Chapter 29
Phaeton
“Miss Bennet, may I ask you an awfully impertinent question?” Anne de Bourgh asked, insouciantly.
“Of course!”
“What in the world have you done to my cousins?”
Elizabeth turned to the lady beside her on the phaeton’s seat. “I presume you mean Mr Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam?”
Anne de Bourgh wondered if her friend was having it on with her or simply clarifying. It was often difficult to tell if she was teasing, explaining, or qualifying—one could so rarely tell.
Elizabeth wondered how much the lady intended to pry, and how much she herself meant to divulge. Anne de Bourgh fascinated her; she was more than willing to indulge her where she could.
It was mid-afternoon, three days after Jane’s engagement announcement, Elizabeth’s second failed proposal, and the subsequent long, healing conversation with that vexing-vexing cousin.
As planned, Mr Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam called at the parsonage the day after she arranged a rendezvous 6 months hence, and Elizabeth found the experience fantastical.
The colonel looked and acted much as he usually did, though perhaps the ease was a facade; some tension clung to him which had not been there before.
She might offer him an apology, but she had no idea how to begin the discussion, or what good she could hope to achieve.
He was a full-grown man and could fend for himself.
He should at least be cured of the worst of his gossipy tendencies.
On the other hand, Mr Darcy was substantially more open and amiable than previously, with her, with Mary, and even with William.
Elizabeth was still trying to sketch his character, and could not decide how to interpret him.
Was he being more amiable because he was trying to improve her opinion of him—courting behaviour, perhaps?
Or because, no longer so worried, he was reverting to his normal demeanour?
Or because he no longer fought his attraction to her?
The colonel had opined earlier that he was lively enough in other situations.
Was the more amiable Mr Darcy real, or was it the more taciturn one—or was it something else entirely?
Perhaps he was like a chameleon, and changed his colour according to his circumstances.
Whatever the explanation, the new Mr Darcy was much more palatable than the disagreeable old one, but she still did not want to marry him.
Elizabeth shook her head, recognising the telltale sign of what Charlotte called a thought storm—that endless loop of thoughts cascading into a waterfall of thinking.
Learning to control the storms had been one of the hardest lessons learned during Charlotte’s self-imposed training regimen—though, in the end, it was not Charlotte who produced a tolerable solution, but Jennifer Long.
One day, Elizabeth described the problem, and Jennifer suggested, “It sounds like you need to trim your sails[xx].”
She meant that Elizabeth’s thoughts circled like a ship in a storm, sails fully open, riding the storm to destruction like a poorly managed vessel.
Jennifer asserted that she must learn to trim her sails enough to quiet herself in the frightening seas before she could open them again and return to riding her thoughts as was proper.
That meant disregarding conflicting voices until they faded, disregarding her mounting panic, or calming her nerves (hopefully without salts).
Just reimagining the voices as wind helped somewhat. The technique worked… eventually.
Jennifer professed no particular cleverness. The wisdom came from an uncle, a sea-captain, who used the same technique to quiet his thoughts before a battle.
Elizabeth applied the technique and dragged her attention back to her companion before she became even ruder.
A quick daydream of a ship in a violent storm, with sailors swarming up the ropes to trim the sails while the captain stood calmly on deck calculating the area of the furled sails aloud did the trick.
She smiled at her companion. “I apologise for the delay. My mind sometimes wanders, through no fault of my companions. I would be pleased if you called me Elizabeth.”
Anne sat up straighter and gave the biggest smile Elizabeth had ever seen on her. Miss de Bourgh was quite pretty when she quit slouching, frowning, letting her companion coddle her, and tolerating her mother’s browbeating.
“And I would be pleased if you called me Anne… or at least I would be if you were not avoiding my question.”
The last came with a shy, timid smile, as if teasing itself frightened the young lady—not an unlikely surmise.
Elizabeth returned the smile. “I would be happy to call you by your given name; or at least to do so when I am not around your mother. As to the latter, I fear I must answer your question with another.”
“Very well,” Anne said with a chuckle, “though I will not absolutely promise not to reply to your question with yet another.”
