Sons and Daughters, page 14
Alice’s emotions had traveled from abject humiliation to joy, and only in a moment. “Yes! How clever you are to recognize him! Oh, Harry, do you really, really like it?”
“Yes, little Alice, I really, really like it.”
As Harry studied the baffling combination sketch and fabric cut outs Alice wrinkled her nose at Celeste and stuck out her tongue, squinting her eyes in the ‘so there’ look children give each other. She was, however, smiling sweetly when Harry looked back at her from his appreciative perusal of the drawing.
“Let me see that…” Celeste bent down to study the picture. “That’s my handkerchief! You’ve adhered pieces of my handkerchief to this! Why you dreadful little troll, that handkerchief cost a fortune! I’m going to go straight to your father and tell him what you’ve done!”
Alice began to tremble and cry. This beautiful gift she had created with her own hands – well, with Luke’s own hands – for her beloved Harry was now evidently criminal evidence that would land her in hot soup. Oh, this was awful.
Seeing how upset both were becoming Harry stepped between and separated the two females. “Celeste, she meant no harm. It was only a handkerchief after all and you have dozens.”
“That does not signify! She is a spoiled, willful child and should be punished. I am sick to death of seeing her wherever we go. Beating is too good for her.”
“Oh really?” Alice’s small fists clenched in anger; she pressed them hard into her waist, no longer feeling like crying but more like bashing. “Well, it was a very stupid looking handkerchief, anyway. It looks better where it is, on the back end of a horse.”
“Ugh! You see! She’s a little beastie; she’s a menace. Go away you ugly little thing.” With that Celeste pushed up against Harry’s side and took possession of him, slipped her arm through his.
Alice was beyond infuriated. She never did appreciate the manner in which this girl giggled up at Harry, neither did she like the possessive way the old witch had grabbed his arm and she really, really did not like her yellow hair, nor her silly smile, nor anything else about her.
And she had called her ugly just one too many times.
Alice suddenly charged forward and kicked the lovely Celeste in her big, fat, bottom, very, very hard.
Chapter Twenty
He felt her sweet warm breath on his cheek first, then he felt a small jam covered finger poke at his jaw. “Are you still mad with me?”
Darcy scrubbed at his face feeling the sticky residue there and then stared at his fingers. Blueberries. He roughly pushed his chair back, removed a handkerchief to wipe his hands. He stared frostily back into those huge light gray eyes watching him.
She was so adorable.
“You understand I am working here, or attempting to do so at any rate.”
She squinted in thought then shook her head. “Up, please.”
“You are supposed to be in your room, evaluating your very bad conduct, assessing the proper punishment for your actions tonight.”
“My feet are cold.”
Grunting his annoyance he lifted her onto his lap, hugged her tightly against both his chest and his better judgment and then pressed his face into her cool soft hair. So much for strict discipline and cold authority. Cupping both her tiny feet into his hand he tried very hard not to laugh. “You’re a menace, do you know that?”
Certain now of his ultimate forgiveness she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“I’m sorry, Papa. I will buy that mean old Celeste another handkerchief – could you lend me some money by the way? Just don’t be mad with me anymore.” Her heart had been breaking forever, unaccustomed as she was to any separation from her parents, most especially her adored father. It had nearly been one hour since they returned home from the assembly and he had sent her off to bed without a kiss. Unheard of. She missed him dreadfully, loved him more than life itself.
“We do not refer to young ladies as ‘mean’ or ‘old’ Alice. Besides, you kicked her and made her shriek. Don’t you feel badly about that?”
“Not so much.”
“Alice!”
“Well, I made the gift for Harry almost all by myself and then she made fun of it, and of me, right in front of him! I wanted to cry, Papa.”
Darcy closed his eyes and sighed. “Is that what this is really about? Harry, again?”
“No. Maybe. Yes. I like Harry so much, Papa. He is beautiful and brave and very smart but he likes Celeste. He loves Celeste.” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “They kiss, Papa. They look like this.” Alice sucked in her cheeks and her eyes rolled up into their sockets. She then pursed her lips and made a fish mouth accompanied by sucking noises. “They kiss like that when they think no one else is around.” She confided those last scandalous facts in a whisper; all the while she nodded sagely at what that implied.
