Chapter 2
Ordinarily, Caroline Bingley was not a woman who startled easily.
She had, over the span of her twenty-one well managed years, cultivated a talent for composure so polished it might have been displayed in a glass case at Gunter’s for all the world to admire.
It had carried her through Charles’s unending procession of companions who were charming in principle and alarming in practice.
Through the various social missteps that had attached themselves to the Bingley name during her trying youth and through the unfortunate incidents at Netherfield Park the previous autumn that she steadfastly refused to revisit.
She had, in essence, endured more than any reasonable person ought in her lifetime.
It was therefore especially vexing that her undoing this morning should arrive in the form of something as simple as a hairbrush.
The new maid had entered her dressing room with the eager brightness of a girl who very much wished to impress her mistress, which was far too much enthusiasm for any hour before nine in the morning.
Her name began with an M. Martha, perhaps.
Or Margaret. Caroline had not troubled herself to remember, having long since discovered that familiarity with one’s household staff made everything unnecessarily complicated.
The girl swept into a curtsy, murmured something about Miss Bingley’s hair being lovely today, which it most assuredly was not, as Caroline had slept abominably and knew perfectly well what she looked like, and then produced a hairbrush from the dressing table.
“Is that,” Caroline said, her voice coming out rather more sharply than she would have preferred, “a brush?”
The maid froze. The hairbrush remained suspended in the space between them, a perfectly ordinary object with a silver handle and not a hint of wickedness about it, though one might have thought otherwise from the way the girl’s eyes widened.
“I—yes, miss,” she stammered. “Shall I not—that is—I only thought– for your hair, miss.”
The rational portion of Caroline’s mind, which was nearly always the ruling portion, observed that this was a most sensible explanation.
A personal maid, in a dressing room, holding a hairbrush, was not the sort of occurrence to send any reasonable woman into a state.
Indeed, it was the very sort of thing dressing rooms were meant to accommodate.
The remainder of Caroline, which was considerably less reasonable on the subject, felt something cold and rigid settle deep within her chest like a jagged stone.
“No hairbrushes,” she said frigidly. “Not in this room. Only combs.” Her clipped voice, she thought with a small flicker of pride, was admirably controlled. Admirably controlled, considering everything. “You are dismissed.”
The girl lowered the brush and retreated with the hurried caution of someone attempting to avoid tripping on ice. Caroline waited until the door clicked shut, then sat on the edge of her bed, pressed her palms flat against her skirts, and breathed.
In. Out. In. Out.
After a long moment, she stood, crossed to the dressing table, and arranged her hair herself. It was a modest style, nothing requiring assistance. The result was tidy, if not especially remarkable. Caroline regarded it in the mirror for half a heartbeat, then looked away.
She needed air.
The morning was cool without being disagreeable, and Netherfield’s gardens still held the damp scent of overnight rain, mingling with wet grass and something faintly floral that Caroline could not quite name and did not particularly care to investigate.
She walked until her breathing had settled and the tightness between her shoulders had loosened into something she could at least pretend was not there, which took rather longer than she felt it ought.
Eventually she found herself on a bench beside the ornamental pond.
The water lay unnaturally still. A wood pigeon contributed an unhelpful and distinctly unmusical commentary from the trees.
It was, by any reasonable standard, a tranquil scene.
Caroline sat and stared at the pond, and thought, as one did when one had nothing more immediate to occupy the mind, about her previous maid, who had recently committed the rather selfish act of marrying and leaving her position with an irritating air of satisfaction.
That woman had known. Not because Caroline had ever explained it in detail, but because she had possessed the rare good sense to observe.
Hairbrushes did not appear in Caroline’s dressing room because hairbrushes were not welcome there, and after four years of service, the maid had understood that without needing it spelled out.
She was precisely what good service required.
Caroline liked everything to be in a certain way, and she hated the disruption to her daily routine this had caused.
The new girl, of course, did not yet know her ways. That was all it amounted to. A simple matter of instruction and adjustment, nothing more complicated than that.
Caroline was helpless to stop the memory arriving, uninvited and entirely unwelcome as it was.
Caroline had long ago given up on the rather optimistic notion that she might have some influence over such moments.
They arrived as they pleased, with all the consideration of a badly behaved guest, and she had learned that the most sensible course of action was simply to endure them until they chose to depart, rather than waste energy attempting to resist something that was, in every meaningful sense, inevitable.
Caroline was six years old, seated before a vanity in a room that smelled of expensive powder and something faintly chemical.
She sat very still, as she had already learned stillness was safer, while her mother’s hands worked through her hair with practice and very little gentleness.
Caroline suppressed a wince as there was another harsh yank on her scalp.
“Why is it so curly?” her mother said, in the tone of someone who did not actually expect an answer.
Caroline had already learned that these were not true questions, but rather the beginning of a familiar performance, and so she wisely remained silent.
“It is entirely unbecoming. Your sister does not suffer from this affliction at her age.”
Louisa’s hair, of course, behaved itself. It was straight, obedient, and perfectly suited to a mother who valued order above nearly all else. Caroline had, for a time, considered this quality a personal affront, as though her own hair had chosen to betray her with deliberate malice.
The brush tugged again, a little too sharply, and Caroline’s jaw tightened in reflex.
Her mother continued as though nothing of consequence were occurring.
Perhaps, Caroline sometimes thought, nothing of consequence was occurring at all.
Her mother often commented that she was prone to such fits of melodrama.
“And that nose,” her mother added, critically.
“So pointed. I cannot imagine where you acquired it. It makes you look dreadfully common, Caroline. You must learn to hold yourself differently.”
The word “common” landed with the practiced weight of an insult that had been used far too often, polished smooth by repetition until it no longer needed emphasis.
Caroline’s mother did not raise her voice when she said such things.
There was no need. She possessed, instead, the far more efficient cruelty of a woman who considered volume vulgar and contempt unnecessary.
“Your hair,” her mother continued, dragging the brush through another section with brisk determination, “is frankly embarrassing. This coiling, this unfortunate frizzing at the temples. I cannot decide whether it resembles a kitchen maid or a stable hand more. Either way, it reflects very poorly on me, and I would be obliged if you would remember that in future.”
Caroline kept her gaze fixed on the vanity table.
It had bottles and brushes and silver tools arranged with meticulous care.
All of them far more orderly than she felt.
If she did not look at her mother directly, she could sometimes imagine she was merely another piece of furniture in the room, temporarily overlooked rather than actively judged.
“You are too fat as well,” her mother added, with a glance in the mirror that managed to be both assessing and dismissive in the same instant. “Like a rather bloated cow. No one will ever find that appealing, you know. Not that it would make much difference, given the nose.”
The brush snagged again, and Caroline’s fingers curled in her lap. She did not make a sound. Experience had taught her that sound could become consequence, and she had no desire to discover if that consequence might mean another day without meals for her.
Her mother worked at the knot with increasing force, the motion turning less like grooming and more like an argument she was determined to win.
Caroline had learned to recognize the change in her.
There was the voice that catalogued faults as if reading from a ledger, and then there was the other voice, the one that arrived when her anger was reaching a boiling point.
“Hold still,” her mother said, though the words seemed aimed more at the reflection in the mirror than at the child seated obediently before her. “I do not know why I bother. Every morning I stand here and I try to fix you– and for what? Well grooming can only help such poor features so much.”
Those mornings, as unpleasant as they were, were never the ones that stole Caroline’s sleep in the quiet hours of the night. Unpleasantness, after all, had become a rather familiar companion during her childhood.