“I was endeavoring not to lead with that intelligence,” Darcy remarked dryly.
Little Tom, sensing escape, had already begun his trudge toward the house, Captain dangling by one ear. Darcy followed, pausing only to incline his head toward their visitor. “Miss Duntze, a pleasure. I leave you in capable hands.”
“Such capable hands!” Prue agreed, bouncing on the discs extending from her shoes, apparently unbothered by her host’s rapid departure. “Georgiana, dearest, you look wonderfully well. And Mrs. Darcy, may I call you Mrs. Darcy? I have been absolutely dying to meet you. The county talks of nothing else.”
Elizabeth rose, brushing a leaf from her sleeve. “I hope the county has better subjects for conversation than a country bride who knows nothing of Derbyshire.”
“Oh, but that is precisely what makes you interesting! A mystery—an unknown quantity! Lady Cathcart has already pronounced you ‘suitable,’ which is the highest praise she has bestowed since the late Mrs. Darcy, and that was geological ages past. You are a triumph, Mrs. Darcy, and you have been here less than a fortnight.”
“A fortnight is rather too soon for any sort of triumph.”
“Not in Derbyshire, for we are starved for novelty. Shall we go inside? I am desperate for tea, and this cake is growing heavy, and I have so much to tell you.”
A maid took the basket, a footman relieved Miss Duntze of her heavy pattens, and inside they went, Georgiana linking her arm through Prue’s with the ease of neighborly friendship while Elizabeth followed, already composing the letter she would write to Jane describing this particular specimen of Derbyshire society. The morning room received them with buttery sunlight and the promise of hot tea, and Prue settled into a chair with the air of a woman who intended to stay until she had exhausted her supply of conversation or her hostess’s patience, whichever came last.
The cake was cut, the tea was poured, and Prue talked. She spoke of Lady Cathcart’s pronouncements and Mrs. Powell’s responses, of Miss Entwhistle who had fixed Elizabeth with a remarkably steady gaze during the sermon, “her form of endorsement, I believe, though one can never be certain with Miss Entwhistle; she once stared at a hat for twenty minutes, and we all thought she admired it, but it turned out she was composing a sonnet about mortality.”
“A hat inspired thoughts of mortality?” Elizabeth asked.
“It was a very unfortunate hat, all black crepe and dead birds. One could hardly blame her.”
Georgiana laughed, and Elizabeth found herself smiling despite the strangeness of being discussed like a new species of flora discovered in the Pemberley hothouse.
“My mother reserves judgment,” Prue continued, accepting more tea, “as she reserves everything, but she did concede your bonnet was well-chosen. From Mamma, that is practically an embrace.”
“Then I shall indeed treasure it.”
“You must! And Georgiana mentioned your visit to the modiste in Lambton. Miss Entwhistle observed you through the window for a full quarter hour; she has remarkable stamina for observation, and reported the visit in great detail to anyone who would listen, which was everyone, because what else have we to discuss? The sheep? The weather? We are drowning in sheep and weather, Mrs. Darcy. You are a rescue.”
Elizabeth glanced at Georgiana, who appeared entirely unsurprised by any of this. “Is Miss Duntze always…”
“Always,” Georgiana confirmed. “One learns to swim in the current rather than fight it.”
“I prefer to think of myself as a river,” Prue agreed. “Refreshing, life-giving, and occasionally prone to flooding. Now, I must ask you something, and I beg you will not think me forward, though I am forward; everyone says so, but this is important.” She leaned in, her voice dropping to what she apparently believed was a level of discretion, though it would have carried easily to the servants’ hall. “Have you found any manuscripts?”
Elizabeth blinked. “Manuscripts?”
“Why, Lady Amelia’s manuscripts, of course!” Prue spoke the name with the practiced ease of someone reciting familiar history, utterly unaware she had just opened a door Elizabeth did not know existed. “You know of Lady Amelia, surely? Thomas’s mother?”
The morning room, so recently warm and companionable, now seemed to have been robbed of its air. Elizabeth kept her teacup steady, though it required more effort than she cared to admit.
“I know very little,” she said. “Mr. Darcy has not yet…”
“Oh, but you must know!” Prue’s eyes went wide with the horror of a gossip discovering an informational void. “Lady Amelia Apethorpe. Daughter of Lord and Lady Apethorpe, theEarl and Countess of Drake, you understand, very grand and very, very proud. She was a celebrated authoress, published all sorts of essays under her own name, which was thought scandalous, though I thought it rather magnificent. She held the most extraordinary literary salons…”
“In Cheapside,” Elizabeth heard herself say, the words escaping before she could catch them.
Prue’s face lit. “You know of them!”
“I…” Elizabeth’s mind scrambled for purchase, found none, and manufactured one. “My aunt lives in Cheapside. Mrs. Gardiner. She mentioned… literary gatherings in passing.”
“Then your aunt has excellent taste. Lady Amelia’s salons were legendary. Wollstonecraft sympathizers, terrifyingly clever women debating rights and reading their own verse aloud. Miss Entwhistle has attended them; being a spinster of advanced age has its benefits, and she reports that Lady Amelia presided like an empress who had traded her crown for a pen.”
Georgiana had gone quiet, her teacup suspended halfway to her lips. Elizabeth felt her watching but could not look at her, not yet, not while she was still assembling her face into something that did not betray the trapdoor that had just opened beneath her.
Elizabeth had attended those salons. Not often, three times, perhaps four, always through Aunt Gardiner’s connections. She had sat in those candlelit rooms, listened to verse read aloud, watched a brilliant, laughing woman hold court. She had not known the woman was Thomas’s mother, but she knew it now.
“I have wondered,” Prue continued, oblivious to the detonation occurring three feet from her seed cake, “what became of her papers. She was writing something extraordinary when she died, a novel, although she was quite secretive about it; she said an earl’s daughter should not reveal such stories. Ishould be eternally grateful if you would ask Mr. Darcy where he kept them. Purely for literature’s sake, you understand.”
