Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A CAGED BIRD SINGS
Georgiana
Three days without Elizabeth, and Georgiana played the country jig every morning.
She played it because Fitzwilliam had not forbidden it, and because Caroline’s dismay showed her that the world was still functioning as it ought.
She played it because the jig was Elizabeth’s, and Elizabeth’s things were the only warm things left at Netherfield now that November had arrived and taken the color out of the garden and the wit out of the breakfast room.
This morning would be duller than ever. Debate raged between leaving Netherfield Park or staying for the Yuletide.
Miss Bingley and the Hursts wished to return to London, but Mr. Bingley, who’d been calling on Longbourn daily, refused.
Fitzwilliam seemed to be a ghost these days, not venturing opinions but backing up Mr. Bingley when asked.
No one asked her. They all treated her like she was still in the schoolroom.
Seventeen and invisible. And so, she played the jaunty country air and the jigs Elizabeth had taught her.
She no longer cared for Miss Bingley’s improvement programmes and the nebulous accomplishments that marked a desirable young gentlewoman approved by the ton.
What did any of it matter in the absence of laughter, fun, and warmth?
She was midway through the jig’s second repetition when Caroline appeared at the music room door and leaned against the pianoforte.
“Lady Lucas and Mrs. Long are taking tea with us this afternoon, dear Georgiana. A small gathering, nothing formal, simply the ladies discussing the assembly. Mrs. Hurst will prepare the drawing room. We shall want your company, naturally.”
Naturally. Caroline did not give her a choice, did she? Simply expected compliance. Elizabeth always presented options and trusted Georgiana’s judgment, and her suggestions were fun.
“Of course,” Georgiana replied when she realized Caroline expected an answer.
“You will wish to dress in that lavender muslin,” Caroline said. “It would show off your complexion wonderfully. Remember, Lady Lucas is the wife of a knight and mother of John Lucas, their eldest son.”
Georgiana raised her eyebrow and stared at Miss Bingley as if she’d grown two heads.
The Lucases had always been portrayed as beneath the Bingleys.
Sir William Lucas’s knighthood was not hereditary, and the family had parlayed that title into minor celebrity, but their roots were in trade, and their holdings were modest.
Without Elizabeth’s wit to parry Caroline’s edicts, Georgiana requested her lady’s maid to dress her in the grey muslin.
Lady Lucas arrived at half three with Mrs Long. Caroline was the effusive hostess, which was quite unlike her usual pinched demeanor. She complimented Mrs. Long on her turban and Lady Lucas on her fine children: Charlotte’s composure, John’s gallantry, and Maria’s budding beauty.
Georgiana was hard-pressed to keep her eyes from rolling. She had been told that particular expression conveyed disrespect and was forbidden in front of Aunt Catherine and Cousin Anne.
The tea was Darjeeling, which Georgiana disliked and Caroline knew she disliked, served in the Chinese porcelain that Caroline had selected because it matched the curtains and not because anyone in the room preferred drinking from cups so thin you could see the color of the tea through the wall of the vessel.
“What exquisite china, Miss Bingley.” Lady Lucas held the cup up to the light. “One rarely sees such delicacy outside of London.”
“A trifle from the Orient,” Caroline said, with the dismissive warmth of a woman who wanted the provenance noted and the cost imagined. “Louisa and I cannot abide heavy crockery. It deadens the palate.”
Mrs. Long nodded as though she had been suffering from deadened palates her entire life and had only now been given the word for it.
Georgiana sipped and tasted nothing but leaves steeped too long, and thought of the earthenware mugs at Longbourn, where the tea was strong and sweet, and Mrs. Bennet poured it without consulting anyone’s palate because the point of tea at Longbourn was warmth, not theatre.
She set the cup down and folded her hands in her lap. Somehow, that gesture drew the notice of Lady Lucas.
“Such a triumph at the assembly,” Lady Lucas declared, beaming at Georgiana across her teacup. “My husband could not stop talking about it. Miss Darcy, you were the picture of elegance. Your composure was beyond your years.”
“You are very kind, Lady Lucas.”
“Simply truthful. And leading the first set with Mr. Bingley, so gracious of him, and so wise of your brother to arrange it. A young lady’s first appearance at a public assembly is a great undertaking. One needs a reliable partner.”
“Mr. Bingley was everything that is amiable,” Georgiana said, because it was the safe thing to say, vague and conveying no sensibility.