Whatever that might actually be however, she hadn’t a clue.
“And I heard you tell Anne Marie that when girls are alone with boys and let boys kiss them they could be in serious trouble and have a baby. The girls I mean. Celeste may very well be with child.”
“Oh, good heavens.” Darcy smiled as he pressed her cheek against his chest. “So you like Harry, do you?” In fact, the whole family was aware of her fanatical devotion to the young man and thought it precocious.
“Oh, very much, Papa. He’s so pretty and tall and he smells good all the time. He smiles at me whenever he sees me. He has nice teeth.” As she played with her Papa’s neck scarf she rubbed her thumb across a spot of jam that somehow had appeared there, a spot that was increasing in size with every attempt of hers to eradicate it. Oh, oh. She sucked the rest of the jam from her thumb but it was too late, the collar was already covered with it. She patted him there. Perhaps he’d never notice.
When he looked down at her she smiled over brightly back at him. She never noticed the wistful look in his eye. His baby daughter was no longer his baby; she was growing up.
“If I tell you a secret do you promise not to tell?”
Her father nodded.
“I want to marry him.”
“Ah.” It was like a knife to his heart. “Well, that is very serious.”
“Remember, you promised not to tell anyone – maybe Mama, but no one else.” Her eyes were huge with concern, but only for a moment. “Oh, and you could tell Uncle Fitz too, if you like. And Auntie Amanda, of course. I love Auntie Amanda’s biscuits. Maybe cousin Matthew and cousin Mark would like to know too; Anne Marie and Kathy already know. But that’s all. Perhaps we could tell George...”
“Let’s say this. I promise no announcements will be made to the general public without your express approval, all right. I only pray he is worthy of you. I cannot imagine any man deserving you, but I do believe Harry would come closest.” Then he cupped her face and kissed her. “And you have not diverted me from why you are being punished in the first place. You should not have kicked Celeste.”
“She said I was ugly, Papa. Am I very ugly?”
He would have liked to have kicked the chit himself when he heard that, but he swallowed hard against the sudden lump in his throat. “Certainly not; you are beautiful, Alice, unique. It was not very good of her to fib like that.”
Alice beamed at her father, content now because he was always right. “I kicked her bottom,” she giggled.
“Alice, you cannot kick people on their bottoms. It is un-Christian to resort to physical retaliation over petty insults. You must allow small differences to resolve themselves.”
“It wasn’t so small,” she explained seriously. “She has a really big bottom.”
“Alice!”
.
1833
“The Adolescents”
Struggle with a sense of identity
Lowered opinion of parents
Rule and limit testing
Sexual awakening
“I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.”
Laurence Sterne
Chapter Twenty-One
It was a lovely May morning and the flower beds were making their first appearances; the landscape was bursting with new life. Kathy Fitzwilliam stood at the window and saw none of it. Her thoughts were with her mother and the estrangement that had kept them apart for so many months. It had been Kathy’s fault entirely, she realized that now, and could not for the life of her understand why she had been so angry for so long. She adored her mother, she really did, and if anything were to happen to her now, before she could tell her how much she meant to her, how much she loved her, how much she needed her… A cry of pain from her parent’s bedroom made her turn and cross herself; tears began to burn her eyes once again.
Kathy’s mother, Amanda, was the worst of all possible things a parent could be in the eyes of the very young – different. She was a foreigner, with a foreign accent and foreign ways. She also laughed freely, something Aunt Catherine had told her was simply not done, excessive smiling was even frowned upon; but, her mother was a naturally happy woman, could not contain her joy at times. She adored her many children and she loved her husband.
“No good can ever come of over stimulation or excessive elation,” admonished Aunt Catherine. “My nephew, Fitzwilliam, should be ashamed to have sired so many children – it’s a scandal I tell you. Restraint in such things must inevitably fall to the woman, of course, men being the naturally unwholesome beasts that they are. An aristocratic woman knows this, is never disposed to enjoy her husband’s amorous attentions. No, no, no – marriage and children are duties in one’s life, not pleasures. To think otherwise is very common.”
