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As Lydia fastened the buttons on Marianne’s delicate red gown, she found herself beginning to struggle. Her heart had begun beating faster, her cheeks were feeling flushed, and it had somehow magically become warmer in the room in the last few minutes. But Lydia knew that this kind of girlish crushing was infantile, and so she forced herself to take her task seriously. She finished doing up Marianne’s buttons and then set to putting on her own dress.
“Thank you for that information. I shall consider it and decide what I will do with it,” Lydia said, attempting to come off casually. Marianne, however, immediately caught her out and laughed.
“Decide what to do with it?!” Marianne cried loudly. Lydia simply adored her more outgoing, vivacious friend, but occasionally Marianne was too excitable even for Lydia. “I know very well what you will do with it, and that is you shall spend the night pining for him! But perhaps ... this might be the night that your feelings are reciprocated.”
Marianne had just finished helping Lydia into her dress and guided her over to the mirror to have a look at herself. Even though Lydia was not one to like the way her reflection looked, she had to admit that she did look quite radiant.
The dress consisted of a silk imitation that had Lydia not known it was not the real thing, she would have thought the dress cost a year’s earnings to buy. Marianne had also lent her the finest yellow jewels that she had, which, although they were small, still brought Lydia’s outfit together in a delightful manner.
“Thank you ever so much for lending me these,” Lydia complimented her friend, but Marianne wouldn’t have it.
“Do not use this time to thank me, Lydia!” she scolded her. “Admire yourself. Feel the presence that this dress gives you. Inhabit the confidence that looking as splendid as you do should. And know that a man like Percy Wentworth would only be so lucky as to fall in love with a woman like you.”
Lydia didn’t know what came over her, but as she heard Marianne’s kind words in her ears, she began tearing up. Marianne saw the tears immediately, of course, and embraced her from behind. “No crying, though, Lyddie,” Marianne joked, “for this illusion shall be ruined if you show up with puffy eyes and tear-stained cheeks!”
Lydia burst out laughing and turned around to give her friend a real hug. “Thank you, Annie, truly,” she whispered in her ear.
When the women broke apart, Marianne took Lydia’s hand and said, “Come now. We have gentlemen to bowl over and a ball to be at the centre of! And I should remind you to never,ever, call me that name again.”
The two young women went scurrying down the stairs, where their chaperones and carriages awaited. Lydia couldn’t help feeling that this evening was going to be a special one, even if she did not catch the eye of the handsome Duke.
