tears pooled in her eyes. “And yet I can’t blame him, Georgiana. How can I? He’s lost so much in his life—his family, his home, the position and stature that should have been his. All lost to those wicked Jacobins in France. Surely anyone can understand why he might wish to regain a little of all he once had, even if it means marrying Lady Catherine.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell Caroline, Don’t bother with making excuses for him. But I managed to swallow the words. If Caroline had managed to excuse both his making a thief of her and his engagement, I couldn’t imagine what I could say that would sway her opinion against him.

  She would only say I was determined to think ill of M. de La Courcelle.

  It truly is frightening what people can persuade themselves into believing when they’re in love.

  I did manage to get Caroline to come with me back to the house. I took her in through the kitchen garden door and then up the servants’ staircase so that there wasn’t the least chance of her meeting either Aunt de Bourgh or Jacques de La Courcelle on her way to her bedroom.

  I offered to sit with her, but she said that she only wanted to be left alone. So I left her there to rest if she could. And I told her that I’d ask Mrs. Reynolds to see that supper was brought up to her on a tray, so that she need not come downstairs if she did not want to face the rest of the company.

  Caroline nodded dully and said that she’d already written to her sister, Mrs. Hurst, to say that she wished to leave Pemberley and join Mrs. Hurst and her husband at their home in Bath. She plans to depart as soon as the Hursts can send a carriage for her, which she thinks should be within a day or two.

  It probably is for the best that she go. I’m not sure what more I or anyone else here can do for Caroline.

  But here is the thought that’s stuck in my mind and won’t be dislodged: There seems nothing I can do for Caroline. But maybe what she’s told me has given me the means to help my cousin Anne.

  I’m tempted to write that someone may as well find love and happiness at Pemberley this spring. But that seems unfair to Anne, as well as unkind.

  Edward took one of my brother’s hunting rifles and stayed out of doors all day. I only saw him at dinner time. Again.

  Saturday 28 May 1814

  I’ve done it.

  I still cannot entirely believe it, even now that I’m back in my own room, sitting at my writing table. It feels as though I must have either dreamt the last half an hour or stepped into someone else’s skin.

  But I did it—I confronted Aunt de Bourgh.

  I scarcely slept at all last night. I had made up my mind even before I got into bed what I was going to have to do. I suppose I knew all along, from the moment the idea occurred to me, that I had no choice. But I still kept tossing and turning and staring around my darkened bedroom, going over and over again what I planned to say. I would mouth the words in the dark: Aunt de Bourgh, there is something of a very serious nature that I think you must know.

  And then I would go cold all over at the thought of actually speaking them to my aunt’s face.

  Still, first thing this morning, I knocked on my aunt’s bedroom door.

  Aunt de Bourgh was sitting at the dressing table in her lace-trimmed combing jacket—though Dawson must already have finished combing her hair, because it was pinned up in its usual heavy coils. She was giving orders to Dawson abou
t what she meant to wear that morning: “No, not the green dimity. The grey Paris muslin, I think. With the grey slippers and my cashmere shawl.”

  I suppose it was always futile to hope that my aunt’s engagement might have softened her. She looked just as always, brows drawn in a frown above her prominent features, eyes as sharp and hard as ever.

  She looked up when I came in and rapped out an impatient, “What is it, Georgiana? What do you want?”

  I swallowed. It sounds silly to write it now—because of all the feats of bravery humans have achieved, facing Aunt de Bourgh scarcely registers on the scale of courage. But just for a second, I felt completely frozen at the thought of what I had come here to do. Every single one of the words I had rehearsed the night before seemed to have fled, leaving my mind entirely blank.

  “Well?” my aunt said.

  I swallowed again. “Aunt de Bourgh, there is something of a very serious nature that I think you must know.”

  “Well?” Aunt de Bourgh said again.

  I took a breath. “I know who stole your pearls.”

  The line between my aunt’s brows deepened. “Are you growing addled in your wits, Georgiana? You informed me of this already. Sir John Huntington took my pearls. And I have written both to my solicitor and to his mother—”

  “No, Aunt de Bourgh.” My aunt’s lips thinned at the interruption, but I went on. “It wasn’t Sir John Huntington who took your pearls after all. I was mistaken. It was Caroline Bingley.”

  Aunt de Bourgh frowned. “What? Nonsense! How do you know?”

  “Because she told me.” My throat still felt dry and my hands cold, but I had at least passed beyond the point where I could turn back. “I found her crying in the woods yesterday and she confessed the whole.”

  “She confessed? Then why has she not come to me herself?” Two angry spots of colour burned on my aunt’s cheeks, and her nostrils flared. “She needn’t think that she will escape the consequences of her actions. I shall see that she is prosecuted to the full extent possible by law. Perhaps if she returns the pearls directly, I may be inclined to speak to the magistrate on her behalf—”

  I had to dig my fingers hard into the palms of my hands to make myself do it, but I broke into the torrent of angry words. “No, Aunt de Bourgh,” I said again.

  “No? What do you mean, no? If you think—”

  “You can’t prosecute Caroline Bingley,” I said.

  Maybe I should have found a more diplomatic way of saying it. I doubt anyone has said, You can’t to Aunt de Bourgh in the last thirty years or more. The angry spots in her cheeks flushed darker yet and white dents appeared on either side of her mouth as she raised her eyebrows.

  “Oh, can’t I? I assure you, Georgiana, that I both can and will. Who are the Bingley family, after all? Mere upstarts. I happen to know they made all their money in trade!”

  “That may be, but you still cannot bring charges against Caroline.” My throat cramped and sickness slid through the pit of my stomach, but I made myself go on. “Because she stole your necklace at the instigation of M. de La Courcelle.”

