The events in this vignette fall just before
Chapter 28 in These Dreams. Lydia and
Georgiana are becoming close, as each girl tries to find ways to cheer the
other. They have found a common bond in the disappointments of their young
lives, but Elizabeth, the thread which first brought them together, is still
emotionally distant.
There are quite a few sibling and sibling-like
relationships running through this book. I enjoyed the relationship between
Lydia and Georgiana for several reasons. The first was that Lydia is such a
marvelous plot device! She will say things that no one else will say, and she
brings an earthy freshness to the other characters just by her tart
observations. She has absolutely no class-- not until the influences of
Georgiana and Elizabeth begin to permeate her shaken senses-- and no fear, save
for her own future.
Another thing I love about these two is that
they are such opposites. They grow from each others’ example, and it is
entertaining to watch how easily they come to terms with the elephant in the
room: George Wickham. He played dirty by both of them, and they form a decided
sisterly bond over the matter. As their friendship strengthens, they almost
embark upon the girlhood that both had been denied; playing instruments,
learning new crafts, planning picnics and comforting one another.
Elizabeth, through no fault or intent of
anyone’s, becomes something of the outsider. Unlike the younger girls, her
grief knows no balm, and she is tormented by night and day with her dreams and
visions of the man she believes lost to her. Additionally, she is weighed down
with the duties and responsibilities that the other two are yet unprepared to
shoulder. In this short vignette, Georgiana and Lydia do a little speculating
about the cause of Elizabeth’s low spirits.
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| Eleanor Tomlinson as Georgiana Darcy |
Lydia Wickham tilted her head, and there was a
careful, hooded look to her expression, which betrayed her lack of enthusiasm
for Georgiana’s talents. She blinked once, twice, and then nodded slowly. “It
shows promise!”
Georgiana sighed and dropped the abused bit of
millinery. “Oh, I shall never get the knack of it!”
“No, I think you quite have it! I particularly
like that bit of holly there. How nicely it sets off the dried lavender!
Perhaps if we tried a white ribbon instead of yellow….”
“No,” Georgiana sighed, “I must give it up as
futile. I shall never master your trick of making over bonnets.” She braced her
hands behind herself on Lydia’s bed, and leaned back in defeat.
“Well, it is a sight better than the last one.
You did not rip it this time, and just look at your flowers! They all still
have their blossoms.”
Georgiana looked up with a smile. “That is
true! I cannot understand why I do so poorly at this. It is not as if I have no
practice with flowers, nor with colours and palettes.”
“Well,” Lydia sniffed in mock superiority and
drew her swollen figure up in the new gown Georgiana had just given her, “not
everyone can be as graceful or as talented as I.”
Georgiana threw her head back in a surprised
laugh. “Dear Lydia, there are a great many things at which you excel, not the
least of which is your way of forming saucy retorts!”
 |
| Jenna Coleman as Lydia Bennet (BBC Death Comes to Pemberley) |
Lydia sighed and dropped to the bed beside her friend. “At least I am able to make you laugh. I cannot remember the last time I succeeded with Lizzy.”
Georgiana’s face sobered. “I only met her
briefly last summer, but I thought her quite a merry girl then. From what you
and Richard have told me, it sounds as if she used to be so. She has not been
quite herself, has she?”
“Hah! She feels to me more like a disapproving
elder brother than the sister I have always known. Do you know that she used to
climb trees, or that she once snuck into each of our rooms while we slept and
switched about all of our underclothes, just to tease us? How Mama fretted
about that! We were almost late for services that Sunday. And do not let me
start on about the way she plays cards! She is altogether impossible to read,
always laughing and alluding to cards she does not even have in her hand. Even
Papa cannot best her when she is in high spirits.”
Georgiana frowned. “What do you suppose
troubles her? Is she unhappy here? I was so glad she agreed to come, but I
would not wish to keep her against her inclinations.”
“Oh, you needn’t worry on that score. She is
no more miserable here than she was at Longbourn. She has been like this since
last fall, do you see.”
“But why? I had at first thought Elizabeth one
of the happiest people I had ever known.”
