Chapter 15
Elizabeth
Elizabeth felt pity for Miss Bingley, and it was an unpleasant sensation. While William played whist with Miss Bingley and the Hursts, he did nothing improper, nothing even a little bit flirtatious; still, the woman responded to him as if he had asked her to partner with him for life, as his wife!
Yet there was no tenderness in Miss Bingley’s gaze, nor even affection.
The longing Elizabeth had seen before in Miss Bingley’s expression was now replaced with a triumphant smile, and the acquisitive glances were transformed into an exultant gleam in her eyes.
Elizabeth felt that such blatant greed should not be cause for her to feel pity—but she did.
She would hate to be the kind of woman who could see all the wonderful things that were Fitzwilliam Darcy and only feel desire for his fortune!
When the colonel and Mr Bingley entered the drawing room, they looked as sober as a pair of parish clerks.
The colonel bowed slightly and said, “Excuse me for the interruption.” Then he walked to William, who stood, and gave him some papers as he whispered at some length into his ear.
Finally, he removed from his pocket an orange scarf wrapped around something, and he handed it to William.
Miss Bingley’s voice was sharp as she asked, “What are you doing with my scarf?”
Mr Bingley held his younger sister’s elbow as he helped her stand and walked her to a corner of the room. He spoke to her in a low voice, and as he spoke, he looked more and more downcast, while Miss Bingley looked more and more…haughty.
While Mr Bingley spoke to his younger sister, the colonel urged Jane to sit at the whist table; he took the fourth chair and began to speak in a low voice to the others.
Jane’s eyes widened in shock, and Mrs Hurst cried out but almost instantly hushed.
Her husband held one of her hands as she held her other hand over her mouth.
As she listened to the colonel, tears filled her eyes and soon overflowed.
Georgiana looked at the two hushed conversations, her eyes wide and concerned.
Elizabeth was almost positive that the missing jewellery lay within the folds of the orange scarf, but she did not know what would become of Miss Bingley, nor what William, the colonel, and Mr Bingley meant to tell others about the situation.
She took Georgiana’s hands in her own and said, “Let us check with your brother.”
Rather than begin a third conversation in the drawing room, William led Elizabeth and Georgiana to the study, and he closed and locked the door.
He did not immediately speak; instead, he unwrapped the scarf and presented the missing comb to Elizabeth and the missing sapphire necklace to Georgiana, who looked shocked and asked, “Oh…where did…?”
He did not yet answer; instead, he held up a gold and ruby ring.
“Mr Johnson’s signet ring. Thank goodness!” Elizabeth breathed.
She noticed that he looked surprised—and in a moment she understood why. He held up an emerald tie pin and cufflinks, asking, “I wonder if these are Hurst’s?”
“Ah! Something we did not even notice was missing.” Elizabeth saw that the scarf held no more treasures.
William placed the scarf and jewels onto the table and he revealed to both ladies that the jewels were found in the false bottom of one of Miss Bingley’s trunks.
He went on to explain, “Richard found a bottle of Godfrey’s Cordial in Miss Bingley’s room.
He said that it is advertised as a remedy against insomnia, and he smelt it and reported that it has an aroma resembling treacle. ”
Georgiana had tears in her eyes, and she could barely whisper a response.
But Elizabeth still heard her: “I do not even like Miss Bingley, but I find it so sad that she has stolen our jewels. And…I am so angry that she would give you something in your tea, Elizabeth! She could have given you too much and hurt you badly!”
She could have killed me. For the first time it occurred to Elizabeth that she had only drunk two sips of the tea. How much of the draught had Miss Bingley put into her cup?
“Miss Bingley seems to be a victim of some variety of madness,” William counselled his sister, squeezing her hand. “If so, she likely cannot choose to behave better. So we ought to sympathise with her and her family rather than moralise to her, should we not?”
“I suppose you are right…but…I hate the thought of her creeping around in my rooms and taking my things! And even more—putting things into people’s tea!”
He shuddered and said in a voice raw with emotion: “I very well understand.”
Elizabeth ventured a question: “What will become of her, William? Did Mr Bingley ask for your advice or tell you his plan?”
“He has a cousin he wishes to contact regarding her care.”
