Chapter 27 #2
The door opened again, revealing Caroline, a woman who listened at doors the way other women embroidered cushions.
“Gentlemen, I could not help but overhear—the raised voices, you understand—and I felt it only right to explain.” She entered with her hands clasped in front of her, as if either beseeching or full of concern.
“I have just been upstairs comforting poor Georgiana, who is terribly distraught. The child is beside herself, Mr. Darcy. She believes herself ruined, and I have been reassuring her that nothing of the sort has occurred, that the situation, while unfortunate, is entirely manageable.”
“You will not speak to my sister again,” I warned, but Caroline turned to her brother.
“Charles, poor Miss Darcy wishes to have her position clarified. As she has now been compromised in the eyes of Lady Lucas and Mrs. Long, will you alleviate her distress by offering for her hand? You are the only gentleman who can repair what has been done.”
“I will not,” Bingley said, his spine straightening. “Miss Darcy’s reputation does not require repair because you and Louisa orchestrated this entirely, and when word gets out, no one in society will have anything to do with the two of you.”
Caroline’s expression did not purple so much as calcify, her jaw dropping as she turned her attention to me.
“Surely you cannot blame me when the entire episode was encouraged by Lady Lucas herself. She was quite pointed about John Lucas’s qualities during tea—his prospects, his height, his education.
One might almost think she invited herself to Netherfield expressly to create a situation in which Miss Darcy’s reputation would require, shall we say, rescue by a respectable local family.
The Lucases would profit enormously from a connection to the Darcys, and any hint of scandal would make the match appear necessary rather than ambitious. ”
What I just watched was a master of pivoting strategies.
“Miss Bingley.” I used the voice Georgiana had once described as the one that put people in boxes and closed the lid. “You are not welcome in my presence.”
The concern froze. Not extinguished—Caroline’s expressions did not extinguish; they recalibrated. Mrs. Hurst had entered the room, her presence no doubt a bolster to Caroline’s schemes. And then, Caroline’s face hardened, and she narrowed her eyes.
“If we are speaking of reputations,” she paused, staring at me meaningfully, “perhaps we should speak of Miss Darcy’s.
Because the ton has whispered for two years about what happened at Ramsgate—about a girl who was set to elope with an older man, a friend of her brother’s.
The whispers are vague, but they exist. And they point, Mr. Darcy, toward a man who was present at that seaside town.
And I, as well as several local merchants, happen to know that my brother was there. ”
“I never met Miss Darcy in Ramsgate,” Bingley said, very clearly. “I was there with you and Louisa, and our aunt Octavia, who required the baths for her aching joints. You managed my social calendar yourself, and any suggestions otherwise are pure fabrications.”
But Caroline was not finished. She pointed a finger at me, “Mr. Darcy, you cannot deny your sister was not at Ramsgate two years ago, and she was rumored to have promenaded with one of your bosom friends, a man as close to you as a brother. Having the ton suppose it was a man as honorable as my brother, Charles, is immensely preferable, wouldn’t you say?
And as a sister to dear Georgiana, I would be bound to keep her secret.
And should I take the Darcy name, I would, naturally, protect the family’s honor. ”
“You will never sully the Darcy name.” My voice had turned to stone.
“Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst. Should any account of Ramsgate appear in any London drawing room, any gossip column, any whisper that connects my sister’s name with scandal, I will know its source, and I will respond—not with denial or silence, not with the dignified retreat you are no doubt expecting—but with the full weight of every connection the Darcy name commands.
I will see to it personally that you will never be received by anyone in London ever. Do you understand me?”
“Mr. Darcy—”
“Do you understand me?”
Caroline looked at Bingley, the oldest reflex she possessed—the appeal to her brother, the request for Charles to come to her aid. But Bingley looked back at her with an expression I had never seen on his face.
“Caroline. I shall settle your dowry upon you immediately—the full twenty thousand. You will have your independence. But you will not live under my roof, and you will not be welcome in my company. When I marry Jane Bennet, you will not be invited. You will never be Aunt Caroline to any of my children. You may live with the Hursts or go to Aunt Octavia up north. What you do with your dowry is yours to determine, but do not ever come back to me.”
Caroline looked at me. I said nothing. There was nothing to say that Bingley had not already said. Everything he said was right, and his spine was magnificent. I would tell him so when this was finished.
“You are both fools.” Caroline’s voice had lost its polish. “You will throw away everything—fortune, connection, consequence—for a pair of country girls with no money and no prospects.”
“I will throw away everything for Jane Bennet,” Bingley said. “And I suspect Darcy will find her sister a great gain both for the honor of his name and friendship for Miss Darcy.”
Mrs. Hurst took Caroline’s arm. The gesture was not comfort but extraction, the elder sister recognizing the orderly retreat to surrender.
“I am going to fetch my sister,” I said, picking up the novel, Belinda, from the desk. “She has been in her room long enough, and she will be eager for the friendly faces at Longbourn.”
Without even so much as a farewell, I walked by Miss Bingley and the Hursts, down the corridor and up the main staircase to Georgiana’s room.
The first thing that struck me was the open door and the silence within.
“Georgiana?”
She wasn’t there. Her boots were gone, and so was her cloak. A trail of dried mud led from the carpet toward the servant’s door at the back of the room.
The bird had fled her cage.