Seagulls & Ices
Darcy’s carriage rolled away from the house with the same quiet competence that had brought them there, wheels striking stone with a steadiness that ought to have reassured him.
He sat back and watched Ramsgate recede in fragments: a pale wall, a shuttered window, the corner where the street dipped towards the sound of the sea.
The wind found every gap, salt threaded through the air, and he told himself it was merely weather, not warning.
He had left nothing to chance.
He had taken care that everything necessary should be easy.
The house was well recommended. The servants were accustomed to order.
Georgiana would not be made conspicuous, nor left without society.
There was money enough for comfort. The hours of walking had been spoken of lightly, as suggestion rather than rule.
He had meant to leave nothing burdensome behind him, nothing that might make his absence felt as authority.
It ought to have been enough.
He could not prevent his mind from returning to the promenade, to Elizabeth standing with her face turned into the wind as if she had forgotten, for a moment, to brace herself against anything.
She had spoken of the sea with that quick honesty which never softened itself to please.
The ease of their exchange had been the most unsettling part of it.
It had not felt arranged by circumstance, nor sustained by effort. It had simply been.
He had no right to wish for what came so naturally.
Yet the absence of it pressed upon him at once.
He began to count the days, because numbers were steadier than hopes.
Ramsgate to London could be done in one long day, if they started early and the horses were good.
There would be business that could not be dismissed with a letter: meetings with his solicitor, accounts to examine, obligations that required his presence, not merely his name.
A week in town, if he allowed no indulgence.
Then Derbyshire must be seen again, steward and tenants and the inevitable accumulation of decisions made in his absence.
A fortnight at Pemberley, at least. After that, London once more to collect Bingley and see him settled upon a house.
Another week, perhaps. And then Ramsgate.
Too long. Far too long.
The carriage rolled on, and with each mile he forced his thoughts back into order.
It was not only Georgiana who would be tested by time, but himself.
Elizabeth must be left free. If she chose Mr Ashton, it would be her right, and Darcy would not reduce her choice by hovering at her shoulder as if constancy could be earned by presence alone.
He had promised to return. He would return.
The promise did not lighten the road.
* * *
The sound of the carriage did not vanish at once.
It ran down the street in diminishing strokes, wheels and hoofbeats reduced to a faint rhythm that the sea seemed to swallow and return.
Georgiana stood at the window until it was gone, her hands folded, her expression composed enough to make Kitty glance at her twice.
“Well,” Kitty said at last, with forced brightness, “we must not look as if we have been abandoned. Georgiana, shall we go out again? The light is much too fine to waste.”
Mary’s gaze travelled once along the passage, taking in the closed door, the stillness, the servants’ absence as if they too were holding their breath.
“We must decide what we are to do,” she said.
Kitty looked from one to the other. “We might go to the parade again. The air will be finer now, and I wish to see whether the boats are as lively as yesterday.”
Georgiana’s lips parted, as if she meant to answer at once, then closed again. She gave a small nod instead, the motion careful, as if assent were safer than choice.
“I should like to visit the library,” Mary said. “We might find a book on Ramsgate and learn what the town has to offer.”
“An excellent idea,” Elizabeth agreed readily. “And I am certain Mrs Allen will know where we may find one, as well as suggest any hidden delights that the book does not know.”
Elizabeth looked at her hands a moment, then at the room. There were no linens to see to, no washing to oversee, no small urgency pressing at the edge of her attention. The morning lay entirely open before her. She was not certain she remembered what to do with it.
They moved at last, not hurried, but no longer idle. A bell sounded faintly from below, a servant appeared, and the morning began.
The days that followed settled into a rhythm as natural as the tide.
They went out each morning after breakfast, into air that met them at the door with salt and brightness.
The parade was their usual first direction, a broad walk above the shore where the sea lay always in view, its colour shifting with the light from grey-green to something almost blue.
Kitty walked faster than the others and had to be recalled.
Georgiana walked steadily, her face turned seaward, and said little at first, though her silence had a different quality outdoors than it did within.
