Despite the frustrations she felt towards her husband’s relations, Elizabeth became captivated by the spectacle of the room. The candlelight had been strategically arranged to produce shifting shadows dancing along the walls. Squinting her eyes, Elizabeth spotted glints and glimmers of colored glass. The shards rhythmically swung in front of each candelabra, hanging by string from the wall sconces.

“Oh, William,” Elizabeth whispered as her husband began to feel some joy again from witnessing his wife’s discovery of the decor. His hand found hers to give a gentle squeeze just as a low moan bellowed from behind the curtain. Georgiana played a flourishing trill, two chords, and a final staccato single high C. Then silence descended upon the room.

Robert Fitzwilliam, the Honorable Viscount Ashborne, leapt onto the makeshift stage, barechested to his breeches and his skin slick with oil. He raised a large conch shell to his lips and blew.

“The devil did he find that?” Lord Matlock complained.

“Hush dear,” his wife scolded, “recall Captain Darcy. I’m sure his things are in the attics.”

“Yes, yes,” the Earl of Matlock grumbled, squirming in his seat to find a comfortable position after slightly overeating at dinner.

Robert glared at his father before delivering his lines. “We call upon the great Dionysus and all of his nymphs to bless this meager offering. And to you mere mortals privileged to witness, consider yourselves fortunate beyond measure to enjoy the world debut of the Supreme, the Divine, and the Beautiful–” he paused for dramatic effect as every woman with the title Mrs. before her name held her breath that Robert Fitzwilliam would be so brash,”writings of Miss Catherine Bennet.”

Almost as quickly as he had appeared, Robert was gone, replaced by two maids timidly scooting on stage dressed as fairies.

At first, the two women froze. For too many uncomfortable seconds, no one spoke. A tinkling from the high keys on the pianoforte broke the silence and the maid named Rachel appeared to snap out of her stupor.

“O the wind, the wind! My wings grow weary,” she croaked out, nudging the fairy next to her. The other maid startled and whispered her line.

As none could hear her, the entire audience leaned forward and Rachel jabbed her fellow actress again.

“Mine as well, let us rest here until the wind subsides,” the second maid said, not performing nearly to the level of the first fairy.

The two maids crumpled to the floor as Kitty burst upon the stage from the center curtain, her skin aglow in metallic powder and a long zephyr-like gown flowing about her form. As she lifted her hands, her long sleeves were attached to the skirts so that they appeared to puff out like a gust of wind.

“What is this? It cannot be. Arise my children of the gale. The ground is not safe.” Kitty looked over her shoulder to the far corner of the stage as she flitted and floated around the crumpled fairies.

“We cannot. We are too weak. Please, lessen the forces we must fly against.” Rachel begged, rather convincingly. Kitty gazed lovingly at the fairies and tilted her head to the side.

“I dare not. I dare not. Now rise, before it’s too late!” Kitty raised her hands again, looking up, as Robert slithered onto the stage, and then stood crouched like a frog. His skin was painted with patches of green and he stared around and around like a crazed person.

“I spy two tasty morsels before me. However did I become so lucky?” he eyed the two weak fairies with an expression of desire. For greater effect, he licked his lips.

“Hurry, my children. I will calm the winds briefly, but you must fly!” Kitty urged.

Rachel rose immediately, but the other maid remained on the ground. Rachel’s fairy joined the goddess of the wind in her urging.

“Lilac, you must not tarry! Listen to Aura!” Rachel fluttered her arms while the other fairy ignored her. Robert’s evil frog hopped closer to the fairies.

“No! This is all of her fault! If she had not tired us out, we would have returned home long ago!” Lilac complained, as the frog villain edged ever closer.

“Argue now and you may not argue later! You must fly!” Rachel’s fairy insisted.

But it was too late. To the gasps of the crowd, Robert’s frog villain tossed a long red ribbon hidden in his hand to simulate a frog’s tongue, and then used his other arm to cover the fairy Lilac with a black cape before the two rolled off stage.

Rachel began to tear up as she turned on Kitty’s goddess character. “How could you have allowed such treachery?”

“Fly, my child, and lean on your own strength. Feel the power in your wings,” Kitty stage whispered, as the two began to travel around the stage area. Intermittently, set pieces were slid under the curtain and held up to symbolize the distance and terrain around them.

The fairy began to look at both of her arms and flap them with more confidence, their speed increased. The set pieces struggled to keep up and finally a tree constructed from what appeared to be a coat rack with liberal decoration from the hot houses, stood strongly on the far stage right. The same place the villainous frog had appeared earlier.

Rachel bent in a near perfect plie while Kitty’s character remained a few feet away from the tree, trying to act as though she were still in the air.

“My friend is lost! But I made it home even though we had flown too far. How?”

Kitty’s Goddess of Aura gazed sympathetically at her charge. She reached out a hand, then turned it gently to place her palm up. “Alas Lilac worried about her toil. But you tried once more and discovered the toil made you stronger. And that, my child, is why the wind blows so hard. So that your wings never fail you when it matters most.”

A second curtain began to fall and Elizabeth Darcy burst into applause. The other guests soon joined and Mrs. Darcy craned her neck to see how such an intricate rigging system for the curtains was managed. Her husband smirked as he watched her and he finally took pity on her.

“The head gardener was once a sailor, before he decided land was more fitting than the seas. He helped the footmen rig a system of pulleys for the curtains,” Mr. Darcy whispered as Elizabeth beamed at him.