by Lucy Tilney
Elizabeth slept horribly if you could call it sleep at all, and the last person she wanted to see the next day (apart from Mr. Darcy, Lady Catherine, and George Wickham!) was Georgiana Darcy. Yet there she was in the magazine office hallway in a cream linen coat, a rose pink dress, and a silk meringue of a hat topped with peonies.
“Miss Bennet?” The meringue tilted around the wood and glass partition of Elizabeth’s office followed by a pair of beguiling dark eyes, “Are you free for a cup of tea?”
“I’m afraid I’m awfully busy,” lied Elizabeth.
“Oh dear, well, I suppose your secretary will bring us some here, but I was rather hoping for a visit to Monsieur Germain. The petit-fours there are divine.”
Elizabeth wanted to be firm. She wanted to point out she could not afford Monsieur Germain’s petit-fours. She wanted to tell Miss Darcy to bother off and spend her excessive allowance as she pleased by herself. However, as she thought her firm thoughts a slender brown hand adorned with diamonds and pink Padparadscha sapphires slid over her own.
“Do come, Miss Bennet, I’m so lonely.”
“Call me Elizabeth,” she heard herself saying.
By the time they reached Monsieur Germain’s, a blissfully Parisian coffee shop in the heart of Mayfair, Elizabeth had hardened her heart sufficiently to resolve to get as much out of Georgiana regarding Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy as she possibly could. As it turned out persuading a young girl to tell you something she likely didn’t know about her uncle in the first place was decidedly impractical and she found herself listening happily to Georgiana’s chatter still wondering why Mr. Darcy didn’t like it enough to spend time with her.
“My cousin Phyllis tells me you put the proverbial fear of the Almighty into Lady Catherine,” Georgiana carefully picked out a pink-iced fancy, “and not many people can do that.”
“I can’t imagine how,” said Elizabeth, although it was very likely that a journalist from London talking to Nettie would spook her if George’s claims were true.
Georgiana sighed, “If you did I’d like to introduce you to my Great Aunt Alice. Did you see my uncle at Hunsford? He came back to Berkeley Square in a rotten mood and has barely been civil to anyone for days.”
Elizabeth almost asked if that was unusual but stirred her tea instead. “Yes, I did see him, with Colonel Fitzwilliam instead of Charles Bingley for a change.”
Georgiana giggled, “Oh, yes, Charles met Lady Catherine once. Did I tell her she said I needn’t bother call her aunt as we are only related by marriage? And has refused ever to meet her again. He was down in Poole messing with one of his boats last weekend. Or perhaps he was in Sussex messing with an aeroplane, it’s hard to know with Charles.”
“Does your uncle spend a lot of time at Hunsford?”
Her brow furrowed, “Rather a lot. Anne isn’t well and he feels it’s his job to cheer her up. Despite having a decent amount of money and the standing offer of a home at Pemberley or Berkeley Square or with any of the Fitzwilliams, Anne will simply not leave Rosings. She doesn’t give a fig for the eugenics nonsense but has spent her whole life typing up and cataloguing the old baggage’s ridiculous research as a sort of unpaid librarian, secretary, stenographer, and general factotum. It must be affecting her dreadfully. In her place, I would drink.”
Elizabeth shuddered. Did her pallor mean poor Anne did drink? She took a lemon fancy. She wanted to ask about Lady Claire but she couldn’t so she devoured it instead.
“Lady Catherine has been on the telephone umpteen times demanding to know what’s going on although I haven’t a clue what could be going on. She said my uncle was rude to her and left the day after you. She thinks you are up to something and keeps demanding that uncle speaks to her and Robards, that’s our butler, keeps making up new excuses. He must be running out of plausible ones by now and tomorrow I expect him to say uncle has married Anna Pavlova and taken her on a honeymoon hunting polar bears in Wales. What on earth did you say to her, Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth poured tea. Any more cake and she’d have to start walking to and from Hampstead.
“I said as little as I could. I’m sorry to say after being introduced to her opinions I wanted as little conversation as possible.”
