Chapter Eighteen
Anne de Bourgh locked her bedroom door and breathed a sigh of relief, leaning her forehead against the polished oak for a moment as she let her mother’s strictures ebb and fade. Then she turned to look at Penelope, who sat at the desk in the corner, scribbling away.
Penelope’s loose blonde curls spilled over her shoulder, and she furrowed her brow. “Are you ill, my dear?”
“How could I not be, with such a mother?”
Penelope set down her quill pen and hastened toward Anne. “Are you hurt?”
Anne had no wish to worry the one person who cared for her, but by unconsciously raising her fingers to the cheek where her mother had given her a slap, she answered Penelope’s concern.
“It was far from her worst—it was nothing.” She turned around, gesturing for Penelope to attend to the buttons she could not reach.
“She thinks I spend too much time with you.”
Penelope breathed out a soft, bitter laugh as her nimble fingers made quick work of removing Anne’s silk dinner gown. “The alternative being what, exactly? Nobody else is good enough to be in her presence, and therefore yours, except your tedious relations and ancient neighbors.”
“Fortunately, Darcy is hundreds of miles away, and the Fitzwilliams are at Bolswick Abbey, mourning my late uncle. We are in mourning, too, though it is not any different from when we are not. I suppose I can bear the deprivation of our dusty old neighbors for conversation about how young people behaved much better half a century ago.”
“Your behavior is not the problem—I daresay it never was.” Penelope tugged the sleeves down from Anne’s shoulders, her hands brushing gently over the fading bruises left by Lady Catherine’s walking stick on the day Anne had tried to refuse her engagement to Darcy.
Anne closed her eyes as Penelope’s comfort washed over her.
Before her dearest friend had come to live with them, Anne had been utterly alone, and had often convinced herself that she imagined her mother’s cruelty.
There had been a sort of solace in that, but she preferred the commiseration of her companion.
“I only want to forget about it for a little while,” Anne sighed.
Penelope continued her ministrations, her soft fingers lingering as they slid down Anne’s waist, letting the gown fall to the floor in a satisfying billow of grey silk. “I must be a bad influence on you; I have made you the wickedest creature to ever walk these halls, I am sure.”
“And filling my head with wild ideas about how things shall be in a couple short years, when I can be as wicked as I choose.” Anne turned around so that Penelope could remove her stays.
“Your pretty little head.” Penelope placed a quick kiss on Anne’s forehead. “Has she grown suspicious of us?”
Anne shook her head. “She believes herself very shrewd, and it is easiest to let her have her triumph, even when she is only old and mean, and maddeningly stubborn. These derelict badgers she consorts with may have been the picture of virtue in their youth, but she and her ilk have only grown greedy and prejudiced. Mother believes you will teach me to be pert and insolent to Darcy and drive him away.”
Penelope rolled her eyes with a look of distaste. “I thought she likes you better when you are as mean-spirited as she.”
“Generally, yes, but you know how she is when she gets into one of her moods. Whatever I am saying or doing or even thinking is unequivocally wrong.” Anne screwed up her face, determined to ease the anxiety of the evening with the playful banter she cherished.
“This will amuse you—old Lady Clarendon posits that if I bring you to Pemberley with me when I am wed, you will seduce my husband and steal his affections away from me, for you are younger and more buxom than I. Who indeed would not desire you?”
Penelope winked at Anne for the compliment, then screwed up her face. “Did you tell her he would do well to take a mistress? Surely it is a tradition their generation must venerate.”
Anne let out a hum of contentment as her confining garments were all stripped away, and then raised her arms as Penelope slid a nightgown over her with a gentle caress.
“I simply reminded her that we promised your aunt Mrs. Jenkinson on her deathbed to look after you. Nothing so easy as playing to her pride. We are honor bound to keep you very close.”
She grabbed Penelope by the hips and pulled her into a kiss.
Penelope wrapped her arms around Anne and began tugging her hairpins loose.
When her mousy brown tresses fell free about her shoulders, Anne shook them out and examined the thin, almost sheer nightdress embroidered with gold and silver vines.
“I do not recognize this one. It is very fine, though a little racy.” She smiled at Penelope, the only person in the world who managed to make her feel almost pretty.
