Visitors （Caroline）
I could not believe Charles was actually going to enter this pigsty, or goat pen, or parsonage, or whatever the hovel was.
He claimed Mr Darcy was there, but the entire idea was so nonsensical and revolting I was seriously beginning to wonder if the boy was touched in the head.
Mr Darcy being caught in a parsonage such as this was so ridiculous it practically gave me the vapours, so I decided to help him along.
“Really, Charles, you must be mistaken. I have no idea why we are to look for my Mr Darcy in such a place, when if he is here, it is clearly just to do some duty to his aunt! He will be back at the great estate before you know it. We should have waited for him at Rosings, visiting with Lady Catherine!”
I truly would have enjoyed a little tête-à-tête with Lady Catherine, who was as graceful, sensible, and genteel a lady as I had ever heard of.
I had never managed to achieve an introduction with the great lady, and here we were wasting a perfectly good invitation from Mr Darcy to attend him with some emergency at Rosings, and Charles was wasting it on a parsonage… a parsonage!
Charles continued in his usual unperturbed and frustrating manner.
“Darcy’s letter was as hard to read as if it were dunked in a stream, and it sounded confusing, but urgent.
I shall attend him immediately, and if he is at the parsonage, then I shall go to the parsonage.
Really, Caroline, I have no idea why you did not stay in town.
There is not the slightest need for your presence here.
In fact, why not take the coach and return, while I take care of whatever minor service I may perform for my friend. I shall return on the morrow.”
I have no idea what made my brother so simple.
The nursemaid must have dropped him on his head a few times, or perhaps he had been fed rat food or a bowl of beef stew during his childhood.
Either way, if he thought I would miss a chance to be in Mr Darcy’s company, he had another half-formed and slow-witted think coming.
“Do not be ridiculous. It was clear from the letter Mr Darcy was suffering from boredom in this county and required the company of some truly refined and elegant society. Imagine how desperate he must be if he is relying on a parson for company.”
I would have continued in that vein for another five minutes, since Charles was a slow-witted boy who had to have everything repeated to him a hundred times, but the door opened.
The maid announced us without anything like the respect we were due, and more than a touch of something akin to annoyance and impatience.
I gave her a nasty look to show her my displeasure, but the woman was much too thick to recognise the look, and she just grunted and left us to ourselves after announcing our names with the same tone of voice the death-takers used to call out ‘bring out your dead’ during a plague.
I would discharge her in a moment if she were my servant, and I might just discharge her anyway, as the behaviour and deportment of the lower classes were shared responsibilities.
We entered a room so small I suspected it was a waiting room, but much to my astonishment, it appeared to be the parlour—the entire parlour.
I looked around for the doors that would open up to make it complete, but in fact this room seemed to be all there was.
It was around the size of my closet, and nowhere nearly as elegantly decorated.
Whoever lived here must live in abject poverty, and I wondered who it was and why Mr Darcy was there.
Was he on some mission of mercy or duty to the disagreeable place?
It must be like visiting his tenants, which he had mentioned from time to time, though to tell the truth I had no idea what a tenant actually was or why you would visit one.
“Mr Bingley, Miss Bingley. Welcome! Will you join us?”
The woman who jumped up from the table and addressed us so unfashionably forwardly was completely unknown to me, so I assumed she might be the parson’s wife.
She was dressed too well to be a tenant, but perhaps if not the parson’s wife, a tradesman’s wife from the village.
It would not be impossible, but why she felt she could presume an acquaintance was beyond me.
It was incumbent upon me to put the insufferable woman in her place lest she try to become too familiar with her betters.
“Madam, we have not even been introduced. I beg you not to address me with such familiarity.”
She looked like trouble, this one. She looked almost as impertinent and disagreeable, and come to think of it, pale and sickly looking as—
What was she doing here?
There, sitting at a table so small I would not use it to play Solitaire, was none other than Miss Eliza Bennet.
Very oddly, she was sitting with Mr Darcy and some army colonel.
The colonel was smiling and smirking most unbecomingly.
I disliked officers in general, and took a decided dislike to this one instantly, though I had to admit that anyone sitting at table with Eliza Bennet would be in my brown books already regardless of their actions or station.
I would put the woman in her place. “Miss Eliza, what are you doing here?”
The Bennet chit surprised me by glancing at my Mr Darcy and giving him a wink. This was unpardonable, and she answered most impertinently. “Visiting my friend, Mrs Collins, of course!”
I had no idea who Mr or Mrs Collins was, so I decided on another tack.
“Mr Darcy, I see you are taking pity on the members of this group and gracing them with your presence. I applaud your decency, sir. I have always said you were the most honourable and dutiful of all the very many elevated gentlemen I am acquainted with. I applaud you.”
I gave him my most sultry look, with a subtle flicking of my eyelashes while standing straight and surreptitiously pulling my dress tighter so he would know of my approbation. Subtlety was lost on men—you had to make your intentions clear.
Eliza was giving me the same smirk she deployed at Netherfield, probably making some type of desperate ploy for Mr Darcy’s attention, but she had not the slightest chance with his true object now present.
Everyone had stood up from the table, so Miss Eliza said, “Perhaps I should perform introductions?”
I sought to put her in her place. “I have no need of meeting anyone of this rank, Eliza. Perhaps we may await Mr Darcy at Rosings, since my brother has urgent business with him.”