“Will anyone be safe, living with the woman?” Elizabeth asked
“Because it is now known, or at least suspected, what she is capable of, all dangerous items can be kept locked up, Miss Bingley would not be allowed freedom of movement or the use of her money, and she would certainly never have responsibility of serving people food or tea. I suppose this sort of private arrangement is common when a family of means is afflicted with madness.”
“Is there any treatment that can be offered to Miss Bingley?”
“From what I have read, there is not, but I am certain that Bingley will hire someone to look further into that question.”
“And how are you going to get the ring to Mr Johnson?”
“Actually, he sent me a letter by express yesterday, saying that he plans to stop by on his way home to see if there is any news of the ring. Thus, he will be able to pick it up himself, and I will feel quite relieved to bring that matter to a close.”
“I am not certain I feel that my own personal mystery is explained. I understand that my comb must have fallen out of my hair when a certain gallant gentleman swept me off my feet, and that Miss Bingley must have seen and taken it, but I still do not know why she gave me a sleeping draught.”
“That is because I have not yet told you what else Richard and the two valets found.” Then William shared that they found in Miss Bingley’s room a skeleton key—the type that can open many doors—and impressions made in wax of other keys.
“And two packets of letters. These letters,” he finished as he brought out from his pocket two groups of envelopes.
One group was loose, but the other was tied together with a green ribbon.
“What is in the letters?” Elizabeth asked. She turned over the ribbon-wrapped packet and gasped: her name was written as the direction.
“Do not forget, these were found in Miss Bingley’s possession. I am confident that these letters addressed to you are fictitious, as are these letters addressed to me.”
He flipped one of the letters not wrapped with ribbon, and there was his name and the Darcy House direction, written in a flowing and feminine script quite unlike the more squared-off script of the letter addressed to Elizabeth.
She untied the ribbon and began to read the first letter, and William began to read one of the letters addressed to him.
“Love letters,” Elizabeth said. “But not lovely love letters.” She read aloud, “‘You are the most beautiful siren, and I shall wreck myself on rocks for you.’ That is….”
“Hackneyed?” William suggested.
“Exactly.”
“Who is the letter from?” Georgiana asked.
“It has almost certainly been written by Miss Bingley, as your brother said. But it is supposed to be from…W. G.” Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “William Goulding?”
“Who is that?” Georgiana whispered, and Elizabeth wondered if she had immediately thought of George Wickham, “G. W.”
“A young man from a nearby estate. Has Miss Bingley met him?”
“He came to join the shooting party the first full day she was here. I suppose she at least heard his name?”
“Well, William, what say you? I have…” she quickly counted the letters… “five love letters from a young man who writes with trite phrases and overused allusions. Are you terribly jealous and wishing to break our engagement?”
Georgiana gasped. “Is that what Miss Bingley was trying to do?”
Her brother explained, “Elizabeth and I thought that she would try to arrange a compromise, start a rumour, or otherwise drive a wedge between us. To be honest, it had not occurred to me that she would write fictitious love letters.”
“Are your letters sparkling with wit and charm? And how did Miss Bingley sign them?”
“They read like a Gothic novel and are signed ‘all my ardent love, Caroline.’”
“That is so disturbing!” Georgiana said.
They passed the letters around and then decided that they should burn them. “If a servant should happen upon them,” Georgiana said, “and we had to tell this long story to explain who really wrote them, and why….”
“Say no more,” William said. “I agree they should be burnt.” He removed the fireboard, stirred the banked embers, and added some kindling to restart the fire. One by one, he added the seven letters addressed to him, waiting until each letter was consumed before adding another.
As she fed the letters signed W. G. to the flames, Elizabeth said, “I believe you are suggesting that Miss Bingley gave me a sleeping drought in order to hide the false love letters in my reticule?”
“That is my best guess. And I imagine that she planned to knock the reticule to the ground, somehow, and then ‘discover’ the letters when she helped pick up the contents.”
“So convoluted. Imagine wishing to do all this…and for no very good chance at benefitting!”
“No chance at all,” William said. “I already feel ’til death do us part’; I would never break my engagement with you. And even if you were to die, I would never marry Miss Bingley.”
“Nor would I ever wed William Goulding,” Elizabeth murmured. “What a waste of time for her to write these letters, which never had a chance of convincing either of us of the other’s perfidy.”
“What a waste of time, energy, intellect—everything,” William said. “Georgie, you were correct to identify the situation as sad.”