Page 36 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
“May I ask you something?” she asked, taking another apple from the basket.
“You may ask, although I reserve the right to deflect.”
“Do you like Caroline?”
The directness was so unexpected that I nearly choked. Her gaze was steady, not challenging or conspiratorial, but curious, the way a girl inquires when she has been receiving one version of reality from one source and suspects there might be another.
“I find Miss Bingley to be a lady of accomplishment and decided opinions.” I chose my words with care. “She is a devoted friend to your family, which speaks well of her constancy.” I took another apple from the basket, considering it as if it held particular fascination. “But I’m curious to know your impression of her. After all, you’ve spent far more time in her company than I have.”
“She is exceedingly kind to me, and to Fitzwilliam,” Georgiana began, her brow furrowed in thought. “And she concurs with my brother regarding the necessity of myimprovement.”
“Does she.”
“Caroline is very attentive and caring.” She looked across the pond. “She tells me when I have played a passage well and when I have worn the wrong ribbons for the weather. She says we are already sisters in spirit.” Georgiana’s expression flickered with a confused sort of guilt. “Miss Bingley is very kind. My brother says I am lucky to have her.”
“And does she feel like a sister?”
A long pause. Below us, a duck let out a solitary, flat quack. Georgiana’s thumb picked at the apple skin, a tiny, jagged movement.
“I don’t know. Is a sister someone you are always trying to please?”
She looked at me then, and the carefully cultivated Darcy mask slipped. There was no trace of the “improvement” or “accomplishment” so prized by her brother—only a young woman weary of the relentless programme of refinement thrust upon her, unaware that Caroline’s attentions were tainted by her aspiration to become a Darcy herself.
But I said nothing of my uncharitable thoughts. Instead, I moved closer and nudged her shoulder with mine. “A sister is the person who tells you that your brother is being a pompous owl, and then helps you hide the evidence when you laugh about it.”
“Do you truly believe my brother resembles an owl?”
“He has that reserved, unblinking quality, does he not? Watching everything from a great height with profound inscrutability.”
“An owl!” Georgiana repeated, her shoulders finally losing their Pemberley rigidity. “I shall never be able to look at him over the breakfast table again without checking for feathers.”
“It is a very noble bird,” I added with a wink. “And he is very wise. Just perhaps… a bit too fond of the sound of his own silence.”
We shared a moment of quiet, the kind that only exists between those who have shared a secret and an apple. It was the perfect opening—a door left ajar.
“And what of his companions?” I asked, trying to keep my voiceas idle as the ducks below. “Mr. Bingley, for instance. I imagine he is much more… vocal. Do you find his company agreeable?”
Georgiana’s reaction was immediate. A rosy flush crept up her neck to her cheeks. She looked away, her fingers busily shredding a leaf.
“Mr. Bingley is… most amiable,” she said, her voice small. “He is very kind to me. Caroline says… she says he finds my company ‘refreshing’ and that we are remarkably well-suited in temperament.”
My heart gave a ponderous, discomfiting thump. The pieces of the puzzle—Caroline’s ‘sisterly’ affection, her constant efforts at ‘improvement,’ the carefully orchestrated shared visits—all began to align, forming a map that led to an inevitable destination. If Caroline could secure Georgiana for Charles, she would be that much closer to becoming the mistress of Pemberley.
“He is certainly easy to like,” I managed to say through a cold prickle of unease.
She looked down at her hands, a shy, soft smile touching her lips—the type of smile that makes a sister’s heart sink. “I think… I think any woman would be very safe with a man who cares so much for everyone’s comfort. He is never cross, never brooding. It is quite… lovely.”
To a girl who had spent her life under the shadow of the great Darcy pride, Bingley’s easy warmth must appear as a welcome sanctuary.
“But he does smile a great deal, doesn’t he?” she added, her brow furrowing slightly.
“Indeed, he does.”
“I find it…” She paused, and the pause was long so that I held my breath, waiting. “I find it difficult to know what a smile means when someone offers it so freely. If everyone receives it, then it signifies nothing in particular, and yet?—”
She stopped. She had arrived at the edge of something and pulled back, and the pulling back was so instinctive that Iunderstood it was not the first time she had stood at this particular edge and retreated.
Someone, it seemed, had once smiled freely at Georgiana Darcy, leaving behind a wound that had taught her to mistrust such generous displays of emotion.
