Kitty Bennet's Diary (Pride and Prejudice Chronicles) (13 page)

That is another change in Mary’s behaviour.  Before this, she would sooner have appeared in her petticoat at a public dinner than be so untidy.

“No, Susanna!”  My aunt deftly extricated the slipper from Susanna’s chubby fingers, substituted a wooden teething ring, and then said, “Kitty, I wish to talk with you about Mary.  I am worried about her.”

I had been amusing myself—or trying to—with sketching when Aunt Gardiner knocked.  Having the older boys and girls gone also leaves me with an uncomfortable amount of time on my hands.

I set my pencil down, feeling my stomach lurch.  “Are you?”

Aunt Gardiner nodded.  “Yes.  I know you have been helping her—giving her dancing lessons and help with dressing and arranging her hair and all that sort of thing.  For which I was delighted,” Aunt Gardiner hastily added.  “Truly, Kitty, it is not that I think you have done anything wrong.  Quite the reverse.  But just this morning—”

Aunt Gardiner broke off momentarily to retrieve the teething ring for Susanna.  Susanna had hurled it under the bed.  And then commenced shrieking angrily when it was discourteous enough not to return to her at once.

“Just this morning,” Aunt Gardiner went on, “I received a letter by the first post from an old friend of mine.  Felicity Chargroves.  Felicity was at a masquerade ball last night.  And she was astonished to see Mary there.  Apparently in company with a group of young people all—nominally, at least—chaperoned by Mrs. Hurst.  However”—a line of worry appeared between Aunt Gardiner’s brows—“what Felicity wrote to tell me was that she was surprised very much by Mary’s behaviour.  Apparently, Mary danced no fewer than three dances—in a row—with the same young man.  And one of them was a waltz.”

“Did she”—I had to swallow before I could make myself ask the question—“did she know this young man’s name?”

“Yes, I believe she said—”  Aunt Gardiner took a folded letter from her reticule and glanced through it.  “She said that the man’s name was Lord Henry Carmichael.”

I had been expecting it, of course.  But I still felt more sick than ever at having my suspicions confirmed.

“Apparently, this Lord Henry has a less than savoury reputation,” Aunt Gardiner went on.  “And Felicity wondered very much that Mrs. Hurst should allow Mary to make such a spectacle of herself with him.”

What is more the wonder is that Mrs. Hurst is not trying to fling Miranda Pettigrew at Lord Henry’s head instead.  Mr. Dalton must be wealthy indeed if he rates higher in Mrs. Hurst’s and Miranda’s eyes than the younger son of a duke.

None of which, of course, affects the situation with Mary.  All those rules that I used to think were so silly—they
are
society’s rules, like it or no.  And behaving as she apparently has—dancing more than two dances with the same gentleman … and especially dancing anything so near-scandalous as a waltz—is more than halfway towards getting herself branded with the reputation of being ‘fast’.

Not to mention her having gone driving alone with Lord Henry in his private carriage the other day.

I shut my eyes and rubbed my forehead.  If anyone had told me three weeks ago that my sister Mary would be in danger of earning a reputation as a forward chit, I should have responded with shrieks of laughter.

“I will speak to Mary, of course,” Aunt Gardiner went on.  “But I feel as though I must tread very carefully.  I should not wish … that is”—Aunt Gardiner smiled just a little—“this is the first sign Mary has shown of possessing anything like the temperament and interests of a typical young girl.  Despite the danger to her reputation, I confess that I do not wish to quash this sudden change in her entirely.   Only perhaps”—the smile faded—“to change the direction of her interests.  If half of the rumours that Felicity recounted about Lord Henry are true …”  Her voice trailed off as she glanced down again at the letter in her lap. 

My memory obligingly presented me with an image of Henry Carmichael’s sleekly handsome face leaning towards me, close enough that the warmth of his breath tickled my cheek.  I snapped the thought off.  “This is so unlike Mary,” I said.  “That she should be taken in by a man like that—”

Aunt Gardiner shook her head, though.  “No.  I confess that I am not especially surprised.”  She sighed.  “You must have observed for yourself that Mary—for all her learned studies and her wish at all times to appear intelligent and scholarly—has no actual common sense whatever.”  Aunt Gardiner smiled a little again.  “You, Kitty, have far more real sense and good judgement than Mary.”

