Chapter Ninety-One
Do you know, we have not had a Rosings Park ball for at least seven years,” Lady Catherine informed her daughter over breakfast one morning.
“Oh! At least that long!” Anne agreed, setting her fork down at once. “Are you considering hosting one, Mother?”
“I am thinking on it, yes,” her mother replied.
“That would be wonderful!” Anne clapped her hands, heedless of the piece of buttered toast in her right hand.
Mrs. Jenkinson asked, quietly, “Who would you invite, Lady Catherine?”
“Oh, everyone! Well, everyone of consequence, in any case. Let me think. Lord and Lady Bellingham, of course, with their two daughters and two sons. Lord and Lady Castleton –“
Her daughter interrupted her. “Lady Castleton died last winter; do you not recall it? We attended the funeral.”
“Quite right! I had forgotten. In any case, I will make up a list, Anne, and you shall review it for me.”
Her ladyship made up her list that very afternoon, and by the next morning, Anne had made some corrections, scratched one name out and added three others. All in all, there would be some twenty couples and a variety of offspring; a very respectable number for a country ball.
“I suppose there is no point in inviting Darcy,” Lady Catherine said, rather mournfully.
“No, I think not,” Anne said. “Particularly as we did not attend his wedding.”
“I was not well, Anne, you know I was not.”
“If you insist, Mother.”
“I do.”
Anne still felt rather peevish at not having been allowed to attend her cousin’s wedding, particularly as she would have been able to see Georgiana again.
Georgiana had turned out to be not much of a correspondent, particularly after her argument, or whatever it had been, with her George Wickham.
But a ball, right here at Rosings, well, that would almost make up for her having missed the wedding.