Epilogue
“Miss Bingley is with child?” Darcy’s voice rang out with shock, shattering the peaceful dark of their bedchamber. “How did that happen?”
“Oh, the usual way I suppose,” Elizabeth teased gently. “Cast your mind back about fifteen minutes if your memory requires refreshing.”
Darcy groaned. “I shall thank you not to put such notions in my head when the name of Miss Bingley yet hangs in the air. But who is her…? Surely not…?”
“Mr Frederick Fitzwilliam,” Elizabeth confirmed.
“Who has just married.”
“And who does not believe the child is his.”
Elizabeth felt his head shaking. “Does he have cause to think thus?”
“I cannot say. To be sure, Miss Bingley has not…maintained her good character.”
Miss Caroline Bingley had scandalized the ton some years past by ending her engagement to a very kindly Irish gentleman, Mr Redmond-Creigh.
Since breaking the poor man’s heart, she had grown increasingly forward and desperate in her attempts to secure a husband.
Most had come to see her as nothing more than an embarrassing fortune hunter.
“Jane tells me that she has vastly overspent her income. They think she has been gambling.”
“Bingley will not consent to taking her in.”
“Nor will my sister plead her cause.”
Jane could not and would not forgive her sister-in-law Caroline for the acts she had perpetrated against Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was alternately gratified and embarrassed at her sister’s fierce loyalty, but as Jane often said, no consideration would tempt her to accept a woman back into her house who had so injured a most beloved sister.
Mr and Mrs Hurst had all but turned their backs on her as well. Caroline’s acceptance among the ladies of fashion had always been tenuous at best.
Alone and bereft of the guidance of her elder brother and sister, Miss Bingley had gone from one poor choice to the next. Her only goal seemed to be to entrap a wealthy man, and her methods grew increasingly desperate as the years went on.
“How many know?” Darcy asked. “Is it all over London?”
“I do not think so,” Elizabeth replied. “Lydia and Kitty called today and neither said anything about it, and you know how they love to gossip. It was not until I was alone with Jane that she told me what happened.”
Miss Bingley had gone to her sister-in-law in desperation.
Having found herself short on funds, she had taken a position—though she never referred to it as such—as friend-in-residence to Mrs Charles Fitzwilliam, cousin of Lord Matlock.
It was shortly thereafter that she became dear—and rather too near—to the widow’s thirty-three year old son, Mr Frederick Fitzwilliam.
“Were it anyone else,” Darcy opined, “I might believe she fancied herself in love. Freddie does have a certain charm. But knowing Miss Bingley as I do, one cannot know whether she was the predator or the prey.”
“In any event, Mr Fitzwilliam got married, and Miss Bingley got…something she does not wish for.” After a short pause, Elizabeth said, “I am thinking of Richard and Marianne.”
“Thinking what about Richard and Marianne?”
“That they should adopt the child.”
Elizabeth knew she was not the only one who had seen the grief of Richard and Marianne Fitzwilliam.
The years of their marriage had yielded nothing but disappointed hopes.
Though she was yet young, Marianne had confided to Elizabeth that she knew not how much more she could take of the endless cycles of promise and despair.
Darcy sighed. “The child will have Fitzwilliam blood, assuming Miss Bingley is being truthful. But is this the way it will be now? Having successfully made matches amongst all your acquaintance, you will move on to procuring babies for them?”
“A matchmaker? Fitzwilliam…” Elizabeth chided gently. “Surely you do not accuse me of that?”
“Well, my beloved, what do you call it?”
“I introduce people who I think might be well suited, nothing more!”
“And should the need arise, host balls, dinners, theatre evenings, and walking parties to continue the introduction right into matrimonial bliss.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Have I been truly so dreadful?”
“Dreadful?” He shifted in the bed, drawing her closer. “I daresay that Georgiana would not think it so, particularly as she is so happy with Mr Haverhill.”
“And Captain and Mrs Bolton as well,” Elizabeth replied with a little sigh. “Ah, but I am quite fond of Jenny. She is a dear, sweet girl. I suppose you will accuse me of making Kitty’s match next, but she is so very shy—”
“Shy? Kitty?”
“—she absolutely required my assistance, and in any case, I think she will be very happy as mistress of the parsonage in Kympton.”
“Such bleak times! No more Bennet sisters left to settle, and all our acquaintances wed, or nearly so.”
“And all the daughters too young to think of just yet. Yes, these are dark days indeed.” Her giggle belied her words.
