Chapter 53
Both Caroline Bingley and Lydia Bennet felt slighted long before the evening was over.
The absence of their hosts was insult enough, but the utter disinterest of Colonel Fitzwilliam was staggeringly rude.
Lydia was appalled that a handsome man who appeared to be in possession of all of his wits would waste them trying to make dull old Mary smile.
Caroline had a wider net and was infuriated to be overlooked in favour of any Bennet.
Not comprehending the vast scope of Caroline’s dislike, nor realising that the disgust included herself, Lydia felt a real connection to her erstwhile foe.
Neither of them deserved to be so callously overlooked!
How dare they be ignored, or treated as if they were less than a boring, bookish girl in an awful blue dress?
Caroline left the gathering almost as soon as they assembled in the drawing room.
Lydia followed almost at once. She had no desire to listen to Kitty’s abysmal attempt to sing Voi Che Sapete, or to watch Mary simper at a man who must surely be deaf, blind and stupid to have chosen her as his companion.
Caroline might just be heading back to her room for an early night, but even an unprofitable visit to the guest wing was far more inviting than spending another second with her sisters.
Miss Bingley, however, did not go to her room.
She turned right at the top of the stairs instead of left, passing a few whimsical country scenes and then stepping on the thick velvet rug which ran the length of the family wing.
She had no business being there. Still, she walked with absolute confidence.
Clearly, she knew her way around. The intruder walked straight to Mr. Darcy’s room and rapped on the door.
Lydia hid in an alcove, beside a tiny table which held a worryingly slender vase. Convinced that she was going to break it, she dug her fingers into the wall and peered around.
The door clicked open and Darcy looked out. He looked surprised to see Miss Bingley, but it was an exhausted reaction which made him look resigned. His voice, however, sounded as if he was spitting the words out through gritted teeth.
“Miss Bingley. Is there some emergency?”
“In a way.” the woman cooed, moving closer, “I heard how your wife spoke to you this evening, Darcy. How noble you were! How patient you were to stay calm and not shout back! Such an assault upon your character should not be borne, sir. I knew that I had to come and congratulate you.”
“Congratulate me?” he echoed wearily.
“Yes, sir! On your restraint! Mrs. Darcy might be forgiven, I suppose, for she does not know any better. I am sure that she believes every family in the country shouts at one another, as her family does. How gentlemanly you are, sir, not to lower yourself to her level!”
“Miss Bingley…” Darcy rubbed his forehead and drew a deep breath, “Are you done?”
The woman blinked at him. “I just wanted you to know that your efforts have not gone unappreciated.”
“How very kind of you. It must have been a great discomfort for you to have your ear pressed to the keyholes in my house for so long. I am glad that your prying has finally borne fruit, Miss Bingley. Congratulations!” his voice dripped with sarcasm, “Now, madam, kindly leave me alone to reflect upon my triumph in peace.”
The door slammed. Caroline stared at it for a long while, white-faced and immobile.
Then, with abrupt haste, she turned on her heel and strode away.
The shock of being spoken to so bluntly had made her unsteady, and she accidentally stormed off in entirely the wrong direction.
Lydia watched, trying not to giggle, when Miss Bingley marched towards the dark and deserted rooms instead of back to her own warm chamber.
Dark, yes… but were they truly deserted?
There was a sliver of light, barely perceptible by Darcy’s room, but hard to miss as Lydia silently followed Caroline into the dark.
One door stood slightly ajar, and candlelight had spilled through.
There was just enough to illuminate Miss Bingley’s confused face when she stopped in front of the door.
Lydia figured out that this room was supposed to be empty.
Of course, it had to be empty. Lydia’s room was not far from here, and she had never seen the door open, nor heard any sounds from the room beyond it.
She knew that it was Miss Darcy’s room: a young lady her own age, who was taking the waters in Bath.
Elizabeth had sternly told Lydia not to go in there, for she knew her younger sister would be curious about the room of a girl so close in age, yet so dissimilar in circumstances, to her own.
Lydia had obeyed, but the location of the forbidden room had been etched upon her mind in stone.
Perhaps it was some servants getting up to mischief in a room which they knew was empty.
Caroline presumably had a similar thought, for she raised her chin in the air and pushed the door open. “Who is in here? Show yourself!”
There was no answer. Lydia watched Caroline’s eyes narrow and for a moment recognised indecision on the woman’s face. Then the older woman squared her shoulders and marched through the door.
Guard, protector, mistress - however she defined her status in Pemberley, Caroline was sure of one thing: she had every right to investigate.
Lydia, inching closer, heard a strangled cry.
