Chapter 16
“Mr and Miss Darcy,” Hill announced the next afternoon.
Elizabeth sprang up from her chair with a wide smile.
Everyone else stood and curtseyed as well when Darcy introduced his sister.
Georgiana Darcy was not dark haired, as her nightmare had envisioned her, but had pale skin, grey blue eyes, and straw-coloured hair.
She was quite tall but still managed to look very young.
Even more than young, she seemed as shy as her brother had said.
She looked up into Elizabeth’s eyes, looking quite eager and happy to be introduced, but her immediate reaction to the eye contact was to duck her head and drop her eyes down to the floor.
Elizabeth crossed to Miss Darcy’s side and took her hand, giving it a little squeeze. “I am overjoyed to meet you at last,” she said. “I so enjoyed your letters.”
“I enjoyed your letters!” the girl said softly but emphatically. She shot another look up at Elizabeth, and gave her another smile.
“Well, shall we take a little tour of Longbourn, Miss Darcy?”
“Please call me Georgiana.”
“Yes, indeed I will, for we are to be sisters. And you must call me Elizabeth or Lizzy.”
Darcy was looking at Elizabeth with as much longing as affection, and she knew that he needed her attention almost as much as Georgiana; so she looped an arm through each of the Darcys’ arms and swept them away on a rather silly tour.
“We must break the ice of formality, you see,” Elizabeth said.
“So you have already seen our esteemed Longbourn hall—and, see, it has as many walls as are required. It may not be quite as large as the entrance hall of Pemberley—” She smiled and winked at Georgiana before turning to Darcy and asking him with a serious face, “Or, perhaps, it is?”
“Minx,” he said with a smile that crinkled his eyes. She laughed, and he said, “I have missed that sound.”
Georgiana giggled, which pleased Elizabeth no end. Darcy turned towards her and said, “And I have missed that sound, as well.”
“Now, that,” Elizabeth went on, nodding towards the door to the bookroom, “is the most sacred space in all of Longbourn. Not only does my beloved father spend most of his waking hours there, but it is the room in which the dearest treasures of the estate are kept. And when I speak of treasures, of course I mean…books.”
Georgiana giggled again. “You sound like my brother.”
“We share a love of reading. Now, onward: you have seen my parlour and have met Lydia and Kitty, Mary and Jane, plus my mother, but did you know that I had longed to have one more sister? I am thrilled to have that wish granted. Come this way, the tour waits for no person.”
At the next doorway, Elizabeth paused and said, “Now you shall see the grandest pianoforte that has ever graced Longbourn House…at least in my lifetime.” She opened the door with a flourish and led them into the small music room, where a very old Broadwood upright reigned.
It looked a bit worse for the wear, but when Georgiana stroked the keys, the sound was quite good. “You keep it in tune; it sounds lovely,” she said. She indicated the stacks of sheet music nearby. “May I take a peek?”
“Of course you may,” Elizabeth said. She sat down and softly played a few bars of a Haydn sonata while Georgiana pored over the musical choices.
“How is it that I have never heard you play?” Darcy asked her. “I did not even realise that you do so.”
She smiled up at him. “There is much you do not know about me, sir.”
“Should I be frightened?” he teased.
“If you are not frightened of my skill in forcing attackers into ravines, I certainly think that my many other accomplishments will not give you cause for fear.”
Georgiana’s head shot up. “You were attacked and had to force someone into a ravine?” she asked.
“Pardon my wayward tongue.” Elizabeth’s eyes widened, and she aimed an apologetic grimace at Darcy.
He took both of his sister’s hands and said in a low voice, “You remember that Elizabeth asked you to tell me that the man I saved her and Miss Bennet from had come to Meryton?”
“Mr Wickham,” she whispered. “And so you rode back to help her.”
“Yes, she had been warned, and she was able to warn others, but still he managed to trick her into leaving the house, and then he attempted to carry her off somewhere.”
“But you saved her?” Georgiana looked very pale. “Like you saved me?”
Elizabeth knew, with those words, that the near-loss of Georgiana that Darcy had confided so long ago was, as she had suspected, something to do with Mr Wickham.
“Actually, I did not manage to save Elizabeth, though I should have dearly loved to. She saved herself before I could reach her.”
Georgiana looked at Elizabeth, wide-eyed, forgetting to be shy as she asked, “You saved yourself?”
“Well, yes, I suppose I did. I knew the area better than that man, because it was Longbourn land, and I had walked every inch of it thousands of times. I was able to edge him backwards enough that he lost his footing and fell.”
“—Into a ravine! Oh, Elizabeth, you seem to be perfect! I am so glad my brother met you.”
“I am far from perfect, Georgiana. But I am so glad your brother met me, as well.” She smiled at both of the Darcys and said, “Should I resume the tour of this enormous manor?”
Everyone laughed, chuckled, or giggled, as they saw fit, and Elizabeth took them to the still room, the back parlour, the dining room, and the kitchen. Finally she knocked on the bookroom door and allowed Darcy to introduce his sister to her father.
It was time for tea, and Elizabeth endeavoured to draw Georgiana into conversations with Mary, Lydia, and Kitty.
She was proud that her mother exuded maternal care rather than mortifying gushing over Darcy’s wealth; that morning, she had reminded her mother that Georgiana was an orphan who had barely known her mother and that she was very shy.
