Chapter One — An Invitation Too Well Arranged #6
“I am entirely serious. I have often thought fire irons underused in the defence of female privacy.”
Jane laughed then, and the sound eased something in the room. But after a moment she leaned her head lightly against Elizabeth’s shoulder, as she had done when they were girls and the world had been smaller, though not necessarily kinder.
“I would rather wait,” Jane said. “Not because I doubt him. Because I do not.”
“That,” Elizabeth said, “is the best possible reason.”
Jane was quiet.
Then she added, so softly Elizabeth almost did not hear, “I think he will ask me.”
Elizabeth looked at her. Jane’s face was turned toward the window, but the emotion in it was unmistakable.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I think he will.”
“And I shall say yes.”
The simplicity of it pierced Elizabeth more deeply than any rapture could have done.
After all the uncertainty, all the pain of Netherfield, all the months in which Jane had schooled herself into composure because hope had become too costly, here was happiness approaching not with trumpets, but with calm steps.
Elizabeth squeezed her hand. “Then Silvermere had better behave itself. It is to host a very important silence.”
Jane laughed, though there were tears in her eyes. “Only until he speaks.”
“Only until then.”
They remained together a little longer. The afternoon light moved across the carpet. Somewhere below, the servant carried the letter to the post. Lady Ashbourne’s invitation had been accepted.
That evening, Elizabeth took up the matter again in solitude.
The house had quieted. Mrs Gardiner had gone to write to her husband.
Jane had retired early, though Elizabeth suspected not to sleep.
The candles in the drawing room burned low and steady, and the sealed answer was gone, already on its way to Silvermere House, where Lady Ashbourne would receive it, read it, and perhaps mark one more piece of her design complete.
Elizabeth sat at the little writing desk and drew Lady Ashbourne’s original letter toward her once more.
Mrs Gardiner had left it there, perhaps intentionally.
The seal had been broken, the paper unfolded and folded so many times that it had lost its first perfection.
Yet the handwriting remained precise. Every line seemed to know its place.
Every word had been chosen to offer welcome and withhold explanation.
She read it yet again.
The phrases did not alter. That was the difficulty with well-written letters.
They remained themselves under scrutiny, while continuing to suggest that something in them had not yet been understood.
Lady Ashbourne desired the pleasure of their company.
Lady Ashbourne hoped Silvermere might offer quiet.
Lady Ashbourne trusted that a small and thoughtful circle would be agreeable after recent strains.
Lady Ashbourne particularly wished to make the acquaintance of Miss Bennet and Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
Particularly.
Elizabeth rested her chin lightly upon her hand.
There it was. The pressure she had felt before—the sense of entering a story already in motion, a room arranged before one crossed the threshold, a conversation begun before one had heard the first word.
She had felt it in Bath when anonymous verses moved from hand to hand.
She had felt it in rooms where jewels carried more history than their owners admitted.
She had felt it at Ravenscroft, where a ghost had been made out of a woman because a woman was harder to explain.
Now she felt it again.
Perhaps Silvermere would prove no more than a beautiful house, a watchful hostess, an anxious widow, an agreeable nephew and a collection of ordinary people behaving with ordinary selfishness beneath extraordinary polish.
That, Elizabeth thought, was quite enough to be getting on with.
Most mysteries did not require rare wickedness.
They required only common weaknesses arranged with care.
The candle flickered.
Elizabeth folded the letter slowly and placed it beneath her hand.
In every visible respect, Lady Ashbourne had offered an honour. The handwriting was elegant. The phrasing was faultless. The seal was proper. The invitation was gracious, tasteful and entirely unobjectionable.
And yet Elizabeth could not escape the conviction that she had just accepted more than a visit.
Silvermere House waited beyond Bath, pale and polished beside its silver lake, admired for beauty, charity and discretion.
Jane’s happiness moved toward it with hope.
Bingley’s purpose moved toward it with restraint.
Darcy’s watchful intelligence would meet hers there, whether either named the alliance or not.
And somewhere within that careful company, perhaps already placed in a drawer, a memory, a letter, or a silence, there lay the reason Lady Ashbourne had gathered them all.
Elizabeth smiled, though not with amusement only.
No, she did not trust the invitation.
That was precisely why she meant to go.