Miss Eliza seemed like she was… was… ah… something, about her demeanour bothered me, but she seemed ready to introduce me to her mousy friend anyway, when Charles interrupted at the worst possible time, and OH! the things he said.
“My pardon for interrupting your tea and I imagine my sister’s rudeness won us no favours. I came as soon as I got your note Darcy, though I must say you had best stop chastising me for my writing. That thing you sent me could not have been any more illegible had you soaked it in the river.”
I was torn between my desires to bash Charles over the head with my fan over his impertinence, and my need to watch what was happening at the table.
How dare he criticise Mr Darcy’s penmanship?
However, my indecision was cut off because I was distracted by Miss Eliza looking over at Mr Darcy, giving him a small, sultry, entirely seductive smile, and making the oddest gesture involving holding her hand well above her head as if measuring a giant.
I was nearing apoplexy when the gentleman smiled back at her and nodded.
So, the little seductress already had her claws in him!
Apparently, I had arrived just in time. I considered the honourable gentleman under my protection from such as she, and Eliza was not to find me easy prey for her arts and allurements, I can assure you!
Mr Darcy actually smirked. “I am afraid that is what actually happened. May I invite you and your sister to join us?”
My brother did that annoyingly jovial laugh of his. “The table seems a bit small for two more.”
The pale sickly merchant’s wife jumped up energetically, in a way entirely reminiscent of the trials I had endured with the Bennet family in Hertfordshire.
Her demeanour showed an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum.
I had not the slightest desire to become acquainted with her, but she managed to beat me to a response.
“Oh, have no fear. We have a card table, do we not Lizzy? Oh! My pardon! We were never introduced in the end. I am Anne.”
With that, she stood and executed the worst curtsey I had ever seen. Really, even a merchant should be able to show respect to their betters? Even the grumpy maidservant had done a better job.
The abominable woman continued her assault. “I imagine you must be Caro!”
I had quite enough of such, and was not about to have some farmer’s wife addressing me with such familiarity, or with such a horrid shortening of my name.
“You may call me Miss Bingley! We are not on such familiar terms, so I imagine you might as well give me your surname, so I do not have to refer to you as parson’s wife or farmer’s wife or some such.”
I had no idea why Charles and Mr Darcy found that funny.
I was simply putting the chit back in her place, and the only thing wrong with the set-down is that my lazy brother and indifferent suitor had not taken care of her in the first place; but they were both actually trying to prevent themselves from laughing.
The horrid woman looked most repentant, so I imagined my set-down had been effective, as they always were.
“My apologies, Miss Bingley. Perhaps Miss Bennet will perform the introductions since you seem to be such a stickler for protocol.”
I reddened in anger and was just about to give her the set-down of her life, when Charles decided to interfere for no apparent reason.
“Would you allow me the office? I am acquainted with everyone here.”
The little chit actually smiled at my mutton-headed brother, and I suspected I might have another rescue to execute soon if she kept her knives as sharp as the Bennet woman. She answered with a smile much too big to be genuine, “Of course, Mr Bingley. It would be my honour.”
My insufferable brother walked in front of me, smirking. What was wrong with that boy? He took a big breath and began what was likely the most tedious introduction in history.
“Forgive me if I get precedence wrong.”
The little hoyden said, “We do not stand on ceremony. Might I call you Charles… Oh! I am getting ahead of myself. Lizzy has been berating me for days about that… or has it been the other way round? I am not certain!”
She delivered that last with what could only be described as a witch’s cackle, and even odder still, the aforementioned Eliza started coughing uncontrollably.
Mr Darcy, in a very gentlemanlike manner, slapped her on the back to help her clear her cough, while holding her arm to ensure he did not knock her onto the table.
He was being entirely too much of a gentleman.
Perform such a move more than once, and the Parson’s Mousetrap was almost certain to be your fate.
Of course, that had me considering how I might put it to use, and I determined I could probably work with that idea once I dispatched Eliza and her coach driver’s wife friend.
I was not about to let her get her hooks into him ahead of me.
Charles stood oddly tall for his introduction. “Very well. Miss Anne de Bourgh, Heiress of Rosings in Kent, may I present you to my sister, Miss Caroline Bingley, daughter of trade from Yorkshire.”
I am certain I swayed and nearly fell as the horror of the worst day of my life dawned on me. Anne de Bourgh! My life was ruined, and it was all my brother’s fault.
Charles took my arm to steady me and whispered, “Steady on, Caroline. How many times have I told you not to make assumptions. You set your own table with your bad manners, so let us see how much you enjoy the meal.”
With much too bright a smile, the chaw-bacon continued as if my life were not over.
“Colonel Fitzwilliam! May I present my sister, Miss Caroline Bingley! Tell me, Colonel, is your father the Earl of Matlock in good health, and has your brother the Viscount decided to finally admit defeat on our last wager?”
The insufferable colonel bowed. “My father is quite well, Bingley. As for my brother, he might admit defeat on his deathbed, but do not hold your breath; and I would appreciate it if you did not hurry that day. I particularly do not want to be the next earl.”
With that, he and my brother laughed and Darcy joined in, surprisingly joined by the two ladies, while I turned red or white or more likely green.
I was almost certain I would collapse, and probably would have despite Charles holding me up, but fortunately a distraction forestalled it.
I managed to hold my feet long enough for the door-bell to ring.