Kitty Bennet's Diary (Pride and Prejudice Chronicles) (3 page)

I will write down in this journal whether I am successful or no—and whether Mary and I both survive my efforts.

Though I have some hopes.  After we had finished at Madame LeFarge’s, I made Mary come with me to Gunter’s famous pastry shop to eat ice cream.  And she only mentioned once that the pastries and ices were shockingly over-priced and not at all healthful, and that she was afraid some of the other customers—she was staring at a pair of very elegantly dressed women with obviously rouged cheeks and varnished fingernails who were eating at the table next to ours—might possibly be
less than respectable
.

As it happens, I only need a single word to sum up the dinner party tonight: disastrous.

Oh, the evening
began
well enough.  Madame LeFarge did manage to finish the blue crepe gown for Mary.  It was delivered this afternoon.  And it is lovely—Madame added rows of pointed lace to the sleeves and collar line and caught up the overskirt with rosettes of deeper blue satin.

I forced Mary into it.  And managed to persuade her to stop tugging at the neckline, which was really not so very low cut—though certainly more revealing than the high-necked dresses she usually wears.

And then I sat Mary down in the chair in front of my dressing table—our room has two, one for each of us—and made her allow me to arrange her hair.

Mary’s hair is quite pretty, really: glossy dark brown, with a natural curl.  It is just that she invariably wears it dragged straight back from her face and pinned in a knot at the nape of her neck that makes her look more like a prim, dowdy governess than any actual governess possibly could.

Tonight I gathered her hair into a loose knot on top of her head.  Then I took my sewing scissors and—ignoring Mary’s squeaks of protest—ruthlessly snipped and clipped so that a few loose, curling tendrils framed her face.

The difference in her appearance was amazing.  I took out a pot of rouge—I have it, still, though I have not opened it in months—and added just a light touch of colour to Mary’s lips and cheeks.  And she looked lovely, she really did.

I turned her to look into the mirror, and her eyes went quite wide with astonishment.  And then she reached for her spectacles, which she had left on the edge of my night table.

“Don’t even think it!”  I slapped her hand away.  “Do you want to undo all my efforts?”

“But—”  Mary cast a longing look at the glasses.

I cut her off.  “I don’t care how much more intelligent you think they make you look, you are not wearing them tonight.”

Mary looked up at me—then down at the floor.  “It’s not that.  I started wearing them when my face had so very many blemishes,” she muttered.  “They seemed—it felt as though I could hide behind them, a little.  And now I feel … naked, without them.”

I was taken aback.  Because as a rule, Mary never admits to uncertainty or self-consciousness—or to anything, really, but absolute confidence in her own wisdom and opinions.

But then she added, “And they
do
make me look more intelligent.”  Which sounded much more like the sister Mary I know.

“Gentlemen don’t want a woman who looks intelligent.   They want a girl who looks like a charming and agreeable companion,” I said.

Another flicker of uncertainty crossed Mary’s face.  “I … is that not like lying, then?  Pretending to be something I am not, just for the sake of attracting what must surely be fickle male attention, if it is based on such untruths?  As the poet Mr. Cowper says, true souls—”

I had not really anything to say to that.  It is certainly not as though my own record in that regard has been so outstanding. But I still interrupted before Mary could start unleashing quotations from poetry.

“Let us just start with getting some agreeable gentleman to ask you to dance,” I said.  “We can worry later about your baring your true souls to each other.”

I looked at the clock, then, and realised that I had barely a quarter of an hour until Aunt Gardiner’s guests were due to arrive, which meant that I had approximately ten minutes to dress myself.

I rummaged in the wardrobe and yanked on the first dress that I found: my ivory silk with silver embroidered acorns.  And then I sat down at the dressing table to fix my own hair.

I had been playing knights and dragons all afternoon with Thomas and Jack—they are Aunt and Uncle Gardiner’s two boys—followed by dolls’ tea party with Anna and Charlotte, who are Thomas and Jack’s older sisters.  And I had spent a good deal of the time holding baby Susanna on my shoulder, as well.

