London Calling (25 page)

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Susanna and the Spy
   
Georgiana Darcy’s Diary
   
Pemberley to Waterloo

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G
EORGIANA
D
ARCY’S
D
IARY

Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice
continued

ANNA ELLIOTT

a W
ILTON
P
RESS
book

Author’s Note

Of all the wonderful secondary characters in
Pride and Prejudice
, Georgiana Darcy has always been my favorite. In Jane Austen’s original text, we never actually hear her speak a single direct word; any dialogue she has is merely summarized by the narrator. But to me, that only made her more intriguing. Just who was she, this painfully shy younger sister of the famous Mr. Darcy—a girl with a large fortune of her own, who at the age of fifteen was so very nearly seduced by the wicked Mr. Wickham?

Jane Austen herself gave her own family a few tidbits about what happened to her characters after the close of Pride and Prejudice. Kitty Bennet married a clergyman near Pemberley, while Mary married one of her uncle’s clerks. But so far as is known, she never hinted at what happened to Georgiana Darcy after her brother married Elizabeth. For myself, I always felt that Georgiana Darcy ought to marry Colonel Fitzwilliam.

The modern reader may object that the two of them are cousins. But in Jane Austen’s world, marriage between cousins wasn’t considered at all improper—it was often absolutely encouraged. Queen Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and theirs was one of the happiest love stories and most famously successful marriages of the age. In fact, Jane Austen herself wrote about such romance in
Mansfield Park
: Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram are first cousins.

Of course, you’ll have to keep reading to see whether, once I started writing their story, Georgiana and Colonel Fitzwilliam agreed with me that they were meant to be together!

One further note: I can’t begin to match Jane Austen’s immortal writing style, and wouldn’t even pretend to try. That’s one reason I chose a diary format for this story. I would never aspire to imitate Jane Austen or compare my work to hers.
Georgiana Darcy’s Diary
is meant to be an entertainment, written for those readers who, like me, simply can’t get enough of Jane Austen and her world.

Thursday 21 April 1814 

At least I was not in love with Mr. Edgeware.

That sounds as though I am trying to salvage my pride, but I am truly not. I hate lying—especially to myself. And there is small point in keeping a private journal if I am only going to fill it with lies.

So, I was flattered by Mr. Edgeware’s attentions. I liked him—or at least, I thought I did. But love? No.

Though I am sure my Aunt de Bourgh would say that is neither here nor there in considering whether Mr. Frank Edgeware and I should marry.

I don’t seem to have begun this story at all properly. I have been keeping a diary on and off since I was ten, but I have not written an entry in a year or more. Maybe I am out of practice with setting down the events of the day. I am not even entirely sure what made me pick up this notebook—a red leather-bound book of blank pages that Elizabeth gave me for Christmas. Except that the memory of what happened today feels like a festering sore inside me—and maybe writing it all down here will let the poison out.

To explain more clearly, then, Mr. Frank Edgeware is the youngest son of Sir John Edgeware of Gossington Park. Mr. Frank has been staying here at Pemberley for the last three weeks, one of the house party my aunt has imposed upon us all. He is a handsome man—really, a very handsome man, with dark hair and melting brown eyes and a sallow, lean kind of good looks. 

Aunt de Bourgh—small surprise—has thrown us together a good deal, and he has been my partner at whist, has accompanied me for walks and rides about the grounds. We seemed to have so much in common, he and I. He would ask which poets I liked best, and when I mentioned Mr. Cowper, he would wholeheartedly agree that Mr. Cowper’s poems were masterpieces of language and feeling. The same with music. I spoke of Mr. Thomas Arne’s operas, he professed himself a great lover of
Artaxerxes
, as well.

 I can see now, of course, that I was an idiot to be so taken in. Anyone would think that after George Wickham’s courtship, I would have learned to spot a fortune hunter. But at the time I had not a single suspicion that Frank Edgeware was anything but sincere.

Until this morning, when I chanced to be walking in the rose garden. I was on a path screened by a thick row of bushes and overheard Mr. Edgeware speaking to Sir John Huntington on the other side of the shrubs. They could not see me, of course, but I heard every word.

Sir John—he being another member of the house party, a goggle-eyed man with plump hands and greasy hair—asked Mr. Edgeware how he was progressing with Miss Georgiana Darcy.

And Mr. Edgeware laughed and replied that he fancied he would succeed in winning my hand in marriage, all right, and confidently expected to be wedded to me by the end of three months’ time.

