Kitty Bennet's Diary (Pride and Prejudice Chronicles) (21 page)

And as it happened, Georgiana was perfectly correct about Saunders’s internal map of London streets.  We arrived at Countess Lieven’s—a very fashionable town home near Holland House—in plenty of time, and with still no sign of Mrs. Hurst’s carriage.

Georgiana got down from the carriage again, looking up and down the street and frowning.  “Now where is Edward?  He promised me faithfully that he would be—  Oh, there he is.  And he brought the dogs, bless him.”

She waved to Edward—who was standing at the far end of the street, holding the leashes of a rather astonishing half a dozen dogs of assorted sizes and breeds.  Too far away for Mrs. Hurst to notice him—or so we hoped—or to recognise him if she did.

Edward raised his hat in response.  And Georgiana climbed back into the carriage to wait for Mrs. Hurst to arrive—which she did perhaps a quarter of an hour later.  Red-faced, flustered, and plainly in a very ill-temper indeed, to judge from the cutting remarks which she addressed to her servant as he helped her down from the carriage.

Georgiana flashed me a quick, conspiratorial grin and we both allowed Saunders to assist us down onto the pavement, as well.

“Why, Louisa,” Georgiana chirped when Mrs. Hurst caught sight of us, “how delightful to see you here.  I had not realised you were invited to the Countess’s today.”  She slipped her arm companionably through Mrs. Hurst’s, and then—I must say with a great deal of skill—contrived to stumble, jerking Mrs. Hurst’s very fashionable bead and silk reticule from her arm and sending it to the ground.

“Oh no!”  Georgiana pantomimed horror.  “Oh, Louisa, I am so dreadfully sorry.  It is just that … my condition, you know.”  I rather think she may even have managed to blush.  “I sometimes take these dizzy turns.”

I could see that Louisa Hurst was positively fuming; Georgiana had not only managed to make her spill her bag, she had sent it directly into a puddle of mud.  However, there was very little she could say to that besides grinding out an extremely unconvincing, “Pray do not trouble yourself.  I assure you, it is nothing.”

Georgiana continued to blush and hold tight to Mrs. Hurst’s arm and babble apologies.  While I said, “Please, let me help,” and bent down to retrieve the reticule from the mud.  I handed the bag back to Mrs. Hurst.

At that moment, far away at the end of the street, Edward let go his hold on the dogs’ leashes.  They came bounding down the street towards us, baying and woofing and yipping.  It was quite an impressive sight.  Mrs. Hurst shied back.  And even I felt myself flinch—and I stepped in front of Georgiana, because I did not want it on my conscience that I had caused an increasing mother to be knocked down by a pack of baying hounds.

However, the dogs cooperated beautifully.  Or rather, I should say that they responded exactly as I would have hoped to the greasy sausage-paper that I had saved especially for the purpose and rubbed all over Mrs. Hurst’s reticule while she was distracted by Georgiana.  The paper itself I had dropped into the gutter—and some of the dogs lunged towards that.  But the rest jumped all over Mrs. Hurst, yapping and barking and trying to lick everything from her reticule to her face.

“Oh, what are they doing?” Mrs. Hurst shrieked, waving her arms and pushing ineffectively at the throng of dogs.  “Get them off me!  Oh, they must be possessed!  What can they want?  Help!  Jerry, call them off at once!”  This last was directed at her footman—the same servant to whom she had been so thoroughly rude before.

Jerry did come to her aid.  But not, I noticed, with any especial speed.  By the time he succeeded in shooing the dogs away from Mrs. Hurst, her hat was tipped over one eye, her hair was coming down—and she had muddy paw prints of assorted sizes all up and down the front of her dress.

She also looked thoroughly dazed.  She appeared completely blank-faced and glassy-eyed as Georgiana exclaimed in sympathy and offered her a lace-trimmed handkerchief to wipe at the mud. 

I would have felt almost guilty.  But she has been cruelly unkind to Jane.  She is the sort of woman to think nothing of being rude to her servants. 
And
she had directed a vicious kick at the smallest of the dogs.  Though thankfully for the dog’s sake, she had missed.

 “I think … I think perhaps I had better return home,” she said at last.

Georgiana and I made further sympathetic noises and agreed that perhaps that would be the best plan.  And contrived to wait until she had got back into her carriage and driven away before we dissolved into laughter once more. 

