Chapter 6
East Sitting Room
Netherfield Hall
Caroline leaned back in her chair with a sigh, careful to keep one finger marking her spot on the current page of her book.
It was dull work, wading her way through a volume that did not hold her interest at all.
She was a determined woman, however, and would do whatever it took to achieve her aims. Only a few days previously, Mr. Darcy had sat in the drawing room after dinner, a branch of candles behind him throwing his handsome profile into sharp relief with this very book in his hands.
He had finished it and returned it to the admittedly bare library, and Caroline had at once gone to that sparse room to find the book and retrieve it for her own perusal.
She would never wish to be considered a bluestocking, and though many gentlemen quite understandably were averse to over-education for the ladies in their lives, Mr. Darcy was one of the rare few who valued wide reading in women.
Thus, here Caroline sat, plugging away at one of the dullest texts that had ever been written.
She could take a few moments to rest her eyes, she thought, but the view out of the window brought her no more pleasure than did her reading.
The Bennet carriage stood in the drive, which was all to the good, for it was at last bearing the tiresome Bennet girls away.
No, it was the sight of her brother, standing beside the carriage, that gave Caroline no pleasure.
He looked positively fatuous, gazing at Jane Bennet with a besotted expression on his face.
Caroline sighed, propping her chin on her free hand, as she contemplated the problem before her.
She had nothing against Jane Bennet, who was a delightful girl.
It had been strange to find a lady so charming and genteel in this unrefined backwater town filled with vulgar yokels.
The girl was also lovely. She was blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and sweet-faced, and thus exactly the type of woman to catch Charles’s attention.
Caroline had not been bothered at first by his open attraction to Miss Bennet; she would provide him amusement during his brief stay here, and Caroline was happy to cultivate her acquaintance.
Nothing, she had thought, would come of it, for Charles fell out of love as easily as he fell into it, his head turned by every new handsome blonde who crossed his path.
It took her some time to realize that out here, in this benighted locale, there was no other blonde beauty to turn his head and distract him from Miss Bennet.
Caroline grimaced. She did not care for his expression as he gazed soulfully at Miss Bennet, but then he closed the door at last and the carriage rolled away over the gravel.
It felt as though a weight had lifted from Caroline’s shoulders as she watched Miss Bennet and Miss Eliza depart.
If the developments between Charles and Miss Bennet were concerning, the situation regarding Mr. Darcy and Miss Eliza was positively alarming.
The second Bennet daughter was well enough to look at but no great beauty, so Caroline had been both shocked and stunned when Mr. Darcy had confided to her a week previously that he admired Miss Eliza’s fine eyes.
Personally, Caroline did not think Miss Eliza’s eyes anything out of the ordinary.
But then, there was no accounting for the taste of gentlemen, perhaps especially wealthy gentlemen.
Let him admire common brown eyes that were not even that well-opened; no harm would come of it, as long as vulgar Mrs. Bennet and those two horrid youngest daughters of hers were making such spectacles of themselves.
No mere country miss with uncles in trade posed a threat to Mr. Darcy or Caroline’s plans to capture him.
At least so she had firmly believed until this ill-fated illness of Miss Bennet’s brought her next younger sister to Netherfield Hall.
If only Miss Eliza had not been so forward as to barge in uninvited!
Oh, ostensibly it had been to care for her sick sister, but the servants could do that quite well without Miss Elizabeth’s oversight.
Though Caroline had not been best pleased with being forced to host the pert girl, she had derived consolation from how stark a contrast it formed; her own genteel refinement contrasted against Miss Eliza putting herself forward so unbecomingly.
At least, so she had thought. Great had been her horror and disgust when she had observed Mr. Darcy repeatedly watching Miss Elizabeth when she had joined them in the evenings. It was preposterous! Absurd! What did Miss Eliza have that Caroline herself did not?
The girl was, admittedly, a great walker and regrettably had been walking precisely at the moment when Mr. Darcy stood in some need of assistance, or at least that was what the gentleman thought.
It was ridiculous that Charles’s wretched spaniel had escaped, distressing that Mr. Darcy had felt obligated to save the beast, and enraging that Elizabeth Bennet had been the heroine of the affair.
