Chapter 13 Lady Catherine
Lady Catherine
Oh! It was a punishment to have a nephew the likes of Darcy!
Lady Catherine de Bourgh felt every one of her joints after so many hours in a jostling carriage. The coachman said that they were still several hours away from his planned stop at Plymouth, and that they would be travelling seven hours the next day before finally reaching Oakhaven!
She used the necessary and hurried back to the carriage.
At this point, she certainly wished she had decided to simply make up a dozen rumours about Darcy’s hideous choice for a bride, without consideration of the evidence she was two-thirds of the way from viewing, and without any consideration at all regarding which eventual solution Darcy might agree to.
She could have stayed in London just long enough to start tongues thoroughly wagging, and then she could have hastened back to sweet, long-suffering Anne with the bad news that Darcy would likely never be free to wed her.
But she would have also brought the good news that Lady Catherine had wreaked vengeance upon the harlot who had stolen Anne’s intended.
Surely a tale of revenge would please her daughter… .
Yet….
If she had started such gossip and achieved retaliation…then criticism would be levelled at Darcy as well as that woman.
That would be unfortunate. Anne would be hurt to see her cousin maligned, and Anne’s reputation was tied to Darcy’s! How many people knew about the cradle betrothal of Anne and Darcy?
Lady Catherine huffed when she realised that, with Darcy being married, his reputation might not suffer nearly as much as Anne’s. A man’s standing in society was so much more durable than a woman’s!
Was it possible that even Darcy’s little upstart might not suffer as much from widespread rumours as Anne would?
Lady Catherine had seen multiple times in her life the seemingly magical effect getting married had on damaged reputations—say, when a compromising situation was retroactively treated as affection expressed by a betrothed couple, or when a woman who has married “up” following a scandal is seen and treated shockingly well, considering.
No, it would not do to spread baseless tales about that…that creature amongst the ton. Instead, Lady Catherine must convince Darcy of her lack of worth, and when he pushed her somewhere far from others’ eyes, he might very well continue as he had before. That was the way to save the family.
Convinced she had made the correct choice—obtaining the evidence, convincing Darcy, sending the bride away to some remote location, and hoping for a divine miracle—Lady Catherine settled back into the squabs and attempted to fall asleep.
She was approaching success in this more proximate goal when the carriage hit yet another rut.
Howards let out a little scream. With the impact of Lady Catherine’s posterior on the increasingly hard bench, and her lady’s maid’s scream echoing in her ears, Lady Catherine begrudgingly allowed a groan to pass her lips.
Over and over again, she began to repeat to herself, Just a few more hours….