There is a tentative knock at the parlor door, and I start. The novel slides to the floor as the door opens.
“There you are,” William says, entering the room. “Did you have an enjoyable walk into town?”
I resist the urge to scoop up the novel. “Very nice,” I say.
He wanders about the room looking at our possessions as if seeing them for the first time. With one fingertip, he swipes at the top of a little round table, then raises the finger as if to inspect its cleanliness. I gather from his lack of comment that either Martha or Mrs. Baxter has dusted recently.
“Did you meet anyone of note?”
“No,” I say quickly. With one foot I slide the novel back under my chair. “No one.”
He is moving restlessly from one spot to the next; he picks up the porcelain shepherdess from its place on the mantel, puts it down again, and then does the same with the little painted bowl Elizabeth sent me from London. I watch him and hold in a sigh. He is bored, or putting off writing his sermon, or both.
“I saw Miss de Bourgh riding out; I thought perhaps you might have met her on the road.”
“No,” I say, “I did not have the pleasure of seeing her.”
“A shame.” He looks around and appears to really see me for the first time. He frowns, just a little. “What are you doing in here, my dear?”
I suppose it must seem odd that I am sitting here with nothing to occupy myself. “I was—going to take up some work,” I say. “But I was just resting for a moment.”
He is all sympathy. “Yes, it is so hot—I do not remember the last year it was so hot, so early in the year.”
“Indeed.” I feel a little of the same thrill I experienced when Lady Catherine visited yesterday, but underneath it lies a touch of shame. I have never made a secret of my trips to the circulating library, but William rarely sits still long enough to take notice of what I am reading or working on. But I cannot pretend not to know that, although he has never read a novel himself, he is opposed to them as a general rule—particularly for women, whose natural delicacy, he says, makes them especially vulnerable to the frivolity and dissipation between the covers. I keep a book of sermons in the room as well, in case he ever wishes me to read aloud; his patience rarely extends beyond six lines or so, and thus he has never noticed that the volume never changes.
I imagine the novel beneath my chair is glowing like an ember.
William leaves the parlor at last, as I knew he must; there is little enough to occupy him here. When the sound of his footsteps in the hall has faded, I crouch down in an undignified way to pick the book up off the floor, then rise and take the Herbal from its hiding spot. Opening the front drawer of my worktable, where I keep odd bits of ribbon and lace for which I have not yet found a use, I tuck both books inside.
IT IS A few days after my encounter with Mr. Travis at the library, and I am in the nursery, surrounded by the wreckage of my morning’s work. Martha sits in a chair by the window, squinting in the dim light as she mends a tear in William’s waistcoat. She has said nothing all morning, even as she watched me waste sheet after sheet of paper, rending them in my frustration and tossing them away until the floor was strewn with half-formed sketches. Even Louisa has lost interest in the game of chasing the papers around the room. Rain streams down the windowpanes, and the sky is covered by one vast, dark cloud, which suits my mood perfectly.
The sketches I copy directly from The British Herbal are fair imitations of the originals, but anything I try to create from life seems, incongruously enough, to lack the spark of life entirely. I will never, I fear, be truly proficient as an artist. Louisa’s bloodless image, crinkled and torn, looks up at me from every corner of the room.
“I quite like this one, ma’am.”
I look at Martha; she has finished with the waistcoat and folded it neatly, and now sits with one of my drawings smoothed out across her lap. A hand, far lumpier and less well proportioned than it is in life, but with faithfully drawn square, clipped fingernails and the suggestion of skin that is thickly callused. I start to blush, and wish fervently that I could stop.
Chapter Twelve
Louisa is walking. Just nine months old, and she took her first steps unaided from Martha’s arms to mine two days ago. Since then, she has grown in confidence—she careens fearlessly off walls and furniture, thumps to the floor, and gets up again without fuss. I wrote to my mother yesterday to tell her the news, and I can already imagine her pained reply—my youngest brother was an early walker, and I can still remember my mother’s despair at the bruises he sustained and the mischief he got into. But I cannot regret my own daughter’s stumbling independence any more than I can help admiring her bravery in venturing into a world that must seem so very large.