“As long as we answer more than we ask, we should eventually run out. On what basis do you claim I did something to your cousins.”
“Fitzwilliam Darcy was kind to me, and Richard Fitzwilliam followed suit.”
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow and waited.
“Darcy and I were close as children. Around the time he went to Eton, I became extremely ill and never quite recovered. In the process, we lost our childhood connection. As soon as he came of age, my mother started telling this ridiculous story of planning our marriage in our cradles and has hounded him ever since.”
“Such a plan is obviously not ideal for the sacrificial lambs,” Elizabeth said, “but that sort of thing is often done in high circles. Even in my own, I must sheepishly admit my mother tried relentlessly to push me into an unwanted marriage. Can you tell me why you consider it ridiculous?”
“Come now, Miss Bennet. You are a master of logic and mathematics. Think!”
Elizabeth laughed, and Anne’s countenance eased.
“Aha! Unless Mr Darcy was a particularly sickly child, I doubt he was in his cradle at 3.”
“Discussing our supposed union in our cradles was temporally impossible. And even if not, you would think Aunt Anne would have mentioned it to Fitzwilliam if there truly was an agreement. That does not seem the sort of arrangement a mother would neglect.”
“That makes sense.”
“We discussed the possibility of following through with the mad plan and mutually decided we would not suit. He noticed Mama became more strident if he vehemently denied it, so I eventually asked him to mostly ignore us, as long as it did not affect him. He reluctantly agreed. When his father died, he took up the care of his estate and his sister. He barely kept his head above water for years and we fell into the habit.”
Elizabeth sighed and took hold of her friend’s arm. “It seems you chose the least objectionable solution you could devise, though the whole idea fills me with sadness. It is not as if you have a surfeit of family and friends at Rosings.”
Realising her tongue had once again run ahead of her good sense and manners, Elizabeth amended, “I apologise. That was unkind.”
“No apology necessary. In fact, it is a good opportunity. May I ask something of you that may be difficult to deliver? I shall ask nonetheless—on the advice of my cousin Darcy, by the way.”
“You may ask, and I will render an opinion about my willingness.”
Her friend wore a look of intense concentration, and perhaps a touch of fear.
“I ask that you, if at all possible, even if it is difficult, pray do not lie to me, or even shade the truth. Whether your last remark was unkind or not, it was true. I shall beg another favour of you soon, but it will require more than the usual level of honesty between people who have known each other only weeks. It is much to ask, but between us, I would like to suspend propriety and politeness.”
Elizabeth looked carefully at her friend, trying to judge if the offer was sincere, and estimating the size and weight of the spring on the mantrap she suspected she was sticking her leg into.
At least her mind was concentrated on the here and now, which was more of an accomplishment than it might be for some.
“Very well, I shall agree when we are in private. I will be polite and noncommittal with your family.”
Anne let out a big sigh. “Thank you. I deeply appreciate it. Nobody speaks honestly to me.”
“Is that their fault?”
“Not really. They do not offer, I do not ask, and my environment does not encourage it.”
“I lost track of where we were in our line of questioning.”
“You were going to tell me what you did to my cousins.”
“You ask a lot, Anne.”
“Too much?”
Elizabeth thought about it for some time.
Anne drove the phaeton with a groom in the back who was deaf as a post, so there were no privacy concerns.
The pony was the most docile creature Elizabeth had ever laid eyes on.
Without encouragement, he walked at a pace Elizabeth could easily outstrip on foot, so she had time to think.
“Not too much,” Elizabeth finally replied, “but to truly answer your question, I must extend you a level of trust currently reserved for very few. I will think on it for a moment.”
Anne seemed perfectly willing to wait all day, and rather than thinking about whether to trust her, Elizabeth became diverted by the source of such patience.
The answer was obvious after a little directed reflection.
Rosings was not a spirited environment; patience must be not only a virtue, but a survival skill.
“If it helps, I will withdraw the question,” Anne said timidly, “but before I do, I should mention that I plan to trust you with something I trust to nobody. Not a single person has seen what I wish to show you.”
Eventually, curiosity got the better of her, so Elizabeth placed her foot gingerly on the trigger of the mantrap.