We were still laughing when Edward arrived on the scene.  I had always thought him rather stern and stiff.  But he was smiling, as well, as he saw Georgiana’s face.  It was not that either of them set out to make me feel awkward or left out.  It was just, I think, that whenever the two of them come together it is for the moment as though they were alone in the world.

“Edward!  There you are.  You were absolutely splendid,” Georgiana said.

Certainly Edward’s focus seemed to narrow to include nothing but Georgiana as he moved to her, slid an arm around her waist, and kissed her.  “If that is all it takes to impress you, I shall have to remember to forgo expensive gifts in favour of a pack of stray dogs.”

“They were perfect,” Georgiana said.  “Where on earth did you find them?”

“Hired them for the purpose from a group of small boys I found playing in the park.  And a few were strays.”  One remaining dog—a spaniel—was still hanging about, apparently still hoping for actual sausages.  Edward bent down and scratched it behind the ears, then looked up at Georgiana with another grin.  “So are you going to tell me, now, what this was all about?”

“Tonight—I promise,” Georgiana said.  “For now, you must be needing to get back to the War Office.  And I ought to go and check on Jane.  She seemed a little unwell this morning.”

Edward bid us good-bye, kissing Georgiana again and raising his hat to me.  So perhaps he does not disapprove of me quite so much as he used to.

Georgiana and I climbed back into the carriage, and I said, “Jane is unwell?”

Georgiana nodded, biting her lip.  “I am sorry, Kitty.  I ought to have told you before, but I did not wish to make you worry.  She looked so tired and pale this morning—and she ate hardly anything.  Mary had not yet arrived, either—so it was not simply an act for her benefit.”

So far, at least, the plan of keeping Mary occupied with Jane has been succeeding.  Mary’s last two days have been spent at Georgiana’s, playing with Amelia and reading aloud to Jane.

If Mary is keeping to her usual taste in reading materials, Jane ought to receive some sort of award for sisterly devotion in that she endures it.

Georgiana hesitated, biting her lip again.  “There is something else,” she said at last.  “I wrote to Charles.  I am afraid I did not tell Jane I had done so, for fear of upsetting her.  And I did not give Charles any details about the necklace or anything else that has occurred.  I only said that Jane was too unselfish to write him herself and take him away from the estate on her account—but that I thought she would be very glad to have him in London with her.  I hope I did not do wrong.”

“No, indeed.  I am glad you did,” I told her.  “I have been thinking that I ought to write to Charles myself.  But it will be much better coming from you—you have known him so much longer than I have.”  I thought of Mrs. Hurst’s face as she was assaulted by the dogs—but much of the humour had soured into a lump of anxiety in the pit of my stomach.  “With any luck, we shall have regained Jane’s necklace by the time Charles can arrive in town.”

“With any luck,” Georgiana agreed.

There was a moment’s quiet between us.  Or rather, as quiet as the streets of London ever are.  Saunders was driving us back to Darcy House, and carriages rolled past us on either side, while newspaper boys shouted out the latest headlines on corners and street vendors selling everything from ribbons to hot baked potatoes hawked their wares.

And then I said, “You did not even tell Edward
why
you wished him to set a pack of dogs on Mrs. Hurst?”

Georgiana shook her head.  “No—there was no time, you see.  He was out until late last night, attending a political supper with the German ambassador.  I was already asleep by the time he came home.  And then this morning, he had another meeting to attend quite early.  There was just barely enough time for me to explain what was required before he had to dash out the door.”

“And yet he still fell in completely with the scheme?” I said.

Georgiana seemed to see nothing at all remarkable in that.  “Oh, yes.”

I did not mean to say anything more.  I would have sworn that I had clenched my jaw so that I could
not
allow the words to escape.  But somehow I heard myself say, “Georgiana, do you ever … do you ever think of last summer, still?”

Georgiana’s look was surprised, but she said, her voice quiet, “Of course I do.  And so does Edward.  He has nightmares, still—of the fighting, the field of battle.  But at least we have each other—”  She broke off sharply and looked at me with wide, repentant eyes.  “Oh, Kitty, I am so sorry.  I should not have said—  I did not mean to remind you …”  She trailed off again and covered my hand with hers.  “Oh Heaven, there is absolutely nothing I can say that will not make it even worse, is there?”

“It’s all right.  I know what you meant.”  Georgiana would never wish to remind me that Edward lived through the war, and John did not.  Or of my knowing deep-down that even if John had lived, we should never have been able to offer each other the comfort that Georgiana and Edward seem to.