The evidence of her timidity prompted Mrs Bennet to speak more softly and smile more gently, and the afternoon passed much more pleasantly than Elizabeth could have imagined.
Of course, the Bennets invited the Darcys to extend their visit to dinner, as well, but Darcy explained that they had not yet greeted their hosts, and they were expected there for dinner.
“We sent our luggage and Georgie’s companion on to Netherfield,” he said, “so Bingley knows we are here, just too busy to greet him.” He smiled and continued, “I suppose that I owe him, as he has taken it upon himself to throw a ball in our honour, Elizabeth.”
“Yes; I am certain that you owe him a great deal, as we all know how much you love a ball,” she teased.
Georgiana apparently thought that was hilarious, and her fit of giggles did not stop even as she was being handed into their carriage to leave.
Elizabeth poked her head into the carriage and said, “Goodbye for now, little sister. I will enjoy knowing you better; please come nice and early tomorrow, if you can.”
Both Darcys demonstrated their enthusiasm for the sentiment.
The next day was sunny, and Elizabeth was ecstatic to take a break from all wedding concerns in order to show Georgiana sights such as Oakham Mount and the folly some long-ago Netherfield owner had erected near the property’s stream and pond.
Of course, Darcy walked alongside the ladies, and he seemed to enjoy listening more than speaking.
It was not long before Georgiana stopped addressing Elizabeth’s shoes, and by day’s end she had become a chatterbox.
“And then Miss Bingley said the weirdest thing,” she was saying. Elizabeth was listening, but with the distraction of Darcy holding her hand, it was difficult to be very engaged with whatever Miss Bingley said.
But her interest spiked when Georgiana mimicked Miss Bingley’s snobbish voice perfectly, saying, “‘My dear Georgiana, you know how much I adored visiting Pemberley, do you not? I was just wondering, Pemberley has all those tenant farms, and a beautiful lake and forest, but it does not have any mines, does it?’”
Both Darcy and Elizabeth laughed at the apt imitation. “And what did you tell Miss Bingley?” Elizabeth asked.
“Well, of course, I had to tell her that Pemberley has two mines: the small coal mine for the purpose of estate use, and the lead mine for the purpose of trade.”
“And did Miss Bingley compliment you on your knowledge of Pemberley’s varied concerns?”
“That was the weird thing—she looked quite vexed. And then she asked, ‘But there is no sawmill, correct?’ And I had to tell her that there was a sawmill, too. She seemed as amazed as she was angry. But I have no idea why. Why are mines and sawmills so terrible?”
Darcy allowed Elizabeth to laugh and shrug before he finally entered the conversation.
“The Bingleys are scorned by many members of the ton as being new money, only now arising from the stench of trade, and so Miss Bingley longs to ensure that there is no longer any connection between her family and commercial endeavours.
However, times are changing rapidly, and long-standing, well-respected families like ours should not hold onto the idea that only wealth through land ownership matters, because that definition is going by the wayside.
“Not only does Pemberley thrive because of the sale of wool and meat and barley and wheat and all the other foods we raise and grow, but also it thrives thanks to the sale of minerals and wood and other commodities. And the same can be said for the other Darcy properties, as well. And certainly it can be said for the investments I have been making, and my father before me. The Darcy family is itself mired in trade, and the same is true of most families that are maintaining or increasing wealth. There is no stench and should be no stench—that perhaps was always nonsense, and nowadays it is outdated nonsense.”
“Hear, hear,” Elizabeth said.
But the usually quiet Darcy was not done.
He continued, “Our tenants do well in part because I have this more modern mindset, and Lambton and Kympton do well for the same reason, and indeed, this liberal mindset that a few of us landowners in Derbyshire share means that our entire county is doing much better than other nearby counties. However, we have a big problem because the wages are so low in factories. We need to somehow address this problem; the Arkwright and Strutt families are very rich but do not provide safe and pleasant conditions for their workers—nor adequate wages. I will not invest in their mills; instead, I choose to invest in mills with better conditions and pay for workers—namely, Robert Owen’s mills in Scotland. ”
Elizabeth stopped walking and gave Darcy a hug. “I cherish your goodness, sir. I am so proud to be connected with you!”
“Oh!” Darcy blushed. “I fear I have been making a speech, or perhaps a sermon. Apologies to you both.”
“Do not apologise to me, brother. I agree with Elizabeth—you are so good, and I have so much to learn from you.”
“I agree with me, too,” said Elizabeth. “No apologies are needed in the current circumstance. If you like, I could store up this apology to use sometime when you are entirely unreasonable and mistaken.”
“Please do. I will likely need an entire reservoir of apologies, so we may as well begin collecting them now.”
“The first time I ever met you, you were apologising silently, just using your eyes, so I do not think a reservoir of spare apologies will be needed.”
“Perhaps just a shallow basin will do?” he asked.
“Oh, you!”
The two became lost in each other’s eyes, and Georgiana giggled as she grabbed their joined hands and began to tow them up a grassy hill, saying, “Oh, you two.”
It was a perfect day for laughter and walking and sunshine.
Which augured well for the next day, the day of the highly anticipated ball at Netherfield Park.