Page 40 of Return to Pemberley

They entered the sun-filled morning room together. Elizabeth gestured to the settee, where Georgiana arranged herself with that quiet grace which was both her nature and her breeding. Elizabeth settled opposite, unfolding Jane's letter with reverent care.

"I must begin," she said, eyes dancing, "with Caroline Bingley's campaign to transform Jane into the perfect mistress of Netherfield.

It promises to rival the siege of Troy for both duration and futility.

" She found her place and read: "'Miss Bingley has now extended her dominion to the henhouse, armed with a treatise on poultry management that would intimidate Cato himself.

She delivered such a lecture to poor Mrs. Nicholls yesterday that the woman has not dared serve an egg since, for fear of revealing inferior technique in their preparation.

Charles wanders about looking bewildered, the hens appear positively mortified by the scrutiny, and I find myself mediating between all parties like some sort of diplomatic envoy to the barnyard. '"

Georgiana's lips curved in a delicate smile.

"Miss Bingley is remarkably... thorough in her attentions.

I recall her reorganising Pemberley's still room during one visit—she created a schedule for the infusions and threatened to ban the housemaids from Christmas syllabub should they deviate from her system. "

"Ah!" Elizabeth clapped her hands together. "Jane failed to mention syllabub, but I see Caroline's methods remain consistent. Should she ever acquire a kingdom, it shall be ruled by the iron fist of domestic efficiency—with syllabub as currency and lavender water as the national beverage."

She continued reading, sharing Mrs. Bennet's triumphant disaster at the haberdashery and Kitty's devoted window vigil. Georgiana received each morsel with growing delight, as if the very notion of maternal boasting were simultaneously shocking and rather magnificent.

When Elizabeth folded the letter, she found herself moved to speak of things beyond its lines.

Gazing toward the roses still blooming against the stone, she mused, "You know, Georgiana, there are moments when I find myself missing Longbourn's chaos almost as acutely as I once fled from it.

Is that not the strangest contradiction? "

Georgiana, emboldened by this confidence, leaned forward slightly. "I confess I should very much like to understand it—if you would not mind describing it? I find myself quite unable to imagine... was it terribly different from Pemberley?"

Elizabeth smiled at the memory. "Different as a sparrow from a swan.

Longbourn contained five sisters and approximately ten thousand opinions, all competing for expression simultaneously.

The rooms were snug, the prospects modest, and solitude was a luxury more precious than French silk.

Jane and I shared a bedchamber until our wedding weeks—even now I sometimes wake expecting to hear her gentle breathing beside me. "

She paused, gathering her thoughts. "Mama's nerves served as our household barometer—when settled, we enjoyed perfect tranquillity; when agitated, every soul was cast into sympathetic turmoil.

Papa barricaded himself in his library, dispensing wit and absolution with magnificent impartiality.

The garden became our sanctuary—Jane and I would spend hours there, plotting improvements to the borders or lying in the grass composing elaborate histories for the bees. "

"It sounds wonderfully... alive," Georgiana ventured, her voice soft with curiosity.

"Oh, abundantly so," Elizabeth laughed. "Sometimes chaotically, occasionally painfully, but always vibrantly alive.

We had our disappointments—what family does not?

—but there existed a peculiar energy, a sense that even the darkest day might be redeemed by a well-timed jest or a stolen hour with a favourite book.

In that house, I learned both to hold my ground in battle and to yield gracefully when wisdom demanded it.

" She paused, surprised by her own insight.

"I believe that without my Bennet education, I should never have survived my Darcy transformation. "

At this, Georgiana's smile grew radiant and entirely unguarded. "Then I am doubly grateful you are both—for your sake and for ours."

Their conversation meandered pleasantly from Meryton's small comedies to Derbyshire's grand formalities. Elizabeth found herself weaving connections between past and present, some spoken, others treasured in thought.

"I think," she said eventually, "the essential difference between my two homes lies not in architecture but in the employment of silence.

At Longbourn, silence was so rare as to be alarming—it usually indicated either illness or plotting.

Here, silence is so abundant one must sometimes break it by force of will.