It was comments such as these that fed Kathy’s growing feelings of embarrassment for her mother; and, of course, she also craved the esteem of her new companions – young men and women interested in her now that she was ‘Lady Katherine’, the daughter of an Earl. It was her eagerness to be received by these people that set the course for her slow and deliberate rejection of the person she loved more than anyone else.
Her memories of what she had said and done the prior year now tormented her.
The current problem began several months earlier, in September, when the door knocker finally went up at the Darcy’s London town home, Pemberley House. Within moments Kathy appeared there, a maid in tow. She greeted her godparents very properly, accepting their happy welcome with a haughty nod. “Uncle William, Aunt Elizabeth, it is very pleasant to see you again. I trust you are both well.”
Lizzy had been about to throw her arms open wide for their customary hugs and kisses when she sensed the tense formality of the occasion. Darcy merely shook his head, his infamous eyebrow raised as he set his hands on his hips.
“You’ve forgotten your coronet,” was his only comment.
“Are you feeling all right, Kathy?”
“Minor aches, Aunt Elizabeth…small discomforts…nothing of a nature that another lady of my stature and breeding could not endure. And, if it is not too great an inconvenience, I should rather be referred to by my proper name, Katherine Marie. Lady Catherine de Bourgh feels that familiar names are too…familiar…or something. I can’t exactly remember what it was, but it was bad. Might I inquire if either Anne Marie or Alicia is home to callers this afternoon?”
“No, you may not.”
“William, behave yourself. Yes, they are both upstairs. Shall I call them for you?”
“There is, of course, no need. I am quite well acquainted with your domicile. I shall acquit myself upward, if that is perfectly acceptable with you both that…I do that. It is perfectly fine with me to…do…to go…” Kathy was quickly becoming tripped up with her own propriety.
A squeal from upstairs caught her attention and a child’s happy smile briefly made its appearance before being beaten back into submission. Lady Katherine’s austere visage returned. “If you will excuse me…” She floated past the Darcy’s and out the family sitting room door. Then, when out of sight of the amused couple, she hitched up her skirt and bounded up the staircase taking two steps at a time, straight into the waiting arms of her greatest friends in the world, Anne Marie and little Alice.
The two older girls locked themselves inside Alice’s bedroom, eagerly indulging their newfound passion for grown up ‘ladies’ things – speaking about young men, fussing with their hair, discussing the latest fashion, speaking about young men, sharing their deepest secrets. Speaking about young men.
Alice sat before her dressing table the whole time half listening, content and reading a book of poetry in Latin. Her job was mainly to hand hairpins up to whichever girl was braiding or curling her thick hair at the moment. The older girls’ constant obsession with boys and appearance was boring beyond belief but she loved them both dearly, felt privileged and honored that they included her in their ‘adult’ discussions. There was also the added bonus of a seemingly non-ending supply of treats that usually arrived with Kathy Fitzwilliam.
“I have had a note passed to me in secret from Sir John Bromley through his footman. He says he admires my eyes. Sir John does, not the footman.”
“Katherine,” Anne Marie stopped hair curling ministrations on her sister to stare disapprovingly at her cousin. “Sir John Bromley is, well, old. He must be at least forty if he’s a day. Whatever would he want with someone as young as you? Never mind, don’t say it out loud. Alice, sweetheart, would you like a little fringe over your forehead?”
“I don’t care. However, I did promise Mama not to allow you anywhere near my hair with a pair of scissors again.” Alice thought little about her appearance but she did recognize a bargaining chip when it reared its head.
“You may borrow my box of paints.”
“And your sketch pad.”
“Yes.”
“And your copy of ‘The Evil Duke of Castle Rackrent’?”
“Why you greedy little…oh, all right.”
“All right, then you may cut a fringe, but nothing too short.”
