Page 63 of What Change Entails

Miss Bingley sat rigid near the card table.

Darcy watched his sister.

Lydia stored that observation away. Interesting again.

Later, while the gentlemen conversed across the room after tea and the ladies remained together, the atmosphere worsened considerably.

Without Darcy and Bingley present, Miss Bingley abandoned even the effort of appearing pleased by Lydia’s existence.

“My dear Georgiana,” she said while rearranging silk thread beside the lamp, “you must allow me to help organize your callers while we remain here. Country visits become so disordered without guidance.”

“I think Mrs. Reynolds manages everything very well,” Georgiana replied.

Miss Bingley smiled indulgently. “Housekeepers manage households. Society requires a different touch.”

Lydia raised her head from petting Horace. “What sort of touch?”

Miss Bingley came gracefully toward her. “Discernment, Miss Lydia.”

“There is that word again.”

Mrs. Gardiner coughed into her handkerchief.

Miss Bingley continued without acknowledging the interruption. “One cannot admit every acquaintance equally.”

“Why not?”

“Because distinctions exist.”

Lydia considered this. “I dislike distinctions. They make conversation tedious.”

Elizabeth murmured, “Lydia.”

“No, truly.” Lydia scratched Horace behind the ears while the dog groaned with contentment beside her slippers. “If everyone must speak correctly and admire the same people and discuss curtains in whispers, society sounds dreadful. I should expire from boredom.”

“Refinement is not dreadful,” Miss Bingley replied. She appeared ready to burst from frustration.

Perfect. Lydia shrugged. “I did not say refinement. I said boredom.”

Georgiana bent abruptly over her embroidery to hide another laugh.

Miss Bingley saw that.

After that, the room never became easy as it had before the Bingleys’ arrival. Georgiana began speaking less often. Miss Bingley moved beside Darcy whenever opportunity allowed. Elizabeth hesitated before joining conversations she would previously have entered naturally. Darcy remained perfectly polite, though as the evening drew on, his answers grew shorter.

Lydia grew thoroughly sick of the entire performance.

Pemberley had been delightful before these people arrived. Now everyone spoke like they expected marks deducted for errors.

By the following afternoon, Lydia’s patience failed entirely.

The party gathered near the south terrace where tea had been arranged outdoors beneath striped awnings. Bees drifted lazily through the roses. Horace slept under Georgiana’s chair with one enormous paw twitching in dreams.

Miss Bingley had spent the last quarter hour correcting Lydia’s affected French accent.

Lydia had never claimed to produce French correctly. Indeed, she had been speaking atrociously to make Georgiana laugh.

“Your accent becomes delightfully provincial at times,” Miss Bingley remarked with a smile intended to soften the insult. “Though perhaps that cannot be helped in Hertfordshire.”