Her stomach dropped like a stone. For a second her knees were too weak to hold her, and she sagged against the wall.
Then her courage returned and she ran. Bursting into the room, she saw that Caroline had her hand pressed to her mouth.
The other woman was as white as a sheet and breathing so heavily that her ridiculous silk dress seemed likely to burst at the bodice.
Muffled by her fingers, her squawks of surprise whistled like a whimpering puppy.
Caroline was staring at the bed. It was hard to make anything out in the dim firelight, and at first Lydia wondered if Miss Bingley had just stubbed her toe or turned her ankle. Surely the huge bed only held a few blankets?
But then she saw the hand.
Was it a hand? Could it be a hand? It was so still and skeletal that Lydia dazedly wondered if it was a pile of twigs.
Then she saw that head that the hand rested beside and swallowed hard.
Long, wavy hair covered the pillow and a white face emerged from it, like a skull rising from the slimy weeds of a blackened bog.
A faint rattle came from the gaping mouth.
Catching the red firelight, two huge dark eyes looked out in accusing fury.
Lydia cried out and stepped backwards. Her knees buckled once more, and she fell to the ground.
“Miss Bennet.” a hand reached down and pulled her sharply upright. “Lovely to see you, my dear. I see that you were following me yet again.”
“I’m not the one creeping through the corridors!”
Caroline sighed. Her aloof attitude was clearly an act. Lydia could see a clammy sheen on the woman’s forehead. In the firelight it looked like marmalade.
Marmalade! What a comparison! As the thought struck her, Lydia’s keen love of absurdities saved her. She felt a single, dry shudder run through her body. It thrummed in her belly and her bones once, like a tolling bell, and then her terror passed.
“Do you know who that is?” she whispered.
Caroline nodded. A look of clinical curiosity came over her as she walked up to the bed.
“Yes.” she said, staring into the woman’s bulging eyes with the detachment of someone seeing a rat in a trap, “It is Georgiana Darcy.”
“It?” Lydia echoed weakly and then curtseyed blindly to the bed. “Miss Darcy, please forgive us. We had no idea…! When did you return from Bath? Had we known…”
“Stop babbling, you little idiot.” Caroline interrupted, “Look at her! Look at her eyes! She isn’t listening. How could she? There’s nothing there!”
Lydia swallowed hard, “What do you think happened in Bath? I am sure that I shall never set foot there after this!”
“Didn’t I tell you to be quiet?” Caroline’s eyes snapped to Lydia’s white face. Her lips curled like a snarling tiger, “She was never in Bath! Look at her - a stiff wind could blow her away!”
The younger girl looked once more at the girl in the blankets.
She could see what Miss Bingley meant. Apart from the eerie, burning eyes Lydia had never seen anything so close to a corpse.
Miss Darcy looked much like the Gothic sculptures she had seen in old churches: skeletal crypt-keepers holding tomes of Revelation.
“What… Miss Bingley, what should we do?” Lydia gulped, “What if somebody finds us here?”
Caroline glanced up at the door and stood up. Lydia raised a hand to stop her from striding past.
“What if she tells on us?”
A thin smile made Miss Bingley’s fire-licked face almost as unsettling as Georgiana’s.
She leaned over the girl in the bed, blocking out all the light until all Georgiana could have made out were the red pinpricks in her oily eyes.
Then, slowly and deliberately, Caroline pressed her long-nailed finger down on the girl’s nose.
“Tell on us?” she hissed, smiling slickly, “Oh no, Georgiana. We were never here. But if you want to glare and grunt at your lying, drunken brother then feel free. No wonder you made him drink, you spoiled little brat.”
“Miss Bingley…”
“What?” Caroline snapped, reeling round to glare at the other irritation in her presence. Lydia bit her lip hard and stepped back.
“She is still there, isn’t she. Look, she can see us. She… she looks like she’s crying. You are being so… how can you talk to her like… ugh! You are a horrible, horrible woman!”
The older woman scoffed and stood up straight, smoothing down her skirt as if she had just finished dancing with a duke instead of bullying a child.
“I will not be lectured to by an uppity chit who spends all of her time spying and sneaking around. How dare you claim any moral superiority?” Caroline saw that Lydia was frozen in place, sneered and pounced: “You will stop your nonsense, Miss Bennet, if you don’t want anyone to know that you were here. ”
I could expose you, too.
Lydia thought the words, but her throat closed up before she could say them. Instead, she humbly asked, “What do we do now, Miss Bingley?”
“You can go and play with your dolls, little girl.” Caroline bit, “As for me, I am going to find my maid. I am going to find out what turned Miss Georgiana Darcy from the darling of her brother’s eye into… that.”