Chapter 4 Chathford House
CHATHFORD HOUSE
EMMA
Blackness fell away to reveal golden wood wainscoting and white plaster. I was lying on my back, suspended in space. My knees, bent and draped in yellow silk, hung level with my eyes.
I floated up a hallway—a stairway. Slanted rectangles of winter light passed on the wall.
The ceiling was a fresco, a spiral of serpentine seraphim that were winged and fiery.
They spun as I turned on a landing, seeming to ascend to Heaven.
The hem of my dress tugged on a banister, then pulled free. I rose again in steady steps.
When my father died, I collapsed for a day and a night. When I woke, there had been this same calm. Freedom from the false images that overran my mind. Freedom from the itch of compulsion.
With some surprise, I realized I was floating because I was in a man’s arms. His ebony chin was inches from my nose, close shaven and framed by a starched white neckcloth. Mr. Knightley, the Black gentleman from the salon.
Politely, I said, “Were we introduced?”
His eyes went wide. He took two driving steps—we fairly leaped up the stairs—then I was dropped on my feet. Rather suddenly and solidly.
The landing filled as Harriet, Mary Bennet, and Georgiana Darcy rushed up. Harriet took a two-handed grip on my upper arm while the other ladies peered with concern.
The gentleman had backed to the far banister. He raised his hands, fingers spread in tense apology.
“I beg your pardon, madam,” he said in a roughened tenor. “Miss Smith and Miss Bennet insisted we bring you inside. I asked several times, but you did not answer.”
“Have I given you a fright? I fear the excitement made me faint.” I produced a delicate laugh while I looked around. How long was I unaware? “May I ask where we are?”
“This is Chathford, our London house,” Georgiana said. “It was closed six years ago. It is as new to me as to you, almost. I have… forgotten it.” Her voice faltered at the end.
“Are you better?” Harriet asked me.
“I feel perfectly well,” I said. Her grip on my arm eased a fraction.
The gentleman maintained his exaggerated, unthreatening pose. His fingers were very long and elegant.
Harriet whispered in my ear, “Some ladies are offended if a man of color touches them.”
Oh. “I am very thankful, sir,” I told him. “Is it Mr. Knightley?”
“It is. At your service, madam.” He bowed, one arm sketching a subtle flourish. Like an actor might bow, if an actor had good taste.
“I am Miss Emma Woodhouse,” I said and offered my hand. When he did not move, I added, “Mr. Knightley, you have already carried me”—I looked over the banister—“two flights of stairs! I think we may shake hands.”
His bare, dark fingers lifted mine in their white satin. After sensing the strange binding of the Darcys, I half expected something peculiar would occur. But it was merely a handshake. A firm one.
“That is better,” I said. “I feel we have known each other our entire lives.”
“You honor me.” He smiled at last, an unreserved smile that crinkled his eyes.
“Oh, it is just a feeling. But I am decided about such things.” The frightening events of the day skittered through my memory. But buttons did not wrench my gaze. No miasma lurked in the corners. I floated on relief. “This is a handsome stairway. Were we going somewhere interesting?”
Georgiana answered. “Mrs. Reynolds is showing us to the afternoon sitting room.” She nodded to an older woman in black watching from the top of the stairs. The housekeeper.
After further are-you-well’s and yes-I-truly-am’s, we began a winding tour. The house was being reopened, overseen by the severely clad but friendly Mrs. Reynolds. In an aside, she told me Georgiana had not entered the house since she was a girl of eleven “when her dear father and mother passed.”
We saw several rooms partially refurbished, then climbed a stair to an arched entry carved like weeping willow branches.
Inside, the furniture and paintings were draped in linen.
The curved outer wall held a tremendous window—twenty panes side-by-side.
Three or four stories below, the sweep of the Thames caught remnants of chilly silver light, shining wide and cold.
Georgiana had stopped on the room’s threshold.
“I remember this,” she said in a little voice.
“I called it ‘the river window.’ ” She thrust out her arm to point, and her childish pose and slender frame could have been that younger girl.
Then she ran to a delicate porcelain ornament on a mantle.
“This was Mamma’s favorite.” She burst into tears.
Mary was with her in two swift steps, embracing her while Georgiana buried her head and sobbed. Mrs. Reynolds circled them, distraught and proffering handkerchiefs.
Harriet and I exchanged a sympathetic look and slipped into the next room. A drawing room, I thought. It was hard to judge with the furniture hidden.
Mr. Knightley joined us. “I think Miss Bennet is her best comfort now.”
