Mr. Williams cleared his throat. Then he said, “Miss Bennet, I wonder if you would … if you would be so good as to give this to your sister?” He held out a paper-wrapped parcel. “It is a book that she expressed an interest in reading, and I went out and bought … that is, I happened to come across a copy of it yesterday, and thought that perhaps she might accept the loan.”
He spoke slowly, with a slight hesitation to the words, and his face looked rather as though he were facing a firing squad.
I said, “Of course, Mr. Williams. I will be happy to. Mary … very much enjoyed the flowers that you sent her.”
It was not entirely a lie; Mary at least could not bring herself to throw the roses away.
She gave them back to Aunt Gardiner, with the stipulation that our aunt put them somewhere Mary need never look at them.
Mr. Williams smiled—I have scarcely ever seen him smile before, but he has one of the nicest smiles I have ever seen. There is a shy sweetness in his expression that is very appealing. And some of his awkwardness of manner fell away as he rubbed a hand through his untidy black hair. “I’m absolutely hopeless at all this, I’m afraid,” he said. “I sent the flowers because … well, that’s what you’re suppose to give a girl, is it not? Or so everyone says. But on reflection, it occurred to me that your sister would likely much prefer a book.”
I was encouraged—truly encouraged. Rhys Williams seems not only to admire Mary, but to understand her, as well. After he had taken his leave and departed, I considered and planned my strategy for presenting his gift to Mary.
All of which effort turned out to be absolutely pointless in the end, when late in the afternoon, Mary came barrelling in through the front door as though her hair were on fire and bolted up the stairs to our room.
I thought something must be wrong—perhaps Jane’s baby was going to arrive too early after all. So I ran up the stairs after her. Only to find her snatching dress after dress out of the wardrobe, holding each up to herself in front of the mirror, and then casting each one aside.
I blinked. Even with the addition of the new clothes I insisted she buy, Mary has never given me the impression that she cares terribly about her wardrobe. “Is something wrong?” I asked. “Has something happened to Jane?”
“What?” Mary looked up, startled, in the act of holding up her new scarlet walking dress with the black braid on the shoulders and hem. “No, nothing—and Jane is perfectly well. It is just that I will be late if I do not dress quickly, that is all.” She started to struggle with the buttons on the plain morning gown she had worn to visit Jane. “Help me, will you Kitty? And may I borrow your white wool pelisse with the red embroidery? It will look all right with this gown, don’t you think?”
“I … yes, of course, if you like.” I stared at her, tempted to ask whether she were some strange impostor who had replaced my sister. But I looked down at the book from Mr. Williams—which I had carried upstairs with me—and said, instead, “Mary, I want to talk to you.”
Mary had managed the buttons on her own after all and had already tugged the scarlet gown over her head; her voice came out muffled by layers of cloth. “All right. But only if you come along and talk as we go. I must leave at once.”
I glanced down at my own dress, which was an old one of yellow printed muslin. With a jammy hand-print from Susanna on the skirt. “Where are we going?”
Mary’s head emerged, slightly red-faced, through the neck of the gown. “To Hyde Park. Miss Pettigrew invited me to go walking there at five o’clock with a party of her friends.”
I ought to have been suspicious from that point onwards, of course. Ordinarily, Mary has even less patience for Miranda Pettigrew than I have. But coming on the heels of her actually dancing at Georgiana’s party—and now appearing to care about clothes—I was more pleased than otherwise. Mary must be coming out of her shell, I thought. Perhaps it would not be so difficult to persuade her to forgive Mr. Williams after all.
Mary caught up her gloves and bonnet and then whirled out the door. So I snatched up my cloak—having leant the pelisse to Mary—and said that I would come, as well.
The hour between five and six in Hyde Park is of course the hour for the swells of fashionable society to see each other and be seen promenading on the park’s tree-lined paths. Even during the winter, with the air frigid and the trees mere bare grey skeletons against a steely grey sky, the park was terribly crowded. As Mary and I made our way to the path that runs along the bank of the Serpentine river—the location Miranda had given Mary as a meeting place—we were ogled by several promenading dandies who wore the latest fashions in skin-tight breeches and elaborate cravats. And we were nearly run over by all the expensive carriages—ladies in high-perch phaetons, young men racing one another in their sporting curricles.
