Chapter 4
Caroline believed that she had a fool-proof plan.
She would wait until after two in the morning when she was sure that everyone would be too tired to pay proper attention and she would escape.
She would not, could not, live like this.
How dare her parents put her in a place like this and not the seminary that she had dreamed of where she would have been rubbing shoulders with daughters of the Ton!
They had every class at the crone’s school, from daughters of tradesmen and up.
The fact that she was one of the former group was completely glossed over as an inconvenient truth.
The gall of it, that she was supposed to follow the lead of some insignificant daughter of an insignificant estate!
As if anyone could show her, Caroline Martha Bingley, how to behave.
She had sat in disbelief while she read the rules she was expected to follow.
She and the girl sharing her chamber were expected to keep it clean—the beds made each morning with no maid to help.
There was no lady’s maid, not even a shared one like she and Louisa had!
That was another grievance that Caroline added to her list—when they arrived in Scarborough her father had locked her in the dingy closet that they called a room and told her that she no longer shared a maid and would not get one of her own.
The incompetent girl was assigned to Louisa alone!
She had scoffed at the punishments listed, including the ultimate one of being dressed in a burlap dress and put to work in the scullery before each meal when one was not in class.
Lessons, what a joke! What could they teach her about the first circles that she was destined to join in this place? Nothing, of course.
Just past half after two, Caroline crept out of her chamber, walking boots in hand.
She could not repine leaving the few plain dresses that had been sent with her behind.
She had ignored what the crone had to say in her office, so Caroline had missed the part about the guards that were always on duty and the distances that she would have to traverse to get close to another living soul.
As she crept down the stairs, she froze as she saw a footman sitting in a chair in the hall below. She congratulated herself as he looked like he was sleeping with his hat pulled over his eyes. She crept down the stairs, making sure that she did not wake the obliging servant.
With a cursory glance, she did not see that his eyes were watching her keenly as he grinned to himself.
The one with pinched face and red hair obviously thought that she was the one who would succeed, just like the miss last week and the one before her!
He waited until she reached for the locked front door and started to rattle the handle.
As she started to get more frustrated that the door would not open by the power of her command, Caroline froze.
“An’ jus’ w’ere does miss think she be goin’?
” Caroline turned slowly, as though the speed of her turn would somehow erase the man now standing behind her.
She decided to do what she always did, employ bluster and her false sense that the world would bow to her command.
“I demand that you unlock this door and allow me to leave! I should not be here with this group of misfits!” she demanded, the pitch of her voice rising until it reached the level of a screech. Before the amused man could answer, she heard the last voice that she wanted to hear.
“Miss Caroline, just where do you think you are going in the middle of the night? And how were you getting there? You must be a great walker if you would make it to our neighbours, who are more than ten miles distant!” Caroline turned to her left, and there was the headmistress, in a nightgown and robe with a shawl over her shoulders and a long grey plait down her back.
Without waiting for a response from the insolent girl, she turned to the footman.
“Smithers, please escort this young lady to my office.
The footman grasped Caroline’s arm in his exceptionally large hand and whether she wanted to go or not, she was dragged along until she was standing in the same position that she had been hours before when she arrived, in front of Mrs Gilbert’s desk.
“Did you listen to naught that you were told today, or did you think that an old crone such as myself was babbling nonsense?” Caroline’s mouth opened wide in shock.
How had the woman heard her call her a crone?
“Let me repeat, our nearest neighbour is ten miles and the nearest town twenty miles from the gate! The gate is three miles from this dwelling, so if you know how to add and subtract, you will understand that even had I no guards, that I daresay you would not be able to walk one mile, never mind ten, twenty, or more!”
Caroline hung her head as the woman berated her.
Rather than learn the lesson that if she were to buckle down and do the work, her life would be vastly easier, all Caroline could think of was how she was going to thwart the crone and her rules.
She was calm until she heard: “Did you take the trouble to read the punishment for attempting to run away?”
“I must have missed that,” came the derisive answer with a sniff.
“Then I will remind you. Starting in just over an hour, you will report to the kitchen; and you will be wearing your new clothing,” Caroline was doubly horrified, she was about to have to do manual labour and she would be wearing a scratchy burlap dress!
“For the next month, you will work as a scullery maid, and if your behaviour does not improve, it will be much longer than that!” the headmistress carried on ignoring the looks and faces emanating from the girl across her desk from her.
“I suggest you get whatever sleep you can, because lack of sleep is no excuse not to report for duty at the prescribed time! Dismissed!”
If it were not for the footman standing behind her, Caroline would have climbed over the desk and clawed the crone’s eyes out.
It was all she could do to control her fury as she marched up the stairs to her room, not caring how much noise she was making.
An hour later, Caroline was in the scullery, and she soon found out that none cared who she thought she was as she was forced to clean plates and scrub pots.
It was there that she met another girl who had recently tried to escape and not made it much further than she had; Lydia Thatcher, the daughter of a country squire from Herefordshire.
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The day arrived that Mr Finch determined that Lady Elizabeth could be carried up to her bedchamber.
He had examined her arm and leg after removing the bindings and was much encouraged by what he saw and felt.
There was no trace of infection, and from what he could feel, without causing the young lady any pain, as he applied pressure to her bones, they seemed to have set just as they should have.
He could not be absolutely sure yet, but all indications were that the surgery had been successful.
A bath chair was procured, and Pemberley’s carpenter had fashioned extra support for her left arm as well as attaching a board covered with the same material used on a carriage’s bench to make it soft.
It would keep her leg straight out in front of her without it being able to bend.
After Lizzy was dressed in a fresh nightgown by her mother and a maid, and a robe had been placed around her with her broken arm inside, Andrew and Richard had the honour of carefully lifting her out of the bed and placing her in the modified bath chair.
A strap was gently placed around her, well under her broken left arm to make sure that she was secure in the chair, and then William pushed her to the stairs where Biggs and Johns were waiting to carry her up the stairs.
As William pushed the bath chair into her bed chamber, Elizabeth could scarce contain her excitement.
The bed had been manoeuvred so that she was now looking out of the double doors that led to the small veranda towards the peaks in the distance.
She could see part of the forest that she longed to walk in, and a cool late summer breeze was blowing making the curtains roll like a swell on the ocean and bringing the smell of the roses in Aunt Anne’s rose garden below wafting into the chambers.
As much as Elizabeth wanted to be mobile, she accepted what Mr Finch told them with good grace; that she would need to be confined to her bed for at least another four weeks before she could start to make forays outside of her bedchamber.
A cot was set up in one corner where a nurse would sleep just in case the patient awoke in the night and needed assistance, and there were ample chairs placed for her visitors to sit with her while she was awake during the day.
“I was so worried about you Lizzy,” Georgiana told her as she sat with her.
“I will always be here for you Gigi,” Elizabeth replied, “I have missed seeing you and Alex. He has grown so much already; I am sure that within a year or two he will be taller than I am!” Elaine, who was sitting back watching the girls banter back and forth, lifted her eyes in prayer giving thanks that her daughter was well on her way to recovery, even if there was still a long road ahead.
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Bennet had not missed that his oldest son spent as much time as he could with the newly-appointed rector of the Longbourn church, Mr Pierce.
He seemed to have a genuine thirst for knowledge in all theological matters.
Bennet would not push any of his children against their own inclinations, but he would encourage them when they displayed interests in a certain direction as William had in the Church.