“But what of Miss Bingley?” Darcy asked. “I do not think it will surprise you when I say I dislike the idea of being involved in any business of such a woman. It is nothing less than taking a viper to our family bosom.”
What Elizabeth could not—and would not—say was that she had all too many reasons to sympathise with Miss Bingley.
Alone, facing her lover’s abandonment, carrying a child, and unsure of her future—it was a position she knew and would not wish on anyone, not even this woman.
For Elizabeth, such feelings were long in the past, but it did not mean she could not feel for another.
Such a fragile position women occupied! Mr Frederick Fitzwilliam could, by choice, walk away from his misdeeds, but Miss Bingley, alas, could not.
“Will you consent,” she asked softly, “to a mere visit? The four of us, perhaps? Or Marianne and I alone?”
She felt his gaze upon her, though with the curtains drawn and the room mostly dark, they could not see one another. She heard him sigh. “You have never left anyone to the fate they deserve, including me, so of course, I cannot deny you this.”
Miss Bingley received Elizabeth and Marianne in the parlour of the Widow Fitzwilliam’s house in town.
Elizabeth had not seen her for some years and found her much the same as she ever was.
She had always been a beautiful woman, her features marred only by the spite of her character; now, those same features were creased and wrinkled by worry.
She did not send for tea.
“Your relation is from home,” she said by way of greeting. “You find me alone this morning.”
“We know that,” said Elizabeth. “We wanted to speak to you, only you.”
“Oh?” Miss Bingley glanced at the calling cards the footman had brought her as if they might have some clue as to what the two ladies wanted. “Why?”
Elizabeth could feel Marianne tense beside her.
She had confided her anxiety in the carriage ride over, and she now sat as if she expected a blow or might cry.
Elizabeth laid her hand over Marianne’s to steady her.
To engender a short delay, she said, “It has been a long time since we last met. I wished to see how you were.”
Miss Bingley narrowed her eyes and stared at Elizabeth. “Come now, Eliza, you hate me.”
“I do not.”
“Well, you should.”
“I choose not to. Why should I let hate corrupt my felicity?”
Miss Bingley scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Is that why you are here? To show that no matter what I have done, you still have him and he is still besotted with you? And that your life—the life that should have been mine—is perfect?”
“That is not why we are here.”
But Marianne, her tension coiled within her like a spring, burst out, “My life is not perfect. Far from it.”
Miss Bingley shot her a mean look. “You are daughter to an earl and have everything you should wish for.”
Elizabeth patted Marianne’s hand. “No, she does not, Miss Bingley, and do not presume that money and position can satisfy everyone. She wishes for something that you have and she does not. And that, my dear, is why we are here.”
Miss Bingley’s back stiffened almost imperceptibly. “I do not know what you mean.”
Elizabeth nodded. “I daresay that you do.”
A vast array of emotions washed across Miss Bingley’s countenance. Fear, loathing, relief, sorrow, delight—too many to comprehend or identify—there and gone in a trice. She lowered her face too quickly. “Jane is a gossip.”
“Not at all,” Elizabeth assured her. “She came to me, and me alone.”
“So there you have it,” said Miss Bingley bitterly.
“Ruination, just as I deserve. You must be thrilled to see me so low. Mrs Fitzwilliam does not know yet, but I shall be out as soon as she does, and then what is left for me? I shall never be received anywhere ever again, my sister and brother will disown me even more than they already have, I—”
Elizabeth had risen and gone to her side. Pushing herself into the narrow space beside her on her sofa, Elizabeth took Miss Bingley’s hands in hers. Marianne watched with wide-eyed hope and fear commingled.
“Yes, that is all very likely—unless you allow me to help you.”
Although her face looked as mean as ever, tears began to wend their way down Miss Bingley’s cheeks.
Marianne found her voice, thin and high though it was. “I cannot have a child. Your child is of Fitzwilliam blood. I could…it would…”
Pressing her lips together tightly, Miss Bingley nodded. “You would adopt him or her.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Yes. It would be their child. You would be—”
“Nothing,” said Miss Bingley quickly. “I would be nothing.”
There was a short pause among the ladies. Elizabeth broke the silence after some minutes. “You would live at Richard and Marianne’s home, unseen, until the child is born…”
“No one would be the wiser,” Marianne finished. “Everyone knows the troubles I have had. It would not be surprising that I should retire to the country for the sake of the child.”
“But that I should go with you?”
“You were dearest friends at school,” Elizabeth said firmly. “And wanted to provide companionship during this difficult time.”