Georgiana took off her hat and caressed the pink silk peonies, “Do you like my peonies? My mother made them. She loved making silk flowers and I brought a huge box with me from India.”
She put it back and smiled beguilingly from under its brim, “You have to tell me, Elizabeth, I’ve spent a lot of my life on the fringes, just watching and listening, and I know when someone is keeping secrets. Please tell me. Whatever it is we can work on it together.”
Elizabeth watched the omnibuses go past outside. The advertisement on one promised her she’d feel better if she had a Guinness and the next assured her that if she lit up a Lucky cigarette she wouldn’t get fat. She decided she’d rather be fat than have yellow teeth or smell like Uncle Arnold.
“Elizabeth, where are you?”
Elizabeth closed her eyes and opened them again.
“Alright, I am keeping a secret but you may not like it when I tell you,” she took a deep breath, “I think your aunt, Annette Darcy, is alive and living in Hunsford.”
“I see,” she replied coldly, “that's quite some secret. What makes you think so?”
Elizabeth had expected horror, incredulity, tears, defensiveness but not… irritation. She explained that someone who knew her as a child had recognised her, the dates matched, that removing a child with epilepsy fitted in with Lady Catherine's views on eugenics and that the physical resemblance between the possible Annette and her aunt and cousins was striking. As she said it she realised she was putting too much faith (or was it hope?) in the statement of a known liar but it was too late. She knew in her heart that Nettie was Annette.
“England is full of tall, slim, brown-haired people. It’s hardly sinister to have found another one. Really Elizabeth, my family doesn't need any more drama, and letting the poor creature imagine she might be related to us is just cruel. I thought better of you.”
She fumbled in her handbag for a few shillings and placed them on the table, “Lady Catherine is right, you are up to something. I wish I had never seen your magazine. As Miss Bingley says, it's just another muck-raker dressed up in pretentiousness and as someone who has been in ‘The Confidential Companion’, I can tell you they do it a great deal better. You'll print stories about our family over my dead body. When I tell my uncle - and I will tell him - you won’t have a chance to print your exposé - he’ll have his lawyer write to your editor and your magazine will close down! How could I have been so stupid as to think you were my friend?”
She rushed out into the street and hailed a cab before Elizabeth could assemble a reply. She had clearly made close friends with Georgiana far too quickly and should have been more circumspect in allowing any friendship to develop. Like most lonely, sensitive young women Georgiana was maddeningly melodramatic and fortunately, she didn’t like Georgiana’s uncle so as long as he didn’t force the magazine to close there was nothing lost.
Except Georgiana.
A LETTER
After another sleepless night caused by a member of the Fitzwilliam/Darcy clan Elizabeth’s worth to her employer was diminishing and it was noted, albeit humorously, by the entire office.
Would Georgiana tell him? Could he force the magazine to close when she hadn’t written a single word about them?
“I think,” said Marianne, “that Elizabeth needs a restorative cake.”
Lily volunteered to go to the baker and Elizabeth decided to go with her. It was a perfect spring day and on the way back they stopped for a moment outside All Saints’ church to admire the sky.
“Oooooh, look at that,” murmured Lily indicating something inside the wrought iron gate of the church.
Elizabeth reluctantly wrested her eyes from the glorious blue above and looked. Her reward, if that could be the word, was a glimpse o
f Mr. Darcy standing in the doorway deep in conversation with a beautiful redhead wrapped in an ivory wool coat.
“That’s Fitzwilliam Darcy,” said Lily helpfully, “him from the newspapers, the most eligible bachelor in England or, quite possibly, the whole British Empire. He’s more eligible than the Prince of Wales and they say every bit as stuck up but I could overlook that to be mistress of Pemberley and have the Darcy rubies set for me to wear, in fact, he’s so delish I might even overlook the rubies. I wonder what he’s doing here with her.”
“Do you know who she is?” asked Elizabeth pulling Lily past the gates and towards the ‘Twenty’ office with one quick glance backwards.
