A Private Performance (16 page)

E
LIZABETH FAIRLY SKIPPED ALONG THE
path, matching Darcy's pace with ease. They wound up through the woods, the leafy green canopy delicious despite the cold day. Patches of sunlight lit the path and glades.

They stopped at a turn in the path, which afforded a brief view of the house. Somewhere in its rooms or about the gardens were their guests. The distant figures of Georgiana and Kitty could be seen walking along the terrace. They stopped by the fountain and Georgiana bent gracefully at its rim.

“Georgiana so loved that fountain when she was a babe,” said Darcy. “The sound of its splashing drew her like a magnet.”

“Did it, indeed?”

“Very much so. She would break away from her nurse, toddle to the basin and endeavour to clamber into it, squealing in ecstasy.”

“How wondrously naughty! How I love her for it!”

“These adventures came to an end. One day she succeeded and, as the nurse pulled her from the water, our father's voice cut short Georgiana's triumph. ‘Nurse, what can you be thinking of? Do you seek to drown the child?' Those were his precise words.”

“You were present?”

“I was. My father turned to me.” Darcy repeated his father's next words with difficulty. “‘As for you, sir, I did not think to find you so derelict in your duty to your sister.'”

Elizabeth put her hand on his arm.

“What harm would have come to her with her nurse and brother so close by? I think your father was a little harsh.”

“Not at all, Elizabeth. He was perfectly correct.” A faint blush coloured his cheeks. “I am ashamed to say that I was laughing.”

“That is a crime indeed. What age were you, may I ask?”

“Old enough to know better. I was thirteen.”

She looked into his eyes. “You are equally hard upon yourself, Fitzwilliam.”

“I believe my father never looked on my sister without mourning my mother. I knew he had a morbid fear of losing his daughter.”

“That is very sad. Do you know that I cannot think of a single member of my family who would not have laughed heartily at such antics?”

“What!”

“Except that my mother, perhaps, may have expressed irritation …”

“Naturally.”

Laughing, she continued, “… if the child's dress were new and the basin full of weeds and dirt.” She turned and looked down at the far-off fountain, with Georgiana standing at its edge.

Darcy said, “I do not believe poor Georgiana understood that my father's anger was directed against the nurse and myself. She knew only his displeasure. He looked down on her, a scrap of humanity, a pool of water collecting round her feet, and he frowned.”

“Poor man.”

“Georgiana never again jumped into the fountain.”

Elizabeth felt a cold prickling on the skin of her arms. She shivered.

“I hope we do not leave too many of these uncomfortable memories with our own children,” she said.

At once she was reminded of all the unhappiness and quarrels at Netherfield following the loss of her unborn child.

‘If we have any such,' she thought.

He was looking at her steadily. She looked up and smiled.

He said, “Elizabeth, I hope you do not dwell overmuch on events in Hertfordshire.”

“No, I assure you.” She took his arm. They turned again away from the house and followed the path further up the hill. He covered her hand with his.

“I know how disappointed you felt, dearest, but recollect for how short a time we have been married.”

“I know. I know. I am over that pain, Fitzwilliam. Yet how much easier it would have been to bear, if none but ourselves had known of my condition.”

“It is my ungovernable temper that has led to this estrangement from your sister Mary.”

“You were perfectly right to be angry and Papa's decree that she could not come here until she has apologised has been of great convenience to me.”

She took a little skipping step. “It has freed me from Mary's embarrassing exhibitions of her self-applauded talent and her false piety. It is quite convenient for me that she is so stiff-necked.”

He wondered if he should remonstrate with her on this unfeeling view of her own sister, but he could not, for laughter.

They continued up the path. Moving out of sight of the house, they wound around the side of the valley and across a little bridge. They were totally hidden here, from above by the overhanging rocks and from below by the trees. The air was redolent with the smell of damp and mosses, and with the sounds of running water.

“Avert your eyes, sir!” Elizabeth said. She hitched up her skirt a little into her sash, and they picked their way along a mossy path that branched off among the rocks.

The water gushed out of a fissure in the rock and fed a deep pool in the side of the hill. Darcy spread his coat over a rock and they sat together. Ripples spread out through the green reflections of the trees. She leant her head against him and they sat in silent companionship.

At last, Elizabeth raised her head from his shoulder and her eyes from the pool.

She looked at her watch.

“Gracious, Fitzwilliam! It is past eleven, and we have an hour's walk back to the house.” He rose, reluctance in all his movements. He put out his hand to her and she rose. All her contemplative peacefulness was gone. She was alive with excitement.

“I would not have my friends arrive at Pemberley and find me absent.”

“Indeed not. Mr. and Mrs. Courtney must not find us negligent.”

They began to trace the little track to the path. Elizabeth turned to bid the pool farewell.

“How Mrs. Courtney would love this spot.”

