A Match for Mary Bennet by Eucharista Ward

Author:Eucharista Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2011-11-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

The next few weeks showed Mary a Pemberley new to her. Fall still bloomed like summer, and the gardens beckoned. Her linden tree still wore some heart-shaped leaves, and she imagined in them love stretched up to God. Sometimes with Elizabeth she gathered flowers to be dried or witch hazel and herbs to be stored for healing; sometimes she strolled the walk between the coppice and the stream and enjoyed the rippling water and the echoes of woodmen’s axes preparing for winter fires. Though she meant to investigate the Blake work, she returned instead to Pilgrim’s Progress, even taking it with her past the oaks and chestnuts on the north lawn and up wooded hills to where a stone bench overlooked the great house. There she read or worked for a time, watched as the men went out to fish—if Mr. Gardiner visited—or out to hunt, which Mr. Bennet preferred. In Mr. Darcy’s absence, Mr. Shepard provided guidance to the well-stocked stream, and Elizabeth entertained Mrs. Bennet and Catherine and, for a short visit, Mrs. Gardiner. Mary never neglected her morning hour of music with Georgiana, and sometimes Georgiana even accepted her invitation to go out and explore the gardens. Once, on a particularly fine day, the two of them shared the stone bench in companionable silence, when Elizabeth and Catherine called them down for a picnic on the lawn. Charles, released from nursery and pram, rolled on the lawn under Callie’s watchful eye, and Georgiana produced a ball and played with the lively child, leaving the sisters to converse of Longbourn days.

Catherine spoke of her longing to see Lydia. “Papa never lets me go, though Lydia often invites me. But lately he says he would not even know where to send me if he wished to. Wickham has left the regulars, you know, and they move around so much now.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Yes indeed. Lydia told me as much when she came this summer, unhappily, that was just at the time when you went with Jane to London to help her shop for Caroline’s wedding.” Elizabeth turned to Mary. “I believe she had been at Longbourn as well.”

“Yes.” Mary did not wish to discuss Lydia’s desire to see Kitty, as she might well have been no fit influence for her pliable sister. “She just missed you there too, Kitty. But she did not stay long.” Should she say that Lydia seemed unhappy, as Oliver thought? But then, Oliver had put his own discernment into some doubt. She added only, “She did not confide in me.” Callie brought Charles, again in his pram, over to his mother, and Kitty and Georgiana went for a walk by the stream. As an afterthought, Mary added, “From what Mr. Oliver and I heard at the post inn, Wickham had sent Lydia to beg money from the family. He spoke as if he had some scheme to take a living as a clergyman.”

Elizabeth jumped up, and then grabbed the pram which had almost overturned.

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