The Unexpected Miss Bennet (7 page)

M
ARY’S FEELINGS OF discontent waned gradually over her stay. Lizzy, Darcy and Georgiana made her feel very welcome, and the house was so grand that it was like living in a palace. Mary’s room was larger than all the bedrooms at Longbourn combined, and she had her own sitting room if she wanted.

‘We have no shortage of rooms here – sometimes I wonder at the architect,’ Lizzy said tartly as they took tea with Georgiana in Lizzy’s own parlour. It was a little smaller than the others and more welcoming, and Mary smiled when she saw some bits of furniture and old things from Longbourn that Lizzy had brought for her own use. A faded footstool, upon which Mary now had her slippered feet, a vase in the shape of a somewhat chipped and battered dryad, and some little boxes and pillows now adorned the room.

‘I did not know that they had been removed from home until I saw them here,’ she murmured. ‘What did Mama say?’

Lizzy smiled and did her best to imitate their mother’s flustered tones. ‘ “Lizzy! You surely do not intend to take all these old things to Pemberley!” ’

‘I like them,’ Georgiana said stoutly. ‘I am very glad you brought them because they are very sweet.’ She wrinkled her nose, looking much younger than her seventeen years. ‘They remind me of you, Lizzy.’

‘What, old and faded and chipped?’ Lizzy laughed and, after a moment of shock, so did Georgiana. Mary could see that she was still not used to her new sister.

‘It is good to be reminded of home, I think, but also not to dwell too much on it,’ Mary said. ‘One must get used to one’s new situation.’

Lizzy looked at her again with the same half-puzzled expression as before, but she let Mary’s comment pass, and the women discussed other things. But later, when Lizzy took her for a walk outside in the grounds, she said to Mary,

‘Do you think that I am unhappy here?’

They faced one another at the end of a long greensward, the wind whipping at the tendrils of hair peeking out beneath their bonnets. Mary took a long time to reply, wondering what to say.

‘You seem different,’ she said at last. ‘You used to be more light-hearted.’

‘Oh Mary,’ Lizzy said, but it was not with the usual tones that Mary was used to. Lizzy was almost crying. ‘I am not unhappy. I am so happy with Darcy that sometimes I cannot sleep at night for fear I will wake up and it will be all a dream. I do miss my family, though, and I do miss Longbourn. That is why I brought those little ornaments with me, not to remind me of home because I hate Pemberley, but because I
am
Longbourn, just as those things are, and they, and I, have become Pemberley, and so does Pemberley become Longbourn.’

Mary had been holding her breath. At the end of Lizzy’s speech she expelled it with a small gasp. ‘Oh Lizzy,’ she said. ‘I thought – what if you were not happy here? I didn’t know what to think. I came because I thought you missed Longbourn so much and I was the only sister who could comfort you.’

This time Lizzy was speechless. ‘Oh,’ she said at last, softly, and in that word Mary knew she had been mistaken.

‘Then, why did you want me to come?’ If it was not for Lizzy’s sake, what had been the reason?

Lizzy took her hand. ‘I feel I may have behaved very badly,’ she said, and her expression was merry again. ‘Please do not hate me, Mary, for it is Jane’s fault.’

‘Jane?’ This was becoming stranger and stranger. What had Jane to do with Mary coming to Pemberley?

‘We felt you needed a respite from Longbourn. Kitty and Mama let drop some small hints without knowing it that you were at a loose end, so we conspired to bring you here.’

No small bit of outrage stiffened Mary’s back. ‘What did they say?’

‘Nothing ill, just that you seemed at odds with yourself. And then, when you arrived, you told Georgiana that you didn’t play any more. Mary, music was your solace. What has happened?’

Lizzy looked at her intently. Mary found tears coming into her eyes and she forced them back; then, impatiently, she wiped them furiously with a small scrap of handkerchief.

‘Sometimes, Lizzy, one can practise and practise and still not become accomplished. And even if one is pronounced accomplished in a very small society, it is not much compared to a grander set. So there. I don’t miss it one bit, you know.’

Lizzy let her sister compose herself, knowing that any expression of sympathy would only cause Mary to become quite over-set. When she felt that enough time had passed, she glanced over at the younger woman. Mary’s nose was red but otherwise she had calmed herself. Lizzy said gravely, ‘Society – true society – doesn’t vary, whether it is small or grand. You should not let imagined censure close you off from something you love and that gives the world a little pleasure.’

Mary sniffed and smiled a watery smile. ‘It doesn’t give me pleasure any more. So I will refrain from playing.’

‘Of course,’ Lizzy said. She knew that was the end of it for now. She patted her sister’s arm, and they continued their walk in silence.

THE DAYS AT Pemberley drifted through the summer. Darcy often had business in town or on the estate, but Lizzy made sure that she and he had time together alone, either walking or taking the carriage about. Lizzy did not ride but would drive a little phaeton and pony as Darcy rode his favourite horse in the grounds. Once Mary watched them as they came back from one such time together, Lizzy with her hand on Darcy’s arm, and Darcy bent protectively over Lizzy as they walked and conversed. She wondered then how she could have thought Lizzy was unhappy. Darcy, too, was as grave as ever, but all he had to do was look upon Lizzy and his face lightened with joy.

Georgiana and Mary drew close, although as Mary already had four sisters she was not sure she was ready for another. Still, Georgiana was a good girl who at first was quiet and then, when Mary grew more acquainted, showed a mischievous streak. Georgiana tried to hide this from her brother, who looked upon her with a kind of grim foreboding, as if he expected his sister to perform some extraordinary frisk. Georgiana was quite different with Mary from what she was with her brother or Lizzy, and Mary rather liked her vivacity.

