Attempting Elizabeth (5 page)

I stared off into space for a few moments. I’m sure I was making Mrs. Younge uncomfortable, but I really didn’t care. After what felt like an age, I felt my hands moving: placing tiny, perfect stitches into the sampler. It was an extremely odd feeling letting my body do something that my mind
knew
I didn’t know how to do. It took more effort to not concentrate on it than one would imagine.

I kept wanting to freak out about the body that I was in. It was strange to feel like I was me, but inside an entirely different body. A body that could do things like embroider without a thought. Every time I felt my mind veering off into panic I would reassure myself that I’d had a severe mental break. While this doesn’t sound like it would be very reassuring, I found it oddly comforting to have an explanation. I figured that I was probably being taken care of by a crack team of specialists as well. I was just too fully involved in my hallucination to notice that I’d been strapped to a gurney in a nice hospital somewhere and, hopefully, fully medicated.

While I comforted myself with thoughts of my lunacy, my fingers continued sewing at a fast pace. Eventually Mrs. Younge seemed assured enough of my return to normal to pick back up where she left off, extolling the virtues of George Wickham. She spent a great deal of time on what a fine figure of a gentleman he had made in a new coat he had recently purchased, and added several references to how he had known me as a child and how surprised he must have been to find me quite grown up into a lady.

She didn’t really seem to require much response. The conversation was entirely one-sided and obviously designed to promote Wickham’s interests with Georgiana. I nodded a few times, and offered a “Yes, oh he did look quite fine,” here and there, but the entire thirty minutes could have passed without one more word from me.

I was incredibly disappointed that the next half hour actually took a full thirty minutes to pass. I was really hopeful that, seeing as it was
my
hallucination after all, time would either speed up, or skip ahead, so I could get to the interesting parts. But, unfortunately, I was stuck there, the minutes ticking off at an annoyingly normal rate, for a full half hour before we heard a knock at the door.

“She was then but fifteen, which must be her excuse...”

At the sound
of the knock on the front door, Mrs. Younge, started up eagerly, pinching her cheeks to improve the color as she set her sewing aside. I glanced at her speculatively. That was a whole theory I had never considered before. Could Mrs. Younge have been so invested in getting Wickham a rich wife because she was interested in him herself? Maybe once Georgiana was Mrs. Wickham and safely stashed away at a country home, Mrs. Younge and Mr. Wickham could live it up on her dowry. I’m not sure if I was more shocked or amused by the thought of the two of them together.

Mrs. Younge regained her composure as the butler came in to announce Mr. Wickham. He was followed into the room by Wickham himself. Mrs. Young and I both stood and curtsied (something else that Georgiana’s body just did by itself without me thinking about it) and Wickham bowed.

We all sat back down. Wickham sat next to me on the settee and looked at me earnestly. “I do hope you are feeling well today, Miss Darcy. I fear our walk yesterday was a bit long and damp. I had not a moment’s rest last evening so concerned was I that you may have taken a chill.”

I blinked for a moment, surveying him. How stupid did this guy think that Georgiana was? Apparently quite. Did this kind of syrupy flirting work with her? Then I remembered that Georgiana was only fifteen. I’d probably fallen for worse at fifteen. God, I’d probably fallen for worse up until two months ago with Jerkface Jordan.

Wickham was really attractive. I’m not sure what I’d expected him to look like. He’s always decently handsome in the movies, and the book does say he has every manner and appearance of a gentleman. But somehow I’d expected something more obvious in his appearance to proclaim him a rake. Like a big red cursive R on his chest, kind of like Hester Prynne’s A in the
Scarlet Letter
. This is why I focused on British Lit for my Masters. My fellow Americans can be so...literal.

Wickham had dark blond, slightly curly that was styled in such a way as to make him seem just a bit windblown, although I would bet it took at least an hour to achieve. He had light, silvery blue eyes, under rather heavy brows, a straight nose and a very sensual looking mouth. I was sure it was that mouth that had got him this far in life. His bottom lip was slightly fuller than the top one. He could probably get women to do whatever he wanted by just curling his lips slightly into a teasing smile. Which of course was set off perfectly by his dimples.

He wasn’t extremely tall, but had broad enough shoulders, though he was generally slim. He looked great in a waistcoat and cravat. But then, I was partial to the whole cravat thing.

Everything about him screamed danger. But poor Georgiana—and really if you think about it, even Elizabeth and most definitely Lydia—was too young and inexperienced to know it. Being as I was unfortunately intimately familiar with his brand of smooth talker, I could smell the sleaze a mile away.

Mrs. Younge coughed discreetly and I suddenly realized that I’d been silent for too long. “Oh. Thank you for your concern, Mr. Wickham, but I do not find that I have developed a chill at all. I am quite well.”

This seemed to satisfy him, though I did catch the questioning glance he shot Mrs. Younge who responded with a slight shrug of her shoulders. I folded my hands in my lap and attempted to appear properly interested in the man who was holding my fragile young heart in his dastardly grip.