“I am sure you are right,” I said. “They seem very close.”
“Mary has been good for Georgiana.” He strolled to a pianoforte hidden under yellowing linen. His fingertip flicked a fold of cloth. A puff of dust rose.
“What is your connection to the salon?” I asked.
“On occasion, I have the honor of performing with Miss Darcy.”
“Music, you mean?” He nodded. “I have never met a gentleman who performs. Do you sing?”
“I am a violinist.”
Harriet looked over at that. “We have a man who plays violin in Highbury. He plays reels at the assemblies! Oh, I love to dance a reel. Can you play reels?”
“I can,” Mr. Knightley answered with a smile that was friendly but a shade too considerate.
“I believe Mr. Knightley performs serious music,” I said.
He appraised me. He had a thoughtful way of moving, as if the choice of where to place one’s head or hand was significant. “What would serious music be?”
I gave a careless smile. “I always fail to apply myself to one subject for long. So, I am not a sufficiently serious musician to answer.”
He laughed with a flash of strong teeth.
He was really quite handsome. And a gentleman.
I looked between him and Harriet, considering.
But a performing musician did not seem a very secure sort of gentleman.
I had already hurt poor Harriet when I attempted to make a match between her and Mr. Elton, our vicar in Highbury.
Who I now knew was a profoundly cruel man.
I would not meddle again. Harriet must choose her own way.
With a brilliant smile, Harriet stepped close to Mr. Knightley. “You were so brave today. Fighting that horrible man!”
It seemed Harriet could meddle on her own behalf. Irritated, I walked to the window, arms crossed and satin fingertips dug into yellow silk.
Across the room, Mr. Knightley replied, “I have encountered my share of horrible men. Fortunately, the others did not hold pistols.” He lifted a corner of the linen, wafting more dust and exposing an octave of keyboard. “I may be able to cheer Miss Darcy after all.”
He played a chord. The notes grated on strings horrendously out of tune. He tapped out a few discordant notes—the melody of a reel—and nodded to Harriet, who clapped her hands with a laugh.
Georgiana, her eyes reddened and cheeks wet, rushed into the room. “What have they done to the pianoforte?” Mr. Knightley bowed gravely and stepped aside, but he was smiling as she pulled the linen cover off.
That launched a billowing cloud of dust, and Harriet began coughing. An image of pestilence stirred in the back of my skull. I fixed my eyes on the cold light of the Thames and jammed my crossed wrists against each other, drawing my gloves snug. The image faded.
Georgiana struck a sour note and uttered a dismayed cry. She played a chromatic scale, every note from bottom to top, her hand roaring up the keys at jaw-dropping speed. Mrs. Reynolds arrived as Georgiana finished and exclaimed, “This instrument has not been tuned once in all these years!”
The abandonment of a pianoforte was, apparently, a great sin.
Miss Darcy began dictating atonement. A particular sort of hammer felt was required, and a German provider of wire strings.
Bowls of water must be placed to prevent the freshly warmed air from drying the soundboard.
Mrs. Reynolds nodded as the instructions mounted.
Mary Bennet entered the room and joined me by the window. We watched together.
“For all the terror of this afternoon,” I said, “I regret the salon performances were canceled. I should have liked to hear Georgiana play.”
“She lives in her art,” Mary said. “There is emotion in every note that she plays. And in every memory she recalls.” Mary’s eyebrows knitted as if that were foolish, but her lips parted in wondering admiration.
“I would find that exhausting,” I said.
Mary gave a short laugh. “The music was not the only event canceled. We had planned to protest the aristocracy’s restrictions on binding.
Your letter was on this subject.” She closed her eyes and quoted: “My dear friend Harriet, through no fault but uncertain parentage, is assumed unable to bind—condemned as inferior by a cruel gentleman.”
“That is why I wished to attend,” I said, disconcerted that she could recite words I had written months ago. I had been very open with my thoughts. “In my enthusiasm to help Harriet, I may have shared her situation too freely.”
“Many women come to us for help. Their wellbeing is at risk. We hold secrets close.” There was a pause. “You did not say that Harriet is Black.”
That was an unexpected comment from so liberal a lady. “Surely that is irrelevant.”
“In a moral world, it is irrelevant. In this world, her position is more precarious.”
“Oh.” I laughed. “I have solved that.”
Mary’s spectacles glinted as she turned, golden circles around her light brown eyes. “How?”
“I have elevated her in society. We are the best of friends.”
“That is a solution?”