Chapter 34 Appassionata
APPASSIONATA
Lucy, the little housemaid, stepped back from dusting my petticoats, her hands on her non-existent hips and her feather brush dangling. Her bottom lip poked one way, then the other. “I can fix your hair, too.”
After the Gardiners expressed their regret to Miss Darcy, Lucy had shown me to a guest room to tidy for dinner.
“What sort of fix?” I said suspiciously.
“Just fix it,” she said, eyes round with innocence.
Grudgingly, I sat, adjusting the looking glass. While Lucy pulled out pins and began brushing, I said, “What do they teach you at school?”
“Everything,” she answered with unabashed confidence. “Reading, mostly. I didn’t know none of it. But there’s a girl my age with no teaching”—she stopped, then continued in a refined tone—“who had not yet been educated. So, we study as a pair.”
“Goodness. You sound like an elegant lady’s companion.”
“D’you think?” She grinned in the glass, then added, “The boys are learning to blacksmith.”
“That is wonderful.” Mary would be pleased that skilled trades were taught. It would further her plan to undermine the corrupt aristocracy.
“Mr. Darcy told his sister you suggested it. He said you like making bolts.”
“I am intrigued by the production of bolts. But what are you doing to my hair?” I had spotted omens of an elaborate crown braid.
“Nothing,” she said, as convincingly as a child caught with a large lump of sugar in their cheek.
“It is only dinner. It should be simple, please.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said softly and switched course to a tucked braid. She finished, then pulled one dark curl free to dangle past each ear.
I tilted my head, and the curls swung. “Are you sure?”
“Mr. Darcy will admire it.”
“You are very young to speak of what gentlemen admire.”
“I’m sure I’m thirteen. Maybe fourteen!”
“Even so.” I suppose my hair hardly mattered. “Thank you.”
The reminder of meeting Mr. Darcy had set nerves tingling in my belly. I puffed out my cheeks, then repeated my aunt’s encouragement to my reflection. “You are a very competent lady.”
“You are, ma’am,” Lucy said and gave one of my dangling locks a twist around her little finger. “I knew you’d be back.”
Mr. Darcy greeted me in the dining room with a graceful bow very different from his customary curt dips.
He had dressed casually, his cravat simply knotted around muslin collars above a smoky-gray tailcoat and pearl waistcoat.
Perhaps he tailored his choice to me, as I had not brought a gown for dinner.
He offered his hand. I placed my fingers in his, and my tingling nerves climbed my spine.
“I am so pleased you were able to stay,” Miss Darcy said, beaming beside us.
“I, also,” Mr. Darcy said. “I am sorry to have missed Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. I wished to further our acquaintance. But my business was urgent.”
“He left last evening,” Miss Darcy said in an aggrieved tone.
Mr. Darcy’s fingers were still intertwined with mine. I let go belatedly and felt his hand open at the same moment. To distract my nerves, I asked the first thing that came to mind. “Last evening? Where did you go?”
“My principal task was in Liverpool.”
“Liverpool!” That was the largest port in western England, and we were far from the coast. “You traveled all night?”
Mr. Darcy held my gaze, his eyes serious. “I was posting a letter.”
He had written to Mr. Bingley. My heart skipped a beat.
“Why go to Liverpool to post a letter?” asked Miss Darcy, folding her arms with a sibling’s skepticism.
Mr. Darcy chose not to answer that. “Our cook has an excellent dinner prepared. But I hoped to have an activity first.” He sounded unusually tentative.
Anything would be better than staring at each other over a huge table. “That sounds lovely!” I enthused.
“I thought music,” Mr. Darcy said, watching his sister.
Oh no.
“How fun!” exclaimed Miss Darcy. She made further delighted noises, but they were drowned by the tolling bells of doom inside my head.
Perhaps all was not lost. I summoned my most charming smile for Miss Darcy. “I have heard you are most accomplished. I should very much enjoy hearing you play.”
“I will play also,” Miss Darcy said, taking my arm. “But you first! My brother says you sing delightfully.”
“I do not!” I protested.
“Mr. Darcy has good taste,” she said as if that settled it.
She led us through the house with distressing efficiency. Outside, the warmth of sunset had cooled to violet dusk. A housemaid walked ahead lighting wall-mounted sconces. Another trailed, cranking chains to lower the wide chandeliers for lighting.
The Gardiners’ tyke padded beside me but drifted to examine each marble statue we passed. For an animal I imagined as puppy-like, he behaved differently than a dog—peering at the shapes, not sniffing for scents.
Miss Darcy swung open the doors to the music parlor. She smiled enthusiastically while the maid lit the fire and candles. “I feel we have become friends, Miss Bennet. Please allow me to hear you sing.”
I was trapped now. Accepting the inevitable, I leafed through the thick, if untidy, stack of music she plucked off an instrument and found an Italian air I knew tolerably well.
I played and sang, trying not to wince when my fingers struck the wrong note. The instrument was superb, flawlessly tuned, and much larger—and louder—than I was accustomed to.
Miss Darcy wandered while I played, listening attentively. Mr. Darcy watched us both, but he was tense when his eyes followed his sister. He was nervous about her opinion. Strangely, that relaxed me. Miss Darcy had been so sweet that I could not be concerned over her.
When I finished, Miss Darcy clapped with delight. “That was lovely! Fitz is right. You have a charming voice. Very natural.”
I laughed. “If by natural, you mean untutored, I will agree.”
“I do,” she said. “But that is perfect for an air. Most are from folk music, after all.” Her gaze shifted to my fingers resting on the keys. There was a pause. “Perhaps a duet next time? I could play while you sing.”