“I hope our walk did not fatigue
you
, Mr. Wickham, although I doubt it could. You seem to be very strong and...robust.” I batted my eyelashes—only twice, I didn’t want to overdo it. I saw something flare in Wickham’s eyes. Georgiana likely would have taken it for interest or desire, but I could see it for what it was. Victory.

“Thank you, my dear, for the compliment. I assure you I am not at all fatigued from our walk.”

“That is good to hear, Mr. Wickham. I would hate to think that anything so trifling as our walk could fatigue a man such as you.” I wondered if I’d pushed it too far, but neither Wickham nor Mrs. Younge expected Georgiana to have any knowledge of flirting or double entendres. It seemed I was safe.

“Perhaps then, Miss Darcy, as neither you nor Mr. Wickham seem the worse for yesterday’s little stroll, we could take another one today. The weather is so fine.” Mrs. Younge offered.

I turned to look at her with a smile. “Oh, Mrs. Younge, what a lovely idea. It is a perfect day for a walk, do you not agree, Mr. Wickham?”

“Any day that I could escort two such lovely ladies must be a perfect day. The weather would not dare refuse me such enjoyment.”

I looked down at the fabric on the settee quickly, trying not to burst out laughing. I was hoping he read my move as a shy young girl being overwhelmed by such a compliment. And what a compliment it was. Did he always flirt quite so obviously? If I ever got out of crazytown (it could happen; they’ve developed some really great meds) I was going to have to reread
Pride and Prejudice
to see if he always talked like this or if he was just laying it on extra thick for Georgiana.

There was much hustle and bustle as Mrs. Younge called for our hats and parasols to be brought so we could prepare for our walk. It seemed like a lot of prep work for a short walk on a sunny day, but then the sun was the enemy of our delicate and pale English skin. I remembered Caroline Bingley’s snide comment about Elizabeth’s skin getting tanned while she travelled and had to suppress the urge to laugh. I wondered what would happen if I just set off for a walk without all the proper accoutrements. Or announced that in just a few hundred years tanned skin would be looked on favorably and that, in fact, people would pay good money to artificially turn their skin brown. I would bet that my current tan, still left over from those blessed few weeks over break when I’d had actual time away from school to hang out at the beach and lay mindlessly in the sand, was set off nicely by the straightjacket the doctors probably had me in. Assuming straight jackets were white. I’d only ever seen them in movies and they always seemed to be white.

Luckily, Georgiana’s body remembered how to tie on a bonnet and the proper way to open and hold a parasol, and so, within a few minutes Mrs. Younge, Mr. Wickham, and I were out the door and on our way down the cobblestone street headed toward the seashore. Wickham had offered me his arm and we strolled together a few steps ahead of Mrs. Younge. I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to notice as she fell farther and farther behind us, just like I wasn’t supposed to notice the speaking looks she and Wickham had shared over my head as I was fiddling with my parasol.

They had decided between them that now was the best time to strike. I wondered if this is how it really went down, or if my extra bit of flirting had caused them to move up their scheduled seduction. I suddenly worried that I’d set things off too early and Darcy wouldn’t reach us in time to save Georgiana. That could seriously mess up the whole novel. Georgiana would then be Mrs. Wickham, stuck with an unfaithful scoundrel of a husband who once he had his grubby paws on her thirty thousand pounds would likely never even look at her again. Darcy would never go to Netherfield, he’d be too distraught over his sister’s elopement, and would likely take her back to Pemberley after he somehow paid off Wickham—unless of course, Wickham wanted to flaunt his power over Georgiana to Darcy and so kept her from her brother as much as possible. Of course Wickham would want to hurt Darcy anyway he could.

I tried not to hyperventilate. If Darcy never went to visit Bingley at Netherfield he would never meet Elizabeth Bennet. Literature’s greatest couple would never get the chance to meet all because I’d batted my eyelashes a few times!

Wickham was saying something to me, but for the life of me I couldn’t pay attention. I’d just ruined my favorite book of all time and I was sinking into a pit of despair.

“Miss Darcy? Are you well? You seem rather far off,” Wickham’s voice finally cut through my mind’s frantic rambling. Miss Darcy. Wait a minute. I was not, in fact, Georgiana Darcy, but just a sad, overworked, and heartbroken grad student taking a slight vacation from reality. I had not ruined my favorite novel. I was merely insane.

I tilted my head up and flashed a sparkling smile at Wickham. “I am sorry. My mind did wander for a bit. I was just enjoying this lovely sunshine. It is quite beautiful today, is it not?”

“I do feel as though I am in the presence of great beauty today, though I confess I have not been paying attention to the sunshine.”

I tried not to throw up. “Mr. Wickham, I am sorry to say I do not quite take your meaning.” ‘
Cause you were so subtle
, I thought derisively as I tried once again for a slight eyelash flutter,
like a sledgehammer.

