Chapter 3 #2
Still, she would make of it what she could.
The anger she felt towards Eliza Bennet had not abated.
Standing there in the drawing room at Longbourn, part of a wedding breakfast that never should have been, she had seethed with resentment watching Eliza prance about, waving her left hand in the face of any and all.
Her gown was an absolute crime, being the least fashionable thing Caroline had ever seen, and her hair was too curly, too simple, to even be termed a proper coiffure.
The food was good—she had to grant the Bennets that much—but who could eat in the face of such travesty?
Not that it mattered to Darcy. He stood there looking as though he was about to tear off his new wife’s gown and take her right there on the dining room table. Caroline sniffed. Poor Darcy. Caught up in lust, and now his life was ruined.
Miss Darcy entered the room, and Caroline stood, cooing her greetings. The two ladies drank tea and chatted for some time, but Caroline could see there was something on Miss Darcy’s mind. She hoped the girl would soon get to it.
“Miss Bingley?” Miss Darcy set her tea cup down on the table in front of the two ladies. “I…I wish to speak to you…that is, you will recall the…the man I told you about?”
“The servant boy?” Caroline asked, with a little smirk. “Yes. I do hope you have gotten rid of him.”
“W-well…not a servant. Not exactly. He was educated as a gentleman.”
“Hmm.”
“And he is a lieutenant in the army. So…so he now has the status of a gentleman too.”
Caroline thought it a rather useless distinction. A gentleman had an estate. If he did not have an estate, he was worthless, no matter what they called him. Was that not why she had so passionately urged her brother to purchase? Fat lot of good it had done her, but still, she had standards.
“Who is he?” she asked, implying that he had no family name. “Who are his people?”
“I suppose you could say his people are my people,” Miss Darcy said hesitantly. “George Wickham—in truth, my father loved him like a son.”
Almost too late, Caroline prevented herself from allowing her jaw to drop agape.
George Wickham was Miss Darcy’s beloved?
She had not confided the whole of it, but Caroline knew that Miss Darcy had seen a great deal of the man, now revealed as Mr Wickham, over the summer in Ramsgate and was besotted with him.
What was it with the Darcys and their inexplicable compulsion to marry beneath them?
“He is a…handsome man, I grant you that,” said Caroline. “You spent time with him this summer in Ramsgate, I believe?”
“I did, but that horrid Mrs Elders, who Brother hired as my companion, behaved as if we were about to elope every time I so much as spoke to him! George is an honourable man. I cannot think why she behaved so to him.”
As it was, Caroline did not think much of any man who would pay such attentions to a girl not yet out, but perhaps he simply made too much of the family connexion.
“Do you know him?” Georgiana asked.
“Know him? Heavens, no,” Caroline said with a little sniff. “I am not in the habit of knowing soldiers. But I saw him in Meryton. You know he is quartered there for the winter?”
Miss Darcy nodded.
“But surely you must know nothing can come of it? My dear, you are Miss Darcy of Pemberley! You must marry well, particularly now that your brother—”
“Exactly!” the girl effused. “Do you not think that my brother’s marriage shows he has changed his mind? He sees now that where there is love, other objections must fall aside!”
In a stroke of utter brilliance, Caroline saw how she might hit two targets with one arrow. Exact a bit of revenge on the nefarious Eliza Bennet and turn her young friend’s thoughts around from her most unsuitable beau.
“Love? Miss Darcy,” she said with as much gentleness as she could manage, “I am loath to tell you this but…”
“But what?”
Caroline turned her head, unaccustomed to playing the role of a compassionate friend. With a deep sigh, she looked at the girl and laid a hand on Miss Darcy’s arm. “You must know…yet I see you do not…about…”
“About what?”
“About them. They are…well, they are in love. Have been for some time, or so I was told. He took the commission there for her.”
“Who?”
“Your new sister and George Wickham.”
Injured humiliation rose on Miss Darcy’s countenance, turning her face hotly red. “No, that is not possible. George loves—”
“I heard a story,” said Caroline, “while I was in Meryton, that they intended to marry but her father forbid it. She has no fortune, as you know, and they would have been penniless.”
“George loves me,” said Miss Darcy stubbornly.
Her hand still on the girl’s arm, Caroline squeezed gently. “My dear, such is our lot. A fortune is both a blessing and a curse—one never knows whether a man wants you or your money.”
Tears sprung into Miss Darcy’s eyes.
“And that is why these unequal alliances are never any good,” Caroline continued. “Why, I would not be surprised in the least if Eliza married your brother intending to keep George Wickham on the side.”
To her credit, Miss Darcy did not weep. Instead, she said again, more vehemently, “George told me he loves me.”
“Then why,” asked Caroline, leaning forward to portray earnestness, “did he while away his days in Meryton, going to card parties at Eliza’s aunt’s house, instead of staying here in London with you?”
“He thought that if he raised his prospects—”
“Indeed, he did raise his prospects.” Caroline removed her hand from the girl and allowed a bit of harshness to seep into her tone. “Lover to a very wealthy woman, who will no doubt use her generous pin money to keep him in style.”
Her face red and her eyes shining, Miss Darcy stared at Caroline for a long moment. Then with great hauteur, she rose, determinedly angling her nose towards the ceiling. “I must take my leave.”
Caroline heard the anger rising in the girl’s voice. “Of course,” she said soothingly. She stood and accompanied Miss Darcy to the front hall, watching silently while the girl donned her bonnet and cloak. When the housekeeper left them, Miss Darcy turned back.
“You must be wrong.”
Caroline gave an elegant little shrug. “I speak as I find, my dear. I simply cannot do otherwise. You should have seen them at my brother’s ball! Ask anyone—they will tell you how it was.”
“How can I stand by and see my brother played for a fool in this insupportable manner?”
“He married her. It is done.”
“I must do something!” Miss Darcy cried. “I have never known him to be this way, and to think it is all a humbug! To think she does not return his love! It is a sore humiliation. He does not deserve that!”
With these words, she swept from the room.
Caroline watched the door close behind her, a small smirk playing on her lips.
How she wished she might be a fly on the wall at Darcy House when all of this came home to roost!
She imagined an enormous row, Mr Darcy in an arrogant, handsome fury, raining down his ire upon Eliza’s head.
Heaven knew she deserved that and much more besides.
But there was not much chance of that, was there? Eliza would say she had no idea what Miss Darcy was talking about, and in the absence of any tie between them, that would be that. No doubt Darcy would be too stupidly besotted to even care.
Caroline pondered over this. With the newly married Darcys at Pemberley, there was not really anything to be done, but when she could, it might be fun to throw a bit of kindling on the fire she had just lit.