Chapter Twenty-Two
The ball consumed every moment of Elizabeth’s time, as the day approached.
She spent the morning of the first day in the ballroom with Lady Matlock, who had produced a list of requirements so long it needed both sides of the paper.
Lady Matlock read aloud while Elizabeth took notes, the notes multiplying: which families must be greeted first (the Ashbournes, because Lady Ashbourne was the county’s oldest dragon and would take lasting offence if she were not); which local worthies required particular attention (Sir Edward Morris, deaf in one ear, who must be spoken to from the left; his wife, not deaf but pretending to be whenever the conversation bored her); where the carriages should queue so that guests arrived in the correct order of precedence; why the musicians must be fed before the dancing began, because musicians who thought about supper played badly.
Mrs Reynolds had the house in hand. The ballroom was opened and aired, the chandeliers taken down and cleaned crystal by crystal by a team of maids who had been at it since dawn.
The floors were polished until they shone.
The kitchens operated at full capacity. Mrs Reynolds moved between the cook, the housekeeper’s pantry, the wine cellar, checking stocks, issuing instructions, maintaining the tireless calm of a woman who had overseen Pemberley’s entertainments for thirty years.
She was not about to let standards slip for the new mistress’s first ball.
Jane appeared at Elizabeth’s elbow whenever a decision was needed.
Should the supper be served at half past ten or eleven?
Eleven, Jane thought, because the receiving line would take a long time and the first set could not start until it had concluded, and they must have time for enough dances before supper.
Should the card room be opened as well as the yellow drawing room for those who did not dance?
Yes, because Mr Hurst would complain bitterly if it was not, and he was not the only gentleman who preferred cards to cotillions.
Jane deflected the questions that could wait, escalated the ones that could not, and within a day the household had accepted her as Elizabeth’s deputy without anyone formally naming her so.
Elizabeth, watching Jane direct a footman where to place the card tables in the yellow drawing room, thought: she was wasted at Longbourn. We were all wasted at Longbourn.
Nana, meanwhile, was everywhere. Elizabeth could not enter a room without finding her already in it, arms folded, inspecting.
She had declared the flowers wrong before the vases were half filled, pronounced the candle arrangements inadequate before they were lit, and sent Elizabeth back to Mrs Reynolds three times about the musicians’ gallery, which she insisted needed dusting despite the fact that Elizabeth had watched two maids dust it with painstaking care that morning.
The real difficulty was the curtains. Nana wanted the ballroom curtains drawn back to show the grounds by moonlight, which was a fine idea, but she wanted them drawn back to a precise degree that Elizabeth could not communicate to the footmen without revealing her source.
Elizabeth spent twenty minutes adjusting the left curtain by inches while Nana stood behind her saying “More. More. No, that is too much. Back a little. There.”
“She is enjoying herself,” George observed, drifting through the ballroom on one of his restless circuits of the house.
He paused to watch Nana direct Elizabeth’s curtain adjustments, his mouth twitching, which was as close to a smile as George Darcy ever came.
“She has not been this animated since the last ball, which was before Anne died. This is her natural element. Pemberley’s reputation as host of the county’s premier events was entirely built during her lifetime. ”
Elizabeth, who was balancing on a footstool adjusting the curtain tie while Lady Matlock waited patiently behind her with the seating plan, could not respond. She gave George a look that she hoped conveyed both acknowledgment and a strong desire for him to go away. He took the hint and drifted on.
Caroline Bingley, having been outmanoeuvred by Jane repeatedly, adjusted her strategy.
She could not dominate the older women: Lady Matlock outranked her, Lady Catherine ignored her, Jane blocked her at every turn, and Elizabeth was mistress of the house.
But the younger women, Caroline clearly reasoned, were another matter.
Kitty was a country nobody. Georgiana was shy.
Anne was sickly and sheltered and could not possibly have anything interesting to say.
She found the three of them in the music room after breakfast on the second day, where Georgiana was practising, Anne was reading, and Kitty was writing a letter. Caroline claimed the settee without hesitation, spreading her skirts as though the room had been arranged for her comfort.
“I do hope you are all looking forward to the ball,” Caroline said. “It will be your first real introduction to society, for some of you. Georgiana, of course, has been to London, but Miss Bennet, Miss de Bourgh, you must be quite overwhelmed at the prospect.”