Though Georgiana was accounted most accomplished, she also liked reading, though her taste tended towards the wilder sort of poetry and novels. She pressed her favourite volume in Mary’s hands, and, dubiously, Mary began it. Half-scandalized and half-enraptured, she read it quickly, lest she be found with it by Lizzy or Darcy. She wondered what Mr Collins would think, and then she thought, Fie on Mr Collins! She laughed to think of his shocked expression and his expressions of dour censure. What would he think of her having received a novel from Georgiana Darcy, of all people? Still, she hastened to finish the book and give it back to Georgiana.

Then they discussed it for hours, Mary’s dark head and Georgiana’s fair one close together as they reread their favourite parts. What adventures young Catherine had in
Northanger Abbey
! And for the first time, Mary thought it might be fine to meet a young man in the assembly rooms in Bath, even if he didn’t have a stern father or a scandalous elder brother.

‘I like this one better than
The Mysteries of Udolpho
,’ Georgiana said. ‘Catherine seems more like us, as if the author knows what a girl really was like. But Udolpho is quite frightening. I couldn’t shut my eyes for several nights after I read it.’ She trembled with the memory of the delicious fright.

Novels, Fordyce said, were unfit for expanding a young woman’s horizons. They turned a female away from her true study and excited emotions unacceptable in a genteel lady.

‘
The Mysteries of Udolpho
,’ Mary said. ‘I have heard of it. I’d like to read that one next.’

PEMBERLEY WAS NOT as lively a household as Bingley’s could be. There, Jane and Bingley entertained often, and it seemed sometimes as if all the young people of the neighbourhood gathered at the house nightly for an informal assembly. No, at Pemberley, Lizzy and Darcy kept a quieter household, though they enjoyed entertaining guests and visiting in their turn.

One morning Darcy took Lizzy’s hand, a gesture that Mary often found both puzzling and disquieting – it was such a proper display of affection yet it held such a private meaning.

‘Lizzy,’ he said, ‘Do you remember meeting Tom Aikens? He has written to me saying he is coming to stay in the village on business, but has expressed a wish to visit us.’

‘I do remember,’ Lizzy said. ‘He is from ___shire, is that not so? A fine horseman?’

Georgiana gave a sudden laugh. ‘I remember! He was such a funny young man! How he made me laugh! I scarce could keep up with him, he would talk and talk on all manner of topics.’

Tom Aikens was a young man of not more than two-and-twenty, of respectable family. The recent death of his father had left him the inheritor of a small estate, which he was ambitious enough to expand in all ways possible, instead of merely squandering its wealth, as many young men with lesser drive were wont to do. He had a great interest in horses and would talk of almost nothing else to anyone who would listen.

‘Be prepared, Mary,’ Georgiana said to her. ‘For he will talk to you of nothing but horses, hunting, and racing. He cannot sit still but must always be moving. It is a wonder he can sit still in the saddle.’

‘Oh,’ Mary said. ‘He sounds alarming.’ To herself she thought he was precisely the sort of young man who was rowdy and boisterous and had nothing to do with quiet young women such as herself. Therefore she would not care to meet him, for he would not care to meet
her
.

Mr Aikens was true to his reputation, for soon all of the little village at the foot of Pemberley’s estate were talking of the young gentleman who rode a fine black horse and thought nothing of jumping over all the hedges all across the country. It was as if a wind blew behind him at all moments. There was talk of nothing but Mr Aikens at all the social gatherings in the county, and though Mary had yet to meet him, she found herself already tired of him.

‘For goodness’ sake, Lizzy,’ she remarked with some exasperation one morning as they made their way through the village’s crowded little high street. ‘It is as if no one like Mr Aikens has ever visited us before. What will become of us when he leaves?’

‘I almost wish he would,’ said Lizzy, half under her breath, nodding cordially to a neighbour. ‘Then we might have some peace. But you know how it is to live in such a small town. When there is little that happens, everything becomes such a to-do. At least it is just one Mr Aikens and his black horse and not a regiment of officers.’

Mary surprised herself by giving a laugh. ‘He is likely to cause less trouble, even if he gallops about so intemperately on horseback.’

Lizzy gave her a smile in return. ‘I wonder why we ladies of Longbourn never learned to love horses. I never was a good enough horsewoman to enjoy the exercise, and I think Jane learned only enough to stay on.’

‘I remember our dear little pony,’ Mary said. She had never forgotten the small brown horse, with his black mane and tail and mischievous temper. He would bite if one wasn’t careful, but he smelled of oats and was fat and comfortable when one of the girls begged a ride from the grooms on the farm.

‘Yes, but I also remember that he mistook my straw bonnet for his luncheon. Do you remember how Mama screamed when she saw that he had chewed his way through my ribbons and was fairly on his way to my hair?’

‘Is that why he was banished to the Lucases? You traitor! I liked him. Once Leigh let me ride him by myself through the fields.’

‘Yes, and he abandoned you halfway through a wet swale after being frightened by a covey of grouse.’

Mary wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. ‘Oh dear. Mr Aikens will find us wanting, I think.’

Lizzy suddenly tightened her hand on Mary’s arm. ‘Sooner than you think, Mary. Look.’ She nodded up ahead at them. There was a crowd of men and horses, and a hubbub of conversation. One young man sat on his black horse, speaking to the rest, his pose casual as his horse danced nervously in the street. He wore a tall hat on his curly brown hair, and his coat was grey with a considerable amount of dirt upon it. The effect was compounded by muddy boots, as if he had been trampling about in wet fields, but there was no denying that he was a horseman of great prowess. He never moved, and controlled his horse with almost imperceptible effort.