We are in the garden, and though I know if William comes upon us he will be full of admonishments about the browning effects of too much sunlight, I have no wish to retire to the shade. I lean back on my hands and remove my bonnet, feeling the sun warm my hair, and watch Louisa weave her unsteady way across the lawn, her arms thrown out to either side for balance and her round face open and guileless. It is impossible to imagine her as a woman grown, a woman with a husband and children of her own, with thoughts and desires far more complicated than those she has now.
She stumbles slightly but rights herself before she falls, and then looks back at me for praise. I clap my hands together.
How odd to think that someday her heart and mind will no longer be so open to me; they will fill with secret thoughts and wishes to which I will not be privy. I think of all the things I have kept from my mother over the years, large and small, and I ache.
From somewhere behind me, I can hear William humming to himself as he goes about his watering. His voice is surprisingly appealing, the air he hums light and cheerful, yet I can feel the muscles in my neck growing tense at the prospect of his coming closer. I bite my lip and look on as Louisa bends toward a stand of foxgloves and, before I can call out a reprimand, snatches one of the pale purple blossoms in her fist. I close my mouth as she toddles on, the flower clutched to her chest. William’s humming seems louder, but I do not look around to see where he is.
One day, I think, Louisa will want to hear about her parents’ romance. When we were young, both Maria and I asked our own mother countless times how she and our father met, fell in love, and decided to marry.
Each time, she told us patiently how they met when she came as a girl to visit her widowed aunt in Meryton. “We went into the shop for some yellow ribbon, and there your father stood, straight and tall and smiling, behind the counter. How handsome he was!”
“And you loved him at once?” Maria always said, and our mother smiled a little.
“He was so cheerful, so agreeable, how could I not admire him?” she said. “And my aunt did much to promote the match, for she loved me and wanted me near her always.”
My mother’s father, who operated a warehouse in London, was also eager for his daughter to live in the country, where the air seemed to agree with her much more than did the smoggy air in town.
“Your father called on me nearly every day for three weeks, after we were first introduced,” our mother said.
“What did you talk about?” I asked, for in truth, it was rare to hear my parents converse about anything that did not pertain to the household.
“Oh—many things,” my mother answered vaguely. “He was always so attentive and paid me the loveliest compliments. It came as no surprise when he finally proposed.”
“And by then, you were very much in love,” Maria said with happy conviction.
Once again, my mother smiled a little. “Indeed.”
It never occurred to me, until just now, that when she answered, my mother might have been lying.
For what can I tell Louisa but a lie? The truth is not an option.
“Your papa was refused by Mrs. Darcy,” I might say, were I being truthful. “So I contrived to put myself in his path when his p
ride was hurt and he was especially vulnerable to flattery.”
Well, that will never do.
I FIRST MET William at a ball in Hertfordshire, where he was a guest of his cousins the Bennets. He was fully himself from the first moments of our acquaintance, simpering and strange, bowing over my hand in a manner that was almost servile. His behavior toward my friend Eliza was so marked that no one could have missed it, and her mortification was just as obvious—except, it seemed, to him. When they danced, she held herself with unusual stiffness, and he moved with no grace at all, his timing just off from the music. More than once, he turned in the wrong direction.
He asked me to dance later in the evening, and it was a trying experience; conversation was impossible, as he had to concentrate so fully on the steps.
He proposed to Eliza the very next morning, and though I had expected nothing else, I could not help but see her inevitable refusal as foolish. Lizzy is younger than I by seven years, and prettier by far, and she had romantic notions about marriage. But she had little in the way of a dowry, and now she was fortunate enough to be the object of a man’s affection—a man who was, for all his many foibles, well situated in life, with a comfortable living in Kent and the promise of inheriting Longbourn upon Mr. Bennet’s death. With the entail of her father’s estate firmly settled upon Mr. Collins, nothing could make Elizabeth’s mother and four unwed sisters safer than to keep the estate within the family.
