Vain and Useless (Pride and Prejudice Variation: Austenesque Vagaries)

Prologue

September

Mr Charles Bingley of Scarborough and London was an attentive brother, frequently though he complained that he could not understand his sisters at all.

This being the case, it was no surprise to Miss Caroline Bingley that, despite the darkness of the carriage, he apprehended her unusual mood as they made their way home from the Northram ball.

“Is aught amiss, Sister?” he asked.

Loath though she was to expose the incident to anyone, she was in desperate need of advice.

“I overheard Miss Parker and some of her friends speaking of me tonight. They were…not kind.” The young lady was the daughter of a wealthy baronet and cousin to an earl.

Until this evening, Caroline had believed that they were quite good friends.

“That does not surprise me,” he admitted. “I have never found her or her set to have much intercourse with kindness. May I ask what they said of you?”

Caroline felt her hands twisting together and forced them to lie still and flat upon her lap.

She had thought that inelegant habit thoroughly conquered.

“Early in the evening, we were all speaking of Miss Westlake and how she has made over her blue ballgown for the second year in a row. When I happened upon them later, they were deriding me for speaking poorly of her, yet I had only agreed with what they were saying!” she asserted, not entirely truthfully.

She had added a comment that the lines of old stitches were visible in the fabric, but that was no less than fact.

“They said I had got well above myself, that I put on airs more suited to an earl’s daughter than a tradesman’s. ”

They had laughed then, over the idea that Mr Darcy of Pemberley might offer for her, cruelly mocking her ambitions towards him.

Lady Ellen Allenby had expressed a wish to be present when Caroline learnt what all of society knew: that the gentleman could hardly abide her company, avoiding her as much as he might without offending her brother.

Her insides curdled with shame at the memory of their derisive laughter.

That part of the conversation, she would never relate to anyone, not even her gentle and caring brother.

Charles sighed. “Caroline, I have attempted to tell you this before. Perhaps today is the day you will at last hear it: wealth buys a certain acceptance, yet breeding trumps all. Miss Parker and her ilk have both and are thereby free to disdain anyone who is not gently bred. Miss Westlake’s grandfather may have impoverished the family, but she is still a baron’s daughter, for all her twice-turned gowns.

If you speak against her, others of similar birth will defend her, though they deride her themselves from their even more fortunate vantage.

Our fortune and education give us entrée into the society of those more highly born, but do not grant us unquestioned acceptance there.

The truth of the matter is that you and I are beneath the children of any gentleman, however modest his estate, and it behoves us to behave with corresponding humility. ”

She had long believed her brother was too modest, but in light of the evening’s events, she was forced to recognise the likelihood that this had won him more genuine friends than her own airs and elevated manners.

She had often heard the wealthy elite scorn their less affluent counterparts, and while at school with many young ladies who spoke so and were quick to mock any failure of hers in comportment or speech, she had conceived the notion that if she were to ape their manners and behaviour, this mimicry along with her family’s wealth would ensure her acceptance.

Both at school and in society, this tactic had seemed to work, though not so quickly nor so thoroughly as she had wished.

Now, she suspected civility had prompted most of them to refrain from denigrating those of lower birth where she might hear, just as she saw in retrospect that they took care to speak of Miss Westlake’s gowns or Mrs Portman’s crumbling plaster only among those comfortably situated with regards to wealth.

“I fear, Charles, that I may have made a stupendous fool of myself,” she confessed reluctantly. “I am not at all sure that I may ever show my face in London again.”

“I doubt it is as bad as all that,” he said.

“Your ambition is widely known, but you are hardly the only lady in town who seeks to improve her family’s position.

” He leant forwards, elbows on his knees.

A most inelegant posture, but a friendly one.

“Come now, Caroline, all will be well. If you do not wish to go about, I shall say you have caught a little cold. I am to my new estate in but a week; I know you planned to arrive later, with the Hursts, but why do you not come with me? It will be good for you to leave London just now, I think, and when we return in the spring, you may seek truer friends.”

The thought of starting anew in the society whose luminaries she had courted these last three years was nearly as lowering as the conversation she had overheard earlier.

Her brother was correct, however—it might all be deferred until the spring.

Perhaps by then she would be resigned to the necessity, at least.

“I wonder if I have any friends at all,” she remarked softly.

“Oh, come now, Caroline. You are constantly paying calls and nattering with other ladies in Hurst’s parlour. Miss Parker and her set may not like you as well as you thought, but you are not friendless.”

“I do have a number of cordial acquaintances willing to receive and repay my calls, that is true,” she replied.

“But I do not know that any of them would, for example, be truly concerned were I to fall ill, or truly rejoice were I to become engaged.” She recalled again the ladies’ words about Mr Darcy, and her stomach twisted with humiliation.

“I do believe that when the Season begins, you will discover that some of those acquaintances are true friends, or willing to become so,” he gently replied. “And if all else fails, you have me.”

“You are my brother.”

“Does that mean I cannot also be your friend? I do hope not. We were thick as thieves as children; do you recall it?”

She genuinely smiled, just a little, for the first time in hours. “I do.”

“Then come with me to Hertfordshire, Caroline. Be my hostess—Louisa will not mind ceding the duty, and it will give you occupation. We shall meet new people, experience country life, and perhaps we will rediscover the close regard we enjoyed in our youth. I would like that very much.”

“So would I,” she said. “Very well, Charles. When you depart next week, I shall be with you.”