Page 88 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
“Oh, we’ve heard how talented you are, Miss Darcy,” Lady Lucas concurred. “Mrs. Long, did you know that Hertfordshire has harbored a most proficient pianist since Michaelmas?”
Georgiana reached for the sheet music and found the stand to be empty. The shelf behind the pianoforte was also bereft.
“Oh my,” Caroline said. “I was hoping you had the Haydn memorized. After Charles made such a scramble of the sheet music, Mr. Hurst had taken them to the library to reorder them. Georgiana, dear, perhaps you can fetch them? The library isn’t far, and we shall have another cup while you sort through them—take your time.”
Georgiana made her escape with a measured pace that breeding demanded, not hastily, never, but in a slow and steady movement as if time had no essence. The library would offer her a refuge from Caroline’s snippy remarks and that awful feeling that Lady Lucas and Mrs. Long had been invited for a specific purpose that had nothing to do with neighborly friendliness.
The door was ajar. She pushed it open and stopped.
Sheet music covered every surface. Pages had been separated from their folios and spread across the desk, the side table, thesettee, and the floor. What had Mr. Hurst done to her precious collection?
Georgiana despaired at the task in front of her. Mozart was mixed with Haydn, and the Clementi was missing pages in the second movement. A page of Handel had been crumpled and smoothed again, as if someone had thrown it into the bin and then removed it when they thought better of it. This was not tidying; it was an entire Sisyphean task that would take her hours to untangle. Still, sorting sheet music was preferable to Caroline’s tea party. The only thing she missed would be the seed cake, but she could request a piece from the kitchen or ask Mrs. Jolliffe to allow her to assist in the baking. Anything to escape the drawing room!
She began collecting pages. The Haydn first, because the Haydn mattered, and then the Mozart, and she was on her knees retrieving a page that had slid beneath the desk when the library door opened behind her.
“Miss Darcy! There you are. Louisa said you were sorting sheet music and could use a hand.” Charles Bingley stood in the doorway, his cravat already loosened from whatever exertion had occupied his morning. He surveyed the debris with wide eyes. “Good Lord. Did a shelf fall?”
“Caroline said Mr. Hurst was tasked with reordering.” Georgiana picked up a crumpled sheet. “I do wonder if he fell asleep on them.”
Bingley laughed good-naturedly. “Well then, let me help.”
He dropped to one knee beside her and began gathering pages with the cheerful disregard for sequence that characterized everything Bingley did. “Is this Mozart or Handel? I can never tell. Music all looks like tadpoles to me.”
“Mozart. The tadpoles swim from left to right.”
Bingley laughed again, easily. She could see why her brother preferred this affable man. He might smile too much, but his smiles were not calculated but the outgrowth of a truly amiable personality. The contrast with her brother was marked, but she supposed he did enjoy Bingley’s company.
“This page is torn,” he said, crawling underneath a table to retrieve a scrap.
“Let me see.” She dropped down to her knees and took it from his hand, and their fingers touched, and the touch was nothing—except the door opened and a thundering herd of ladies stepped in.
“Georgiana!” Caroline’s voice rose in alarm while the heads of Mrs. Long and Lady Lucas peeked around her tall form. “We were so worried. You’ve been gone so long, and we wondered what trouble you’d gotten into.”
Mrs. Hurst pushed her way forward and stopped in front of Mr. Bingley. “Charles, you ought to know better than to be alone with Miss Darcy inside a library with a closed door.”
“But the door was open,” Bingley said, slowly rising to his feet. “I left it that way, and oh, there was such a mess, and she needed help.”
“How long have you been here?” Caroline fanned her breast. “Lady Lucas, Mrs. Long, I do apologise. I had no idea my brother would…”
“We were collecting pages,” Georgiana said, still in a kneeling position. Her voice sounded distant, as though it belonged to a girl standing in a different room. “The music was scattered, and Mr. Bingley was helping me sort it.”
“On the floor.” Mrs. Hurst’s voice was soft with implication. “Both of you. On the floor.”
Lady Lucas had the expression of a woman assembling information she would relay to every acquaintance before supper. Mrs. Long was studying the crumpled Mozart with the avid attention of a woman who recognized that she was witnessing something worth discussing for a fortnight.
“It is nothing,” Georgiana said. “The door was open.”
“It was barely ajar,” Mrs. Hurst corrected. “Which is not quite the same thing.”
Bingley looked from his sisters to Georgiana to the scattered music. “I say, this is absurd. Louisa, you sent me here. You said Miss Darcy needed assistance with the music.”
“I suggested you might look in on her. I did not suggest you join her on the floor.” Mrs. Hurst’s voice carried a note of reproach so precise that Georgiana almost admired its craft.
Lady Lucas murmured something to Mrs. Long, and Mrs. Long murmured back. Caroline was steering the visitors toward the door with the expert management of a hostess who wished to control the narrative of their departure, offering reassurances that it was all perfectly innocent, that youth was sometimes heedless, that Georgiana was above reproach and Charles was merely thoughtless, and that they must not trouble themselves, although one could understand how it mightlook, and she was only grateful they had not been gone longer.
She returned with Fitzwilliam Darcy. He stood very still, surveying the scene in front of him—the piles of sheet music, Louisa like a dog treeing Charles, preventing his escape, and of course, Caroline simpering, “It’s not what it looks like, Mr. Darcy. My brother was merely assisting your sister with fetching sheet music. It does appear one had dropped underneath the table, and as you know, the appearance is worse than what actually happened.”
“Darcy.” Bingley stepped forward, hands raised, pages still clutched in his fists. “This is madness. I would never—you know me. I helped her sort pages. That is the entirety of it.”