 When I looked into the mirror, I discovered that I still had a smear of green paint on my neck from the dragon’s costume—the headdress the boys and I made together had not quite dried when I put it on—and that at some point during the tea party, baby Susanna had managed to deposit a sticky smear of what looked like grape jelly in my hair.

There was only time enough to hastily scrub the green paint off, though, with the cold wash water in the basin.  I pulled my hair back into a tight knot that rivalled the severity of Mary’s usual hairstyles, and then covered the jelly with a silver lace bandeau.

After all, it was not as though it mattered especially what I looked like.  And I am sure Mary could quote me some verse of the Bible that has something or other to say about the dangers of vanity over one’s looks.

“All right,” I said to Mary.  “Let us go down.  And for Heaven’s sake, do not forget what I told you.  Do
not
quote poetry, do not criticise any of the gentlemen’s apparent vices, and above all, smile from time to time.”

Mary looked as though she were preparing to argue—probably thinking up some other quotation about wisdom being a kindly spirit.  But I never gave her the chance, only took her by the arm and marched her downstairs to where Aunt Gardiner’s guests were beginning to arrive.

The dinner itself was also perfectly fine.  I was seated next to a Mr. Frank Bertram, who talked mostly about—

Actually, I have no idea what he talked about.  Horses, possibly?  Or boating?  My entire attention was occupied with trying to overhear what Mary was saying to her dinner companion.  And wishing that I were seated near enough to stamp on her foot if she broke any of my rules and started lecturing or sermonising.

She seemed to do all right, though.  She was seated next to Rhys Williams.  He is a clerk in Uncle Phillips’s employ (Uncle Phillips being the husband of our mother’s sister; they live in Meryton, near our father’s estate at Longbourn), and has come to town to conduct some business for our uncle.  Mr. Williams is somewhere about twenty-three or -four, and on the compact side—only a head or so taller than I am—but squarely built and sturdy-looking.  His colouring is Welsh—black hair and dark eyes—and though he is not strictly speaking handsome, he is a pleasant young man.

Well, to be accurate, I suppose I should say that he
appears
to be a pleasant young man.  He is so excessively shy that I have never actually managed to get him to say a word to me, though since he has been in town these last weeks, Aunt and Uncle Gardiner have often had him here to dine.

Tonight he appeared all through dinner to be listening to whatever Mary was saying.  His eyes did not even appear to have glazed over with boredom, nor did I see him yawn.  Though perhaps he was only grateful to have been blessed with a dinner companion who did not require him to talk.

After dinner ended and the gentlemen had joined us in the drawing room, Aunt Gardiner proposed that we have some dancing.  I could see Mary poised to offer to play, but I stepped in before she could get the words out, and volunteered to accompany the dancing myself.  I do not play nearly so well as Mary.  Not even so well as Lizzy, really.  But I can manage a few reels and a “Sir Roger de Coverley”.

The only drawback to that arrangement was that, though I had prevented Mary from playing, I could not both accompany the dancing and find a way to force Mary to actually dance.  Or rather, force one of the gentlemen to ask her; she stood at the side of the space Aunt Gardiner had cleared for dancing.  Moving her gloved fingers awkwardly in time to the music and looking hopeful.  But not one of the young men there approached her.

Then at last Rhys Williams came to stand beside her.  But not to ask her to dance.  They only resumed their dinnertime conversation.

I could hear only part of what they said, but they seemed to be discussing the new gaslights that are being put up around London.  It sounded stultifyingly boring to me, but I actually heard Mr. Williams utter a sentence or two, so he cannot have been entirely uninterested.  And—perhaps it was the new dress and hairstyle—but Mary looked quite bright and interested, too.  She even smiled.

Then Aunt Gardiner approached the pair of them—and I actually had some hopes, because she was intent on seeing Mary and Mr. Williams dance.

The other drawback of my sitting at the piano was that I was
still
not immune from invitations to dance myself.  At least five gentlemen approached my bench and either offered to turn pages for me or said how hard it was that I could not dance, and surely my aunt or my sister could take a turn?

I kept having to break off playing in order to decline, since attempting to talk and play at the same time usually leads to disaster.

At any rate it was during one of these lulls—I was refusing Mr. Bertram, my companion from dinner—that Aunt Gardiner approached Mary and Mr. Williams, so I was able to hear the whole of the exchange.

