Pemberley to Waterloo: Georgiana Darcy's Diary, Volume 2 (17 page)

Monday 17 April 1815

I have not yet heard from Edward. I cannot even write to him, since I do not know where in Brussels he and the rest of the general's staff are to be billeted, and anything I sent would only go astray.

But I did hear from Ruth. She of course is also in Brussels now--and likely to remain, since her employer Lady Denby does not think that Napoleon's armies pose enough of a threat to drive them back to England.

According to Ruth's letter, Brussels society is almost entirely unaffected by the threat of war.

It's unreal
, she writes.
Across the border, Bonaparte is massing what reports hold to be a vast army. And yet here in Brussels there are balls and dinners and entertainments every night. The Duke of Wellington himself holds balls or routs every week, attends every party, and walks in the park with dozens of his admirers every afternoon.

She says that morale among the troops is very high. And the Duke of Wellington himself appears to all eyes completely unconcerned.

Monday 1 May 1815

Here is the letter I received from Edward today:

Dear Georgiana
,

I have been thinking about you constantly, all day long. And now that I finally have a few moments to write to you, I am too tired to do more than scrawl a few lines. We are arrived in Brussels. Which in many ways is Vienna all over again--balls and parties and routs. Except that every day brings another report of Napoleon's massing his troops just beyond the border.

War seems inevitable. And part of me dreads it. And in part--in part as much as I abhor the thought of another battle, a part of me feels relieved. I know how to be a soldier. Sometimes I am not sure I know how to be anything else--and I wonder whether that is not the true reason I elected not to sell my commission and resign.

God, I'm sorry. I should probably tear up this letter and start again and try to write something less complaint-ridden.

I do wish you were here.

Monday 15 May 1815

I am to travel to Brussels.

I was hoping that writing it would make it seem more real. And I suppose it does in a way, seeing it there on the page. Though I am still afraid that something will happen--that the fighting will break out sooner than anyone thinks, or some other unforeseen circumstance may occur to stop my going after all.

Come to that, I have been nearly prevented from even thinking of the journey already.

My brother stared at me a long moment when I told him of the plan, then rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and said that he would have to be out of his mind to allow his sister to travel straight into the heart of a war-torn land.

We were sitting at the breakfast table. With baby James sitting propped up on Elizabeth's lap and gnawing with fierce concentration on a spoon she'd given him. Elizabeth shifted the baby into her arms and took my brother's hand and said, her voice quiet, "Darcy, if you were the one who had gone to war--and I had the chance of seeing you at least once more before the fighting began--do you think anything could stop me seizing that chance?"

It was only then that my brother agreed.

But I should start from the beginning and tell properly everything that occurred.

This morning, a letter arrived for me from Kitty. I had not heard from her at all since she left Pemberley. And even Elizabeth has had only one short letter from her, which said that Kitty had indeed written to Captain Ayres to break off the engagement between them.

But this morning's letter was addressed to me. And in it Kitty said that her friend Mrs. Harriet Forster's husband--who had been a colonel in the militia--had been called to duty in the regular army. So many of our troops were sent to the former American colonies last year that the Duke of Wellington--despite the confidence Ruth described--is reported to be in dire need of men. Colonel Forster is in Brussels already, serving with the 1st Guards. And now Mrs. Forster is to join him there and has asked Kitty to come as a companion for her. And Kitty's letter asks whether I would not like to join the party.

Colonel Forster has rented a house in Brussels already, so we will have somewhere to stay when we arrive. And it has all been arranged. Elizabeth and I will leave Pemberley in a week's time and travel to Longbourn. Elizabeth says that baby James is overdue for a visit with his grandmother and grandfather in any case. And then from Longbourn, Kitty and I will travel to Ramsgate, where we will embark for Ostend. We are to set sail on the 10th of June.

I've written to Edward of course, to tell him that I'm coming. But given the state of the mails, I may arrive before the letter does.