Caroline herself was not fond of walking long distances alone, and certainly not in mud, which was distinctly unladylike, but oh, how she wished she had been walking with Mr. Darcy that ill-fated morning.
She would have been Mr. Darcy’s champion!
She took a deep breath, calming herself.
Let Mr. Darcy admire Miss Eliza while she stood to advantage in the drawing room.
His feelings would doubtless undergo a rapid change the next time he saw the object of his admiration surrounded by her loving family.
Mrs. Bennet could be trusted to forcibly remind the refined Mr. Darcy of the inherent disadvantages in allying himself with a scion of such vulgar antecedents.
All Caroline had to do was bide her time.
Gentlemen were fickle creatures, easily swayed by engaging manners and fine eyes.
Let Mr. Darcy admire this country miss for the time being.
He would soon enough come to a realization of how superior his best friend’s sister was in every way.
Caroline stood ready to accept his offer of marriage as soon as he made it.
Then he would spirit her away to the grandness of Pemberley where she belonged, leaving behind the bucolic Netherfield and its bumptious neighbors, including and especially the Bennets, in dull little Hertfordshire where they belonged.
***
Drawing Room
Longbourn
An Hour Later
For Elizabeth, it was its own special kind of relief, like a weight lifted off her chest, to be seated once more in the Longbourn drawing room.
She had seen Jane tucked into her own bed, wearing her own flannel nightgown and nightcap, fussed over by the housekeeper and a maid, plied with possets and hot bricks.
Content that her elder sister was as comfortable and cared for as she could be, Elizabeth had gone back downstairs.
It was a relief indeed to step through the doorway into her own drawing room, to take her workbasket and her seat there and know she belonged.
No longer did she have to worry about fending off barbed words from Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst, their stiff smiles and snide comments ensuring that she was fully cognizant of just how unwelcome she was.
Not, strictly speaking, that she felt particularly welcome at the moment. Mrs. Bennet was as unhappy to see her return from Netherfield as Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst had been to see her arrive, and she was considerably more strident about it.
“I simply do not understand why you thought you must return home when Jane is still not entirely well,” Mrs. Bennet said fretfully. “It would serve you right, Lizzy, if Jane grows more ill again.”
“That is not fair, Mamma,” Mary said quietly.
Mrs. Bennet turned an exasperated look on her third child.
“Not fair? What is not fair is that there is an entail on Longbourn, and none of my daughters are married! It is not fair that I am destined for the hedgerows along with my unfortunate daughters. If Mr. Bingley is to fall in love with Jane, he needs to spend time with her! There was no reason for you to hurry home in such a manner, Lizzy. Indeed, I would not have allowed you the carriage if I had been consulted. Does no one have compassion for my poor nerves?”
Elizabeth kept quiet, but cast a thankful look at Mary, who smiled and turned her attention back to her knitting.
Before their mother could complain more, the door opened to reveal the two younger Misses Bennet, who appeared with rosy cheeks and windblown hair.
“Oh, Lizzy! You are back!” Lydia declared, hurrying over to the fire and holding out her hands. “Kitty and I just returned from Meryton! It is so cold out there!”
Elizabeth suppressed a sigh. A militia regiment was currently quartered in Meryton, and both Kitty and Lydia found it almost impossible to survive a day without visiting some of the red-coated officers.
Elizabeth knew that her sisters were far too forward in company, but her mother only encouraged her daughters’ flirtatious behavior, and her father was indifferent and indolent.
“I hope you had a pleasant walk,” Mary said calmly.
“It was wonderful,” Kitty breathed, plopping inelegantly onto the couch next to Elizabeth. “We saw Captain Denny and Lieutenant Pratt and Lieutenant Smythe! And you will never guess what they told us about Colonel Forster!”
“What about him?” Mrs. Bennet demanded eagerly.
“It seems that he is to be married soon!” Lydia exclaimed. “Her name is Miss Harriet Climpson, and she is from Derby!”
Mrs. Bennet moaned dramatically, provoking a bewildered look from Kitty. “Whatever is wrong, Mamma?”
“What is wrong?” Mrs. Bennet repeated in exasperation. “Colonel Forster would have been a most appropriate husband for one of you girls, and now you tell me that he is engaged to be married?”