the nursery, murmuring the sort of sibilant nonsense mothers have employed for millennia to calm distressed infants. Despite the stimulus of Lily’s wails, her own eyelids burned with the urge to close. Yet even if she roused Mrs. Flaherty and returned to her own quiet chamber, she knew that maternal anxiety, or at a minimum, maternal guilt, would not allow her to sleep while her daughter suffered.
She sang. She rocked. She paced still more.
At last, exhaustion claimed Lily-Anne, and blessed silence settled upon the nursery. It was, however, a fitful slumber. Lily was still in discomfort, unconsciously rubbing her jaw against her mother’s shoulder and squirming each time Elizabeth tried to lower her into the crib. Elizabeth sat with her awhile in a chair, but was so tired that she did not trust herself to retain a safe hold on Lily should she, too, succumb to sleep.
She decided to bring Lily back to her own chamber, in hopes that a shared bed would enable them both to rest. Darcy would not mind. There had been a few occasions at Pemberley when Lily, in need of extra comfort, had slept in their bed, and Darcy’s presence often had a calming effect on the baby, awake or asleep.
She moved quietly as she carried Lily down the corridor where the earl’s relations were quartered. The bride and her family occupied the floor above, and several gentleman friends of Roger’s were in another wing altogether. She did not fear disturbing these more distant guests should Lily suddenly waken and complain at full volume, but Lady Catherine’s room she passed with extra caution. Her ladyship’s tenure at Pemberley had proven her a light sleeper, ever alert to everyone else’s affairs.
She rounded a corner and stopped suddenly.
Anne de Bourgh appeared equally startled. They had very nearly collided. “Mrs. Darcy!”
“Miss de Bourgh?”
Both spoke in the lowest of whispers. Anne cast an alarmed glance in the direction of her mother’s chamber. In the weak grey light just beginning to penetrate a nearby window, her face appeared pale as usual, but her features had lost some of their sharpness. The angles of her cheekbones had rounded, dissolving her typically haughty expression and softening her countenance. Instead of pinched, she looked almost pretty.
“I–I did not expect to — that is…”
“Nor I.” Elizabeth shifted Lily to her other shoulder. The child had entered a deeper sleep as they walked and was becoming heavier by the minute. “I thought none but Lily and I was awake, and even she has finally decided the hour is grown quite late enough.” She tried to formulate a polite query as to why Miss de Bourgh was wandering Riveton Hall fully dressed at half past four in the morning. She doubted that Anne, coddled since childhood for fragile health, routinely kept late hours. But her fatigued mind was not equal to the challenge of clever phrasing. “What draws you from your bed at this time of night?” she finally blurted.
“No one. I mean—”Anne nodded at Lily. “The child did not wake me, if that is your concern.”
It had not been. In fact, the thought had not so much as entered Elizabeth’s mind, which was primarily occupied with calculating how many hours’ sleep she might yet manage to capture if she nodded off immediately upon reaching her pillow. Another part of her brain was attempting to determine whether Anne’s improved appearance were indeed a trick of the light or a genuine transformation. Upon continued observation, the view afforded by their unusually close proximity suggested the latter.
Anne bristled under Elizabeth’s scrutiny. Her gaze strayed to the window. “Actually, I am not up late, but very early. I woke and could not return to sleep, so I thought I would stroll in the rose garden whilst the sun rose.”
Unlike herself, Elizabeth had never known Miss de Bourgh to take pleasure in walking or, for that matter, to walk any farther than necessity demanded. Lady Catherine had always kept her on a short tether, ostensibly to protect her weak constitution. The most vigorous exercise permitted was airings in a phaeton or immersions in the therapeutic waters at Bath.
Until now.
The change of practice might account for Miss de Bourgh’s improved looks — Elizabeth had previously entertained the opinion that Anne’s health would benefit from more, not less, exercise — though she wondered that her mother allowed it.
Or did she?
Miss de Bourgh’s eyes again looked toward Lady Catherine’s door. Pity moved Elizabeth as realization dawned along with the sun. To escape her ladyship’s disapprobation, Anne had to take her exercise before anyone in the household — her mother, her chaperone, even the servants — awoke. Else an accidental slip of someone’s tongue could betray her actions to Lady Catherine, who would bring them to a swift and decisive halt.
Elizabeth had never given much thought to Anne’s life. She knew that living with Lady Catherine would be intolerable for herself, but she had never contemplated Anne’s happiness. Anne had always seemed a mere appendage to the formidable entity that was Lady Catherine, existing to serve her mother’s convenience. Now she wondered whether the “poor health” from which Anne had suffered all these years were the result of smothering — a slow suffocation of the soul.
How long had Anne been rising early to enjoy an hour’s freedom before the shackles of life under Lady Catherine’s domination closed upon her each day? From her appearance, she had been engaging in the practice for some time.
Good for her. Elizabeth wanted to praise the benign deception, but tact restrained her. She would, however, encourage it.
“I suspect what you are about,” she whispered, offering a slight, knowing smile. “But do not be uneasy. Your secret is safe with me.”
Anne’s eyes widened. She stared at Elizabeth, struggling to formulate a reply.
Elizabeth spared her the trouble. “I wish you a pleasant morning,” she said as Lily released an unfeminine snore that was a sweet lullaby to her mother’s ears. “I intend to spend mine lying abed as long as my daughter permits me.”
There were more Dancers than the Room could conveniently hold, which is enough to constitute a good Ball at any time.
“Miss de Bourgh has altered since we saw her in Bath last October.”
Mr. Darcy regarded his wife curiously, then followed her gaze across the ballroom. It required a full three minutes to spy his cousin amid the scores of guests milling about, but at last he caught sight of her. Anne de Bourgh stood with her mother and Mrs. Jenkinson, her ever-present attendant, at the side of the dance floor. The de Bourghs were engaged in conversation with an older gentleman he recognized as one of Riveton’s neighbors, the Viscount Sennex.
More accurately, Lady Catherine conversed. Anne listened silently, her attention straying to other parts of the busy room as her mother soliloquized unchecked. Wandering concentration, however, was endemic to participants in Lady Catherine’s conversations. It was how one survived them.
“Altered?” he asked. “How so?”
“She only half attends her mother’s discourse.”
“After nearly three decades of constant exposure to it, she has likely heard the main theme before.”
“But note how closely she observes the couples dancing. I believe she wants to join them.”
Darcy doubted his cousin harbored any such desire. In fact, so restricted had been Miss de Bourgh’s upbringing — her mother had forbidden even pianoforte lessons as unduly taxing on her health — that he was not entirely confident Anne so much as knew a waltz from a reel. “I have never seen my cousin dance.”
“That is precisely my point. Do you not think it possible that she longs to engage in some of the same pursuits and pleasures as all the other young women of her acquaintance?”
Darcy looked at Anne again — truly looked at her, for perhaps the first time in twenty years. It is an easy thing to see one’s longest acquaintances without actually seeing them — for familiarity to breed, if not contempt,