“And thank God that when we’re wedded,” he said, “I won’t have to listen and pretend to agree while she maunders on about poets and musicians.” He laughed again. “It’s a good thing she has a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. She’s a nice enough little thing, but ditchwater dull.” 

My whole body flashed hot and cold, and just for a second I wanted to smash my way through the bushes and confront the pair of them. But I did not. If I have not yet learned to judge men’s characters, I at least know my own well enough. And I knew I would never in three hundred years work up the nerve for a dramatic confrontation of that kind. Or if I did, I would stand there, red-faced and stammering trying to to think of the perfect retort. Which would probably come to me at three o’clock the following morning, but not before.

Sometimes I hate being shy.

So I simply turned and walked—very quietly—away, before the men could guess they had been overheard.

Mr. Edgeware came to sit with me on the settee after dinner this evening, just as usual, and smiled into my eyes.

I wonder, now, that I never noticed how calculated his smile is. I can just imagine him practising it every morning in front of the mirror.

At any rate, he asked me whether I would consent to play for the party this evening. He had been dreaming all day, he said, of hearing me play again on the pianoforte.

So I said that I had been practising a waltz by Mozart, and when he replied that he was absolutely enchanted with Mozart’s waltzes, I smiled at him very sweetly. “Are you really?” I said. “They are nice enough, I suppose, but ditchwater dull.”

It was some consolation, at least, to see the smile slide off his handsome face and the way he went red right to the tips of his ears. For once he had absolutely nothing to say; he just sat there, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. 

My affections truly were not engaged. It is only my pride that is hurt, not my heart. And really, Mr. Edgeware’s deceit of me is incredibly petty when weighed against the other news of the day, which is that victory has been won over France at last.

Come to think of it, I really should have made that the opening of this journal entry, not the tag end; it’s far more important than my own concerns. But—
peace
. It is such momentous news that I think everyone can scarcely take it in. Britain has been at war with France since before I was born—all eighteen years of my life—and I’d come almost to take it for granted. I think many people would say the same. But it’s true—the latest word is that the Emperor Napoleon has been forced from his throne and is to be exiled. Our troops will be returning home.

I got all this from the newspapers, not from any note or letter of Edward’s. I’ve not heard a single word from Edward since his regiment was called to foreign duty more than a year ago. Not since the last night I saw him, at the Pemberley Christmas ball.

But he can’t have been killed—he can’t. I’ve read the casualty lists in the papers every day, and his name has never appeared.

Still, I wish—

But I cannot write any more. It is very late. I am writing perched on the cushioned window seat, watching the moonlight glimmer on the lake in front of the house. My fingers are cramped with writing, and my ink is growing thin from being watered so often.

Friday 22 April 1814 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young lady of rank and property will have packs of money- or land-hungry suitors yapping around her heels like hounds after a fox.

I said as much to Elizabeth this morning, when we were looking over my new gown for the ball next month, which had just arrived by special delivery from London.

Elizabeth laughed and said she quite liked that comparison, because she could imagine my aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, as a huntswoman, cheering on the packs of suitors with cries of
Yoiks!
and
Tally-ho!

But then she stopped laughing and said, looking at me, her gaze serious for once, “There’s no one among the young men staying here you like, Georgiana? Truly? Mr. Folliet? Or Mr. Carter, even?”

I hung up the gown we had been examining in the wardrobe. It is very pretty: pale peach silk with an overdress of cream-coloured gauze, all embroidered with tiny rosebuds. And I am sure I would like it even more were it not further evidence that my aunt has determined to see me married within the year, it being a scandal that any niece of hers should have reached the age of eighteen—and had two Seasons in London—without being at the very least engaged.

“None,” I said. “Or rather, I like some of them. But not
that
way. I don’t wish to marry any of them. Unless—” I stopped as a thought struck me coldly. “Does my brother … does he wish that I should?”

“Of course not! Not unless you want to, that is.” Elizabeth tilted her head to look at me from where she was perched on the edge of my bed. “Georgiana, you cannot truly think he would allow you to be pushed into a marriage just to please your aunt?”

“Yes—I mean, no, I do not think that.”

Elizabeth said, “Listen to me. Darcy agreed to this house party scheme of Lady Catherine’s because he worries—as I do!—that you go out too little into society. That you have small chance of meeting any nice, agreeable young men. But that is all.” She watched me for a moment, her dark eyes thoughtful. Then she said, “You could speak to him, though, if you truly hate all this so much.” She smiled. “He doesn’t bite, I promise you. He wouldn’t even be angry.”

“I know.” I
do
know. I think. It is just that my brother Fitzwilliam is eleven years older than I am. And he has been my guardian since I was ten years old.