I was ashamed of the envy that curled in my belly—envy that a man wanted her; envy that she was secure enough in her own mind and sure enough of her own prospects to reject him.
NOT LONG AFTER, the entire Longbourn party came to dine at Lucas Lodge. Elizabeth made a face at me, half-laughing, half-apologetic, from across the table, when Mr. Collins took the seat my mother indicated beside me—a look that Mr. Collins clearly caught, for I felt him grow very still at my side.
It was a rather dreadful dinner, really, for Mr. Collins’s refused proposal hung heavily over the room, known by all but not openly acknowledged. My mother and Jane, the eldest of the Bennet girls, were occupied in trying to find neutral topics of conversation, while Mrs. Bennet interspersed too-quick, too-cheerful remarks with black looks in Elizabeth’s direction. From the corner of my eye, I watched as Mr. Collins’s long fingers opened and closed in spasms around his spoon.
I set my own spoon down and turned deliberately in his direction. Even by candlelight, I could see the red of mortification on his cheeks. “Do tell me, Mr. Collins,” I said, “from where did you come before you found your place in Kent?”
He looked at me, clearly startled. “I am from Suffolk, Miss Lucas,” he said.
I did my best to smile encouragingly. “I have never been there, but I have heard it is a beautiful county.”
“Well,” he said, “it is pretty enough, I daresay, though I must say I prefer my situation now.” He leaned toward me and added with great seriousness, “Do you know that I can see the rooftop of Rosings Park from the windows of my humble abode?” When I shook my head, he said, “Oh, yes! And a very handsome rooftop it is—more than thirty thousand slate tiles! And not a one in need of repair, for Lady Catherine is most attentive to all the details of her estate’s upkeep.”
My voice caught at the back of my throat as I tried to reply, and I had to swallow. “That does sound . . . most agreeable,” I said at last. “And how long have you been in Kent?”
From her seat opposite, Lizzy sent me a look of gratitude as he spoke—at length, and with much enthusiasm—about his life as the parson at Hunsford parish. He used his hands to great effect as his voice rose, gesticulating to emphasize a point and, once, nearly upsetting my wineglass in his fervor. I nodded and smiled in the proper places. Mr. Collins seemed to grow larger under my attention, swelling as his self-assurance returned until I felt almost crowded by the bulk of him in the chair beside me. His elbow jostled mine, and he then was most anxious to assure me he had not meant to take such a liberty.
I watched the changing expressions on his face as he spoke; I listened to the earnestness of his voice. He was not an attractive young man; he was heavy of cheek and jowl, with slightly irregular features and thinning hair, and his manners were so awkward that it was hard, at times, to keep my countenance as he veered from unaccountable pomposity to slavish compliments. The longer I spent in his company, the more impossible it became to imagine Elizabeth married to him; though she delights in small doses of the ridiculous, she has never been very tolerant of the faults of others.
As I sat there beside him, I began to feel rather as if I were outside myself. The sounds of the others at the table—their voices, the clink of silverware—receded, and I heard only Mr. Collins’s stumbling voice. I was acutely aware of the details of him—the way he wet his lips with his tongue when he had been speaking for a long while; the large curling shells of his ears; the odd impression his neckcloth gave of trying to strangle him. He made a comment about the grand dining room at Rosings Park; I smiled, and his gratitude was such that a bright sureness bloomed within me.
I can have him, I thought with an odd detachment. It was not an idle hope; it was a certainty. I was capable of doing what Elizabeth was not. I could listen to this man without deriding him; I could endure his company and keep my composure. A little encouragement, a little attention—he needed these things, and if I gave them to him, I could have him, and all he had to offer, in return.
