Chapter Four
“AS IT HAPPENS, it may be fortuitous,” Caroline said the next morning.
It was very early in the morning, on the road near Netherfield. The sun had only recently risen, and the bright rays turned the sky orange in the east. It was still warm in the morning, early September, but the world had not yet been overtaken with an autumnal chill.
Jane and Elizabeth regarded the other woman, who had a bright expression on her face, almost cheery.
“What do you mean?” said Jane. “Fortuitous in that you can end this association between myself and your brother? For let us not pretend any longer, Miss Bingley. I have known since last spring that you do not hold me in high regard.”
“Oh, Jane,” said Caroline. She smiled. “I may call you Jane, mayn’t I? For we are to be sisters.”
“Are we?” said Jane pointedly.
“Let us walk,” said Caroline, gesturing for them to follow her.
They walked, the sunrise at their backs, the warmth on their necks, on their shoulders.
“It is not your fault that your entire family is embarrassing, Jane,” said Caroline, laughing.
“I have said it since the beginning, that you are a very sweet girl, but that everyone else amongst the Bennets is maddeningly improper. I have faced arguments from certain gentlemen not to include you in that statement, Eliza, but I suppose we have our answer now, do we not? You are the least proper of them all.”
Elizabeth said nothing. She wished that there was someone here to defend her, but she would not defend herself. She would wait to see what it was that Caroline was about. What was fortuitous? Why would she say that?
Caroline continued speaking. “As for the marriage itself, no, I do not wish to derail it anymore. It hardly matters. The letter, though, it did give me an idea. About Louisa.”
“About Mrs. Hurst?” said Elizabeth.
“Mr. Hurst was in an unfortunate accident some time ago when he fell from a horse. His leg was injured, and that healed, but there was damage elsewhere, and he has decided it is down to that damage as to why he cannot father a child on Louisa,” said Caroline.
“When I read your letter about this Mrs. Jacoby, who was in a similar situation, I thought, ‘What a novel idea, getting someone else to have a babe for you.’” She turned to smile at Elizabeth.
“And here you are, in just the right state for such an endeavor.” She looked at Jane.
“And your aunt has already procured a cottage for our use in Lambton. What a perfect location.”
Elizabeth understood. Lambton was close to Pemberley. Caroline still had her sights set on Mr. Darcy. “You’ll wish to be there with me and your sister. And you’ll call on Miss Darcy, I suppose. You did go on and on about how much you admired her.”
“There are a number of advantageous elements to the proposition,” said Caroline, nodding at Elizabeth. “I’m sure your aunt will agree? And I’m sure she’ll be pleased and relieved not to have to travel so far to give birth to her babe. It will just be me, and you, and Louisa.”
Elizabeth could not think of a worse way to spend the time she was growing heavy with child than to spend it with Caroline Bingley and her sister. Caroline certainly hated her, as Jane had said, and Louisa held no real love for her either. She did not wish to give her child to Louisa Hurst either.
She almost burst out with all of this, but then she thought of what her sister had said to her last night, that she was impulsive, that she did not think things through, that she did not think enough of how her actions might damage others. She said nothing at all, instead.
“This is why you asked us to come here?” said Jane. “Truly?”
Caroline turned to look at Jane. “You must not think I am some ogre, Jane, trying to destroy you at every turn.”
“This is so very perfect,” said Jane. “This is wondrous. It is the best thing that could happen for Lizzy.”
“Best?” said Elizabeth faintly, looking at Jane. What had happened? How could she and Jane be so entirely out of touch with each other now? Was this her own fault for having kept the truth from Jane for so long? Was it that Jane was altered by her long and lonely time in London?
Maybe Elizabeth had been imagining in Jane something unrealistic. She had thought that Jane would be her staunchest defender, always on her side, the person who sympathized with her perfectly.
But maybe that was too much to ask of anyone.
And given the situation, anyway, Elizabeth with child, an illicit and illegitimate child, and Jane about to be married into the Bingley family, given the situation, maybe Jane didn’t have the wherewithal to be Elizabeth’s staunchest defender.
Perhaps, in truth, her sister had never had much of a backbone. Jane was sweet, Jane was pleasant, Jane was quiet, but Jane certainly never stood up to anyone.
Elizabeth knew that if she had been ill at Netherfield, Jane certainly would not have walked there three miles in the mud all alone, and Elizabeth would never expected it of her timid sister.
