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Susannah smiled, a little wryly and glanced at Lydia’s sleeping figure.
“I know I am of use to Cassandra, especially now she has Vicky to care for, but at the same time I am sure she and Richard will be delighted to have the house to themselves for a while. And there is still a week left of your sister’s visit.
I must admit I shall be grateful not to be at home during that time.
We do not have a comfortable relationship; I think it comes from when I innocently asked her how she wished to be addressed as a grandmother! ”
Elizabeth tried not to smile but failed. “The thought of Lydia being a grandmother fills me both with amusement and also horror at how old I must be if my little sister has now reached that stage in life, although to be fair, she did have Cassandra when she was very young.”
“Yes, I fear she did not take the news of Victoria’s arrival well. But enough of this. The trip to Dorset—I shall be delighted to accompany Jane. We have always been good friends. Am I right in thinking this will not be a long visit to see Colonel Fitzwilliam?”
“A few weeks, no more. Hopefully, when she returns, Jane will have forgotten her disappointments and this disagreement with her sister, and life can return to its even keel again.”
Susannah considered that it would be a good thing if Jane returned determined to be a person in her own right and not just “Anne’s twin” but thought it unwise to say those words to her hostess. She changed the subject. “The house seems very quiet with Henry and Fitzwilliam missing.”
Elizabeth’s usually brilliant dark eyes became shadowed.
“It has been a very odd few months. The whole household was put in turmoil by my niece Miriam’s arrival from Africa and even more so by her sudden departure to marry the sea captain!
We still await letters from her and Mary telling of the wedding which was supposed to have taken place in Cape Town.
Then Fitz left to spend August with a school friend and as you know, Mr Darcy has taken Henry to Portsmouth where he is to join a ship of the line as a midshipman. ”
“I was sad not to meet Miriam when she was here, but I could not leave Cassandra when she was so near her time.”
“Oh, I quite understand. I feel as if some exotic bird has flown through the halls of Pemberley, disturbing everything. I would never have believed that Mary, so quiet, so solemn, could have such a daughter. But then our children never turn out as we expect them to.
“And I have had to say goodbye to my dear Henry—to me he seems very young to start such a hard and dangerous life, but I am assured that it is the right thing to do, for him to have his own career in the navy, away from Pemberley which of course, Fitz will one day inherit. As you may imagine, Henry cannot wait to hear cannon fire and be involved in some dreadful battle. The fact that I lie awake at night, picturing all sorts of injuries and worse does not seem to be important to anyone!”
She bit back the words, “Especially Mr Darcy,” because that would have been disloyal to her husband, whom she loved dearly. But on this subject they did not agree and although they had not exactly quarrelled about Henry’s naval career, she felt that her opinion did not matter.
At least they agreed on how undesirable Digby Frobisher was as a husband for either of the twins. Mr Darcy—who would have been quite happy to have kept all his daughters at home, unmarried, for the rest of their lives—had been unusually vocal about Digby’s behaviour.
“So you will accompany Jane? I will arrange for the carriage to stop at Wyvern Lodge tomorrow morning, if that is convenient for you.”
“Certainly. I have only met Colonel Fitzwilliam the once, that was at Cassandra’s wedding, but he seemed an extremely agreeable gentleman.
He did me the honour of asking me to dance and we sat next to each other at breakfast. I was very impressed by his knowledge of the world and his genteel manners.
It will be a pleasure to make his acquaintance again. ”
“I fear I cannot tell you more of the disagreement between Jane and Anne because that would mean breaking a confidence. But, of course, if Jane tells you herself, then please feel free to give her any advice you can. Mine, I am afraid, is of little use. Apparently ‘I do not understand about love!’”
She stood up and adjusted her parasol. “Now, I will awaken my lazy sister and announce that tea is ready in the drawing room. You must have some refreshment before you leave. The girls’ elderly nurse, Nanny Chilcot, whom, as you know, has rooms in the east wing now she has retired, has, I believe, been called into action to care for Victoria so we can all eat in peace.