It is hard to think well of men when they so obviously do not think well of you. Though my head was turned once or twice when I was just a girl, as I never turned any heads myself, it became easy to observe the men of my acquaintance with a critical eye rather than a hopeful one. And what I saw did not impress, so that, except for the obvious brutes, one man began to seem much like another. Mr. Collins was ridiculous; but what was a bit of silliness compared to a lifetime of dependency?
During the main course, he broke off suddenly, noticing that my plate was still mostly full. “Miss Lucas,” he said, and the redness returned to his cheeks in a great rush. “I am keeping you from your dinner . . .”
In the time since, I have looked back upon that moment, seeing it with such clarity that it is as if I am still there, seated beside William at my parents’ table, poised on the precipice of an irrevocable choice. I teetered there, looking at his round, plain face, for a long moment. And then:
“Your conversation is such a pleasure, Mr. Collins, that I quite forgot to eat,” I said. I lifted my glass and took a sip of wine but made no move toward my fork. “Pray, continue.”
WILLIAM COMES AROUND the bend in the path. He is still humming to himself. His shirtsleeves are rolled up, showing forearms that are nearly hairless, and his hat is pushed back on his head so that his face is ruddy from the sun. In one hand is a small posy of early summer blooms that he must have just clipped. He looks as contented as I have ever seen him, and when he spies Louisa and me, he smiles.
Chapter Thirteen
My sister, Maria, is marrying for love.
The letter was waiting for me at the post office, along with another, written in an unfamiliar scrawl, for Mrs. Fitzgibbon from her own sister. I sit reading Maria’s in a field just outside the village, Louisa crouched beside me. In one fist she holds the bread I brought with me to keep her satiated on our walk.
I have read the letter over twice, and still I cannot entirely believe its contents. When last Maria wrote, only a month past, she bemoaned Meryton’s scarcity of eligible men. And now . . .
I should be filled with joy. I read her words yet again, look at Louisa, pick her up, and press her against my belly. She wriggles, the bread trapped between us.
“Shall we go visit our friend?” I say.
MRS. FITZGIBBON IS kneeling among her vegetables. Louisa squirms fiercely in my arms; I put her down and she stumble-runs across the field, her white bonnet, just a little too big, slipping down over one eye, the leading ribbons I sewed to the shoulders of her dress sailing behind her.
“Oh, my sweet lamb!” Mrs. Fitzgibbon cries, and holds her arms wide. Louisa rushes into her embrace. “Just look at you!” She leans her head back to look up at me. “Walking, the clever girl! When did this start?”
“Only days ago; she seems to have a particular talent for it.” I reach into my reticule and hold out her letter. “I am sorry for the early hour, but this was waiting for you at the post office. I thought you would be eager to read it.”
Mrs. Fitzgibbon stares at the letter as if she has never seen such a thing before. When she reaches for it, her hand trembles. “From Sarah,” she says, so softly, running her thumb over the paper. With great economy, her sister has cross-written her letter in a very small, cramped hand, lines running from side to side as well as up and down the page. “Oh, Mrs. Collins—”
She gently moves Louisa aside and rises. Her joints creak. Then, “I’ll just be a moment,” and she vanishes into the cottage. When she reappears, she is dragging two chairs from her kitchen.
“Let’s sit out here,” she says. I take one of the chairs from her hastily. “It’s so nice and cool.”
The air still feels close and thick, but there is a blanket of clouds spread across the sky; what little light that filters through is feeble. Without the sun’s full weight, the day does feel almost cool.
Still . . . “Louisa and I should leave you to your letter, Mrs. Fitzgibbon. I know how much you have longed for word from your sister.”
But Mrs. Fitzgibbon shakes her head. “It can wait. It will give me something to look forward to, and right now, I’ve the pleasure of your company.” She ducks back into the cottage before I can respond and returns with something cupped in one hand.
“A sweetie,” she says, and holds out her hand, palm up, to show me the lump of sugar. I nod, and her smile becomes a grin; she hands the sugar to Louisa, who takes it, sticks it in her mouth, and sucks.
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