“Lady Lucas, your son, Mr. John Lucas, was a very attentive partner to Miss Darcy,” Caroline mentioned smoothly. “He danced with her twice, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Once,” Georgiana corrected.
“Was it only once? I was certain it was twice. He is a handsome young man, Lady Lucas. Tall, well-mannered. How old is he now?”
Lady Lucas brightened with the unmistakable glow of a mother whose son had been singled out for attention by a woman connected to ten thousand a year.
“One-and-twenty in March. He has just returned from his studies. He reads law, you know, though Sir William hopes he will take up the estate management in time.”
“One-and-twenty. A fine age. And well-read, you say.” Caroline turned to Georgiana with the solicitous expression she used when she wished to appear genuine. “Did you enjoy your dance with Mr. Lucas? He seemed a very pleasant young man.”
“He was civil.”
“Civil! High praise from Miss Darcy.” Caroline laughed, and Mrs. Hurst, who had entered with a plate of seed cake, laughed with her. Mrs. Long smiled uncertainly, unsure whether the joke included her. Lady Lucas looked at Georgiana with the assessing eyes of a mother recalculating prospects.
And Georgiana’s stomach tightened. She recognized this.
Not the specific conversation—she had never been recommended to John Lucas before—but the shape of it.
The asking after a young man’s age. The listing of his qualities, and the positioning of Georgiana beside those qualities as though she were a painting being hung on the wall opposite a coordinating landscape.
Elizabeth would have deflected with a quip about the relative merits of civility versus charm and turned the conversation toward something that did not make Georgiana feel like goods displayed on a counter.
But Elizabeth was at Longbourn, and Bingley had said she was well, another vague and inconsequential word.
“I am sure Mr. Lucas would be flattered to know he made an impression,” Caroline continued, turning back to Lady Lucas. “Georgiana is so particular about her partners. She will not dance with just anyone, will you, my dear?”
“I danced with seven gentlemen,” Georgiana said pleasantly. “I do not recall being particular about any of them.”
A silence rippled. Mrs. Long’s teacup halted halfway to her lips, and Lady Lucas’s brightness dimmed by half a shade. Caroline’s smile held, but her eyes sharpened.
“Seven! Well, that is the enthusiasm of youth.” Caroline recovered with a light touch on Georgiana’s arm. “We must forgive her, Lady Lucas. She is so new to society that she has not yet learned to discriminate.”
Mrs. Hurst distributed cake. The conversation shifted, as Caroline redirected it, toward the assembly in general and the neighborhood’s delights and the weather, which was growing heavy with the promise of November rain.
“Charles was in such fine form at the assembly,” Mrs. Hurst said, cutting her cake into precise quarters. “Though I am afraid he did tread upon your foot during the second figure, Georgiana. He has always been hopeless with the chassé.”
“He did not tread on my foot.”
“Oh, I was certain he did. I saw you wince.”
“I winced because the candles were dripping wax near the edge of the dance floor, and I stepped aside.”
Georgiana did not know where the words came from. They arrived from a place that sounded like Elizabeth’s voice saying you are allowed to take up space, and the taking-up felt dangerous and necessary.
Lady Lucas and Mrs. Long laughed, although Georgiana wasn’t sure if they were laughing at her or her words about the dripping wax. She bit into a seed cake, hoping for a change in the conversation.
But Mrs. Hurst was determined to criticize poor Mr. Bingley. “Dear Charles is many things, but a dancer is not among his talents. I told him the quadrille was ambitious, but Charles will insist on enthusiasm over ability. It is his most endearing and most exhausting quality.”
“Dear Georgie, was he tiring?” Caroline sent me a look of false sympathy. “I do worry about your hems being trodden. Such exquisite embroidery ruined.”
“He did not step on my hems,” I defended, because it was cruel to make a sport out of Bingley when he was not present to speak for himself. “Mr. Bingley was a very good partner. I did not notice any deficiency.”
“How loyal!” Caroline beamed. “Charles will be so pleased. He was terribly nervous about partnering with a Darcy, you know. He told me afterward that he had never been so anxious in his life, and that dancing with Miss Darcy was like dancing with—what was the word he used, Louisa?”
“Royalty,” Mrs. Hurst supplied.
“Royalty. He has always admired you enormously, Georgiana. Ever since Ramsgate.”