If only she knew.  Fortunately, though, Susanna interrupted at that moment with another outraged squawk—having lost her teething ring under the bed again—and I was able to bend down and avoid my aunt’s gaze under the cover of retrieving it for her.

Aunt Gardiner went on, “Mary is not actually especially clever.  And she has no solid experience whatever in forming judgements of other people’s characters.  Besides which, this is the first time that a dashing young man has ever shown the slightest degree of interest in her.”

Which of course invites the question of
why
Lord Henry should have shown such an interest in Mary.  To be sure, he was happy enough to conduct a flirtation with me last year.  But we were in Derbyshire, where he was staying with his elderly aunt, and there was very little else for him in the way of amusement.  This is London—where he might take his choice from scores of girls who are both handsomer and richer than Mary is.  And more accommodating of what Mrs. Hurst would probably coyly term ‘a gentleman’s needs’, as well. 

At least I sincerely
hope
that there are girls more accommodating than Mary.  The thought that she may have actually … 

This is preposterous; I am sitting here and trying to think of a way to phrase this delicately.  In my own private journal!

Very well.  To be blunt, the sudden fear that Mary might actually have allowed Lord Henry to persuade her into becoming his mistress struck me cold.

“What is to be done?” I said.

“I had hoped that I might ask you to accompany Mary to some other balls and assemblies—to give her an alternative venue for meeting young men more suitable than Lord Henry.  There is to be a charity gala at Vauxhall Gardens on Monday—and I have persuaded your uncle to buy us all tickets.  Will you come—and persuade Mary to give up any other plans she may have made and come along?”

I nodded.  “Yes, of course.”

“Good.”  Aunt Gardiner smiled again.  “I will be happy to see you going out and taking some entertainment, as well.  I have been worried about you, my dear.  You are looking so pale, and you have scarcely left your room these last few days.”

She was—again fortunately—distracted once more by Susanna, who at that moment wriggled out from under Mary’s bed, absolutely covered in the contents of a pot of rouge which Mary appeared to have hidden there.  Aunt Gardiner laughed, gave a martyred sigh when she contemplated how much of the rouge had been smeared through Susanna’s hair—then scooped Susanna up and carried her off.  Holding her carefully at arm’s length.

Which left me with only my own wholly unpleasant thoughts for company.

Despite what Aunt Gardiner said about my having done nothing wrong, I cannot help feeling that all of this
is
my fault.  If I had not formed my resolution about finding Mary a husband, none of her improper association with Lord Henry would ever have occurred.

To which there is the added fact that I have been more or less hiding in this room for the last two days, ever since I saw Mary and Lord Henry out driving.

I did not want to run the risk of seeing them again.  Or being forced to face the truth: that there is in fact far more I can do—or rather
must
do—in the way of protecting Mary.

I will say for Mary that when she undertakes to do something, she does it thoroughly.  Even when that same
something
involves completely losing her head and abandoning every principle she has previously lived by.

I woke this morning at the crack of dawn to find Mary already up and dressed, tiptoeing about the room in her riding habit.  That sight was enough to jolt me from groggy half-awareness to full consciousness.  Mary does not own a riding habit.  Or at least she has not up until now.  This new one was nothing of the clothes I had helped her pick out; she must have picked out the fabrics and ordered it made entirely by herself.

She did not do a bad job with her selection, precisely.  Save for a rather incredible amount of gaudy gold braid on the jacket and fringe on the shoulders
a la Hussar,
the new riding habit was smart enough.  The close-fitting coat and skirt were both made of emerald green cloth, and were matched by the hat Mary wore: a tall-crowned affair in the military Shako style, trimmed with curling ostrich plumes.

It was just that the whole effect was so utterly unlike Mary’s usual style of dress that it made me sit up in bed, wondering whether I was having some sort of bizarre dream.

Mary was startled enough to drop the pair of gloves she had been drawing on.  “Oh.  Good morning, Kitty,” she said.  “I did not mean to wake you.”

