Page 170
“Well,” said Hildie, “The shoes and gloves in Bond Street are very fine, but I am sure they can be purchased more economically in Cornhill. If I were to buy something in Bond Street, I think it would be a beautiful hair comb—maybe with pearls.”
“Oh, Hildie!” exclaimed Lizzy, “What a good idea! No doubt, Aunt Gardiner will loan you her pearl necklace, Jane! A comb to match it would be the very thing!”
“No!” said Jane. “I am sure it will be too expensive!”
“Stuff!” replied Lizzy. “We will never know unless we ask! And if it is too expensive, there are at least three beautiful combs amongst the Darcy jewels. You can borrow one!”
Georgie insisted these be fetched immediately to convince Jane it was just what was required. Mrs Flowers was summoned to extract the jewels. Each of the Darcy combs was placed on Jane’s head under the veil: one of ivory, one with seed pearls and another with beads of coral.
“It will distinguish the veil from when Mary wore it,” coaxed Lizzy. “Give you a different look!”
Jane had to admit all three combs looked fetching for different reasons—size, shape or colour—but still continued to shake her head.
“None of them are quite right, what you need is something new!” said Georgiana, referencing tradition.
“It will stop your hair being tousled by the veil,” added Hildie practically.
“I am afraid you will have to indulge them, Jane, by letting them take you shopping,” came a voice from behind them.
They all turned in surprise to find Darcy standing at the saloon door.
“Did we disturb you, Fitzwilliam?” asked Lizzy apologetically.
“Firstly,” said Darcy, “the strongbox is in my study. Secondly, you need to take lessons in persuasion from Mr Trevor. Success is not necessarily correlated with volume.”
“There you are, Jane!” said Lizzy triumphantly. “You must go out with us so that we are not disturbing my husband.”
“No, no, no!” tut-tutted Darcy, calling for his hat and cane. “I have a mind to come with you.”
As the other ladies bustled about to gather their belongings, Lizzy approached her husband. “Really?” she whispered from the corner of her mouth.
“You will get a much better price if I come,” Darcy whispered back in kind.
“I do not see that,” hissed Lizzy. “They know you are rich and will adjust the price accordingly.”
“Wrong. They know I have a pretty new wife and will likely come back if they are nice to me,” smiled Darcy.
On Bond Street, the ladies were discussing the merits of several exquisite combs displayed in a case of head ornaments when the jeweller noticed Jane’s engagement ring. Walking to a case containing jewelled parures, he extracted a gilded filigree comb with a single line of small aquamarines for her to try. This was deemed just the thing by all the ladies except Jane, who had gone pale thinking of the price.
Of course, the jeweller had an ulterior motive in selecting this piece. When Darcy went aside with him to request the figure, the canny merchant suggested he buy the entire parure. Fortunately, Princess Brunhilda had provided a distraction for the ladies by asking an assistant if she might try on the jeweller’s pièce de résistance—an enormous tiara sitting in a reinforced case on a plinth. Thus, Darcy was able to quietly ask his wife’s opinion.
The hair comb was boxed separately, the remainder of the parure handed discreetly to one of Darcy’s footmen, to be given as a wedding present from a doting sister and an over-indulgent brother-in-law. But Darcy was sanguine with the transaction—he got a very good price.
Chapter 57: Wedding belle
The wedding of Jane Bennet to Mr Benjamin Thorne, trader of Bristol, went off well enough, with a few minor hitches—the most significant being the failure of the bride’s mother to appear.
On Mrs Bennet’s insistence that she must see her dear Jane off, especially after being robbed of the pleasure of Lizzy’s nuptials, Mr Gardiner had ridden to Longbourn to escort his sister and his two youngest nieces to London, leaving his carriage in London with his wife to deal with the wedding arrangements. Edward had gone to the expense of obtaining lodgings in Gracechurch St for his relatives for two days before the wedding, after which Mrs Bennet would accompany Jane to Bristol for the first month while Kitty and Lydia resided with the Gardiners. It was then Mr Gardiner’s plan to take Lydia back to Longbourn with her mother while Kitty remained with them in London.
Returning to the city in the grand but aging Bennet carriage, they made it as far as St Albans before Mrs Bennet declared herself unable to go a mile further. To her brother’s reasoned arguments that they were halfway there, she categorically refused to listen—she had such spasms in her side, such pains in her head, and such beatings of her heart that she could go no further—no, not even for her dear Jane!
Admitting defeat, Mr Gardiner would have turned the carriage around. But Kitty began caterwauling and Lydia moaning that their only decent outing since their father’s passing was now to be denied, their new bonnets to be wasted! Faced with the dilemma of needing to take his sister back and his nieces forward with a single carriage and himself as their only escort, Edward decided the only solution available to him was to spend more of his hard-earned cash on hiring a room for the ladies at The George in St Albans while he rode back to Meryton to fetch his other sister. This manoeuvre took three hours.
Arriving back at The George in the Philipses’ carriage, Mr Gardiner found his nieces leaning out of an upstairs window. They were ogling uniformed gentlemen entering the taproom. The officers tipped their hats upon perceiving themselves the object of giggling admiration. Hurrying upstairs with Mrs Philips in his wake, Mr Gardiner found Mrs Bennet stretched out on the bed having her head bathed with lavender water by the solicitous proprietress of The George. After dressing down his nieces for their hoydenish behaviour while Mrs Bennet flailed distressfully on the bed, moaning for him to stop yelling, Mr Gardiner was of a mind to send Kitty and Lydia back to Longbourn with their mother. Only the prospective ruination of his plans for Kitty’s salvation stayed his hand.
Eventually Mrs Bennet was restored by sympathetic words from her sister and a cordial. After helping his sisters into the Philipses’ carriage, which—Mr Gardiner had to admit—was far better sprung than the grander but older Bennet carriage, he was able to send his sisters back to Longbourn and continue the journey to London with his nieces.
Upon their arrival in Gracechurch Street, Jane was a little distressed on her mother’s behalf, but Mr Gardiner assured her that Fanny would no doubt be restored by a good night’s rest. He knew his sister’s fits and starts.
