Chapter Six
Dear daughter,
I am writing from the coast, where I intend to stay for a couple of months with Louisa, in hopes that a trip will rejuvenate us both. I do not know when you plan to return home to Hadley Hall, but remember that you ought not to linger at Pemberley like a bad smell. A friendship, once it has left the safety of harbour, can be sunk in any number of ways.
Yours,
Arianna Bingley
Caroline stared down at the letter, a cold coil of disappointment winding through her stomach. It wasn’t as if she particularly wanted to go to the coast—by which her mother might equally have meant Bath or Lyme Regis—but it would have been nice to be asked.
It would have been nice to be wanted.
Worse, the letter had been dated more than two weeks prior, suggesting a clear lack of urgency on the part of the sender. She folded the page up again, unable to look at her mother’s handwriting a moment more. Louisa had always been their mother’s favourite, and Charles had been their father’s, which had left Caroline feeling rather left out all her life. They had aunts and uncles, of course, but most lived in another county and visited infrequently.
Hadley Hall, the family house in south Lancashire, was beautiful and elegant, furnished with her mother’s discerning eye, but it had never felt much like a home to Caroline. Pemberley, in spite of all its stately grandeur, exuded a feeling of cosiness that Hadley Hall could never hope to achieve. One could never be quite comfortable there, all too aware that a person, along with every decoration in every room, was also on display at all times and was therefore expected to exude the same glittering, polished perfection as any vase. Mrs Bingley had at least approved of her children spending time with the Darcys, who were an old family and very well-connected, though she seemed to think that friendships ought to be cultivated like rosebushes—watered often and pruned frequently. Caroline’s mother did not actually know Fitzwilliam or Georgiana herself, though she ate up every scrap of gossip and chatter as if she were a hungry little sparrow with a nest of babies to feed. Not that Caroline actually wished her mother to visit Pemberley; she was sure Mrs Bingley would have preferred Darcy the way he’d been last year, all cool haughtiness and superiority, and although there was nothing one could possibly criticise about Georgiana, Caroline did not want to risk it. Miss Darcy was too nice of a person to endure even a moment of Mrs Bingley’s chilly temperament.
She realised that the parchment was trembling in her hands, and stood abruptly, not quite knowing what to do with herself. Restless anxiety drove her out of her seat and alongthe corridor. Though an early riser by nature, surely even Georgiana was unlikely to be up at such an hour, when the sun had barely begun to ascend from its own bed. Caroline herself had only awakened when the maid had crept in to leave the letter on her dresser—something which ordinarily wouldn’t have awoken her, for she slept like the dead, had the girl not stumbled over the rug on her way out and uttered a soft yelp of alarm.
In the great hall, Caroline unhooked her coat from the peg in the cloakroom and wound a light scarf around her neck lest she should catch an unattractive cold. A walk would do her wonders and would certainly sweep away the sticky cobwebs of this awful feeling of abandonment which had crawled into her chest. In the middle of that tangle, the plump spider of loneliness spun new threads. Her mother was wrong; she was neither intruding on Georgiana’s time nor her space.
Am I?
She slipped out of the main door, which was oiled so often it never creaked, and headed down the stone steps which led to the courtyard. The fountain bubbled quietly as she passed it, but the friendly sound was nowhere near enough to quell her agitation. Caroline settled into a brisk pace, marching down the path which led to the shrubberies without a particular destination in mind. Before long, she emerged out the other side. The landscape lay before her, green and inviting, the treetops ahead only just kissed by a pale sunrise which promised later warmth. The air was cool, though not cold, and dew brushed the hem of her skirt. Somewhere on the left, a blackbird trilled, and Caroline swung towards the friendly sound, desperate for any shred of comfort.
Perhaps Mother thinks she is doing me a kindness by not invitingme along,she tried to convince herself.Perhaps she thinks that Louisais in need ofsome special attentionat the moment, since she is not yet with child.This was a lie, of course. Mrs Bingley and Louisa had often taken little trips together, sharing confidences in a way that Caroline could never hope to. Tears prickled, spilling over before she could blink them back, forcing her to dab at her face with her scarf. Really, it was too ridiculous to cry twice in one week. She was almost certainly going to get sad eyes if she did not get a hold of herself.
Caroline trudged through the trees, her steps slowing as she realised her path was taking her towards the lake. A pleasant, calming view might aid her in this moment. The fountain had been too active, too cheerful, but the morose stillness of a lake would be a perfect match for her mood. However, by the time she was thirty feet away from the shore, she could see that the water was not still at all. Instead, ripples wrinkled the surface and, in the very middle, a small, dark thing bobbed around.What on earth is that?she wondered, drawing closer.Some sort of animal? An otter, perhaps, or a stoat. Or—oh!
“Good heavens, Georgie,” she called. “At first I mistook you for a stoat.”
Miss Darcy’s head turned sharply at the sound of Caroline’s voice. For a moment, she did not respond, her dark eyes narrowing.
“A terrifyingly large stoat, I should think,” Georgiana called back, before cutting through the water with easy strokes that brought her within reach of the shore in mere seconds. “Your ability to identify woodland creatures is extraordinarily deficient. Did your governess never take you outside?”
“No, she imprisoned Louisa and me in a stuffy room all day,” Caroline groused, halting by a towel which lay neatlyfolded on the shore. “Hence why I enjoy being out of doors now.” She cocked her head. “Though not, it seems, as much as you.”
Georgiana hauled herself to her feet and strode forward, dripping water with every step. Until this moment, Caroline had not actually imagined what Georgiana might have been wearing for a swim in the lake. If she had, she might have concluded that something shapeless and dark would be an appropriate garment for such a ridiculous activity. She certainly wouldn’t have pictured only a single white petticoat, rendered almost entirely transparent by the soaking, clinging to Georgiana’s every curve like a barnacle.
Caroline gaped, unable to form coherent thought. She’d been aware that Georgiana, like other people, had a body upon which her head sat. She’d always been appreciative—and openly complimentary—of Miss Darcy’s figure. But there was a world of difference between seeing a body artfully swathed in layers of silks in the dim light of a ballroom, or cloaked in cotton across the breakfast table, versus seeing it now, in the light of day, flushed and rosy under a single layer. And good Lord, that layer seemed thin. Insubstantial, as if questing fingers might press right through—
“What?” Georgiana twisted, staring down at herself. “Do I have something on me? Some strand of grass, perhaps?”
“No, not at all.” Caroline swallowed hard. Words suddenly seemed rather difficult to string together in an adequate manner. She stooped and picked up the towel, offering it to Georgiana. “Here, dry yourself off before you catch your death of cold.”
“I promise you,” said she, though she accepted the towel gratefully and wiped her face, “that I shall be fine. I have been doing this at least thrice a week for the last decade.”
Caroline hadn’t even known that Georgiana could swim, far less that she was doing so in a disgusting, muddy lake with routine regularity. “Is not the water unpleasant?” Without waiting for an answer, she dipped a finger in the lake and drew back with a shriek. “Why, it is freezing! Beyond freezing!”
“If it were beyond freezing, it would be ice,” Georgiana pointed out. “Which would make swimming rather impossible.”
Caroline wiped her finger on her dress. The tip was already numb. “My dear Georgie, this is madness. You surely cannot actually enjoy such a thing.”
“And yet I do.”
“It is torturous to do this to one’s self,” she insisted. “You are behaving like those monks who live in a bare cell and eat only one meal a day.”
Georgiana swivelled to stare at Pemberley, the enormous house now equally kissed by sunrise. “Our living conditions seem rather a long way away from what you describe.”
