A Season Lost

by Sophie Turner

  “A little better, thank you, even if I am no less pale. I fear I shall always be a little pale, even if my health improves more than it has. Mr. Sinclair was right in that – I shall always be plain and sickly.”

  “Oh, but you must not think that – do not listen to such a man. Your features want only better health to be very becoming,” he said, then glanced down at his lap in apparent mortification. “Pardon me, I shouldn’t have spoken so, particularly to a lady of your quality.”

  “Do not ask for my pardon,” said Anne, blushing. “It was a very nice thing to say.”

  +++

  One of the benefits of having only one remove at dinner was that the event ended earlier than usual, giving Elizabeth more than ample time to go up and nurse her sons. She did so knowing the night to have been a general success. Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair had come up to her in the drawing-room, telling her they were pleased this should now be the tone within the neighbourhood, and this had been echoed by some others.

  The only person in the drawing-room who had seemed unhappy was Laurence Sinclair, who had appeared so when he entered, and then grown even more ill-behaved over the course of the evening. He seemed to be leaving Anne alone, at least, which Elizabeth was glad of. A little attention from such a man might have been flattering and enjoyable, but more was not desirable, particularly when he was in such a mood. No, Anne had spent most of the evening speaking with Mr. Smith. Elizabeth felt no concern over this – Smith’s manners towards her appeared most gentlemanly, and when Elizabeth had approached and overheard their conversation, they were still speaking of farming. She had felt a certain pride for Anne, then, to be putting her utmost efforts in to learning what she needed to manage Rosings.

  Before the twins’ last feeding of the evening, Elizabeth’s stays were completely removed by Sarah, and after this was done, she was handed both of her sons by Mrs. Nichols, but warned they had been offered gruel earlier, and George had taken very happily to it. True to Mrs. Nichols’s statement, George nursed a little and was done, and although James kept at it for longer, Elizabeth was aware of her approaching loss. Eventually, neither of her sons would want their mother’s milk in the same way they had, and although she would have the delights of their growing up still to anticipate, she would lose this connection to them. The only benefit was that the less they nursed, the more she might be able to hope for another child.

  From behind the screen, she heard Darcy come in, and from the sound of it, speak to George about his dinner of gruel. When James was done and Sarah had buttoned up her dress, Elizabeth came out with him and laid him down on the floor beside his brother, standing beside Darcy to observe them. James lifted himself up on his arms and crawled rather shakily toward her, but George only raised himself to sitting, and wabbled along languidly on his bottom. It was difficult to watch this and not think that perhaps the correct son had been born first, the son who should inherit Pemberley and have its responsibilities; it was difficult to watch it and not think there was something odd about George. Yet then again, he had been first to take to solid food. They were not identical and would develop differently, Elizabeth reminded herself, and they were a very long time away from judging any child’s worthiness of inheriting Pemberley.

  Chapter 39

  For some days after the Darcys’s dinner, Pemberley was struck with such a succession of rain that they all chose to remain inside, save their charitable efforts in Kympton and Lambton, and those efforts continued to take place under the protection of an awning. When finally the weather broke – at least as much as it could be expected to break in such a season – Charles was eager to ride to his own estate, to see what could be done for the village there. Elizabeth felt badly for him, to be torn between his duty to those dependent on him and the comfort of his pregnant wife, who could never be expected to live in a house in such poor repair as the old house, nor one half-constructed, for the new one remained severely delayed by the weather.

  Jane would, of course, remain at Pemberley, but Elizabeth and Darcy were both eager to ride, and surprised to find even Anne asking if she might ride with them. Anne’s health continued in its slow improvement, but she still looked as though she would benefit from a great deal more time out of doors, and she was encouraged to come. Buttercup was deemed the best choice for someone who had not ridden in a great many years, and the old pony bore her sturdily as they trotted along the lane.

  It was a beautiful day, and Elizabeth hoped it meant that summer was finally making its appearance – its ridiculously late appearance, near the end of August. The day was fine enough and Elizabeth’s skill was now high enough that Darcy had chosen to go out on Kestrel, and he was often galloping the stallion on ahead of them and then returning at a canter, to expend some of the horse’s abundant energy.

  They were raising Mr. Smith’s farm, and he could be seen mounted upon a sturdy hack, surveying his fields, which were generally looking poorly aside from the water-cress, which thrived. He trotted over to greet them with a concerned expression similar to the one Darcy wore, although his words were cordial, and he commented particularly on Miss de Bourgh’s looking to be in good health that morning.

  Elizabeth glanced at Anne and saw he was right. The air and the exercise must have done Anne good, for she had a very nice colour to her cheeks, and her eyes were bright. Unless – Elizabeth contemplated Anne and wondered if perhaps Mr. Smith was the cause of her sudden invigoration. They had conversed extensively before and after the dinner, and after Laurence Sinclair, Mr. Smith’s manners must have been an improvement. Although Elizabeth much preferred her own husband, Smith was handsome, in a particular sort of way, and she could understand how one might form an attraction to him.

