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The hundred-mile journey to Ramsgate was accomplished in near-silence. Lizzy felt too sad to attempt much conversation. Mrs Morris usually had her nose in a book, while Harriet plainly believed Lizzy to have been stricken as an invalid since the last party they’d attended together. And the first time she and Harriet—accompanied only by Harriet’s maid, for Mrs Morris could not be bothered—journeyed to the town proper, Lizzy was astonished by the sight of what must have been a thousand soldiers, probably more, meandering about the streets of the village. Lydia could have had a different redcoat beside her every day of the week.
“Oh my,” Harriet murmured, looking around delightedly. “How sorry Lydia will be when she hears of this.”
“Why, Lydia will be so…” Lizzy trailed off, imagining her sister’s fury and, even, an insistence upon joining them directly, whether or not it meant Lizzy was thrown out on her ear.
Harriet laughed, but then tossed her curls. “Hmpf. I shall write nothing to her yet. Lydia is a great deal of fun, but she does like to claim the best admirers for herself. I do hope you will not be so boring.” What she meant, of course, was her expectation of the exact opposite. Where Lydia would have shined, Harriet now wished her companion to fade into the background.
The following week proved Lizzy correct. By turns aimable and temperamental, giddy and officer-mad, the pretty and popular Harriet Thorpe was happiest when Lizzy faded into the background. The aunt was completely inept at chaperonage—she called Lizzy ‘Lilian’ if she called her anything at all—and paid little attention to her charges. However, Mrs Morris had been spending her summers in Ramsgate for many years now, and she was well known to its inhabitants. They found no lack of invitations to soirees, concerts, dances, teas, and the like, and Mrs Morris was usually agreeable enough to attend so they could as well. Lizzy was careful to seat herself with the matrons, watching rather than participating. The longer she could stay in Harriet’s good graces, the better.
Her natural bonhomie made her situation—living very quietly, avoiding dancing and other activities as if she were an invalid in truth—more difficult, and Lizzy struggled to stay optimistic. She reminded herself that living in Mrs Morris’s lovely home, perched atop Ramsgate’s East Cliff, was hardly a punishment. It was built in a circular row of other fine houses rimming the cliff, with marvellous views of the ocean on one side and a large park on the other. Its library was quite good, even including a copy of the very interesting Practices of Physiks,which Lizzy had long wished to study. Each morning she rose with dawn’s first light, long before the rest of the household, walking the shoreline, taking in the crisp cold air and the vastness of the ocean. She told herself that Jane would not see her put into service by some hitherto unknown, uncaring uncle; she was the furthest thing from cold-hearted. It was irrational to believe Jane might.
Still, Lizzy felt very much alone and lonely. Her presence was only tolerated by Harriet, who quickly made other friends whose company she preferred. It was a constant reminder that Ramsgate was but a temporary reprieve.
It was two of Harriet’s new friends, Miss Martha Beaton and Miss Diana Cavendish, however, who imparted the first news of real interest.
“Of course, my father is known to Mr Darcy,” Martha crowed. “Papa is sure to gain me an introduction if he comes. They say he has ten thousand a year.”
Lizzy, who had been paying little attention to their banal conversation, looked up from her book. “Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy?” she asked, struggling for a casual expression. “He is here?”
“Mr Bingley’s friend from London!” Harriet cried. “We have met him! Eliza even danced with him once, I recall. She was the only one he danced with not of his party for the whole of his visit.”
The other girls turned to her with their first indication of interest, but Lizzy waved dismissively. “It was not what you would think,” she explained. “Mr Bingley urged him to dance with me, but he refused. ‘The carrot-headed chit?’ he asked. ‘You must be joking. If no one else will dance with her, why should I?’”
The insult had infuriated and embarrassed her; she had spent so much time trying to tuck every ruby curl out of sight! Even now it invoked a remembered annoyance.
“He did not,” Martha breathed.
“Oh, but he did,” Lizzy asserted.
“Appalling behaviour in a gentleman,” Diana said, but she sounded amused, and Lizzy knew the story would be repeated around dinner tables that evening. But what did she care?
“That is what I told him.”
“You did what?” the three girls chorused.
“He knew that I heard him, the hateful creature. I simply turned to him and said, ‘You are mistaken, Mr Darcy, if you suppose that I would ever agree to dance with a man who cannot behave in a more gentleman-like manner.’ I left him standing there with his mouth gaping like a fish while that wonderful Mr Bingley laughed at him. ’Twas very satisfying.”
“But did you not dance with him?” Martha questioned.
“Not by choice. He approached me at Sir William Lucas’s party with a condescending apology and asked if I would partner him. I almost refused, but my friend Charlotte Lucas pinched me and said I would accept, so I had to, else make a scene. But it was utter agony to act polite, and the worst dance of my life!”
And the best dance of my life.To be on the arm of the handsomest man she had ever seen, the envy of her friends, to dance with one so skilled, to meet his dark-eyed gaze, to trade banter and to know he had been amused—or perhaps even impressed by her wit…well, it had been a high point. Had he been a different man and she a different girl, she might even have thought him attracted to her for a moment or two of it. But subsequent encounters and his haughty coldness in her presence had cured her of that fancy, all concluding in that mocking, insulting declaration. Determinedly, she forced the memory away.
“He is the one who owns Sea Cliff Lodge,” Diana explained, naming the grandest home on the East Cliff. “It is said he took it for his young sister, but perhaps she is an invalid, for we have never once seen her, not even walking out on the Green, although the house is definitely occupied. There was even a rumour he is visiting. Or was. No one seems to know the truth of it, though.”
Miss Bingley had frequently spoken of Miss Darcy, had claimed her to be the pinnacle of every female accomplishment. But then, Miss Bingley was usually effusive in the presence of Mr Darcy.
“I have never heard any report of her being an invalid. In fact, she was said to be in perfect health and countenance.”
“How odd!” Diana exclaimed.
“Perhaps we should call upon Miss Darcy,” Lizzy suggested.
“Why should we?” Martha asked.
“Why should we not? We are neighbours,” Lizzy replied.
“She is not yet out, I believe,” Harriet said with obvious reluctance.