Mrs Younge walked with them, as was proper, though she fell a little behind on the steeper stretches of the parade and did not appear to mind the distance.
She had opinions on the wind, which she found disagreeable, and on the crowds, which she found fatiguing, and she expressed both with a mild resignation that required no answer.
Elizabeth had discovered the gulls.
They were, she had decided by the second morning, entirely without dignity and wholly without shame. She watched them wheel and dive and rob each other with cheerful efficiency. One particularly bold bird robbed its neighbour mid-air, and the laugh rose before she could stop it.
She turned, the words already forming, and found only Mrs Younge a few paces behind her, eyes on the middle distance, entirely uninterested in gulls.
She turned back to the sea.
It was Mrs Younge who suggested the confectioner.
“There is a very respectable shop just off the parade,” she said, as they turned from the harbour. “I am told the ices are quite good. It would be a pleasant stop, if you are not too fatigued.”
Kitty was not too fatigued. Georgiana said she thought it sounded very agreeable. Mary made no objection.
Elizabeth made none either, though she noted, without quite knowing why, that Mrs Younge seemed already to know exactly where it was.
Mrs Younge turned into a narrower street where the sea wind was softened by the houses, and paused before a shop whose windows displayed pyramids of sugared almonds and glass jars filled with bright syrups.
The door stood open to the morning, and the cool air within carried the faint scent of lemon and cream.
Inside, the room was small but orderly. A marble counter ran along one side, and several little tables stood near the windows, each with two or three chairs drawn neatly about them.
Mirrors hung upon the walls to enlarge the space, catching the light and doubling the motion of those within.
A boy behind the counter was carefully arranging small glass dishes upon a tray.
Kitty looked about her with immediate delight.
“Oh, this is charming,” she declared. “I had imagined something far grander, but this is much better.”
Mrs Younge accepted a table near the window as if she had expected it to be free. Georgiana seated herself beside Elizabeth with visible relief, removing her gloves with careful fingers. Mary took the chair opposite and began examining the printed bill with interest.
“What does one order?” Kitty asked, leaning over Mary’s shoulder.
“Ices, it appears,” Mary replied. “Lemon, raspberry, and something called orange water.”
“That sounds medicinal,” Kitty said.
The boy approached with a polite bow, and the matter was soon settled.
Kitty chose raspberry at once, declaring it the only sensible colour for an ice.
Mary selected lemon after brief consideration.
Georgiana asked softly whether orange might be had, and accepted it with visible satisfaction when assured it was.
Elizabeth, who had been watching the others rather than the bill, requested lemon cream simply because it remained undecided.
Mrs Younge requested lemon water and settled back in her chair with the air of someone whose duty was satisfactorily discharged.
For a few minutes there was only the quiet business of spoons against glass and the pleasant coolness that followed the first taste. Outside the window the street moved slowly in the sunshine, carriages passing at an unhurried pace and the sea visible at the end of the lane like a strip of silver.
The confectioner soon became one of their habitual stops.
The mornings arranged themselves easily after that first day: a walk upon the parade while the air was fresh, a pause to watch the boats shifting in the harbour, and sometimes a bench where Mary might read a page or two aloud while Kitty attempted a sketch of whatever had most recently caught her attention.
Georgiana listened more than she spoke at first, yet the sea seemed to restore her by degrees.
The colour returned to her cheeks, and her smiles came more readily with each passing day.
It was on one such morning, as they left the confectioner and turned again toward the parade, that Mrs Younge proposed a change.
“Miss Darcy has walked a good deal already,” she observed gently. “Perhaps she might prefer a quieter turn with me along the lower path while the rest of you visit the library.”
Georgiana glanced instinctively toward Elizabeth, as if the decision belonged elsewhere.
Elizabeth smiled. “The library will not fatigue her, I think. We shall all go together, and rest there if we please.”
Mrs Younge inclined her head at once, yielding with perfect composure.
“As you wish.”