“She was,
I suppose. I daresay I laughed a great deal more, and so did Kitty, but Lizzy
nearly always had a smile upon her face.” Lydia glanced over her shoulder
toward the door, then leaned confidentially close with a finger held to her
lips. “I think I know why, but Lizzy will never confess it.”
Georgiana’s brows shot up at the implied
secret. “Why?” she whispered.
“Why, she has been disappointed in love. I
know it, for she spoke of him once. Sometimes I see her staring off into
nothing, looking for all the world like she would reach for some lover, if he
were only there, and kiss him senseless.”
Georgiana covered her mouth, scandalised at
such a sordid implication. “What was his name? Did he abandon her?”
“Oh, well, she never told me that. She only
spoke of general things, you know-- wishing for him to hold her, dreaming of
him and hearing his voice-- that sort of thing. She denied it the instant I
caught her, but she cannot fool me. Someone broke her heart, and it must have
happened last summer while I was in Brighton.”
Georgiana lifted her shoulders. “But who?”
Lydia surveyed her friend with a significant
expression. “Well, it had to be either John Lucas back home-- that flabby
boy-man-- or someone she met on her tour to Derbyshire.”
Georgiana’s eyes widened. “You cannot mean…
oh! You do not suppose that she and my brother--!”
“Why not? Lizzy used to declare all the time
how stoutly she disliked him, and do you know, I never heard her take the
trouble to denounce any other man.
She always did enjoy a good banter, and I suppose Mr Darcy gave it to her.”
“She disliked him?” Georgiana’s brow furrowed.
“Now I am even more confused! I thought you just suspected her of being in love
with him!”
“Do you not see? They challenged one another.
Lizzy never could do things the easy way, and I can think of no tougher nut to
crack than Mr Darcy.”
“I never saw a thing of her dislike, nor his,
either. In fact…” the space between her eyes pinched in thought. “He smiled at
her a great deal. I noted it at the time because he was working so hard not to smile at Miss Bingley.”
“There, do you see! I think they carried on a
liason of sorts, right beneath your nose.”
“Fitzwilliam would never! My brother was a
gentleman.”
The corner of Lydia’s mouth turned up wryly.
“They are all ‘gentlemen,’ until they are not. But I would not distress you, so
let us speak no more of it just now.”
Georgiana’s eyes were beginning to brim with
tears. “I miss him so! And poor Elizabeth! If she really did love him, and he
is gone… and now she has had to come here! I cannot think what torment it must
be for her. Is there nothing we can do?”
“Short of a miracle?” Lydia snorted and rubbed
a hand over her belly. “Not likely. Lizzy is too stubborn to change her mood just
because we try to make her laugh. She will hold on to her melancholy until she
is good and done with it.”
“But I feel we must try! What comfort you both
have brought me, and he was my brother, after all. I lost someone I had known
my whole life, while she could not have… that is to say, surely she will forget
her grief if we but try harder. What if we were to plan a lovely picnic? Do you
think she would like that?”
“You will not pry her away from the account
books,” Lydia warned. “But I suppose we might try. Oh!” Lydia brightened and
rubbed her stomach once more. “I must show her my new wardrobe! Surely that
will make her smile.”
Lydia rose and brushed a hand down the flowing
new gown, which fitted her far more comfortably than her old one. Georgiana rose
to stand beside her with a proud, yet wistful smile. “It suits you.”
“Yes, but it is missing something.” Lydia
tilted her head to the side, then with a wicked smile, she sashayed to the bed
to retrieve the hapless bonnet. “There!” She crowned her brown curls with the
lopsided thing, tossing her chin up so that her eyes could be seen beneath it.
“What do you think?”
Georgiana pursed her lips. “I think… if
anything can make Elizabeth laugh, you have found it.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
About the book
An abandoned bride
Pride and patriotism lend fervor to greed and cruelty, and
Fitzwilliam Darcy is caught at the centre of a decades-old international
feud. Taken far from England, presumed dead by his family, and lost to all
he holds dear, only one name remains as his beacon in the darkness: Elizabeth.