  She contemplated what to do with this thought and determined it should be set aside, for now. Anne had already shown that although she had not been out in society, she did still possess the maturity of her age, and no-one would call Smith a flirtatious man. The difference between his place in society – even with the recent elevation the Darcys had affected for him – and hers was so substantial that a little innocent admiration on one side or the other, or both, could do little harm.

  +++

  A messenger came to Pemberley just before evening with the news that Mr. Bingley intended to stay the night at Clareborne, for there was much to do after his rain-induced absence. He did not return until just after dinner the next day, soaking wet and exhausted, and after he had changed into dry clothes, Elizabeth had a tray brought in for him so he could eat in the drawing-room. This he did, and he was much restored, by both the food and the brandy Darcy poured out for him.

  When he had slowed his pace of eating and drinking, he looked about the room, sighed, and said: “Things grow worse. There has hardly been any progress on the house to speak of, and things are so bad in the village, they are sleeping alongside the streets.”

  “Oh, Charles, how awful,” said Jane, who had already been much affected by his entrance, and looked to be near weeping. Bingley rose and went to sit beside her, providing those comforts he could in a drawing-room amongst family.

  “I cannot be there so often as I would like, particularly with my sweet Jane as she is,” said Charles, “so I decided to do something that may make you all think me mad.”

  “Charles, what is it you did?” asked Darcy, warily.

  “I opened the old house, for those who have nowhere to live. Just temporarily – and just one wing. I made it clear I must still have the principal rooms for my use, when I am there.”

  “You turned over your house to a group of people you do not know – people who have no jobs and no food, and likely began stripping it of anything of value as soon as you rode away?” Darcy asked. It was clear by his countenance that he thought this a singularly bad idea, and Elizabeth found herself in agreement with him.

  “There is nothing of any great value left in the house, aside from what of the panelling and the plasterwork has not been ruined, and I suppose the coppers in
the kitchen and whatnot,” said Charles. “My housekeeper and a few servants are still there, to maintain some order.”

  “Do you think them likely to last long, amongst a mob?”

  “I would not expect them to, but nor do I expect it to become a mob. Everyone seemed very grateful, for a dry place in which to sleep. Well – comparably dry.”

  Darcy sighed, and looked his wife in the eye, seemingly relieved that she was of a mind with him on this. It was one thing to feed the poor, but quite another to invite them to take over one’s house, even if it was a house eventually slated to be torn down. Even if they did not steal anything of value, affecting their removal when the time came would surely prove difficult.

  “I think it was very good of you, Charles,” said Jane.

  “Well, at the very least, no one can accuse you of a lack of generosity,” Darcy said, drily.

  +++

  It was well that Charles had decided to return when he did, for the next morning, Elizabeth was awakened by a tremendous clap of thunder. She rose from the bed and went to the window, finding that a storm of some strength was on the horizon, a dark patch of clouds roiling and churning over the distant hills.

  The storm did not reach them until Elizabeth and Jane were up in the nursery, and it did so with a lengthy boom of thunder, one that set three of the four children within on a course of frightened tears. In the chaos that must come from such a predominance of crying within the nursery, each mother went to her own child to attempt to soothe his or her tears, and Mrs. Padgett hurried down to the kitchen to see about a posset’s being made up.

  James calmed almost as soon as he was picked up and held against his mother’s bosom, and that allowed his mother to look around for where George had got to, hoping Rachel returned quickly from whatever errand she had been sent on, for there were no arms to spare for him at present. George had not gone far, however; he had merely wabbled nearer the window and was now seated there, looking up, seemingly dazzled by each flash of lightning. Once again, Elizabeth could not but be struck by the difference between her two sons, and for a moment she worried that perhaps something was wrong with George’s hearing, that he should not react over what the other children had. Then she noticed he was flinching, when each clap of thunder came. George did not like the thunder, but his fascination over watching the lightning seemed to have outweighed his dislike.

  He continued to watch and flinch as each of the other children were given their share of the posset, but when Mrs. Nichols approached him with his own dose, Elizabeth intervened, saying, “so long as he is not distressed, please leave him be.”

  Thus, after the other children were put down for the inevitable nap that followed Mrs. Padgett’s possets, Elizabeth left the nursery with a final glance over at her son, still quietly watching the lightning. The storm showed no signs of abating, and Elizabeth decided to go down to the library, suspecting her husband might be there.

  Her suspicions were right, she found, after she made her way through the darkened hallways, her progress occasionally punctuated by a flash of lightning. If ever there was a time for Pemberley to endeavour to show herself as the sort of house that could have been the setting of a gothic novel, it was now, but the house was still too light, too well-kept, too Pemberley to make her case, and Elizabeth came into the library with no fears that she was being chased by the ghost of some ancestor past, or a madman that had got loose from his prison in the attic. She entered to find only the usual large, beautiful space, with a lamp lit on one of the tables and her husband quietly reading in the chair beside it. Or rather endeavouring to read, for as Elizabeth approached him, she did not see him turn the page.

  He heard her and turned to look at her, and Elizabeth for the first time saw resignation in his countenance. Any emotion would have been better – hope, particularly, but even anger or frustration Elizabeth would have preferred to the face of the man who looked at her now. He attempted to smile to her, generally failing, and after Elizabeth picked up her book from the table nearby, she laid her hand on his shoulder before sitting in the chair nearest him.

