Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
Not at the wedding. Not in three years of letters.
Not in weeks of courtship that he had been conducting as though it were a campaign with a clear objective and a set of applicable tactics.
Not in the morning room two days ago, where he had taken Caroline Bingley’s poison and handed it to Lydia dressed up as concern for her reputation.
Lewes had said: she has learned not to ask for anything. Darcy had said: she did everything that was asked of her. Georgiana had said: Lydia is not a situation.
Every decision, examined individually, had been the right decision.
Brighton had been handled correctly. Matlock, and Pemberley, had been the right placements.
The distance during the war had been correct, and necessary, and he had maintained it with the thoroughness he brought to everything, and had written at appropriate intervals, and had managed the situation from seven thousand miles away with a competence that he had never once thought to be ashamed of.
The sum of all the right decisions was a woman of nineteen who had learned so thoroughly not to need him that she was now beyond the reach of his courtship, his flowers, his carefully selected books, his entire portfolio of correct and considerate behaviour. Beyond the reach of him.
He had made her that. Not Matlock, not the drawing rooms, not London seasons of impeccable performance. Him. His design, executed correctly.
He was beginning to understand what he had done.
He was considerably less certain what he was going to do about it.
But the understanding, even partial and uncomfortable, felt like the first real and unmanaged thing that had happened to him since he walked into a ballroom and found a woman he did not know where he had left a girl he had not understood.
The note from Mrs Annesley arrived while Elizabeth was out.
A friend had passed it to her, who had it delicately and with apparent reluctance from a source she declined to name: Miss Bingley had been saying certain things.
Nothing precise enough to constitute actionable slander.
Enough to do damage if it circulated further.
Four minutes, approximately, she sat with this information.
She had known, after the assembly, that something had been said to Fitzwilliam; she had seen it in his face across the room and had sat in Darcy’s silence with it and had made the correct decision not to intervene and had found the decision, over the following days, not easier but harder to maintain as she watched Lydia move through the house with the careful contained manner of someone who has received a blow and is not going to show it.
She had kept to the decision. She was Mrs Darcy, not a Bennet sister any longer, and there were things that were not hers to manage.
This, however, was different.
She called for her carriage and went to call on Caroline Bingley.
Caroline’s lodgings were in a good street and furnished with the careful precision of someone who understands that appearances are work and is prepared to do the work.
She received Elizabeth with the warmth of a woman who has nothing to conceal, which was, Elizabeth reflected, one of the things Caroline did genuinely well.
Tea was brought. Pleasantries were exchanged.
Elizabeth was perfectly pleasant throughout.
She asked after the Hursts, who were well.
She asked after Caroline’s plans for Christmas, which were agreeably vague and did not, apparently, include a visit to Netherfield, to her brother and his wife and their children.
She spoke of the season, and of several mutual acquaintances, and she let Caroline talk, because Caroline always talked most freely when she believed she was winning a conversation, and Elizabeth had found over the years that the easiest way to manage Caroline was to let her believe this until the last possible moment.
Then, at a natural pause, she said: “I understand you have been speaking about Lydia.”
Caroline’s stillness was extremely informative. “I have a great deal of regard for Mrs Fitzwilliam,” she said after a moment, very carefully.
“I know you do,” Elizabeth said, pleasantly.
“I am sure that is why, when you heard certain things about Lord Chatterton’s attentions, you felt you must say something to someone.
I quite understand the impulse.” She set down her cup.
“The difficulty is that what you said has apparently been repeated, and has reached ears that were not intended, and I find myself in the unfortunate position of having to address the consequences.”
Caroline managed her expression well, but Elizabeth had known her for quite some time now. She could see the fear beginning to creep in around the edges.
“I cannot be responsible for what other people choose to repeat,” Caroline said, too quickly.
“No,” Elizabeth agreed. “But one can be responsible for what one says in the first place, and to whom, and with what degree of precision.” A pause.
“Caroline, I am going to be direct with you, because I think you will appreciate it. We have known each other a long time. I am aware of your opinion of me, and of my family, and I have never made the mistake of expecting it to change. But Lydia is nineteen years old and she has worked very hard, for a very long time, to build a position that she should not have had to build in the first place, and I will not sit quietly while that work is undone by rumour.” She looked at Caroline steadily.
“Darcy and I take a close interest in her wellbeing. I hope you will bear that in mind.”
She did not raise her voice. She was perfectly pleasant throughout. She was also, and she believed Caroline understood this precisely, the wife of Mr Darcy of Pemberley, and she had rank and consequence and a very secure marriage and righteous fury on her side.
Caroline said she quite understood, and would of course be more careful in future, and the conversation moved on to other things, and they parted warmly, and Elizabeth went home.
That evening she found Fitzwilliam in the small library. Darcy was with him, but left quietly when Elizabeth came in and looked at him. Three years of marriage had taught Darcy to read his wife’s intentions from a single glance exceedingly well.
She sat down.
“I called on Caroline Bingley today,” she said.
Fitzwilliam looked up.
“She has been saying things about Lydia and Chatterton. Nothing direct enough to be actionable, but enough to circulate, and it appears to have circulated somewhat.” She looked at him. “It also appears to have had some influence closer to home.”
A pause. He said nothing.
“I am not going to tell you what to do,” Elizabeth said.
“You are a grown man and it is not my marriage. But I want you to understand something about Caroline, which is this: she has hated every Bennet sister since she met us, and that hatred has only increased because of me, because of Darcy, because of what she wanted and did not get. It has never been about Lydia. Not once, not for a single moment. Lydia is just the most convenient available instrument.” She let that sit for a moment.
“She will hurt her if she can, because hurting Lydia is a way of hurting me. That is the whole of it.”
She stood. He was looking at the floor.
“She is very good at this,” Elizabeth said.
“She always has been. The things she says are never entirely false, which is what makes them so difficult to dismiss. Chatterton’s reputation is real.
Lydia’s history is real, as you well know.
Everything she uses is real, and none of what she implies is.
” A pause. “I say this not to excuse what you did. Only to make sure you understand what was done to you, and by whom, and why.”
With that she left him. He was a grown man, and she had said what she had to say, and the rest was his.
Darcy was in the corridor outside.
“Well?” he said.
“I told him the truth,” Elizabeth said. “What he does with it is his affair.”
“You told him more than you needed to,” Darcy said.
“Perhaps,” she said. “He needed it.”
“Should I…” Darcy gestured toward the door.
“Absolutely not. Let him sit with it.”
Darcy inclined his head, and she smiled, wearily, up at him. “I am going up now, dearest. I shall check on James.”
“I will join you shortly.”
Through the door of Lydia’s sitting room, as she passed, she could see the light still burning, and the shape of her sister at the writing desk, perfectly still, not writing.
Elizabeth did not knock. She checked on her sleeping son, went to her own room and sat, waiting for Darcy. She did not feel, quite, that she had done enough, and understood that there was nothing more she could do, and found these two things very difficult to hold simultaneously.