“Do I know? Am I or am I not Lily Doolittle, the most voracious consumer of gossip in His Majesty’s Dominions? Lady Claire de Bourgh was in the ‘Tatler’ just the other week; she’s the eldest daughter of Lord and Lady Clereborough and when her father dies she will inherit the title despite being a female and be the Countess Clereborough in her own right. She says it is a great thing for twentieth century women.”
“Oh, good grief! Well, that’ll be a great comfort, I’m sure, to the poor creatures who have to labour in the mills and choose between food and firewood. Is there no end to the self-satisfied complacency of these people?”
Lily shrugged, “Probably not. My old man says being pleased with themselves is in their veins. I still want to know why she’s here with him. Perhaps they’re talking about their wedding but this isn’t the parish church for Clereborough House, is it? It should be St George’s, Hanover Square.”
“She’ll make him a very proper wife. He couldn’t hope to find someone more snobbish or out of touch. Poor Miss Bingley!”
“Someone, poor soul, will have to force herself to become Mrs. Darcy, I suppose,” said Lily. “Come on, let's get in out of the cold. I want a cuppa and some of that cake.”
As the Gardiners attended the synagogue rather than church Elizabeth occasionally didn’t go and spent Sunday mornings eating marmalade with a teaspoon and reading the papers. She particularly didn’t like the service at the West Hampstead parish and being out of marmalade and in competition with the Gardiners’ guests for the papers, she decided to go into town.
The tube was running to time so at 10.55 Elizabeth was slipping into a pew in All Saints’, Margaret Street, delightedly thanking God for having put William Butterfield in the way of becoming an architect. As she stood for the processional she adjusted her hat and then through a purple haze of incense she saw a tall, dark figure three pews ahead on the other side. It couldn’t be, it wouldn’t be… it was. It was impossible to tell if the woman next to him was with him let alone if it was Lady Claire but, if it was, perhaps they were here for the reading of the banns. Her stomach sank and blamed it on fasting for Communion but never in her life before had she felt this way in church and never had a service lasted so long but finally, the rector reached the point, at the very end, where he read the notices and there were no banns.
After the service, she thought of simply kneeling in the pew until everyone had gone but not wanting to be a coward she waited a few minutes, hoped he had vanished into the remotes of Mayfair, and tried to make her escape. It was not to be. He was standing in the porch being ludicrously, uncharacteristically sociable. Since when did he stand around and chinwag with the likes of cheery Mrs. Wilton and her husband? She kept her eyes down, she would not look at him; she would not look at such a vile man.
“Miss Bennet… Miss Bennet… we haven’t met for ages, how are you?”
She was forced to look up into the face of an old acquaintance and as she did she realised he was staring at her while the loquacious Major Wilton blethered on. It was a deep, intense, longing stare, and it made her shudder. How on earth could she have made herself attractive to that type?
With the office and safety close by (George had packed up his cameras and vanished in the wake of his engagement to the Honourable Miss King) she darted past him and out into the street but a polite woman in Louis heels is no match for a long-legged man known for being rude. In a second he had caught up with her.
“Don’t look so alarmed, Miss Bennet, I am not about to renew my addresses here in the street or, indeed, anywhere. I would be deeply obliged if you would read this letter. I heard you attend church here occasionally so I’ve been hoping to see you. Please take it. You would do me a great favour.”
So she took it and read it on the tube which was quite possibly not the best place given the accompaniment of a wailing baby, a couple of earthy costermongers’ wives discussing childbirth, two men arguing over a greyhound, and the drift of cheap cigarettes.
Dear Miss Bennet,
When we met in Hunsford in February you laid three offences of some magnitude at my charge. I had intended to answer them at the time but another meeting seemed unwise and I have been in two minds since about the best way to manage it. This morning, considering your ongoing friendship with my niece, it feels wisest to me to at least attempt to clear my name from the ignominy you have attached to it hence this letter.