Darcy recoiled inwardly.

“Never mind,” said Elizabeth. “She shall not know of its existence. I doubt if she has ever walked so far or climbed so high a hill in her life.”

Darcy felt a rush of relief, somewhat tempered by a lack of satisfaction in her reasons for keeping her friend from this spot.

“We shall, in all probability, lack the opportunity to repeat this excursion ourselves these next three weeks, dearest. By tomorrow we shall have fifty guests in the house, and I shall treasure each moment I spend alone with you.”

She raised her eyebrows. They set off briskly to return to the house.

 

Kitty was fascinated by Mrs. Courtney. She was quite the smallest person at table for luncheon, but by no means the least significant. She sparkled away on her host's right hand, listening to him, then making him laugh. Kitty could scarcely attend to her neighbours for wondering what Mrs. Courtney might be saying.

Darcy had gravely questioned his guest regarding her family's health. She told him that Mr. Courtney, as could plainly be seen, was “disgracefully stout in his constitution”. Her aunt, the marchioness, was likewise, although she showed her usual end-of-the-season dissatisfaction with her protégés.

“I am sorry to hear it,” said Darcy. She laughed.

“Mr. Glover was invited to pay an extended visit to the estate of an admirer, who offers him patronage he cannot afford to scorn. When he carefully broke the news, Lady Englebury's response was to wave him off with an injunction to partake of some fresh air and return exhibiting some colour. Her ladyship looked about her drawing room and commented on how surrounded she was
with (here Amelia mimicked her aunt's expression of scorn and distaste) ‘pasty-complexioned men'. She well-nigh broke his heart.”

Darcy laughed.

Mrs. Courtney watched him, as she added, “The marchioness said: ‘If I cannot have Mrs. Darcy, I want no-one.'” Darcy merely inclined his head.

Mrs. Courtney looked archly at her host. “You have won such a prize in your lady, Mr. Darcy.”

He smiled. “Indeed, I know this.”

“Lady Englebury has gone to Deepdene without her disciples. Of course, I do not mean that she abandoned my cousins. Miss Whittaker and her brother will spend three weeks with her, after visiting their friends in Somerset. Her ladyship says that she cannot survive five months on wholesome country fare, without a generous seasoning of Peregrine's spite.” Amelia noted the pleasure with which Mr. Darcy received that remark.

 

Any hopes Kitty might have cherished of conversation with Amelia Courtney after the meal were dashed. Elizabeth carried her friend off to drive around the estate in her new phaeton. Kitty watched from her window as the groom fussed over the placement of the blanket on their knees. She saw Elizabeth turn and speak to him, as he leapt up onto the narrow step on the back of the vehicle. The coachman half turned his head, seemingly in surprise. The groom had jumped down and stood in a woebegone posture. Elizabeth could be seen to laugh. He jumped up again, and the coachman turned back, with squared shoulders and handed up the reins to his mistress. They were off, all as it should be, with the mistress of Pemberley properly escorted when away from her house.

Kitty sighed. How was she to pass the afternoon? Miss Bingley and Miss Darcy were at their music. Jane was driving out with Bingley. Oh, for the morrow, when there would be any number of young people about the house. She sat at her little desk to compose a letter to her sister Lydia.

Kitty looked out across the park, to a little summer house, where the sun streamed in. How picturesque she would look sitting there, with the light shining through her muslin gown. It was a little cold out, to be sure, but she might wear her velvet pelisse. Kitty gathered up her paper and implements and set off for the summer house. She seated herself prettily by the window and unpacked her little basket. Just as she imagined, the sun came in and illuminated her nicely. The pink frills of velvet glowed around her neck and wrists, while the light fabric of her skirt shone almost transparent. And there was no-one to see her! She picked up her pen.

From the safety of distance, Kitty smiled at the thought of her mother's hysterics. For the first time, she noticed the buzzing of insects in the flowers that sprawled over the roof of the summer house. She moistened her little red mouth with the tip of her tongue. As she dipped the pen in the ink, a sound intruded upon her. It was a footstep. She looked up and gasped. She jumped up and the pen rolled from the little table to the floor. The intruder stepped forward and bent to retrieve it. Gold tassels swung forward from his epaulettes; gold buttons adorned the front of his red coat. He held out the pen to her. Kitty gazed into his handsome face. He bowed. Brown eyes sparkled with warmth and humour. Under his teasing smile, a strong chin jutted out over his gold-braided collar.

“Madam, may I present myself for your protection?”

“Oh, no!” she said. “I do not know you, sir.”

Snatching up her letter, she stepped out of the revealing ray of sunlight and passed him on the steps, her eyes averted. She tripped back across the grass, never once looking back. He laughed to himself and picked up the little basket she seemed to have forgotten. At a distance, he followed her back to the house.