Chapter Eight #2
Blushing for Mamma—though Mamma herself certainly would not—Elizabeth had never been more chagrined.
Desperation and loss drove Mamma to such lengths, but Mr Darcy could not know that.
How vexing it was! She and Jane had sought to introduce the family most carefully, in order to mitigate Mamma’s wilder flights and not give their landlord a disgust of them when they were so dependent upon his generosity and largesse—a strategy left in ruins with one senseless panegyric to praise Jane’s eyebrow, or her left elbow, or some such nonsense.
Dear lord, why could not a daughter die of mortification and be free of such dreadful humiliations?
It was Lydia who broke the silence. Thank heavens someone did! Though Lydia could not be delicate and proper about it, of course. “How exciting it all sounds! Did you really kill a tiger? Did you bring its skin home with you? I should love to see it.”
Mr Darcy glanced at her. “No. My friend Bingley was the one to do the deed. He had the skin cured and brought it home, though what he will do with it, I do not know.”
“Perhaps he will wear it! There are people who wear only animal skins, are there not? Perhaps he will. What a sight that would be! I wish I could see it!”
Oh, Lydia.
Elizabeth swallowed a sigh. Miss Standley did not swallow her derisive snicker.
Aunt Darcy’s patience was at an end. “Time for your lessons, girls. Georgiana, please take your cousins to the schoolroom.”
Georgiana jumped up at once, but Lydia replied before Mamma could do more than open her mouth, “Oh, we are not here for lessons, but to meet Mr Darcy!” She smiled at him with all the brilliance of a clever child who had never known true discipline and restraint.
“And now you have met him, Lydia. The schoolroom, please.” Aunt Darcy looked at Elizabeth and nodded.
Elizabeth rose swiftly. “I will go up with you, girls, as I must speak with your governess.”
She turned to loom over Kitty and Lydia.
Lydia opened her mouth to protest, of course, but Elizabeth merely tilted her head to one side—Are you truly foolish enough to cross me, Lyddy?
Lydia was not, though she took a moment to fold her arms across her ample bosom and scowl, craning to one side to try and see around Elizabeth to catch their mother’s eye in the hope Mamma would support her.
Mamma, however, understood on which side her bread was buttered when it came to the influence Pemberley and the Darcys had over her life.
She carefully did not see her youngest daughter’s pleading looks.
Lydia huffed and rose; Kitty, as ever, an instant behind her. Elizabeth hid a smile. Lydia might be the tallest Bennet sister, and by far the boldest, but she still had a healthy disinclination to provoke Elizabeth’s ire.
“Make your curtseys, girls, and we shall be off.” Elizabeth herself dipped the Standleys a curtsey, murmured her farewells and good wishes, and shepherded the three girls to the door.
She noted the nod Mr Darcy gave her. Was that approval in his expression? Surely not. And yet he deliberately turned towards her, and his smile, though slight, was warm. She felt a sudden rush of fellow-feeling. He seemed to endure these calls with as little enthusiasm as she did herself.
Behind her, Mr Standley cleared his throat.
“Well, Darcy, shall we see you at the weekly Gentlemen’s Club meeting in Buxton?
I can promise you a fine claret in the club’s cellars, and we play many a close game of Cassino or Loo.
” His coarse laugh followed Elizabeth out of the door.
“I assure you the stakes are no higher than is fashionable!”
She closed the door behind her. Really, the Standleys were the most tiresome bores. Poor Mr Darcy, forced to endure the man.
“You do like to spoil our fun, Lizzy!” Lydia dawdled and dilly-dallied, complaining as she went.
Georgiana and Kitty had already started up the stairs to the schoolroom, arm-in-arm and heads together as they chatted and giggled. The Lord alone knew what had them so enthralled.
Lydia, though, displayed a fine fit of the sulks.
“Mamma wanted Jane to meet Mr Darcy. And I wished to meet him, too! Why should Jane have all the preference? I am as pretty as she, and Mr Darcy might fancy me better. He is a handsome one, is he not? He looks stern, though. I cannot think he is a merry kind of man, the way Hugh is. And, now I think on it, I do not think him so handsome as George. George smiles more and is partial to us, and I like him better, too, even if he is not as rich.”