Kathy’s attention had been miles away during the sisters’ exchange. “Perhaps he wants a new wife. Perhaps he wants a young wife.”
“Whom? Oh him. Don’t be ridiculous. His other one’s just died, and that was his third I believe. How indecorous would that appear – a bit cold hearted, even for a Marquis. You’ve not even made your debut, and besides that you are barely fifteen years. It all sounds rather unseemly and havey-cavey to me.”
“Yes, and splendidly wicked. I do so admire older men, especially ones with titles hanging about their ears.” She squinted at the impish and odd little face of Alice Darcy staring back up at her in the mirror. “I think you should cut her hair a little more on the left. Ooh, no, I meant her right, my left. Sorry.” They all tilted their heads to the right to study the damage. “Perhaps more fringes will hide that slight mistake. Really, Anne, I don’t like him that way. It’s just exciting to think someone older, someone terribly important, has even noticed me. He’s ever so rich and he is the nephew, on his mother’s side, to a Russian prince.”
“He’ll be a dead nephew to a Russian prince if Uncle Fitz learns about this; he’ll bash the poor old fellow’s head in,” Alice continued reading from her book as she spoke.
“There is that.” Kathy leaned closer into the mirror, examined the results of the Anne Marie’s coifing attempt and made a soft moue of distaste. “Well, it doesn’t signify, I never answered. In fact, Aunt Catherine and I have set our sights on another. No offense, Anne Marie, but isn’t Alice beginning to look a bit like a Shetland pony? Here let me take over. Alice, dearest, what say we cut the whole top, it’s half gone anyway.”
“How are Mr. Wentworth and his wife?” Anne Marie had moved out of the way, turned and now fidgeted with the lace table scarf on the dressing table, straightened the brushes and combs, arranged some creams and bottles of lotion, never acknowledging the two sets of eyes that followed her every movement.
“Oh Anne Marie! Never tell me you are still in love with Robert Wentworth.”
“She adores him.” Alice managed to pull away just in time from her sister’s pinch. “She still runs from the room whenever he visits with father, or she blushes and stammers if she cannot escape in time. Robert is always very civil to her too. He’s a perfectly splendid fellow, Anne. You are so silly.”
“Sit still Alice! Heavens, I very nearly sliced your ear off just then and that would be horrifying; it would completely unbalance your coif. Anne, he is married, dear, and that pale little wife of his is about to make him a father. Even worse than that – he has no family connections, nothing really to commend him; and, did you hear that when his father passed it was found out there was no money! Imagine that, a distinguished old gentleman with gaming debts! Why, it’s taken poor Mr. Wentworth four years to pay them off and begin again. And he didn’t need to – Papa was ready to settle the accounts himself.”
“I think that was quite splendid, I really do; I think he’s quite splendid. He’s very brave,” Anne burst out suddenly, her face crimson.
“As do I, naturally. But, my dear, he’s… poor.” Kathy seemed to feel that was even worse than being married.
For a moment Alice watched as they stared at each other in the mirror. “There’s another minor obstacle neither of you have mentioned yet, I mean besides his being married and completely unsuitable. Isn’t he quite a few years older as well? You would be behaving as silly as Katherine with Sir John, don’t you think? No offense meant, Kate.”
“No offense taken, mouse.” A snip too near her ear caused Alice to jump. “Oops. Sorry. I’m nearly finished, please sit still.”
It was an unfortunate hairbrush incident moments later that concluded the grooming afternoon, taking all the girls by surprise. Kathy accidentally caught the brush within the child’s thick tresses and none of them could dislodge it; a bit more cutting was needed. “I am sorry about that, Alice, I truly am. Really, you can barely tell it’s been cut, especially if you don’t show your left side too often. To get back to Robert, I heard Mama tell Papa that she believes he felt obligated to marry the chit. Very sad since the woman rarely comes to town to be with him and he’s alone now more than ever before.” Placing her hands over Alice’s ears, Katherine leaned close enough to Anne Marie to whisper, “No one truly believes the child is even his.” Katherine then stared meaningfully at Anne Marie, both peering at each other in the mirror.