We had reached a sort of walkway that ran right along the shoreline. The sea breeze was lovely and cool and it played with Wickham’s tousled curls in a very appealing way. I wondered if he’d brought us down to the beach for just that very reason, so that he would appear young and carefree and edible. That would make him a hell of a set director, but I suppose all good actors secretly want to direct. I watched him turn slightly into the breeze and I realized that it
was
all staging. This was going to be it! I just knew this was going to be the moment.

I almost panicked and ran. Then I almost ruined the whole thing by laughing in his face as he looked down at me and proclaimed in a serious voice that he found himself to be quite in love with me and would I do him the great honor of becoming his wife.

“Uh,” I swallowed. I was supposed to say yes. I just was having a hard time forming the words. This was my first proposal. And instead of coming from a man I loved and wanted to marry (and being directed actually at
me
), it was coming from a dirty, rotten, loser who only wanted money and revenge. I had compared my exes to Wickham and here I was with actual Wickham proposing to me.

It’s okay, Kelsey, it’s not really happening. Just say it.

“I am so flattered, I—” I cast my eyes downward. “Of course I shall marry you.” I looked up through my lashes in time to see the exultant look cross his face before he rearranged his features back into something more appropriate for a happy lover. “How excited my brother will be when we tell him.”

A muscle in Wickham’s jaw ticked almost imperceptibly. “Yes, Darcy shall surely be happy that his childhood friend and his sister are making such a happy match of it. Just think of all the good times we shall have at Pemberley together, my dear.”

“Oh, I cannot wait to tell him!” I gushed. “He will want us to be married at Pemberley. I have always dreamed of having a wedding there and now I shall! I daresay we should write to him immediately. Do let us turn back now so that we can write to him!” There was something perversely fun about not making this easy for him.

“What a splendid idea, my dear. Perhaps we should first share our joy with Mrs. Younge?”

“Mrs. Younge, of course, you should tell her, my…dear Wickham.”

Wickham turned us around so that we could inform Mrs. Younge of our happy news. She had managed to end up several yards behind us. As a chaperone she sucked, however as co-conspirator for Wickham she was truly brilliant. She expressed her joy and happiness for us, and how she had always known this was just how it should be. That from the start she could tell we had been made for each other.

I’m sure at some point any decent person would have expressed concern over Georgiana’s rather young age, the comparative age gap (I’m pretty sure it had to be about nine years, which at say, twenty and twenty-nine isn’t too much of a big deal, but at fifteen and twenty-four it is kind of a different matter. In my day and age a prosecutable matter), and the fact that Wickham had most definitely not applied to her brother and her cousin who were co-guardians of Georgiana since the death of her parents, for her hand. But these were all apparently trifling matters that did not merit discussion.

As we headed back to the townhouse, Wickham played the devoted lover to the hilt, asking every few minutes if I was warm enough, complimenting me on the sparkle in my eye or the blush in my cheeks. I suppose if I was really a young, newly engaged girl, my head would have been turned by all of his nonsense, but to me it really did seem just like nonsense. He and Mrs. Younge still had to convince Georgiana that it was a brilliant plan to elope without informing her brother of her intentions and surprise Darcy with news of their marriage. I was actually very curious to find out how they were going to convince me. Even though she was young, parentless, and under the influence of an obviously unsuitable chaperone, with a handsome man paying attention to her as a woman for the first time, it still struck me as odd that she’d agree to run off with him. Elopements just did not happen in her class during this time period. And if they did they were severely looked down upon.

Darcy was a proud man. I can’t believe he hadn’t instilled in Georgiana the worth of her fortune or family. It could be that he just didn’t believe her to be grown up enough to be the object of fortune hunters? That seemed like a huge lapse on his part. Fifteen is young, but nothing is off limits when the girl has a thirty thousand pound fortune. Even I knew that, and I was from a completely different century.

But then maybe I’ve just read more novels than Fitzwilliam Darcy.

We walked along with my only responses to Wickham’s overly solicitous attitude being a few modest laughs and my almost perfected mock-innocent eyelash flutter thrown in here and there for good measure. I was still wrestling with Georgiana’s naïveté. It was beginning to frustrate me. I realized I had no basis to guess how Wickham was going to manage to sway me to his will.

Austen just sort of skates over that part of the story. Actually, everything I was experiencing now didn’t even happen as storyline in the novel. It’s more like a flashback sequence. It was technically
before
the main storyline. This whole episode is just related to Elizabeth by Darcy in a few paragraphs of a letter. He was trying to lay out for her Wickham’s true nature and felt that the only way was to tell the truth about what had happened to his young sister—trusting Elizabeth not to ruin Georgiana’s reputation by spreading the story around. I’d always thought it showed a great deal of respect on Darcy’s part for Lizzy’s character and discretion, even though in that disastrous first proposal he made it clear he thought her family had no such discretion.