Which if I am completely honest, I am glad for. There is a part of me that is afraid that if Edward had time to personally approve the plan, he would tell me that it is too dangerous, that I ought not to come.

Saturday 10 June 1815

I'm writing this in the parlour of our inn at Ramsgate--the Traveller's Arms, the inn is called. It's very early in the morning; Kitty and Mrs. Forster are still asleep, but I can hear the innkeeper and his wife arguing in the kitchen and the maidservants beginning to clatter pots and pans.

We're to set sail this afternoon and, depending on the winds, should reach Ostend sometime tomorrow night.

I had never met Mrs. Forster before, though I have heard of her from Elizabeth. Elizabeth's sister Lydia was staying with Mrs. Forster and her husband in Brighton when she--Lydia, I mean--eloped with George Wickham two years ago. Given that history, I was more than a little surprised that Mr. and Mrs. Bennet consented to let Kitty go with Mrs. Forster to Brussels. But after meeting Mrs. Forster--or Harriet, as she insists I should call her--I think I do understand.

Harriet has been married to Colonel Forster for these three years already, but she is very young--only a few months older than I am. She has a round, pink-cheeked face and round brown eyes and bouncing brown curls. Now that I have written that, it sounds rather patronising. But I don't mean it that way. I do like her--it is impossible
not
to like her. I can see why Elizabeth hasn't managed to cherish any resentment over her small part in Lydia's elopement.

Harriet is chubby and bouncing and friendly--and anxious to please--as a new puppy. And very sweet and kind. She offered to change rooms with me last night at least three times, just because the room I'd been assigned to was at the back of the inn, overlooking the stable yard, and Harriet was afraid that I might be woken by the noise. And she is sincerely attached to her husband. It's not only that she can talk of little else but the prospect of being with him again. There is a kind of glow that comes into her face whenever she speaks his name.

And besides all that--and which Kitty didn't mention in her letter to me--we are to be accompanied to Brussels by Harriet's grandmother, Mrs. Metcalfe, who will serve as chaperone for us all.

Mrs. Metcalfe is as unlike her granddaughter as it's possible to imagine: fine-boned, bird-thin and ramrod-straight instead of plump and round, with snowy-white hair scraped back into a plain knot under her cap. Her movements are all sharp and very decided, as is her voice. And she has a small, withered-apple face and the keenest pair of black eyes I've ever seen.

She caught me watching her last night while we sat down to the dinner of steak and kidney pie that the inn had provided. "I suppose you'll be wondering what an old woman such as myself is doing, gallivanting off to the Continent in this way when I should be sitting by the fireside at home?"

Her eyes seemed to bore into mine--which I had always thought an exaggerated figure of speech until now. But her gaze seemed as though it ought to penetrate clear to the back of my skull. So I gave up the half-framed polite response I'd been composing and answered frankly, "Actually, I was trying to guess at what your age might be."

That seemed to please her, for she laughed. Her voice is old and cracked-sounding, but her laugh is surprisingly young. "Well, you're honest, at any rate. I cannot abide dishonesty in young females--or all this wrapping a truth up in a lot of flowery-sounding rubbish when it would take three words to say what you really mean." And then she stopped, fixing me with the same penetrating stare as before. "Your room is next to mine upstairs. You don't snore, do you? Or talk in your sleep?"

I was startled, but told her I didn't--at least, not so far as I knew.

Mrs. Metcalfe nodded her head, making the ruffles on her cap bounce. "Well, see that you don't tonight. I'm an old woman and need my sleep." And then she closed one eye in a wink that surprised me nearly as much as the question had. "Sixty-nine years old, to answer your question from before."

A maidservant has just been in to offer me tea and hot rolls for breakfast. Maybe I will go outside and look around Ramsgate for a little while after I have eaten. It is very strange to be here again--and in these circumstances, preparing to set sail for the borderlands of a war. I have not been in Ramsgate since I was fifteen.