“An early Christmas gift—I ordered it when we were in London. It broke my heart when your mother burnt both the gowns the dowager countess gave you for your birthday. But this she will never see—only I shall ever admire you in it.”
Anne’s heart leapt at the sight of Penelope surveying her. “It must have been very dear.”
“Do not fret over the expense—I still have a very tidy sum from my aunt, for emergencies or special occasions. You are both.”
Anne threw herself back onto the bed, the strain of another day under her mother’s dictatorship melting away in the privacy of her candlelit bedroom and the company of her favorite person. “The modiste must have been scandalized.”
Penelope smirked. “I borrowed a ring of yours and made up a story about my new fiancé, and how much I wished to please him.”
Anne snorted and made a face of disgust. “We live to please the men, do we not? Lady Clarendon fears you too adept at such things. How I wished to give the old bat apoplexy with the truth, that you would sooner be my mistress than Darcy’s!”
“I wish no blood on my hands, thank you very much. In fact, I have devoted my evening to pleasing one gentleman in particular.” Penelope moved to the desk and picked up a letter she had been composing.
“It has been more than a fortnight since he has written to you, and a frequent correspondence with you was part of the agreement.”
“Their agreement. It was ordained by God herself, my mother, when we were in our cradles. Ugh! I could throttle the odious man for finally capitulating to her. He held out for so long.”
“And now it is your turn to stall. Here, read it.” Penelope sat down on the bed beside Anne, kicking off her slippers as she curled her legs up and cuddled against her mistress.
Anne scanned the letter Penelope had composed to Darcy for her.
It was brief and cordial at best, but still more of an effort than Anne’s absolute refusal to comply.
A surge of resentment rose in her chest and she flexed the fingers of her left hand, the one she had once favored, until her mother sought to correct that evil sign of deviance.
“I know, it is not very good,” Penelope said with a sigh. “I despise him perhaps more than you do, as I would any man who shall soon be bedding you against your wishes, against your very inclination.”
“Perhaps that is what we should write,” Anne said with a look of mischief as she laid her head on Penelope’s shoulder and gazed up at her.
“Dear Cousin Darcy, I have no wish to bear you heirs, and likely die in the process, so that you can put on a good show of mourning me and then secretly revel in the liberty of choosing any woman you like to replace me, for you are master of the universe, after all.”
Penelope laughed and shook her head. She idly stoked Anne’s shoulder, her expression growing thoughtful. “I had a different idea I should like to put to you.”
“I hope it is one that has more to do with removing your clothes as I have done, and less with any thought of bedding my dreary cousin.”
Penelope sat up and curled her knees up against her chest. “I think you may like what I have to say. And if you do not, well, I can surely think of something you like….”
Anne gave a heady giggle as she sat up in a position mirroring her dearest friend. “Of course I will hear you. My darling, you are the only one I trust, and I would always know your mind.”
“Very well. Your cousin Darcy is to remain in Scotland until summer, is that not so?”
“Yes, I understand he is overseeing some renovations to the estate Richard inherited from his mother’s cousin.”
“And then he will likely take his sister to the seaside as he does every summer. And by summer’s end you shall be but a year from your majority.”
Anne could sense what Penelope meant to say, and she clung to the hope her lover offered. “And how am I to put him off for another year after that?”
“You will not have to. Ever the dutiful daughter, you will tell your mother you are ready to purchase your trousseau in London. And while we are in town, you will of course be attending dinners and parties, which may put you into the path of gentlemen superior even to Mr. Darcy. She will think it all her own idea for you to throw him over for another, and then you have but a year left to invent further delays by planning a grand wedding that you can cancel as soon as you come of age.”
“Cousin Rupert will be out of mourning for his father by then,” Anne mused.
“And how could your mother resist the temptation of seeing you made a countess?”
Anne considered the idea and nodded slowly. “The plan has merit. And the letters?”
“There could be no ill in retaining Mr. Darcy’s admiration for the time being.
If the worst should happen—if our plans go awry—well, I suppose it would be better for you if the man you may yet be shackled to is at least fond of you, and inclined to be indulgent.
I could not bear it if he mistreated you. ”