It is true that I acted to separate my friend from your sister. I have no doubt that you have heard from Georgiana that Charles still suffers considerably from his experiences in the war. He is a good man, the best of men, but he requires – indeed I believe it will be his eventual redemption – wholehearted love. I had not been in society with your sister for more than a week before I realised that she is as good and honourable as she is beautiful, however, I had equally not been in Hertfordshire a week before I heard of her broken heart. Your mother has made it abundantly clear to the entire neighbourhood over the years since the end of the War that your sister will never be able to give her heart wholly to anyone again following the death of Captain Woodhouse.
Perhaps I should not have thought that a girl who was eighteen when she lost her fiancé would never love again but I have seen a great deal of grief and loss. As an officer I took seriously my duty of writing to mothers and widows and, even now, I keep up a small correspondence with some as well as holding myself responsible for the welfare of war widows, orphans, and other dependents on my estate, and I know well how grief can remain particularly in young and sensitive women. There was also an undefinable, unavoidable sadness about your sister that convinced me it was true. I could not let Charles marry her and be second in her heart. If I have destroyed her chance of happiness I will live with the regret for the rest of my life but it was done to protect my best friend from a loveless marriage which would eventually kill him. In my own defence, I can only say that my knowledge of the situation came directly from your mother who gave me every impression that all she wanted for her grieving daughter was to be mistress of her late fiancé’s home.
As regards your accusation that I share my aunt’s views on politics and culture all I can say is an emphatic ‘no’. I find her opinions appalling but disagreement results in excommunication from Rosings and I love my cousin dearly, Anne is the nearest thing I have to a sister and while she puts up with her mother, so will I. I must trust you will believe me when I say I do not visit Rosings for any other reason.
Where Mr. Wickham is concerned, however, I am afraid I must impose on you at some length.
It is true that my father left George Wickham a considerable sum of money and true that I withheld the greater percentage of it. When George returned from the war in 1917 with an injury that forced him to leave the army my father kept the promise he had made to John Wickham to help his son and so funded him at university. George acquitted himself reasonably well at London although no-one without my father’s affection would have been impressed.
My father then decided to finance him through studying law and, on his death, I gave George the preliminary sum intended for that. I have no idea what he spent it on beyond some photographic equipment although I imagine the biblical phrase ‘riotous living’ might cover it. After a couple of years he returned requesting the remainder of the money which I refused to give
him on the grounds that he had not studied law but against my own better judgement I found myself writing him a cheque for another one thousand pounds which he claimed would “set him up”.
After I left you in Margaret Street I drove up to Albert Denny’s family place in Northamptonshire. I had a bit of difficulty with him mostly because the poor chap has certain problems and George (to his credit, I daresay) has been a steadfast friend. At first, all he would tell me was that George had gone off with one of his ‘conquests’ but once I persuaded him that the ‘conquest’ was a schoolgirl he told me exactly where to find them. When I arrived at the Brighton Metropole I found him leaving the hotel and very anxious to be gone. Your sister was still in the room and he hadn’t paid the bill.
I asked the hotel to contact you and to contact my London office if they were unable to reach you or another member of your family, and returned to Derby to the business I had postponed. I intended to contact you on my return to London a week later but before I could I found out in the most distressing way possible why George had been so keen to leave Brighton.
I was chatting to a friend outside Claridges when an old acquaintance got out of a cab and jokingly told me she had seen Georgiana entering the Great Eastern Hotel at Liverpool Street station with Douglas Fairbanks. I laughed but it was no joke for I have heard George Wickham likened to Mr. Fairbanks a dozen times. I rushed outside for a cab and when I arrived at the hotel (you will recall Liverpool Street serves Tilbury Docks and the P&O Line for India) it was not hard to guess Wickham’s pseudonym. I found him in his shirt sleeves with his arm around my obviously intoxicated niece. I am ashamed to say I wanted to kill him. He fled. If had been held up another twenty minutes she would have been violated and, with her strong sense of pride and purity, she would have considered herself bound to the brute for life.