The Zephyr

Chapter 35

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

SUGAR PLUMS AND FRILLS OF LACE

I spent two days with the Gardiners in London. I had not been to visit for a good long while, since my sisters had taken precedence in that regard. There, I saw for myself that Lydia was slowly gathering her confidence.

“Have you done something different with your hair?” I asked after a swift kiss on her pinking cheek.

“Do you like it?”

“It becomes you. You look like a town miss now. Do you miss the country?”

She smiled a little as she admitted that only when the pall of smoke over the city was not cleared away by the westerly winds coming off the Atlantic Ocean did she remember the smell of fresh hay.

“Ah yes. Perhaps I should remind you that the wonderful smells of home are intermingled with those of the piggery.”

This was a homely conversation, meaningless on the surface, yet bubbling with goodwill between two sisters reunited and perhaps more inclined than ever before to think well of each other. I had known the decision to keep Lydia in London had been for the best, but to see the wisdom of it in person, even after Jane had gone home, truly struck me. Wickham, I reflected, had not wounded her as much as he surely intended. He had instead spurred her to grow up!

Over a pleasant dinner, my family gathered to talk of plans for Jane’s wedding, of my nieces and nephews, and of the many entertainments to be had now that spring had arrived. This led to talk of friends returned from holidays and of my aunt’s many callers, for she was a popular lady with her set of friends. It was then I sustained a slight shock.

“You will never guess, Lizzy,” Lydia said with just enough mischief to remind me of the sister I used to know. “Mr Darcy paid us a call,” she confided with dancing eyes. “Imagine, such a man sitting with us!”

“Mr Darcy—here!” I spluttered.

“He came once with Mr Bingley,” my aunt explained, “and once more recently. He was on his way to Kent. Did you see him there?”

I had conquered my gasping sufficiently to reply. “Often!”

Unfortunately, my curiosity, which I had wished to overpower so as to move away from this tricky subject, did not allow me to follow this admission with anything other than a question.

“And what did the esteemed gentleman have to say for himself in Cheapside?”

“I know from your letters of last year you have decided he is an unpleasant sort of man,” Aunt Gardiner said, “and I grant you he is nothing like Mr Bingley for friendliness and conversation, but we spoke, albeit sparingly, of Lambton and my memories of Pemberley and such. He wishes to introduce me to his sister when we meet next month at Netherfield Park, for apparently, she loves to hear tales of her mother.”

“Oh? Well, in that case, I have changed my mind. If he recognises you, Aunt, I might even condescend to stand up with him in the unlikely case he asks. What about you, Lydia? Might you dance with Mr Darcy?”

“He would never ask me to dance,” she said with a blush, “but if he did, I suppose I could not refuse. He brought me a little box of sugar plums, you know.”

Such was my surprise to hear this, a great deal of schooling was required to keep my eyebrows from reaching upward towards my hairline. I then laughed, perhaps a little too gaily, and said, “That settles it. I might already be in love with him!”

“I pity the man if you are,” my uncle said with a wink. Such was my reputation with my family for wilfulness, I could only acknowledge his observation with a grin.

“Well, you should feel sorry for him, Uncle, for if I decide to have him I will ‘catch’ him as Mama used to say.”

The following morning, I travelled home, again in my uncle’s coach, and on the bench beside and opposite me were parcels aplenty from the merchants of London—commissioned last minute purchases my aunt had made at my mother’s behest. My poor father had likely been forced to open his locked desk drawer to hand out what remained of his profits for the cause of Jane’s wedding, but perhaps he had done so with a little more grace than he might have not so long ago. After Lydia’s near-catastrophe, we were lucky Jane was to marry anyone.

Besides, my sister was marrying advantageously, and our mother felt secure for once. Perhaps my father’s anxiety in that regard, though he never acknowledged it, was similarly relieved. I hoped we had heard the last lament over Longbourn’s entail.

Then considering that soon enough my mother would hear that her second daughter was marrying—not just a prosperous man, but a man of great wealth—I chuckled aloud. Aunt Gardiner would soon have to return to the shops!

As my eyes wandered over the packages on the seat facing me, I realised with a start I had not once considered my own impending fortune. I was entirely comfortable with Mr Darcy being rich, but the notion of having a great deal of my own money caused me to shift in my seat. I could not get comfortable.

Truth be told, the prospect daunted me. Would I, at the snap of the fingers of fate, become an entitled, demanding empress who could not tolerate the slightest deviation from her faintest wish? In my old age, would I begin to resemble the gorgon of Kent? Would Mr Darcy’s wealth change me?

The question hung over my head for the following two weeks. I pushed it aside with great regularity, and instead of dwelling upon my fear of the corruption of having the world handed to me on a gold platter, I applied myself to renewing my friendship with Jane. We whispered and giggled often, mostly at night, and mostly about something Mr Bingley had done or said, about my mother’s notions of what was a proper wedding dress, and the sudden elevation in my sister’s standing in Meryton. The fact that she was curtseyed to and bowed at as though she were the resident duchess sent us into fits of laughter, particularly because not so long ago, she had been so liberally pitied for her disappointed hopes.

I also repaired relations with my ponies who, if I was not mistaken, were pretending not to remember me as a kind of punishment for my abandonment. Unlike people, however, animals do not hold grudges for long. An offering of the last of the withered apples from the cellar was sufficient to clear the air, and when Mr Hill pulled the Zephyr out of the shed and put them in the traces, my horses seemed to forget I was ever gone.

“Come, Jane,” I said that morning, “let us go for a long ride today, shall we?”

My sister readily agreed to this plan since the weather was beautiful for a change, and though they pranced impatiently, I did not whip my ponies into a run, opting instead for an easy canter suitable for conversation.

“How I have missed this,” I said, closing my eyes and breathing in the impeccable freshness of a late springtime breeze. “And how I have missed you.”

“And I you, Lizzy. When Mr Bingley called on me in London, I wished for no one save for you in which to pour out all my anxieties.”

“Because you feared he may disappoint you a second time? You were terribly brave to have risked it. I am not sure I would have given him a second look.”

“I tried to forget him, Lizzy. Only I could not.”

“Then you are in love, Jane, and I am delighted for you.”

“It is wonderful to be in love,” she confided with her eyes fixed far down the lane, “but oddly painful as well.”

Oh yes! I nearly confessed aloud that I knew just what she meant.

Instead, I struck off in another direction.

“What we have endured is also painful. I have been thinking that sisters often face separation upon marriage, but ours came earlier than it should. We have lost a whole year of precious time.”

This lament seemed to puzzle her. “But I will live close by, Lizzy. We can have our year together and many more thereafter.”

Her assumption pinched my heart, so much so that I turned the conversation to Mr Bingley’s ball—a topic so thoroughly canvassed at home I was heartily sick of it.

She chatted contentedly about the plans made and even of Miss Bingley’s tutelage in the proper arrangements for such an elegant affair.

“Miss Bingley is obliging, then? I had not thought she would be best pleased that her brother did not marry a marchioness or better.”

“Well, she was not terribly friendly to me until Mr Darcy wrote that he planned to arrive in time for the ball.”

“Oh?”

“And he is bringing his sister.”

“Is he? We shall meet Miss Darcy at last.”

“Yes, although I am slightly anxious in that regard. Miss Bingley says she is the most accomplished, most elegant woman she has ever met, and that upon application, Miss Darcy might even arrange for us to meet her aunt, the Countess of Matlock.”

After a heavy pause in which my slight oppression of recent days deepened, I took a large breath. “In that case, I had better look over the gown Mama has chosen for me to wear. God forbid I meet this storied lady trussed up to the neck in frills.”