I have discovered, to my amazement, that I miss the din—not the quarrels precisely, but the constant assurance of life stirring around me.

At Longbourn, the very staircase announced the household's mood; at Pemberley, I must rely on birdsong and Mrs. Reynolds's measured footsteps for such intelligence. "

Georgiana nodded with feeling. "Sometimes the quiet feels overwhelming, even surrounded by people. I used to crave solitude, but I have learned it can be rather... heavy."

Elizabeth reached across to touch her hand—a gesture worth volumes of speech. "Then we must conspire to fill the silence when it grows oppressive. I possess considerable talent for chatter, and you excel at the art of listening. Between us, we shall keep these walls thoroughly entertained."

Georgiana laughed—a sound both delicate and satisfying. "I suspect you would have managed Longbourn admirably, even without Jane's moderating influence."

"Without Jane, I should have terrorised the entire county," Elizabeth declared. "She taught me to season judgment with mercy and to discover virtue even in those determined to conceal it. I attempt to apply her methods here, though I fear I remain dangerously susceptible to mischief."

Georgiana's eyes brightened with something approaching mischievous delight. "Perhaps we might be mischievous together? It would be quite revolutionary for Pemberley, and I believe these ancient walls could withstand the shock."

They finished their tea as their conversation drifted between memory and anticipation, as sisters' conversations naturally do.

Elizabeth marveled at how completely Georgiana's reserve had dissolved, how natural their intimacy had become.

Jane's letters no longer felt like lifelines to a lost world, but rather golden threads weaving her past and present into something richer than either alone.

As the hour drew toward its close, Elizabeth rose and offered Georgiana her arm.

"Shall we venture out to inspect the roses?

They may lack Netherfield's celebrated lavender, but I can show you the corner where the bees hold their daily parliament.

Their debates are quite as spirited as any in the House of Lords, and considerably more productive. "

Georgiana accepted with pleasure, and together they left the morning room, their shadows long and companionable upon the marble floor.

If Pemberley still held its silences, they were now the comfortable kind—silences born not of absence, but of perfect understanding.

T here are afternoons at Pemberley which seem, by some fortunate conspiracy of weather and circumstance, to slip free from duty's claims and surrender instead to pleasure's gentler governance.

This was such a day. The rose walk, though technically past its prime, managed—through a collaboration of lingering blooms and charitable sunlight—to suggest that summer had merely paused rather than departed, while warmth rising from the flagstones lent the air a contentment remarkable for September.

Elizabeth could not recall when the prospect of an hour's garden idleness had felt so deliciously guilt-free. She and Georgiana had abandoned, by mutual consent, all pretense of industry and walked with no grander purpose than their own amusement and the season's small, particular graces.

"I have been considering," said Elizabeth as they rounded the first curve and the house vanished behind a wall of yew, "the revolutionary notion of a border composed entirely of marigolds.

It would be magnificently vulgar—their colour possesses a kind of cheerful defiance that I find wonderfully restorative to the spirits. "

Georgiana, who had never contemplated marigold philosophy, smiled at the idea. "Mama always declared they smelled of old cheese and banished them from the south terrace. She permitted them only in the kitchen garden, where none but Cook need suffer their fragrance."

"Then I shall champion them there, in noble solidarity with all the world's unfashionable flowers." Elizabeth stooped to pluck a particularly audacious blossom, then launched into the saga of Bennet horticultural disasters.

"When Jane and I were perhaps ten and eight," she began, "we conceived the brilliant notion of grafting an apple tree using only kitchen twine, candle wax, and agricultural theories gleaned from a penny novel.

The result was a grotesque monstrosity that never produced fruit fit for human consumption, yet became Mama's greatest pride.

She insisted every visitor admire it as the cleverest botanical innovation in Hertfordshire.

Even Lady Lucas was compelled to pronounce it remarkable, though I suspect her private opinion was rather different. "

Georgiana's laughter rang clear and bright, startling a sparrow from the hedge. "I cannot imagine Mrs. Bennet as such a determined advocate. I had always supposed—" She hesitated, uncertain of her ground.