Georgiana Darcy is now the reluctant, heartbroken heiress
to Pemberley, and Colonel Fitwilliam her bewildered guardian. Vulnerable
and unprepared, Georgiana desperately longs for a friend, while Fitzwilliam
seeks to protect her from his own family. As the conspiracy around Darcy's death
widens and questions mount, Colonel Fitzwilliam must confront his own
past. An impossible dream, long ago sacrificed for duty, may
become his only hope.
Newly married Lydia Wickham returns to Longbourn- alone and
under mysterious circumstances. Elizabeth Bennet watches one
sister suffer and another find joy, while she lives her own days in empty
regrets over what might have been. Believing Darcy lost forever, she closes her
heart against both pain and happiness, but finds no escape from her dreams of him.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
About the Author
Nicole Clarkston is a book lover and a
happily married mom of three. Originally from Idaho, she now lives in Oregon
with her own romantic hero, several horses, and one very fat dog. She has loved
crafting alternate stories and sequels since she was a child watching Disney’s
Robin Hood, and she is never found sitting quietly without a book of some sort.
Nicole discovered Jane Austen rather by
guilt in her early thirties―how does any book worm really live that long
without a little P&P? She has never looked back. A year or so later, during
a major house renovation project, she discovered Elizabeth Gaskell and fell
completely in love. Her need for more time with these characters led her to
simultaneously write Rumours &
Recklessness, a P&P inspired novel, and No Such Thing as Luck, a N&S inspired novel. Both immediately
became best selling books. The success she had with her first attempt at
writing led her to write three other novels that are her pitiful homage to two
authors who have so deeply inspired her.
Nicole was recently invited to join Austenvariations.com, a group of
talented authors in the Jane Austen Fiction genre. In addition to her work with
the Austen Variations blog, Nicole can be reached through Facebook at http://fb.me/NicoleClarkstonAuthor,
Twitter @N_Clarkston, her blog at
Goodreads.com,
or her personal blog and website, NicoleClarkson.com.
Contact
Info
Buy
Links:
Buy Links for Nicole’s
other books
CreateSpace:
Amazon:
15 comments:
Really enjoyed the vignette. I love the friendship between Lydia and Georgiana. They seem to be good for one another.
Thank you for stopping by! They are such opposites, aren't they? It was fun putting them together. Strangely, Lydia was never intended to be such a big part of the story. She just takes over wherever she goes!
Lydia is such fun in this story! I love her and her boisterousness. She is good for Georgiana and vice versa! This is so neat that the seeds are planted for Georgiana to realize that Darcy liked Lizzy. Makes me smile!
Thanks for such a lovely vignette, Nicole. Thanks for hosting, Maria! Well done, ladies!
Been following this book tour and am so looking forward to reading Nicole's book! Unlikely friendships between Georgie&Lydia always wamrs my heart.
Thank you, Priscilla! I am glad you enjoyed them. They are an unlikely duo, but always fun!
Though I would personally find it difficult to imagine myself and Lydia close. The match with Georgiana strangley sounds like a really good idea. Bringing out the best in both I imagine :)
They say that opposites attract, Jo! They have both been similarly betrayed, and both are grieving. Misery loves company, the saying goes.
This is a very interesting friendship! I'm curious to see what happens between these -very different from each other- characters!
:-) No spoilers! Thank you for stopping by, Maria!
Sounds like Lydia has a little more depth to her and has grown up. Thank you for the excerpt!
I do not think that Georgiana and Lydia would have a sisterly bond but this book surprises me. It's great to know that both are now friends and take the trouble to find a way to cheer Elizabeth up. Thanks for sharing this touching vignette, Nicole.
Thank you for the excerpt. Why are Lydia and Georgianna together and is Elizabeth there doing the account books? It is a surprise that Lydia and Georgianna are friends.
Love the excerpt and how Lydia and Georgiana are forming a stronger bond. I hope they can at least cheer Elizabeth up a little! I can't wait to read this story!
Lydia surprised me so often in this book! She kept popping up when I least expected, and saying things I almost made her take back. She's just such a little tart! I can see why Georgiana would feel sympathy for her, even if they are far apart in personality and education.
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