Why was she expecting that of Jane now?
I am expecting Jane to be me, she thought. If the situation was reversed, I would be Jane’s staunchest defender, but that is how I would behave, not how Jane would behave.
So, this was the way it was going to go, then.
Elizabeth turned to look at Caroline Bingley, letting all of it crash into her with a certain sort of horrific knowledge. “Well, when shall we go?”
“I don’t know,” said Caroline. “Likely after the wedding. It certainly would not do for all of us to be absent for the wedding. We may need to speak to Charles about moving it up.”
“You haven’t told him?” said Jane.
“I have not,” said Caroline. “But how far gone are you with child, Eliza?”
Elizabeth licked her lips. “A bit more than two months, I should think.”
“So, we should have the wedding soon, then,” said Caroline, “so as to be in Lambton by late October, just to be on the safe side.”
It would be six months of this, then, six months of Caroline Bingley and Louisa Hurst, as Elizabeth grew larger and rounder and less and less able to do anything for herself.
At the end, she would be entirely dependent upon them, and then they would take her child from her, and she would never be able to claim the small one, never be able to tell the baby that she was its mother.
She had thought things were the worst they had ever been for her, but she should not have thought such a thing, because of course, this would be worse. Of course, the worst was yet to come.
“We are ever so grateful, Caroline,” said Jane. “Lizzy, thank Caroline for this solution, this absolutely wondrous solution.”
Elizabeth pulled her mouth into something that resembled a smile. “Yes, thank you ever so, Caroline.”
Caroline smirked at her. “Oh, it is actually my pleasure, Eliza.”
Elizabeth felt a chill at that. Caroline Bingley had a cruel streak.
She had seen it. She had seen that the woman could be quick to ridicule.
She had seen how easily the woman wholeheartedly adopted the viewpoint of someone she wished to impress, and this bespoke how disingenuous Caroline could be when she wished to manipulate others.
Elizabeth was going to be entirely under Caroline’s power at this cottage.
“Of course,” said Caroline, “you will write to your aunt and tell her she need not accompany you, but be sure to secure the cottage for our use. Whereabouts in Lambton is it, exactly?”
Elizabeth wanted to tell her that Mr. Darcy had proposed to her.
That he had come to see her and had been so nervous that his voice had shook a bit, that she had later realized he had been nervous around her in nearly every one of their interactions, that what she had taken for haughtiness was actually Mr. Darcy trying to cover his own lack of surety, and that he had told her that his feelings for her would not be repressed.
He wanted me, Caroline, she wanted to say to the other woman.
But what was the point of that?
He certainly would never want Elizabeth now.
Also, it would be madness to antagonize this woman further, not when she was clearly planning to take great joy in keeping Elizabeth entirely under her power for six months, when she was going to take some kind of delight in punishing Elizabeth for that.
Later, Elizabeth brought the thought up with Jane.
They were alone together in the bedchamber they shared, and Elizabeth was composing the letter to Mrs. Gardiner, though she was having difficulty putting her pen to paper to seal her own fate.
“You said it yesterday, Jane, she hates us,” said Elizabeth.
“She hates me. She saw it when I didn’t, that Mr. Darcy had feelings for me and that I was a rival to her, and she hated me then, and I did not notice, because I didn’t think he did, but it turns out she was correct.
Now, she thinks to take me to up to his back doorstep and to parade around in front of me as she goes after him, and to rub my nose in the fact that I can never have him. She means to torture me, Jane.”
“Lizzy, torture? Really?”
“Well… you yourself said she hates us.”
“But this is not something done out of hate,” said Jane. “She has accepted we are part of the family. Your babe will be her niece or nephew, and it is a good solution. Your babe does not leave the family.”
“But it does. They are not my family.”
“Well, they are to be mine. I think it is a good gesture. I think it brings us all together. As for Mr. Darcy, you did, in fact, refuse him.”
Elizabeth sighed. She did refuse him.
“And, anyway, perhaps he won’t even be in Derbyshire.”
“Perhaps not,” said Elizabeth, nodding. She shrugged.
“Perhaps he will marry his sickly cousin Anne de Bourgh.” Perhaps he will be so dolorous at the lack of me, he will settle for that, she thought, and then she felt ashamed of herself.
Was she better than Caroline? Was that not a cruel thing to think of poor Miss de Bourgh?
“Lizzy, I know this will not be easy for you, but, well, it is perhaps fitting that you have some suffering.”