I had no chance at all of bringing up the subject of Mr. Williams. Not until we were midway along the path and a momentary break in the traffic gave me the chance to say, “Mary, Mr. Williams called at the house for you this morning. He had a gift for you.”
“Oh?”
Mary seemed scarcely to be attending; her eyes were scanning the path up ahead.
“Yes,” I persisted. “He very much hoped that you would forgive him for his clumsiness the other night.”
“Oh?” Mary said again. And then, with a little more attention, she added, giving a careless wave of her hand, “I mean, yes, certainly I forgive him. It scarcely matters now.”
I stopped walking, staring at her. That had been far easier than I had dared let myself even hope. “You forgive him? Then you will see him again if he calls at the house?” I asked.
“See him?” It was Mary’s turn to stop and stare. Which she did—wrinkling her nose. “No, indeed. It would be unfair of me to give him false hopes that our acquaintance might in time deepen into something more. Which is impossible, now—since I have discovered the true meaning of attachment and esteem.”
I blinked at her again, working out the full import of her words. “Do you mean to say that there is some other man you admire? Who is he? And where on earth did you meet him?”
Mary giggled—actually giggled. And I continued to stare, thinking that it really was as though she had been replaced by someone alike in appearance but entirely unfamiliar in all other regards. “We met at Georgiana’s Christmas party, of course,” she said. “We danced two dances together.”
“Two dances. And already you believe yourself in love?”
Mary looked peevish at my tone—which made her appear a good deal more like herself. “Do not the poets speak of love blooming in the space of a single glance across a crowded room? And Shakespeare himself asked the question, Who ever loved that loved not at first sight? And besides,” Mary added, “many engagements are begun without any more acquaintance between the parties than a dance or two.”
Which is perfectly true. I think I may have danced three or four times—at two separate assemblies—with John before he proposed.
I drew in a breath, telling myself that this might be all to the good. I was sorry for Mr. Williams, of course. But it would make my resolution to see Mary wedded a good deal easier if she had found someone for herself—and if he actually returned her feelings.
“What is the fortunate gentleman’s name?” I asked, just as Mary drew in a sharp breath at sight of something up ahead.
“There he is!” She lifted a hand and waved at a group of ladies and gentlemen moving towards us along the path. And I saw him—and recognised him—at the identical moment that Mary declared in fondly smug tones, “Lord Henry Carmichael.”
I registered—distantly—that Miranda was part of the group. Dressed in a frilly pink pelisse and a bonnet trimmed with ostrich plumes.
I scarcely saw her, though. The entire world seemed to have ground to a halt—to borrow again from the vocabulary of gothic heroines—and my heart thudded, sickeningly loud in my ears. “That is the man you are in love with? Lord”—I had to force my stiff lips to sha
pe the name—“Carmichael?”
Mary frowned again. “It ought to be ‘with whom you are in love’, Kitty.”
That made me choke on a laugh. A more than slightly hysterical laugh. If I had suspected Fate of unpleasant tricks before, this, surely, was its most spectacular joke yet. My sister Mary has fallen in love with Lord Henry Carmichael. The very last man in England I would like to meet with ever again.
Mary looked at me in some alarm. “Are you quite well, Kitty?”
I stared at Lord Henry up ahead; the group was close enough now that I could see him clearly. He was dressed in riding breeches and an immaculately cut superfine coat—and he looked exactly the same as he had last year. Fair haired and blue eyed and … it is hard to put it into words. Glossily handsome is the nearest I can come. Sleek and smooth and very, very fully aware of his own physical beauty and charm.
He was saying something to the girl beside him—a brunette-haired girl I did not recognise—and she was positively shrieking with laughter; I could hear her from where I stood.
