Chapter Thirty-One #3
The name was anything but unfamiliar. She had considered it before, when attempting with Louisa to make sense of Darcy’s stay in Somerset and his inexplicable interest in Elizabeth Bennet afterwards.
Julia had been Elizabeth’s intimate friend and had disappeared somewhere in that county.
Darcy had gone to Somerset shortly before coming to Hertfordshire.
The most reasonable explanation Caroline had been able to devise was that Darcy had somehow encountered Julia Harding there and heard enough of Elizabeth to have his curiosity awakened before they ever met.
Now Julia Harding’s name was lying upon his desk.
A little thrill of satisfaction went through her as she picked up the letter.
Perhaps she had been right after all. Yet the direction immediately confused matters.
The letter was addressed to Julia in Somerset, not written by her, and somehow it had found its way into Darcy’s possession in Hertfordshire.
Caroline unfolded the pages and turned to the end.
Elizabeth.
Her satisfaction vanished.
She returned immediately to the beginning and read properly this time, passing impatiently over Mr. Collins, Mary Bennet and Charlotte Lucas until Darcy’s name caught her attention.
Mr. Darcy is courting me.
Caroline’s mouth tightened, but she continued. Elizabeth wrote of his visits to Longbourn and her acceptance of his addresses before arriving, most curiously, at Julia.
There is something else which will perhaps sound very strange when you finally read this. Mr. Darcy is trying to find you.
Caroline slowed. She read the paragraph which followed once, then again.
Elizabeth had told Darcy of Julia’s disappearance, and Darcy had afterwards enlisted Colonel Fitzwilliam to find her.
She praised his kindness in doing so without being asked and wrote as though the entire subject of Julia Harding had been introduced to him by Elizabeth herself.
Caroline’s gaze moved to Colonel Fitzwilliam’s letter upon the desk, then back to the one in her hand.
That could not be the whole truth.
Several letters had been waiting at Willowbrook when Darcy arrived.
More had come during his stay, and correspondence from Somerset had followed him into Hertfordshire.
Caroline had assumed Julia Harding herself must somehow have been the connexion between Darcy and Elizabeth, but the letter in her hand overturned that theory entirely.
Julia had not written to Darcy about Elizabeth.
Elizabeth had been writing to Julia. And Darcy had been receiving the letters.
Caroline looked down at the opened pages with dawning comprehension.
That explained far more than her original theory ever had.
Darcy’s strange interest in a country gentleman’s daughter, the speed with which that interest had deepened, perhaps even his decision to come to Hertfordshire after Somerset.
Caroline could not know how many letters he had read or when he had first discovered their writer, but she no longer doubted what had been happening.
More importantly, judging by this one letter, Elizabeth did not know.
Every line concerning Darcy made that plain.
Elizabeth believed she had recently told him about Julia.
She believed his search was an unsolicited kindness performed because her distress mattered to him.
There was not the slightest suggestion that she knew Darcy had possessed correspondence intended for Julia before she ever placed that confidence in him.
Caroline continued reading until another passage arrested her attention.
I wish you were here to see Mr. Darcy. He is everything I had always hoped for, and I am not ashamed to say that I love him.
Her fingers tightened upon the page as jealousy rose sharply, but it soon gave way to something colder and considerably more useful.
Elizabeth loved Darcy and trusted him completely, all while apparently knowing nothing of the private letters he had been receiving.
Caroline could not know how long he had been reading them, but the several letters at Willowbrook and the one later forwarded from Somerset made it unlikely that the one in her hand was the first.
She folded the letter along its existing creases and returned it carefully to the desk, arranging Colonel Fitzwilliam’s beside it before stepping back to assure herself that nothing appeared disturbed.
There was no reason to act hastily. Darcy had already possessed ample opportunity to tell Elizabeth whatever connexion he had to her correspondence, yet judging by this letter, he had chosen not to do so.
Caroline could afford to wait until tomorrow evening. Elizabeth Bennet would come to Netherfield for the ball, where finding an opportunity to speak with her would present little difficulty. As Caroline quietly left Darcy’s room, she had already decided where that conversation ought to begin.
Willowbrook would do very nicely, and Caroline was quite certain that by the time their conversation ended, Elizabeth Bennet would have little desire to continue being courted by Mr. Darcy.