Indeed, I will be surprised if we manage to extract the infant from her arms when your carriage is called! ”
She turned to her duties as mistress of Pemberley and tried to push her worries about Jane to the back of her mind.
So many years had passed since the twins had been born and Elizabeth was certain that most people would have long forgotten that she had almost lost the younger twin.
Anne was a healthy infant but Jane had been tiny, fragile and her parents were told by the doctors that she might not survive.
For weeks they had hardly strayed from the nursery, desperate for the child to thrive.
Thankfully, as the months passed, Jane had grown stronger, although she never had her sister’s robust constitution; always the first to be ill, to catch a cold, to tire when walking or riding.
Elizabeth knew she had treated her differently from the other children; shielding her from anything unpleasant, not allowing her to ever take unnecessary risks, always concerned that she was not over-tiring herself.
Bennetta should, of course, have taken her place as the child most in need of care, but then Bennetta, whose arrival in the world had almost ended her mother’s place in it, had never and would never rouse the same tender emotions in Elizabeth.
She loved her wild child dearly, but apart from two years previously when she had fallen from her horse and lost her memory for several days after hitting her head, she had never had a day’s worry about Bennetta’s health.
Now she was beginning to realise that this constant protection of Jane had, perhaps, been inadvisable.
Throughout her nearly twenty years, Jane had never had to make her own decisions or been allowed to suffer any discomfort.
She had never learnt to deal with any hardship.
Was that why this silly affair with Digby Frobisher had affected her so badly?
Elizabeth sighed, woke her sleeping sister and gathered her guests together for tea. Daughters were a great trial and she wondered if her mother had lain awake worrying about her five girls. Then she smiled and thought, ‘Mama worried about getting us married. Our characters were our own affair.’
Upstairs in the cool of the library, the girl who was causing her mother so much concern was gazing out of a window at the splendour of the great parkland below her. This room had a northerly aspect and so was cool even on the hottest of summer days.
Nobody had needed to sculpt or force the surroundings of Pemberley into beauty, no Capability Brown had been hired in the past to provide a magnificent landscape—nature had managed that all on her own.
Admittedly, in one or two places, a tree had been felled to produce a distant view of woods and high hills but great oaks and Spanish chestnuts cast their shade on the lawns.
The flower gardens on the southerly side had been extended by the Darcys in the years since their marriage, and fell away in tiers of white, red, pink and yellow, roses and lilies. Little paths wound through the flowers and in places small fountains burbled bright cascades of water into pools.
Jane, who was usually only too happy to sit and read, occasionally glancing up to enjoy the scene before her, now sat on the deep window sill, half hidden behind the heavy brocade curtains.
She knew she could not stay there much longer.
It would be extremely discourteous to Cassandra not to go downstairs and admire the baby.
But Anne would be there and the thought of facing her twin at the moment filled her with dread. How could she have been so callous, so unkind? Did Jane mean so little to her that she could hurt her in this fashion?
“I truly believe she does not see me as a person at all,” she murmured to herself. “All our lives, I have just been a pale copy of her, to be ignored, not someone with real feelings and emotions.”
Then somewhere deep inside her head a voice muttered, “But you liked being overlooked, allowed to go your own way, enjoyed being ‘just Jane’ so that no one queried you or argued. You never had to defend your thoughts because you never told anyone what they were. It isn’t all Anne’s fault!”
But she was too unhappy to listen for long or give the voice any attention: she stepped down from the window sill and straightening the pale blue silk that billowed over her petticoats, she tightened the darker blue sash and brushed tears from her cheeks.
‘No one here understands,’ she thought. ‘Mama loves Papa, of course, but I am sure she has never felt this way, never had someone tell her how ardently they admire and love her and then … Well, I am going to stay with dear Colonel Fitzwilliam. I’ll be safe there at Deerwood Park.
Free from Anne’s barbed comments, Bennetta’s knowing looks and Mama’s questions. ’
“Jane! Jane! Oh, here you are. I guessed you would be in the library.”