Chapter 9
Elizabeth was to turn ten in a matter of a few days, and she was sad that her brother Andrew had not returned to the shores of England yet.
She knew that it was only ten months since he had left, but she thought that she had heard her papa tell her mama that Andrew and Lord Perry were cutting the trip short because the Duke of Bedford had taken ill.
Elizabeth treasured every letter that she received from her brother; he had, as he had promised that he would, been a faithful correspondent.
She sat in her chamber and reviewed the neatly-ordered letters that Andrew had sent her and looked at the globe that her papa had gifted her where she traced Andrew’s journey on his tour.
He had sent a letter from Dover before they boarded the Dennington Lines ship that would be at their disposal until they returned to England.
The first letter from the continent was dated the tenth of August from Lisbon in the Kingdom of Portugal, their first stop.
There were two more letters from other cities in that Kingdom.
A week later, she received a letter dated the sixth of September from Madrid in the Kingdom of Spain.
Andrew told her of the bull fighting, in her opinion a barbaric sport, and how bewitching an instrument the guitar was, played by gypsies in England, but used to accompany those dancing a fast-paced dance called the flamenco.
Andrew told his sister that he had acquired a guitar for himself and castanets for her, Anne, and Gigi.
Not long after, he and Perry, as he called the Marquess of Birchington, reached the east coast of the kingdom at the city of Valencia.
There they loaded their coach on the Duke’s ship, which transported them across the Mediterranean Sea stopping for some days at the islands of Ibiza, Majorca, Minorca, and Sardinia, where they spent a fortnight.
They did not visit Corsica as it was part of France.
In mid-October, a letter was posted from Palermo, an island that was part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
Another fortnight was spent on the island before they sailed to Policastro on the mainland of the kingdom.
From there they used about a month as they travelled north through Salerno and Naples to Rome in the States of the Church.
By the beginning of December of 1800, after visiting Venice, Milan, Pisa, where they climbed up the famous leaning tower, and Milan, they made the crossing of the Swiss Alps as the way over the mountains was thankfully not closed by snow when they crossed over.
A few days before Christmas, Andrew posted a letter from Zurich in Switzerland where he and his friend would spend the Lord’s birthday with some family of the Duchess of Bedford.
The last letter from Switzerland was dated just after Twelfth Night, as they were about to travel east into the Empire and then the Kingdom of Hungary.
Elizabeth had letters from Innsbruck, Carinthia, Styria, and then in mid-February 1801, a missive announcing their arrival in Buda, just across the Danube River from Pest.
Their next leg had them travelling north through Vienna, where Andrew promised to purchase some new scores by the local composers, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, Hamburg.
In May, his letter was sent from Tonning in Denmark, and Norway.
That is when the Duke was taken ill. The original plan was after Copenhagen, to see some of the Kingdom of Sweden where the ship was to meet them, sail to the Netherlands and then after they toured that country, the Dennington Lines ship would bring them back to London, sailing up the Thames.
Since the notification of the Duke’s illness had been sent, Elizabeth had received no further letters from Andrew and was concerned at hearing no further news from her brother but hoped that it was simply that being rushed, there had not been the time to post another letter.
At least Richard and Will were home from Cambridge.
That in itself was a worrying proposition for Elizabeth as, after Richard graduated in a year, he would not take a grand tour but would be inducted into the regulars after papa purchased him his commission.
Her worry over Richard was interrupted as she heard the crunch of a carriage’s wheels on the gravel of the drive.
Leaving her box of letters where it was, she took off down the stairs toward the entrance where she saw that her parents, Anne, and Richard were all heading out of the door.
She caught up with them as they arrived on the bottom step in time to see the door open and Andrew emerge from within.
As much as she wanted to leap into his arms, she restrained herself knowing that she needed to wait until her parents greeted him first.
“Andrew how well you look,” Elaine gushed after she received kisses on both cheeks and a warm hug from her oldest child.
“As do all of you,” Andrew replied as he was grasping his father’s hand and shaking it vigorously. Elizabeth was at the end of her patience and launched herself into her brother’s welcoming arms.
“I missed you every day that you were away Andrew. Welcome home big brother,” Elizabeth said as she planted kisses on his cheeks.
“Who is this old lady and what have you done with the sprite that I left here when I departed?” Andrew teased his sister.
“It is me silly,” came the indignant reply. “Where is Lord Perry?” she asked after not seeing Andrew’s friend emerge from the conveyance.
“We sailed directly to Newcastle. Perry took a coach directly to Longfield Meadows to be with his family and as you see, I came to Snowhaven,” Andrew explained.
He lowered Elizabeth to the ground and then hugged Anne and lastly gave Richard a massive bear hug that was returned with equal fervour.
“Should we go inside?” his mother reminded the family.
As happy as she was that Andrew was returned home for her birthday, Elizabeth was also sad, because in a matter of weeks her brother would move to his own home at Hilldale; Snowhaven would no longer be his home.
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Caroline Bingley had the worst year of her life at the Greenlake School for Troubled Girls.
Her hands were calloused like those of a servant; her nails were kept short so they would not break off while she cleaned and scrubbed.
Through all of this, she still stubbornly held onto her belief that she was the aggrieved party and that all of her dreams of taking her rightful place as a member of the first circles would be realised.
She had turned sixteen that year, but there had been no party or cake.
No acknowledgement at all. She did not receive letters from her family, and she was not aware that her vitriol and threat-laced missives had never left the headmistress’s office.
Rather, they had provided evidence of what her parents had always feared; their daughter had a mental deficiency that no amount of punishment or school would change.
In letters between themselves and the headmistress, they had reluctantly accepted that there was no choice but to commit Caroline to an asylum for the rest of her natural life.
They agreed that she was a danger to herself, and others, and they could not understand why her hatred seemed to be aimed especially at Lady Elizabeth Fitzwilliam.
Yes, they could see that she was jealous of the social status that the young girl lived with, but that still did not explain the absolute hatred and desires to make Lady Elizabeth suffer before she killed her that Caroline wrote about in her letters.
On the fifteenth day of June in the year 1801, the defiant young lady was led into Mrs Johnson’s office.
“As you have not been willing or able to amend your behaviour and see the culpability that you alone bear for the situation you are in, you will be leaving us today,” the headmistress informed Caroline with no preamble.
“Is my family ready to apologise to me and take me home?” the delusional young lady asked.
“No, Miss Caroline, that is not what is happening. You are being committed to the Hesperia Asylum for incurable hysteria on this island where you will be cared for the remainder of your life.” It took Caroline a few moments to understand what the woman had just told her.
“NO! I order you to send me home this instant!” she screeched.
Mrs Johnson signalled two waiting footmen who took the screeching Caroline by the arms and carried her up to her chamber to pack what she had into her small trunk.
By the time that she had packed her trunk while the footmen waited for her in the hall, she was almost in a catatonic state.
She followed the footman who carried her trunk down the stairs to the same cart that had brought her to the nightmarish place while the other man followed behind her.
As she seemed calm, she was not bound and sat in her stupor in the cart as it jerked forward and exited the big doors in the wall of the building.
The cart was half way to the lowered drawbridge when Caroline stood and jumped from the cart and ran with all the speed that she was able to toward the cliff and the sheer drop to the rocks below.
In her mind she saw herself running toward the welcoming arms of Fitzwilliam Darcy.
The last thing that Caroline Bingley knew in her short and wasted life was that she was falling, and then there was nothing.
The footmen arrived at the edge of the cliff just as she fell onto the rocks below and the angry waves pulled her body, and soon nothing was left of the young lady as the sea claimed her body.
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