“That would be most welcome,” I said with heartfelt sincerity. “Will you play now?”
“All right,” she said and took my place at the instrument.
I was curious to hear her perform after so many comments on her skill.
But even more, I was intrigued by her manner in the presence of her instruments.
It was like a flower had opened. Her reserve had lessened throughout our visit, but here she was confident.
Almost exuberant. Yet there was no hint of the pretension or self-promotion that marred many accomplished ladies.
Without thinking, I stood next to Mr. Darcy.
“This is everything to Georgiana,” he said softly. “I very much wished you to see.” That left me flustered, and I did not look at him.
Miss Darcy’s head was cocked, considering. I noticed she did not consult the stack of music.
“Perhaps another air?” she said.
“No,” Mr. Darcy said. “Beethoven. Play the Appassionata. The last movement.”
Her smile faded, and her gaze flicked to me before returning to her brother. “Are you sure?”
“I am,” was all he said.
She rose and went to the side of the instrument, which was at least six feet long, and with astounding casualness heaved the heavy lid open, then propped it up with a stick. I had never seen such a thing.
She returned to her seat, her hands in her lap and her face lost in thought. In her red dress, closely fitted even through her sleeves, she looked like a waif beside the huge instrument.
Her hands rose, then pounded into the keys. Chords rang out, strident and dissonant, a desperate cry. The room reverberated as if a natural force was unleashed. Thunder and gale.
I knew the music.
I had heard it practiced on our simple instrument at Longbourn. I had heard it performed once, desperately, when Mary threw it in the face of our society at Netherfield before she was mocked by my own father. A performance Mr. Darcy had also heard.
But for all that the emotion and pain were the same, it had been nothing like this. This was knives of sound that cut, agony and ecstasy in turns, triumphant and terrible, brooding and breathtaking, accelerating endlessly as if the world had no limits on speed, or power, or freedom.
The music turned lyric, and Miss Darcy’s lithe form swayed, her eyes closed while her hands danced over the keys. The volume grew, and she threw herself at the instrument. Her scarlet and gold robe twisted like a roaring flame against the mahogany frame and the white and black of the keys.
The final chords soared. The room fell silent.
Miss Darcy sat, her hands on the keyboard, motionless except her shoulders heaving with each shaking breath.
When I could move, I walked to her. “That was extraordinary.” There were tears on my cheeks.
She reached out blindly, and I took her hand. Her fingers were slim but strong, her tendons like steel wire.
Facing the keys, she said, “I require a moment to… to come back.” After several more breaths, her posture relaxed. She tipped her head and peered under the instrument. “We have a little lover of music.”
The tykeworm was watching her from beneath the pianoforte. It was odd to see a draca interested in someone other than myself.
Miss Darcy straightened, then played a single note, the high E. The tone buzzed unpleasantly. “I have broken a string,” she observed.
“I am unsurprised,” said Mr. Darcy’s baritone behind me. I had forgotten he was present. For once, I did not jump out of my skin.
To my astonishment, Miss Darcy proceeded, with no assistance from her brother, to haul the heavy cover of the pianoforte to one side.
She rustled through a cabinet at the side of the room, returned with a complex tool, and began loudly cranking something inside the case.
The tyke rose with an irritated shake and padded over to lie by the fire, his nose tucked under his belly.
After several savage yanks, and annoyed noises from both the instrument and Miss Darcy, two halves of a wire string came free.
She examined them with a disgusted expression, then opened another drawer of the cabinet.
This drawer was wide and flat, and displayed fragments of strings and pieces of mechanisms, each with a small paper card.
She found a blank card, wrote a note, and added the broken string to the collection.
“Your sister is most remarkable,” I said to Mr. Darcy. She was now fishing through another drawer, searching for a replacement string.
“After the death of our parents, she played endlessly. Her emotion manifested in music. But it was not a grieving child’s obsession or retreat.
It was… an awakening. When your sister Mary played, it moved me the same way.
It was revelation. Honesty.” His words touched deep feelings for my own family, of trials and of love.
I drew a breath to dare a real reply, but before the words came, he raised his voice to address his sister.
“I wrote to Herr Beethoven, asking his advice on strings.”
Miss Darcy spun to him, her mouth open in shock. “You must not! He should not be disturbed for frivolous questions.”
“It is not frivolous to ask his advice for a virtuoso and advocate of his work. For so I described you. He has replied already, suggesting the German who supplies his wire.”
She crossed her arms, her eyebrows notched. “Did you pay him?” Mr. Darcy did not answer immediately, and she looked at me and added, “My brother believes he can purchase anything.”
With mortified horror, I realized that was the same accusation I had hurled at Mr. Darcy after his proposal.
He was very still. Finally, he said, “I know that is not true.”
“Oh, you are so serious,” his sister said, coming over, a coiled wire in one hand. “I will forgive you if you do not write to him again.”
“That will be difficult,” Mr. Darcy admitted. “I have been his patron for some years.”
“You do pay him!”
“I believe he appreciates the frivolous distraction of patronage.” Mr. Darcy was smiling now. It lit the hint of hazel in his eyes.
“Hold this.” She slapped the coil into his palm then turned to me. “Miss Bennet, will you walk with me? I require a tool from my room.”
“Of course,” I said. I had watched their exchange with amusement, but below that, my wildly swinging feelings had settled into a wistful flutter under my breastbone.
A rather heated flutter that threatened to warm the back of my neck.
I clasped my hands together and blew out a breath to cool myself.
Miss Darcy left the room. I hurried to follow, exchanging a silent nod with Mr. Darcy. But I had made my decision. I would follow my aunt’s advice and find an opportunity to talk.