Elizabeth blew out a soft sigh. “You are not yet out, Lyddy. While it is entirely proper for you to meet Mr Darcy, given that we are some distant connections to his wider family, it is entirely improper to talk about his friends wearing nothing but tiger skins. I do not think Mr Darcy was amused. Our aunt was not, to be certain.”
“She is not really our aunt.”
“No. Cousin Sarah, then. It does not matter what we call her. What matters is that we owe her a great deal, and it is ungracious of us to vex her.”
“Pffft! It is all very well for you. She prefers you to any of us. She does not have us here to live in Pemberley in splendour.” Lydia paused at the foot of the stairs, kicking idly at the first riser.
“Lizzy, when shall I be out? And Kitty, of course. When? How will it happen? All Mary did was go to one or two assemblies, and not even in Buxton. She never goes farther than Lambton, where no one of consequence attends. Is that all we can do?” She glanced up the stairs to where Kitty and Georgiana stood on the landing, still chatting.
“Georgiana will have a grand come-out in London, I suppose. We will not.”
“Not even if we still had Longbourn, and our circumstances now are more constrained. We will do our best to give you as fine a come-out we can manage, but it will be as Mary’s was, not as Georgiana’s will be.
We cannot afford more, and must make do with what we can achieve when the time comes.
And that will not be for two years. You are not old enough yet. ”
Lydia could produce a scowl fearsome enough to sour milk still in the cow.
She kicked again at the riser, her mouth very tight.
“I hate it here! I do. I do. Mamma would have let me come out if we were still in Meryton. I know she would. Instead she does whatever the Darcys want, and because Aunt Darcy is so prim and proper and will not allow Georgiana to be out for years and years yet, they make me stay in the schoolroom as if I were a child! I must be grateful for every crumb falling from their table, no matter what I really think. I hate it, Lizzy! I want to be out and able to see people, and dance and… and… have merry times and laugh and…. I hate it. I hate it.”
Elizabeth’s breath caught in her throat. She could not speak, hearing her deepest, most secret thoughts tumble pell-mell out of Lydia’s mouth.
“The only escape is marriage, I know that. How will I ever find someone to marry, buried away here? I will not have Georgiana’s chances. I must make my own.”
Elizabeth was shocked into finding her voice. “Marriage? You are barely sixteen! You should not be thinking of marriage.”
“Mamma does. It is all she thinks about for us.” Lydia’s expression cleared, bouncing in an instant from squalls to bright sunshine. “Oh, here is George! He knows, too. He understands.”
George Wickham emerged into the Great Hall from the corridor leading to the master’s study, in time to hear Lydia’s impassioned words. He shifted the roll of papers and maps he carried to his left hand, and bowed over Lydia’s as if she had been the grandest of grandes dames, and quite grown up.
“What do I know, Lydia?”
“That it is a terrible, terrible thing to be forced to be grateful all the time. Why must I pretend to like it?” A foot stamp. “I do not want to be here. I want to go back home… to Longbourn. I want…” She stopped, choked.
George slid an arm around her shoulders. “It is hard, I know. Frith House is a long way from Longbourn, is it not?”
Lydia sobbed, and pressed her head into George’s shoulder. “You do know, George. You do. You understand me best of all.”
Elizabeth found her voice, though her throat ached.
“We cannot go back. You were very young then, but you must remember when Papa died and Mr Collins came. All the shouting, and he tried to fight Uncle Gardiner, and he wanted to throw Mamma and us out of the house when Papa had died only hours before…”
“George would not let him.” Lydia drew back to give George the look she often wore when he was there, her face slightly flushed, bright-eyed, mouth curving into a wide smile; all her hard edges softened in his presence.
She had a wholehearted admiration for the handsome young man who had stood between them and rough-voiced Arthur Collins trying to invade their home when poor Papa was barely an hour dead.
George had tussled with the man in the doorway before thrusting him out, and ever since, he had all the virtues in Lydia’s worshipful eyes.
“I remember how you stood in front of him, and defied him. You were so brave.”
“I was glad to be of service. And glad of the three large footmen at my back!” George gave her a gentle shake and released her, stepping back.
