Chapter 37 Georgiana #2
“To capture Pike,” I pressed on. “To end him. I’m close, Georgiana.” The other female couples, growing bored, had drifted away to the refreshment table. Now we were alone, dancing in a pool of darkness between tables of candles, right in the middle of the ball, and yet, I fancied, almost unseen.
Her eyes glittered. “Miss Darcy.”
I swallowed. “Miss Darcy.” She spun under my arm. As she whirled past me I swear I felt her eyelashes brush my cheekbone.
“I needed something from you once, Miss Bennet. You never even deigned to answer.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It was only, I thought—”
“No.” The dance had come to an end. She wrenched her hands from mine. “Whatever hopes you cherished, pray smother them. We are nothing to each other.” She lowered her eyes and offered a slow curtsy. “Thank you for the dance.”
I left with Mamma shortly after that. Her iron grip on my arm left me little choice. I had disgraced the name of Bennet enough for one evening, it was clear.
Now here I am in my nightshirt, curled in a window seat that is far too large, overlooking an unfamiliar park.
If she thinks I will give up that easily, she does not know me at all.
29 April, 18--
Last night as I sat writing there was a rustle. A tap at the window of my third-floor room. The curtains moved. The next thing I knew, Georgiana Darcy stood before me in the moonlight.
I stared at her for a long moment. Then I stepped past her, parted the curtains, and peered out.
“There is a balcony,” I said. “Connecting our two rooms. You walked across.”
She smiled faintly. “I never said otherwise.”
Her hair was down, her white sleep shift blowing in the breeze. I turned away. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I thought we ought to finish our conversation.”
“I thought you had finished. Oughtn’t you to get your sleep? To look pretty for your fiancé?” I could not keep the jeer from my voice on the last word.
“You don’t like him much.”
“Nor do you,” I accused.
“He’s all right. His father, too, is tied to the full moon, though he does not become an owl.”
“Stop. It has been years. Must you still mock me in this way?”
“Mock you?”
My head was beginning to hurt. “I know I offended you. I know it must have been a blow when I would not do as you ordered. After all, I am a mere country spinster, and you are Miss Darcy. But I know perfectly well that girls cannot turn into owls.”
She took a shuddering breath. Anger drew her half a step closer to me. “You know so much less than you think. There are worlds other than the one you see. Every one of us has a different world between our ears, so why should we ever expect to understand them all?”
“Nonsense! Some scientist you are, if you throw up your hands at the mysteries of the universe!”
“I am a scientist, and I do turn into an owl several nights a month! What is there to do but throw up my hands?”
“Oh, please.”
“It is true. I swear it.”
“Then prove it. Change now.”
“I can’t do it on command. I am not a dancing bear.”
“Tell me everything then. How did it happen?”
She swallowed. “I cannot. It is not my secret to tell.”
I laughed. “Of course.” I hated the bitterness in my own voice—but how stupid did she think I was? “Please go back to your room.”
She drew herself up. “I cannot fund your travels. Most of my money is held either by Fitz or by the lawyers, preparing to transfer it to my husband.”
“Your husband,” I said. “You will be Mrs. Bascombe.”
“I will give you what I can,” she pressed on. “As well as the modest laboratory equipment I possess. You will have to make it be enough. I cannot do more. I am trying to be the sister Fitz deserves. I must prepare for my wedding.”
“If I cannot catch Pike—”
“You never will catch him!” she said. “To be honest, you are acting foolishly, Miss Bennet, to chase him all over England like this. He is a young man with wealth and resources. You are an unmarried lady of modest means. He will always be able to move faster than you.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “You can find another way. I know you. But better yet—don’t.”
“Don’t?”
“Forget about Pike. You’ve done all you can. Take what I can give you and use it to make a life somehow.”
I closed my eyes. My headache was pounding ever more fiercely, and I had the horrible feeling that she was right about the futility of my pursuit. Had I really been wasting my time these last years? I scrubbed my hand over my face, willed words to come.
She gave a cry. The next thing I knew she was beside me, two hands pulling my forearm into the moonlight. “Mary! What in heaven?”
I tried to pull away, but her grip was strong.
Of course. My night shift’s sleeves had grown loose with my weight loss.
I had not bothered to take them in, and one had ridden up.
My network of scars and scabs showed up plainly on the bare skin of my arm.
Georgiana gave a tch of outrage, turning my arm this way and that. “Who is this for?”
I thought about telling her. I was so tired, and so cold, and my arms throbbed so badly. I wanted to sink into bed with her, let the warmth close over us, and whisper the whole sorry story into her ear.
I wrenched my arm away. “If you will not tell the whole truth, why should I?” There was a dampness seeping over my skin. One of my cuts had reopened. It still hurt less than her touch.
She backed away. “You must stop this,” she said. “It’s killing you. It’s shaming your family. Today we cut you off, but if you persist, you will find yourself in a madhouse.”
I laughed. “If my father tries—”
“If your father tries, I will back him, for your own good. So will we all. So stop .”
Gravity seemed to be malfunctioning. It could not be Georgiana, my Georgiana, saying such things.
But then, I had made quite sure she was not my Georgiana at all. She could no more abide me than the rest of them.
I waited till she had left, till I heard her window shut. Then I whispered, “Good night, Georgiana.”
I lay awake for some time, waiting for the pain in my arms to die down.
I drifted off before it did, and the pain chased me through my dreams. I awoke as the sky began to shade from black to gray.
Heedless of the cold, I leaned my head out the window, looking over Pemberley Park.
It really was extraordinarily beautiful.
The hills, the ancient trees, the winding garden, the lake.
My father would never put me in a madhouse.
That would be mad indeed, since he was the recipient of my serums. But…
if my sisters pressed him, he might put me under lock and key.
Longbourn was back on the map. It would be the easiest thing in the world to imprison me there.
I had, in some sense, been a prisoner there most of my life.
I still had the strange feeling that gravity was not quite itself. The floor would not settle under my feet. I found myself gripping the windowsill.
I see, now, Harry, that Georgiana was right. I must stop chasing Pike. The only sensible course of action is to bring him to me.
[The following appeared in all the London and Manchester papers for three days.]
To S.P.—
I give in. Find me in Derbyshire. I’ve nowhere else to turn.
—M.