I squeezed Georgiana’s hand.  “Truly, Georgiana, it’s all right.”

I am sitting curled up beside the dying embers of tonight’s fire in my aunt and uncle’s parlour, with this book balanced on my knees.  At least it makes for a change from writing upstairs in bed while Mary slumbers on the other side of the room.  My head aches and my eyes feel gritty with weariness after the manner in which I spent today, and I wish—

I wish any number of things.  Chief among which is that I might have met Lancelot Dalton a year ago.  Before I met John or made him fall in love with me.  Before I even knew who Lord Henry Carmichael was.

Of course, while I am wishing for impossibilities, I ought also to wish for a cure for Will.  And peace of mind for Mark Chamberlayne.

And that my sister Mary would have the sense that God gave to geese.

What happened was this: This morning, Mary was dressing herself to set out for Darcy House and Jane.  I actually felt some slight stirrings of hope, because she was taking more than usual care with her appearance.  Darkening her eyelashes and adding a touch of rouge to her lips and cheeks … and she had slept with her head tied up in rags to curl her hair.

I asked whether Rhys Williams would be calling for her this afternoon, to bring her home from Darcy House.  But Mary gave a dismissive wave of her hand and said, “Oh, no.  I told him I would not need him to escort me today.  Miranda has invited me to go walking in the park again this afternoon.  She and Mrs. Hurst will call at Georgiana and Edward’s to collect me.”

Her face took on a dreamy-eyed expression that told me there was every chance of Lord Henry’s being one of the party.

Though at least I had the satisfaction of reflecting that Lord Henry would be undoubtedly every bit as dismayed to see Mary as she would be delighted to see him.

Aunt Gardiner is better, but still not entirely well, which meant that I had charge of Susanna for the morning.  After Mary had departed, I was playing with Susanna on the floor—and trying to think what further steps I might take to disentangle Mary from Lord Henry.

After all, if love were as simple as that to shut off and forget, I would not at this moment have sour pain scratching at my heart with sharp little claws.

However, I forgot all about Mary and Lord Henry when the messenger arrived.  A small boy, red-faced and panting, who delivered to me a scrawled note written by Sergeant James Maddox.

Sergeant Maddox served in the same regiment as Mark Chamberlayne.  Mark was his commanding officer.  And Mark’s one saving grace in these last months since he returned from Brussels has been that Sergeant Maddox has remained in Mark’s service.  Nominally as a valet, but his duties are more often those of nursemaid.  Whenever I have had to help a drunken Mark back to his rooms, Sergeant Maddox has been there to take Mark in and put him to bed to sleep it off.  And I know he also follows Mark to the various gaming hells that Mark frequents, and tries as best he may to ensure that Mark comes to no actual bodily harm.

He—Sergeant Maddox, that is—is a big, heavy-set man with a dome-like bald head and an extremely down-to-earth, practical nature.  He was with Mark in the thick of the battle at Waterloo, but he managed to come through without a scratch.  And with scarcely appearing to bat an eyelash, either, at the danger he had endured.  Until today, I should have said that Maddox was impossible to upset or alarm.

His note, though—hastily scrawled on the back of an unpaid wine merchant’s bill addressed to Mark—was as near to hysterical as it was possible for James Maddox to come.

Captain Chamberlayne, he wrote, had come home early this morning from a night of carousing.  He was drunk—which is not of course unusual.  But Mark then had proceeded to lock himself into his bedroom with his loaded army pistol.  And nothing Sergeant Maddox could say would induce him to come out—or even to speak to Sergeant Maddox through the door.  Every entreaty Sergeant Maddox had made had so far met with no response at all.

A thread of panic pulled tight in my chest as I read the words.  Several times I have heard Mark say, while intoxicated, that he would have done better to have died on the battlefield in Brussels.  But I never thought that he might actually do himself an injury.

I picked up Susanna and carried her to my aunt’s room—and then stopped, my hand raised to knock on the door.  I could not tell my aunt the truth.  Every nerve in my body felt stretched tight with the need for haste, and at best it would take a great deal of convincing for my aunt to permit me to go.  At worst, she would forbid me from going to Mark’s rooms altogether.  Aunt Gardiner is not overly strict, but the address Sergeant Maddox had given was in an even less savoury part of town than Mark’s last place of lodging.