Chapter 27
When Caroline Bingley heard that Lydia Bennet was marrying at the end of September in London, she surmised correctly that her brother and his wife would likely postpone their removal to Derbyshire.
With Jane and Bingley in town for some weeks, it presented her with an opportunity, and she would make of it what she could.
What she wanted, Caroline decided, was for Eliza to go away and stay away.
To that end, Eliza should be persuaded she should leave Darcy.
Her brother’s wife was having a morning in, and Caroline would attend. Jane, she knew, would not refuse her entry nor would she wish for any sort of scene to be made. So Caroline would go, she would draw Eliza aside, and then she would do her worst.
When she and Louisa arrived, the drawing room contained about ten ladies.
As Caroline had predicted, Jane’s lips tightened at the sight of her and she shot a glance at Louisa but otherwise did nothing.
Eliza sat in the midst of everything, an unlikely queen.
Caroline had to admit to some begrudging admiration of her gown—likely it was one that Viscount Saye had chosen.
She did not approach her at first, choosing instead to be demure and quiet beside her elder sister. She was introduced to a Miss Lillian Goddard, who was sweet but stupid and evidently fancied herself an artist but otherwise spoke no more than the barest civilities.
When Eliza rose to go refresh herself, Caroline did likewise, following her to the nearest bedchamber and waiting for her to emerge. When she did, she was startled to see Caroline, rearing back and gasping a moment before saying, “Miss Bingley you frightened me.”
“The least of my offences against you I am sure.” Caroline tried for her best, most contrite smile. “I know I am not to speak to you, but I hoped I might offer an apology.”
Eliza tilted her head, considering. It had the unfortunate effect of also showing off some pearl earbobs that looked very expensive and made Caroline burn with jealousy. Those should be her earbobs!
“Very well,” she pronounced at last. “Shall we?” She gestured towards the door to the room she had just quit. Caroline nodded and followed her in.
The door had scarcely closed behind them when Eliza turned. “You do understand I have no power to compel Bingley to leave you in London or admit you to his home.”
“I know.” Again the contrite smile. “My brother has become quite stiff in his old age.”
Eliza did not smile.
“In any case,” Caroline hurried on, “I wish to apologise, deeply. I cannot tell you how much I regret the prank that…well, that led to…never mind that, it need not be said. But suffer me to say I am sorry, not only for that but for taking advantage of your absence in the way I did.”
“How do you mean?”
Perfect. Caroline tried not to look happy at Eliza’s confusion, instead choosing to appear flustered. “Oh…uh, Mr Darcy did not…I assumed he might have said to you…”
“Said what?”
Caroline covered her face with her hands and sighed heavily. Dropping her hands, she said severely, “I should have thought he would be honest with you. Did you not deserve at least that much?”
She shook her head. “Men. They never speak the truth when a lie will do.”
Eliza merely studied her curiously.
Caroline licked her lips. “I am sure you knew about our understanding…before. Before he saw you.”
Eliza still said nothing.
“He and my brother had spoken, things were…well, not quite settled, but that was the purpose of us being all together in Hertfordshire—to settle things and offer us a time of courtship. Instead, I saw his head turned.”
“You blame me that it went off.”
“I do. I did. I mean, these things happen, I am sure. The trouble is…” Caroline sighed heavily. “It was more than just convenience and the union of two fine families for me. I loved him. Loved him so much that I had allowed him…”
She looked helplessly at Eliza. Eliza merely nodded coolly. “What has this to do with me?”
“Well, having happened once, it was…well, a short time after you left, it was natural he should seek solace somewhere, and it seems that somewhere was with me. He thought you dead, but he could not quite grieve you as such, and in the meantime, a man does have his needs.” This was all said so perfectly earnestly that Caroline almost believed it herself.
“So what you are telling me is that you are ruined? And my husband is to blame.” There was no emotion in Eliza’s words. Caroline thought she had never been so flat.
“Well…yes. I guess you might say it thus. I do not think myself ruined for we were engaged, after all.”
Eliza raised an eyebrow when Caroline called herself engaged but otherwise seemed to believe it. “So what is it that you want? Is there some child lurking about whom Darcy must claim as his? Or is it money you are after?”
“I wanted to apologise, like I said,” Caroline replied. “And also…”
“Also?”