What she really meant was that she had
hoped
to sneak out of the room without waking me.  However else she may have changed, Mary is still absolutely no good at dissembling.  She looked like a small child caught with her fingers in the jam pot: half guiltily conscious, half brazenly defiant.

I pushed the tangled hair out of my eyes and said, “Good morning.  Where are you off to so early?”

“Out riding.  In the park.”

“I can see that,” I said patiently.  “With whom are you going riding?”

I was hoping she would give me a ready, benign answer.  I would even have welcomed the news that her engagement was with Miranda Pettigrew.

But Mary, avoiding my eyes, concentrated very hard on buttoning up her gloves as she said, “Oh, just a … a friend.”

Have I mentioned that Mary’s efforts at prevarication would not deceive a child?  Her cheeks had reddened, and her voice had a strained quality—and altogether she might as well have held up a sign reading,
I am about to do something of which you will not approve.

I sighed—and tried to pull my sleep-bleary thoughts into order.  I should have preferred to at least have had a cup of tea before facing this talk with Mary.  Actually, if I am honest, I should have preferred to put off having the talk indefinitely.  But since it had to be done, I might as well get it over and done with.

“And does this ‘friend’ happen to bear the name Lord Henry Carmichael?”

Mary jerked, setting the ostrich plumes on her hat bobbing alarmingly, and then lifted her chin and looked at me with a mixture of guilt and defiance.  “I did not say that!  Why should you suppose that?”

“Because you have apparently spent the last week making a spectacle of yourself all over London with that same Lord Henry!”  I drew in my breath and tried to temper my tone.  “I am sorry, Mary.  I do not mean to speak harshly.  I am concerned for you, that is all.  Have you not reflected that conducting yourself as you have done these last days—going for rides alone in Lord Henry’s carriage … dancing so many times with him at a public assembly—do you not see that such behaviour exposes you to gossip and scandal of the most unwelcome kind?”

I might as well not have bothered with trying to win Mary over by my kind and reasonable tone.  She drew herself up, white dots of temper appearing at the corners of her nostrils, and demanded,  “Have you been
spying
on me, Kitty?”

I let out a breath of exasperation.  “No, of course not.  But your behaviour—”

“My behaviour contains nothing with which I need reproach myself!” Mary flashed back.  “I have held to my own standards of decorum and modesty in every regard.  Henry is to me, as Lord Byron so aptly phrases it, ‘the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.’  You may be certain that I am not in the slightest degree concerned about the opinions of narrow-minded and vicious gossips.  And if I am not troubled, then I see no reason for you to be, either.”

Only Mary could manage to be both sloppily romantic and insufferably pompous in very nearly the same breath.

I was tempted to quote Mary’s own words back at her—her declaration when Lydia ran away with Mr. Wickham, that a woman’s reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful.  But I could not manage it.  I did—I do—have a certain degree of sympathy for Mary’s point of view.

It is stupidly, preposterously unfair that a gentleman may keep half a dozen mistresses and visit every house of ill repute in London, and yet remain in the eyes of the world a respectable gentleman still.  And let an unmarried lady so much as kiss a man to whom she is not at the very least engaged—or dance more than two dances with him in a row—and she is well on her way to having her reputation ruined forever.

But there was still the matter of Mary’s choice in the object of her affections.  I forced back my impatience and began again, trying an alternate line of approach.  “Mary, I know—  That is, I am sure that Lord Henry must be very charming.  But his reputation … he is rumoured to have conducted himself in a manner less than respectable in the past.”

And that is saying quite a bit, that Lord Henry’s conduct has been—even for a gentleman of high station—scandalous enough to earn him a degree of censure in the eyes of London society.

Mary only sniffed, bright spots of temper burning on her cheekbones.  “Lord Henry is a gentleman!  With a gentleman’s pure heart and noble disposition.  I know that he may have been wild in his youth—there are no secrets between us—but all that is behind him.  He has thoroughly repented of his past ways and now seeks to conduct himself only in a manner that will prove him worthy of my regard!”

I stared at Mary.  Does it say something terrible about my own character that I did not for a moment actually believe Lord Henry Carmichael sincere in his repentance for past sins?

Before I could formulate any sort of response, Mary added, in haughty tones, “And I shall not stay here and listen to another word against him!” and flounced out the door.