  Before this year, Elizabeth would have found the library the best possible place to be at such a time; she would have delighted in the delicious feeling of being ensconced in such a place while a storm raged outside. There could be no such enjoyment of the situation today, not when she understood that whatever little bit of hope her husband had before possessed was now gone. He had fought the weather, with his ditch-digging and his water-cress and his planting of oats, but now the fight had gone out of him. Earlier in the year she had felt the sense of what he would look like when he was older, but now he had the look of a much younger man, a man who had been given such a heavy responsibility at what was still a young age to bear it.

  She could make no progress on the book while oppressed by such thoughts, and eventually she set it aside and rose, kneeling before him and taking his book – he had yet to turn the page – from him and setting it down. Then she took up his hands in a firm grasp and whispered, “you did the best you could.”

  “Oh Elizabeth,” he murmured, pulling her up into his lap and drawing his arms about her. “At least I have you. I have you and our sons, and that is so very much. That is what I must endeavour to be thankful for.”

  PART TWO

  August, 1816

  Chapter 1

  Georgiana looked with envy at the Chinese shore. She felt herself to have adjusted well to living on board a ship, but did not think she would ever become such a marine creature as Matthew was, for the sight of land always made her very eager to walk upon it. She was not to walk on that shore, however – not now, and not ever. When the ship had come up the China Sea and picked up the Lyra and two Company ships to add to her squadron, those ships had contained a group of gentlemen led by Sir George Staunton, representing the Company’s factory. The Caroline had then passed on to a new anchorage, and Matthew had invited Lord Amherst and the factory men to dine in the great cabin. During dinner, Georgiana had expressed her enthusiasm over going ashore with the watering party that was to go out the next day, Clerkwell not favouring what they had taken on in Anjeri.

  Sir George had, in as genteel a manner as possible, informed Georgiana that her presence – the presence of a foreign woman – would not be tolerated by the Chinese on their shores. Georgiana had gaped at him, as had Matthew, but no amount of gaping could make this cease to be the truth, and the other Company men reinforced that it was. If they chanced to anchor near Macao, she could go ashore there – it being owned by the Portuguese – but otherwise she would be required to remain on board the Caroline.

  In the days that followed, they had not anchored near Macao, but instead sailed toward the White River, where the Lyra was once again sent ahead to announce the squadron, and Lord Amherst gathered his men in the great cabin to speak to them. Georgiana had assisted by sending Bowden to summon them, but then, like Matthew, felt it proper to step out so Lord Amherst could address his men in privacy. The Stantons had sat in the sleeping cabin during this time, and although Georgiana could hear Lord Amherst talking, she could understand nothing of what he said, except for one moment when he strongly urged his men to conduct themselves with the strictest propriety. They certainly had looks of strict propriety as the Caroline sailed to the mouth of the river, where two Chinese men of rank – mandarins, they were called – came on board, saluting in their strange uniforms.

  Five days later, Lord Amherst and his men had been invited ashore, and they had gone there in truly British fashion, with colours waving about the squadron, men standing on the yard-arms, and a nineteen-gun salute fired from each ship with an exactitude that seemed to give Matthew, at least, a great deal of satisfaction. They had gone up the river attended by those strange Chinese ships with their fan-like sails, called junks, watched carefully by Matthew and the other captains until they were out of sight.

  The squadron had then split up, the Lyra and one of the new ships, the Investigator, go
ing to the south, and the Caroline and the other of the new ships, the Discovery, for the north, to eventually rendezvous with the General Hewitt. And so the Caroline had set sail, and Georgiana had passed her days as she was passing this one, watching the shore she would never walk upon. Georgiana reminded herself that she ought to be happy: she was with Matthew, she was loved by him, and she had carried their child for more than three months, now. Her illness had begun to diminish, and the evidence of her baby could finally be seen in the slight swelling of her belly. It was not substantial – she still had some time before she would need to worry about her dresses – but it was visible. There was life inside her, and Georgiana looked at it with hope, yet she also looked at it knowing that if she lost the baby now, or still worse, after the quickening, she could never forgive herself.

  Thus she passed her time fighting the pull of that lee shore within her mind, despondency and pessimism regarding the life within her. She was carrying a child and had carried it far longer than her last; she had carried her first for longer and still lost it. She was viewing things on the shore she had never thought she would see in her life; she would never have opportunity to be present upon that shore. Negative thoughts battled with hope, optimism, and love, with the thought that most Englishwomen would never see the things she saw, even if she could not go ashore, and the determination she felt deep within that she would bring this child to bear: she would not fail again. Always, she tried to consider the outcome she wished for, that she would have this child, and that, in turn, brought to mind her own risk, and the reminder that she must try to find what enjoyment she could in each day, must savour being in the company of the husband she had been without over the past winter.

  That husband came down from where he had been positioned in the masthead, viewing the horizon through his glass, and he approached his wife, saying, “the Great Wall will be coming into view, soon.”