“Well, I did wonder whether you thought you would stay this time.” Caroline was still sweet but allowed a harder edge to creep in.
“I could not remain with a man whose heart was with another, after all, and from what I hear, you had a pretty situation in Weymouth. Quite fashionable. Perhaps it might be happiest for us all if you were there and Darcy—and I—were here.”
Elizabeth congratulated herself for sitting calmly through Miss Bingley’s absurd stories.
What she wished to do—what she could not do—was lash out violently, scratching her eyes and pulling her hair.
But she would not because she was a lady.
She listened quietly to Miss Bingley’s lies, but when she rose, she permitted herself one small indulgence.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” she began in a light, conversational tone, “that if you were not so mean spirited and unkind, he just might have had some designs on you? I suggest you consider some significant improvement of your character, else you are sure to end up alone. No man wants to take a viper to his bosom.”
And with that, she quit the room, not caring whether Miss Bingley had any reply.
She could not return to the party, feeling unequal to any sort of conversation. Instead, she wandered in something of a stupor and found herself behind the house in a small courtyard.
Autumn was full upon them, and there was nothing green to comfort her, but she sat and pretended she was looking out on the gardens at Pemberley. She wanted to cry; there was a hard lump of sorrow in her throat that needed relief, but it would not come.
What could she do? She was entrapped in this life where nasty wenches like Caroline Bingley held power over her. They knew her secrets, and they could come to her at any moment and spew bile on her, and she had to sit there and accept it. She was vastly sick of it all and had deserved none of it.
Something needed to change.
Darcy was sitting with his cousins at their club when Bingley found them.
He immediately insisted on a private room, and Saye, with a short whistle, procured one.
Bingley waved off a drink and sat looking grim as he reported the extraordinary falsehood Miss Bingley had told Elizabeth that afternoon.
“She said what?” Darcy felt himself grow cold with anger.
Following some confrontation with Miss Bingley in a bedchamber somewhere, Elizabeth had disappeared.
It was Miss Goddard who asked after her—they had been in conversation when Elizabeth had excused herself for a few minutes but did not come back.
A search of the house did not locate her until Bingley discovered her in the back courtyard staring at nothing.
It took some doing, but Bingley eventually extracted the whole stupid story.
“What on earth does your sister have against Elizabeth,” Darcy spat, once the recitation was done, “that she cannot stop herself from trying to upset her?”
“I am sorry. I believed Louisa understood that she was not to enter my home, but Caroline can be persuasive, and she truly believed Caroline would apologise and leave it at that.”
Darcy scoffed at the notion. “Has she put these rumours about elsewhere? Is there talk?”
Saye spoke up. “I have not heard so much as a whisper about this, but surely Miss Bingley is not stupid enough to put about her own ruination.”
“Therein lies the utter stupidity of it all!” Darcy cried. “In seeking to discredit me, she makes herself disreputable! What of her own marriage prospects?”
Delicately, Bingley said, “Um, I daresay she should vastly prefer being your mistress to someone else’s wife.”
“Bingley!”
“I do not say I agree with her,” Bingley said hastily. “Only that it certainly seems so by her actions.”
Darcy cursed. “Just when I had hoped…”
“Hoped what?” Bingley asked.
Darcy shook his head. He would lose Elizabeth because of this, he was sure of it. A sudden vision came to him—returning to the house to find Elizabeth and Bennet gone, back to Weymouth or worse, off to a place he knew not. Panic suddenly clenched him, and he said, “I must go to my wife.”
“Now? But Darcy we should—”
Whatever else Saye said, he knew not, for Darcy was gone.
He did not call for his carriage; there was no time, and in any case, it was only a mile to his house.
He walked briskly, using the length of his legs to their full advantage, a litany of curses to Miss Bingley interspersed with pleading to Elizabeth running through his mind.
All the while, images of an empty bedchamber, an empty parlour ran rampant.
By the time he burst into the front door of his house, he was so wholly persuaded she was gone that it was a shock to hear Mrs Hobbs say, “In the courtyard with Master Bennet,” when he asked where she was. He paused a moment, his breath coming in short, quick pants, and said, “You are certain.”
“I am indeed, for I left her there not a moment ago. Are you well, sir?”