Sunday 11 June 1815

I am sitting on the deck of our packet boat. It is nearly eight o'clock at night--which means we have been aboard more than a day, now--and the sea is millpond smooth and stained rosy-gold by the fire of the sunset. It would be beautiful--well, it
is
beautiful, but would be more so if it weren't for the fact that the utterly calm sea means we are stranded some miles still from Ostend without a breath of wind to push us towards the shore.

Kitty and Harriet have been horribly seasick almost from the moment we set sail; they are down in the ship's cabin, lying on the hard wooden bunks and groaning feebly. I have never been aboard a ship before, so I had no idea whether I would be sick or not. I haven't been for a moment, though, not even last night when the sea was quite rough. I feel slightly guilty saying so, when Kitty and Harriet are so miserable, but I really do love the sensation of the boat rocking and swaying under my feet.

Mrs. Metcalfe is the only one of our party besides me not affected by sickness. At the moment, she is also on deck, lecturing one of the ship's crew about the hygienic arrangements on board. Which honestly do leave something to be desired, but between the voyage and the prospect of finally reaching Brussels within the next few days, I haven't noticed very much.

I was just reading through what I wrote yesterday morning at the inn. Mostly to keep myself from growing impatient over the delay in reaching shore. But it has reminded me that I never wrote about the conversation I had with Elizabeth just before Kitty and I left for Ramsgate.

Our visit at Longbourn was lovely--though we were busy from morning until night with Elizabeth's family and all the neighbourhood callers who came to see her during our stay. And then, too, Elizabeth's sister Jane came to visit with her husband Charles Bingley. They brought their daughter Amelia, who is nearly a year old now. Amelia looks exactly like Jane, the same golden-blonde hair--though Amelia's of course is as yet just wispy curls--the same blue eyes. She was so funny with baby James; every time she saw him she would give a kind of high-pitched baby shriek and crawl towards him at full speed. And then she would grin and chuckle and try to gum his cheek or poke her small fingers into his ears.

James started to be able to roll himself over while we were there.

But none of this is what I started out to recount, which was that on the night before we were to depart Longbourn, Elizabeth came to my room. She had a parting gift for me--a little bottle of lavender water to use on my handkerchiefs. But then once she'd given it to me she sat down on the bed and seemed to hesitate, looking uncertain or as though she were trying to make up her mind whether or not to speak.

Which is so unlike her that I asked whether anything was wrong.

Elizabeth shook her head. "No, there is nothing the matter. Or at least, I hope that there will not be anything the matter. It's just ..." she gave me a small, rueful twist of a smile. "I have been debating whether or not to tell you this all day. I don't want to upset you. But then, that's rather condescending, isn't it? Trying to decide what you should and should not know. And besides, you ought to be prepared if--" Elizabeth stopped again and drew in her breath. "To speak plainly, my mother had a letter from my sister Lydia three days ago. Lydia is the worst correspondent in the world, of course, and hardly ever writes. Not unless it is to ask for money. But in this letter to my mother, she wrote that her husband George Wickham's regiment has been called to foreign service and is already embarked to join the Duke of Wellington's force in Brussels."

I think I said,
Oh
. Or something like that. And Elizabeth leaned forward and asked whether I was all right.

I nodded. "Yes. I'm ... surprised. Though I suppose I shouldn't be. I didn't know he was now in the regular army, but the chances were always going to be great that he should be called to fight with the rest of Wellington's troops."

I know last year I forced myself to write out the full story of how George Wickham nearly persuaded me into eloping with him four years ago, when I was fifteen. It is embarrassing now, to remember how naive I was, how easily taken in by his unctuous declarations of love. And I still despise myself a little--even if I was only fifteen--for being so spineless that I was too afraid to tell him
no
when he asked me to run away.

But at least I have the comfort of knowing that it was after all four years ago, and I am not that girl anymore.

I sat back a little against the pillows on the bed. And then looked up at Elizabeth. "I am surprised. But I don't think I am worried or distressed. The army is thousands and thousands of men strong--it's surely not very likely I should meet him. And besides, even if I did, I don't think I would care."