Trepilogue
“Mr Bingley, I have a confession to make.”
Charles Bingley looked critically at his lovely bride, who was apparently somewhat embarrassed and would have enjoyed the moment immensely, were he not aware that he had to come clean himself.
“I fear I have one as well, Mrs Bingley.”
Jane and Charles Bingley stared at each other with intense concentration, and at a signal nobody else would ever see, both dropped to the floor on their knees, pulled out a pair of dice from pockets where they were always kept to hand, and cast them at the same time.
“BLAST!”
Jane Bingley turned red in embarrassment at the unladylike exclamation that escaped her lips, but Mr Bingley knew better…
she was just toying with him, but fair was fair.
Her Snake Eyes said she had to go first, so he simply looked at her in expectation.
She started to tell of her transgression, but before she could start, Mr Bingley developed a cramp in his leg from the unaccustomed position on his knees, and fell forward on top of his lovely bride.
She, being the most amiable woman in Hertfordshire, or all of England for that matter, did her duty to her husband, and massaged out any pain he had in his leg, and just for good measure, did a preemptive treatment on other potentially troublesome areas of his person.
Being thorough and meticulous takes time, so it was a good deal later when they came back to the subject at hand.
Drawing a deep breath, Jane Bingley started her confession.
“I am afraid I have lost ￡3,000 of our personal fortune on a foolish wager. It seemed so certain, like betting on the sun or the tides, and I thought myself perfectly safe at three to five, but alas, the unthinkable has happened and I lost.”
“Egads!” cried her husband. “What was the wager?”
Jane blushed. “I bet that Caroline would not be married by summer. Who could imagine losing that one?!”
Her mortification was complete when her husband started laughing uproariously, and gradually turned into indignation when some minutes later he could not stop, despite the usual remedies.
He finally got himself under regulation. “Oh, Mrs Bingley… what a pair of fools we are. I myself lost ￡2,000 on the same wager, although I got two to one… but still, who could possibly have imagined Caroline would be married!”
Mr Bingley grew pensive. “We also have to come up with ￡20,000 for her dowry!”
They stared at each other and said at exactly the same time, “Blast, this marriage is going to be expensive!”
They frowned intensely for some moments, but in the end, Mr Bingley cracked first and started laughing uproariously.
That released the dam of laughter that Mrs Bingley was holding back, and the couple proceeded to dance around the room like kangaroos, singing over and over again, “We get rid of Caroline for ￡25,000”, interspersed with other similar comments, such as “What a bargain”…
“Best Deal Ever!”… “Would have paid 30”…
“40”… “50”… “Seventh best day of my life!”
Their merry dance was interrupted by a footman knocking on the door with a letter, which they both fell to like starving wolves on a bucket of rabbit stew with toast. They both reached the critical section at the same time and started babbling with the news.
“She is marrying a count!”… “In Paris!”…
“She leaves in a se'nnight!”… “We shall have 500 miles of French countryside and the English Channel between us and her!”…
“And the French Army”… “And the English Navy”…
“And the English Army”… “And the Militia”… “We will never see her again!”
Such was their joy at the unexpected news, Mr Bingley felt it incumbent upon himself to attend to any potential cramps or other maladies his wife might have, as everyone knew that excessive laughter was bad for the humours.
Sometime later Charles Bingley frowned in confusion. “If it is going to be nearly impossible for Caroline to get back here, how is she getting there in the first place?”
Jane reached for the letter abandoned on the side table.
“Somehow, Lizzy became convinced we were going to bring her for our visit in the summer, so she asked our mother, who asked Anne de Bourgh, who worked with Lady Matlock, who in turn engaged Princess Joyce, who had her man of business engage a blockade runner to deliver Caroline to Calais in the middle of the night, and then had the Prince Regent sign a minor treaty with Napoleon to get him to have some of his army deliver her safely to Paris. All quite simple in the end, really.”
Charles Bingley considered the full scope and scale of the endeavour in awe. “So, in the end, Lizzy did all this just to avoid having Caroline visit for a month?”
Jane laughed. “Lizzy would do much more than that to avoid having her for company for even a week.”
“There is only one problem with that entire scheme, my love!” he laughed.
“Pray enlighten me.”
“I never threatened to take her to Pemberley at all. Darcy threatened to make me spend a fortnight with Kitty if I so much as brought her any closer than Bedfordshire.”
“Oh, dear!”