“I am not overwhelmed,” Kitty said, without looking up from her letter. “I have been to assemblies. And indeed, the ball your brother hosted at Netherfield, a year past.”
“Assemblies in Hertfordshire,” Caroline said, with a smile that made it clear what she thought of assemblies in Hertfordshire, and conveniently ignoring the latter part of Kitty’s remarks.
“This will be rather different. Three hundred guests, the principal families of Derbyshire. One must know who is who, of course. Lady Ashbourne will certainly come; she is the grande dame of the county set, terribly exacting, and one must be very careful not to offend her. And Lord and Lady Vernon, naturally, from Chatterton. And I understand Sir Peregrine Howe and his family are in the neighbourhood; I met them in London last Season, at Lady Jersey’s.
Delightful people. The second son is said to be looking for a wife. ”
She delivered this catalogue with evident authority and looked around for the expected admiration.
Anne turned a page of her book. “Lady Ashbourne is my great-aunt, on my father’s side,” she said mildly.
“She and my mother have corresponded weekly for many years. I believe she is bringing her granddaughter Clara, who is about Georgiana’s age; a very sweet girl who plays the harp.
I think you and she might make a duet, Georgiana, which would be charming.
The Vernons I have known since I was a child; they came to Rosings every autumn for the shooting until Papa died.
As for Sir Peregrine, his father and mine were at school together.
The second son, Frederick, has a stammer and is very shy, and he is not looking for a wife; he is looking for a living, which my cousin Fitzwilliam has promised to provide when the next one falls vacant. ”
Caroline stared at her. Her smile set like plaster.
“I see,” she said.
“Mama keeps a very thorough correspondence,” Anne added, returning to her book. “If there is anyone you wish to know about, I am sure I can help.”
Kitty and Georgiana exchanged a look of pure, undisguised delight. Georgiana bit her lip. Kitty suddenly needed to attend with great concentration to her letter.
Caroline excused herself shortly after, and Anne watched her go with an expression that was not unkind but was certainly not sorry.
“Was that too much?” Anne asked Georgiana, when Caroline was safely out of earshot.
“It was perfect,” Georgiana said. “Absolutely perfect.”
“My mother would have been much worse,” Anne said thoughtfully.
“She would have told Miss Bingley exactly where she ranked in the social order, precisely why she would never rise above it. She would have done it in front of everyone. She would have enjoyed it. I merely stated facts. I did not even enjoy it.” She paused. “Well. Perhaps a little.”
“You are a dragon’s daughter,” Kitty said admiringly.
Anne considered this. “I suppose I am. Though I should like to think a rather more polite one.”
Caroline retreated to the yellow drawing room, where Louisa Hurst was established on the sofa with a novel she was not reading and a cup of tea she had let go cold.
Elizabeth was not present for what followed. But Nana was. Bored with Elizabeth’s insufficient attention to her opinions on the ball preparations, she had drifted off in search of better entertainment. She found it in the music room.
Caroline Bingley was, if nothing else, quite useful for keeping Nana amused.
Elizabeth was in her parlour going through the guest list one more time, marking the names she still did not recognise so that she could ask Mrs Reynolds about them before tomorrow, when Nana came through the bookcase looking as though Christmas had come early.
“You will not believe what I have just witnessed,” Nana said.
Elizabeth set down her pen. Nana in this mood was not to be denied, and at least here there were no witnesses.
Nana settled in her chair, the smile on her face broader than Elizabeth had ever seen it, and related, at length, Anne’s effortless set-down of Miss Bingley.
“And then,” Nana said, with something that might almost have been a giggle, “Miss Bingley went to her sister in the yellow drawing room and complained, at length, about Miss de Bourgh. She called her sickly. She called her presumptuous. She said it was ridiculous that a girl who had never had a Season should pretend to know everyone worth knowing, and that Anne was putting on airs that her constitution could not support.”
Nana looked far more gleeful than a mere witness had any right to be, much though Elizabeth wished she could have been there in person to see Caroline’s face after Anne’s puncturing of her presumptions.
“In the yellow drawing room,” Elizabeth said thoughtfully. “Which is adjacent to...”