“We were lucky Aunt Darcy sent George and the footmen to us just in time,” said Elizabeth. “They got us away to safety.”
“But nothing ever happens here.”
“We are safe. Mr Collins is not a good man. Without our aunt’s help, I dread to think what would have become of us.
The Darcys came when we were in direst need.
She has done so from affection and family feeling, Lyddy.
They gave us somewhere to live, and you and Kitty are getting an education of the kind I only dreamed of.
Make the most of it. It will be for the best, in the end.
And I know, I do know, how hard it is to be grateful all the time, but the least we might do is for you and Kitty to be the best friends to Georgiana you can possibly be. ”
Lydia huffed, and tossed her head, and folded her arms under her bosom.
Probably to attract George’s notice to her attributes.
Luckily she wore her best dress, one that had once been Georgiana’s, and Aunt Darcy would never countenance anything immodest. Only the Good Lord knew what Lydia might wear if she had her own way.
“Lyddy!” Kitty called from the upper landing. “What are you about? Do hurry.”
“Go to your lessons,” George said, so gentle and kind that Elizabeth’s throat tightened and ached. “Learn all you can. Then when you do come out, I promise to dance your very first set with you, and be the envy of the room for taking a genteel and well-educated young lady up and down the set.”
“You will not forget?” A sour twist to her lips made Lydia look far older than her sixteen years. “Even though we will have to wait for years?”
“As if I could! It will be my greatest pleasure and honour.” He bowed.
Lydia heaved a great sigh, and nodded. She trailed slowly up the stairs to join her sister and Georgiana.
Elizabeth watched her go with burning eyes.
Heaven knew that at Longbourn their come-outs had been modest affairs, but still Mamma had held an evening party for each of them with the best she could afford in elegant foods and wines, and had the carpets in the drawing room rolled up to allow for as many as a dozen couples to dance.
Modest indeed, but more than Mary had, or Lydia and Kitty could expect.
“She is right. Gratitude is a terrible thing.” George glanced down at the papers in his hand, and his scowl was as magnificent as Lydia’s. “I feel it myself.”
“I know you do. I am surprised Lydia noticed.”
“She is a clever girl, and discontent often sharpens the eyes and mind.”
“You were very kind to her. You always are.” For deliberately not acknowledging Lydia’s admiration, she wanted to say but could not. For his care with a young girl’s heart.
“She is so like you, and not only in looks. She has a great deal of your fire and passion and energy, and you both have quick and clever minds. You have learned the control she has yet to achieve, that is all.” George glanced up at the staircase, empty now the girls were out of sight.
“We understand each other, Lydia and I. We both chafe at obligation.” He stood close, a warm presence.
He had been stalwart at a dreadful time, and ever since.
Elizabeth nodded. “I often feel the same. Since Mr Darcy’s return…
His stories unsettle me, George. They show how confined and unchanging my life is.
He has had such a profession and pursuits, such adventures, difficulties, and dangers…
and I must sit at home and run errands for my aunt to show my gratitude.
I am fond of the Darcys, truly I am, but sometimes, I wonder how I contrive to bear it. ”
“I am not much more free than you. My uncle’s drunken improvidence and downright stupidity has robbed me of the future along with the estate I expected to inherit one day.
I have nothing but blighted hope. I will continue to do my best at Pemberley, because I have no other recourse, but it is hard, Lizzy.
I cannot achieve my desire of marrying a lady I love and respect, and establishing a family. It is very hard.”
Elizabeth nodded, and had to force her voice past the lump in her throat. “Hope.” She drew in a wavering breath. “I have hopes. I hope, more than anything, for a life of my own, not one doled out to me by others the way the parish doles out farthings to the poor.”
George grasped her hand in his, his voice low and fervent.
“I promise, Lizzy. I promise that one day you and I will have our hope together. I promise you.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, then stepped back while she stared at him, her mouth dropping open.
“And now I must go and meet Mr Darcy, and carry out the obligations that weigh so heavy. Not forever, I promise. Not forever.”
She watched him go, breath and thought suspended. George. In such a light… George? She drew in a breath and closed her mouth with a snap.
George?