Aunt Gardiner said, “Come, Rhys—Mary.  I must have you dance.  The two of you are the only couple here who have yet to take a turn on the floor.”

Rhys Williams’s face flushed beet-red to the roots of his hair, and he started to shake his head and stammer some sort of refusal.  Something about Mr. Phillips requiring that he look over some accounts before tomorrow.

Mary, watching him and listening, looked mortified.  After all, it is not especially pleasant to have the young man whom you have been speaking with for the past half hour look as though he would much prefer to run a mile in tight shoes rather than ask you to dance.

Aunt Gardiner saw Mary’s face, too.  She is very perceptive, as well as kind.  She turned to Mr. Williams and said, “Nonsense, Rhys.  You work far too hard, as Mr. Phillips is well aware.  He would not wish for you to cut short your enjoyment of the evening for a mere accounts book.  I am sure whatever business it is can very well wait.”

There was no way Mr. Williams could refuse without crossing the line into outright rudeness.  Still blushing furiously, he offered Mary his hand and bowed.  And Mary took it and moved with him onto the dance floor.

That
was when disaster struck.  I could kick myself for not thinking of it, but in all my coaching Mary these last two days in how to attract a gentleman’s invitation to dance, it never occurred to me to question whether she
can
actually dance.

She cannot.  At least, she cannot dance well.  I remember her having dance lessons when we were young, with all the rest of us—and I cannot recall that she was so especially unskilled then.  I suppose it has been years since she had the opportunity to practise, though, and I am not sure that she has ever danced in company with a young man. 

Not that it was her fault entirely—once he was on the dance floor, I could understand Mr. Williams’s reluctance.  He is, quite possibly, the worst dancer I have ever seen.  He tripped and stumbled and stepped on the other dancers’ feet—and could not to save his own life keep to the beat of the music.

I could only see them out of the corner of my eye, since I was playing.  But the combination of him and Mary together was like something from a
Punch and Judy
show.  They reeled around, crashing into the other couples in the line.  Then Mr. Williams stepped on the hem of Mary’s gown as she turned to move away from him during the
allemande.

There was a sound of rending fabric.  Mary lost her balance and was yanked backwards off her feet, her arms flailing wildly.  She landed flat on her back in the centre of the dance floor.

For a moment of absolute, stunned silence, the entire room seemed to stare at her, collectively uncertain of what to do or say.  And then Mary scrambled ungracefully up and bolted from the room, her hands covering her face.

I got up from the piano and ran after her.  Mr. Williams was standing where Mary had left him, looking acutely horrified, and miserable as well.  But I was much less concerned with him than with Mary.

I should have expected her to run upstairs to our room, but I suppose she was not thinking clearly and simply chose the nearest bolt-hole—which happened to be the cloakroom at the foot of the stairs.

As I came out of the drawing room and into the hall, I saw the door bang behind her, and heard the key turn in the lock.

“Mary?”  I knocked on the door.

There was no response.  Nothing but the sound of a muffled sob from inside.  I felt truly dreadful, then.  That is twice in three days that Mary the Complacent has been reduced to tears.

“Mary, please come out.”  I knocked again.  “Everyone knows it was just an accident.  No one will laugh at you.  Besides, it was my fault.  I ought to have made sure that you weren’t a complete disaster on the dance floor before I sent you out there tonight.”

In hindsight, it was not the most tactful way I could have phrased it.  But I was just feeling both guilty and irritated at the same time, and it simply slipped out.

Renewed sobs sounded from behind the locked cloakroom door.

I tried several more times, without any better results.  And then finally I gave up, leaning against the panel, uncertain of what to do.  Clearly I was making no headway with trying to apologise or reason with Mary.  And yet I did not feel, either, as though I could simply go and rejoin the party and leave my sister weeping in a cloakroom.

I was debating whether to try knocking again, when I felt a touch on my elbow and turned to find a young man standing beside me.  A very handsome young man—really, one of the handsomest men I have ever seen, with wheat-blond hair that fell across his brow, a lean, chiselled face, and eyes of a vivid blue.