  For an instant, my aunt’s bedroom was entirely still. I could hear every beat of my heart, every one of my aunt’s breaths. Every soft rustle of Dawson’s dress as she pressed herself quietly back into the corner—I suppose for fear my aunt would recollect her presence and order her from the room before she could hear the whole.

  Then my aunt said in a low, dangerous tone, “What did you say?”

  I moistened my lips. “I said that it was Jacques de La Courcelle who asked Caroline to steal your necklace, Aunt de Bourgh. He told her that he needed ready money to make a bid to purchase Kennelwood Hall.”

  I will not write down the whole of what my aunt said in response. Screamed, rather. Her furious tirade was almost the equal of the outburst when she first learned her pearls were missing. She called me every name she could think of—liar, sneak, insolent, jealous, ungrateful, headstrong girl—and said she was ashamed to call me her niece, that I was a disgrace to my parents’ memory, that she was grateful her sister Anne hadn’t lived to see her daughter maliciously lying to slander an innocent man—

  There was a good deal more, besides. And standing there in the face of it all, at first my insides felt as though I’d swallowed broken glass, and I was sick and shaking all over with the urge to tell my aunt that Yes, of course I was mistaken or lying or simply delusional in my claims.

  But then, all at once, I was not afraid at all any more. It was amazing—as though I were a clockwork figure, and someone had turned a key and shut off all fear at the source.

  I was only standing a few paces away from Aunt de Bourgh, but suddenly I felt as though I were seeing her from a great distance. She seemed suddenly smaller. Small and a little ridiculous—like an overgrown child throwing a tantrum over not getting the last cream cake on the tea tray. And very pitiable, too.

  I remembered what Elizabeth had said. And all at once I felt nothing but sorry for Aunt de Bourgh. Because underneath all her pride and vanity and disagreeable manners, she was at heart so desperate for someone to love her that she fell prey to the first smooth, pleasant-spoken confidence trickster of a fortune hunter who crossed her path.

  Is M. de La Courcelle even French? I do not think I would be surprised to learn that he has never set foot on the Continent in his life. I keep remembering his blank look when I spoke French to him at the Herrons’.

  At any rate, Aunt de Bourgh finally wound down. She looked a little disconcerted because I had not said anything, all the time she was shouting at me. She drew a breath and pressed a lace trimmed handkerchief to her mouth and said, “Well? What have you to say for yourself?”

  “Only this.” I did not even have to work to make my voice sound quiet and calm. “If you have such perfect confidence in Jacques de La Courcelle’s honour and honesty, confront him with what I’ve told you yourself—let him deny my claims. See whether you are convinced by his response.”

  There was another silence. Slowly, the colour drained from my aunt’s face, leaving her skin splotched and sallow-looking. The muscles of her throat contracted as she swallowed.

  “Yes.” I nodded. “I thought so.” It felt brutal to take advantage of her at such a time. But I had come here for a purpose. I drew in my breath. “Your announcement of the engagement is already on its way to the Times. If you denounce M. de La Courcelle now, you yourself will be dishonoured by the scandal.”

  My aunt’s tongue moved over her lips and she swallowed again. “Why do you tell me this? What do you want?”

  “Your daughter Anne wishes to marry Mr. Carter,” I said. “I want you to give her your blessing and consent.”

  My muscles had tightened in anticipation of another outburst, another angry tirade and spate of argument. But to my astonishment, my aunt simply sat, perfectly still, watching me from hooded dark eyes. Then she inclined her head. “Very well.”

  I must have blinked, or made some other show of surprise, because Aunt de Bourgh said, “I am her mother, Georgiana. And I am not quite a fool.”

  I waited, wondering whether Anne and I had been wrong about that, as well—whether my aunt did indeed feel more affection for Anne than she let show. But Aunt de Bourgh only drew herself up, straightening her shoulders beneath the lacy folds of the combing jacket. Her colour was still bad, but she said, with something of a return to her usual manner, “You may go, now, Georgiana. And I trust we need not speak of these matters again.”

  She was strangely admirable, in that moment—oddly, more impressive I think than I had ever found her before.

  Monday 30 May 1814

  Caroline left this morning, her brother-in-law’s carriage having arrived to fetch her. And Aunt de Bourgh wore her pearl necklace at dinner tonight. I think the entire company of us stared when she came downstairs, but she only said, before anyone could ask questions, that she had discovered that she’d simply misplaced her pearls, after all. They ha
d slipped down inside an inner pocket in her jewel case, but she had found them, now, and all was well.

  M. de La Courcelle came to dinner again. Dressed in an embroidered velvet coat and white satin waistcoat that I am very sure he knew set off his dark good looks. He did not look at all guilty or conscious. But he was more attentive to my aunt than ever: making sure she had a sample of every dish on the table, insisting that he change places with her on the sofa in the drawing room afterwards, because, he said, he was sure that she was sitting in a draft.

  Aunt de Bourgh accepted his attentions just as regally and graciously as before—except that she looked at him from time to time and touched the pearls around her throat.

  I’ve been pitying my aunt—but maybe it should have been Jacques de La Courcelle for whom I felt sorry, because I think that in marrying Aunt de Bourgh he may get more than he bargained for.

  Edward spent most of yesterday and today out of doors again, first in shooting and then he and my brother rode out to look over the tenant farms and timberlands. He was perfectly pleasant and good tempered at dinner—but he did not look at me at all, much less speak to me.

  Even Elizabeth noticed it, and asked whether Edward and I had quarrelled. I said—truthfully—that we had not.