“I— As a matter of fact, I believe I may be taking a … a cold.” I changed my hysterical laughter into a cough. Which was likely as unconvincing as Mary’s snores, but I did not give her the chance to protest or consider my claim. “You go on and … and join the others. But I think I had better make my way home.”
And then I whirled around and fairly ran from the park.
Mary has not yet returned, and I have spent all the time in waiting for her trying to imagine whether her infatuation can possibly survive an acquaintance of more than two dances. One would not think so—if one looked in the dictionary for a definition of the word ‘shallow’, I am convinced that a likeness of Lord Henry would accompany the entry. Not to mention the word ‘vain’.
Of course, I suppose I could equally say that I was no better than he, when we met a year ago last Christmas at Pemberley.
But I think I must be worrying for nothing. However infatuated Mary may be, the Lord Henry Carmichael I knew would not have troubled himself to open his pocket watch to read Mary the time of day.
Here is my own dictionary illustration of Lord Henry—to appear opposite a word that on second thought seems to sum him up even better than shallow or vain.
Wednesday 17 January 1816
I went to Darcy House to see Jane this morning. I had not seen her since the night of the ball. But I had Mary’s report that though Jane was still by physician’s orders confined to her bed, she seemed quite well. So I was not unduly worried—not until, that is, I knocked at the door. An extremely correct-looking butler answered, but Georgiana darted past him and practically dragged me inside.
“Kitty! I am so glad you have come.”
I felt a lump of ice congeal instantly in my stomach. “What is it? Is Jane—” Despite the butler’s presence, I was too frightened to bother with delicacy. “Is the baby coming early after all?”
Georgiana shook her head. “No, no. Nothing like that. I am sorry to have frightened you. It is just—” She bit her lip as I exhaled a gusty breath of relief and fumbled to untie my bonnet strings. “Here. Give your cloak and hat to Maxwell and come into my sitting room. We can speak there.”
Georgiana’s sitting room looks exactly as she does herself—beautiful and refined and polished. The chairs and tables and the little gilt desk in one corner were all constructed with slender, delicate lines; and the curtains, walls, and carpet were a soothing blend of pale blues and greens.
To look at Georgiana as she perched on the satin-upholstered sofa, it seemed impossible that just this past summer she was with me on the streets of Brussels, both of us sweat-stained and almost as filthy as the wounded soldiers themselves.
She rang the bell and asked the maid who answered to bring tea. And I asked, “Is Edward not at home?”
Georgiana shook her head. “No, he is at the War Office. He was offered a position there after he resigned his commission in the army, you know. That is why we are in London.”
I did not know, as a matter of fact. I felt a twinge of guilt that I had not bothered to ask. I said, “He is recovered, though, from … from last summer?”
Edward lost his sight due to a severe blow to the head during the battle at Waterloo, but then against all odds he regained it.
Georgiana nodded. “He still gets headaches occasionally, but they are much less severe and less frequent than they were. He has not had any at all for … it must be two months now.”
A small, private smile flickered about the corners of Georgiana’s mouth as she spoke. I doubt she was even aware of it. But she cannot speak Edward’s name and not be suffused with a glow of happiness.
I ought to write out I will not envy Georgiana a hundred times in this journal. The way my mother used to make me do when I had pulled Mary’s hair or stolen jam tarts from the kitchen.
I am glad of Georgiana’s happiness. She truly deserves every good thing in life.
The maid came in at that point with the tea things, and we were both silent while she set the tray on a table by Georgiana. At last when she had left the room, Georgiana said, “You know of course that I am happy to have Jane staying here with us for as long as she likes. I know she worries that she and Amelia are an inconvenience. But they are not—not at all. Even with Jane in bed, I love having Amelia running about, and besides, everyone from Maxwell to the scullery maids is absolutely entranced with her. I thought the discussion over who was to entertain her this morning would positively come to blows. But—” Georgiana stopped, her voice trailing off.
“You wonder what Jane is doing here in London?” I asked.
“Yes! I cannot understand why she would have undertaken to travel at all, with the birth of the child so near. And every time I mention Charles—”
“She gives her best impression of an especially uncommunicative oyster,” I finished for her.
Georgiana gave an involuntary gurgle of laughter, but she quickly sobered as she said, “Yes, exactly. I cannot get her to tell me what is the trouble—not that I have tried very hard. I did not feel it was right to press her, especially in her current state. I was hoping she might have confided in you?”
“No. She has said nothing at all to me, either,” I said.
Georgiana was occupied with pouring out the tea. I got up and wandered over to the room’s big bow window, looking out over the street below.
Georgiana was still speaking. “I have known Charles very nearly all of my life. He and my brother are such friends. I cannot imagine what can have caused a rift between him and Jane. He is so very—”
But the rest of what she said washed passed my ears as meaningless noise. Because at that moment, someone dumped a bucket of cold water down the back of my neck.
Well, not literally speaking, of course. But that was how it felt. As I stood at the window, I heard the rattle of carriage wheels coming very fast. And then a barouche came rolling into view. A very elegant barouche—far more expensively appointed than Mr. Dalton’s curricle. It had Lord Henry Carmichael’s family crest of arms emblazoned in gold and red on the doors. As quickly as the coach passed, I recognised it at once.
I ought to; I spent an embarrassing amount of time last Christmas sketching that same family crest and writing things like ‘Lady Henry Carmichael’ in the margins of all the novels I was reading.
But that was not what made me freeze, feeling all over again as though my insides had been scooped out and replaced with blocks of ice.
The barouche was—naturally enough—being driven by Lord Henry himself. He had a little page boy—a tiger, men like Lord Henry call them—in the back, hanging on for dear life. And in the seat beside Lord Henry was my sister Mary.
She looked absolutely terrified. But with a rigid smile, as though she had pasted an expression of delight onto her face and was holding it there through sheer force of will. I saw her mouth a stiff-lipped response to something Lord Henry must have said. Lord Henry laughed. And then the barouche rattled past th
e window and was gone, rolling away towards Regent’s Park.
I forced myself to draw first one breath, then another. Not that it made me feel very much better, but I was able to keep my voice steady as I turned back to Georgiana and said, “Will you take me upstairs? I will speak to Jane and make her tell me what the trouble is.”
Georgiana’s eyes widened slightly at my tone. I suppose with reason; if my voice was steady, it had also come out rather clashing and grim.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I promise not to take Jane by the shoulders and shake her and demand that she tell me what has gone wrong between her and Charles. But it occurs to me that it is silly to sit here speculating and theorising when we might know the truth simply by asking Jane herself.”
In fact, that had been Mary’s original idea. Which would no doubt have made her gloat excessively if she had been here to hear me say it.
I found Jane in bed, reading to little Amelia. Amelia was sitting curled up beside her mother, her thumb in her mouth, as she listened to the story—which seemed to be about a squirrel. But she readily agreed to Georgiana’s suggestion that she come to the kitchen and see what could be found in the way of leftover treacle tart.
That left me alone with Jane. I waited until the door had closed behind them, then sat down on the edge of the bed and said, “Jane, what is the matter between you and Charles?”
Jane’s jaw dropped open slightly, her cornflower blue eyes registering shock. I had been rather more blunt than I had intended, but I suppose I was feeling rather grimly determined to help one of my sisters, at least. If it could not be Mary, I would at least be of service to Jane. Whether she especially wished for my help or no.
I did gentle my tone as I added, “Please, Jane. I know I am not Lizzy, for you to confide in. But please, will you not tell me what has happened to upset you so? Plainly you are unhappy—enough to put both your own and your child’s life and health at risk. Will you not at least let me see if I can try to help? Is it Charles? Has he done something—” I struggled to find a tactful way of asking whether he had taken to drink or fathered an illegitimate child. Neither of which seemed likely, but I could not think what else could have caused such obvious trouble. “Something wrong?” I finished at last.
Kitty Bennet's Diary (Pride and Prejudice Chronicles) Page 8
