That way she looked at him.
The way she smelled, and the way her laugh sounded.
Jove.
He was in love with her.
“Well, that’s a pity. Beauty and brilliance, and we are abandoned by it,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. Darcy’s jealousy rose up again as his cousin clapped his hands together twice. “Miss Bingley, I’ll require you to try twice as hard to entertain me, since there are only one third as many pretty girls.”
Miss Bingley stared at his cousin, and Colonel Fitzwilliam winked back at her.
To Darcy’s surprise Miss Bingley giggled in an authentic way that he’d never heard her laugh before. She asked him, “You are certain you will not miss my Eliza?”
“Miss Eliza? Of course I shall miss Miss Eliza. Beauty and brilliance. And her sister is an attractive creature as well. But we’ll see her in the town I am sure — Bingley, wewillsee them all in the town?”
“You may depend upon it. And everyone shall be at my ball. Another week or two will be ample time to put everything into preparation.”
“Well then. No great loss. I’ve already achieved my real aim, and I shall dance first with her at that ball.” Colonel Fitzwilliam turned to Darcy, and laughingly said, “I am certain that you are even more eager than me foryourdance. Already promised to the lovely, and ravishing, and one day to be the queen of all our hearts, Miss Bingley.”
At this Miss Bingley looked at Darcy with that eager gaze she always showed.
Darcy bowed stiffly. “It will be a delight.”
That night Darcy found it difficult to sleep, and after pacing his room a few minutes, he went downstairs to the kitchen to acquire some meat and cheese and a bit of bread for a quick snack.
However when he reached the kitchen, he was surprised to hear the sound of a woman crying. He softly stepped around, to see if it was a servant who he might aid in some way, but then to his shock, her face half illuminated by a candle she’d set on one of the counters, was Caroline Bingley, sobbing.
Darcy startled, and with an intense sense that he was intruding, immediately withdrew. Thankfully she gave no sign of having noticed him, and he was able to retreat back to his bedroom, and return to sleep.
*****
Miss Bingley had been unable to sleep, her mind running around and around about Mr. Darcy, and thoughts and schemes to attract him, plans for her coiffage and dress — everything.
After a long while she determined that if she wished to look her best she must force her mind elsewhere, andactuallyfall asleep.
Fortunately, from childhood, Caroline had found that a glass of warmed milk always sent her right to sleep.
It was too late at night to politely awaken one of the servants to work the stove, but Caroline had never forgotten how to safely light and use a stove. After all, she’d had to learn during the straightened circumstances of their childhood.
As she lit the stove and poured her cup of milk and placed it on, Caroline remembered that time when Elizabeth had made fun of Lady Amelia after she revealed that she had no notion how the hot water for tea was actually prepared.
And it was sort of funny.
But Caroline had then felt ashamed of herself forknowing. If it was proper for the daughter of an earl to be so isolated from labor that she literally did not know what a stove was, then Caroline wanted to be like that too.
But ignorance could not be regained. It was like a snowflake which once it had melted, could never be reformed in precisely the same way again.
With a sudden shock of fear, Caroline wondered if Mr. Darcy would horribly judge her if he saw her heating her own milk. After all he must expect the sort of ignorance in his bride that Lady Amelia had been bred to have. This was why gentlemen like him despised connections with trade, they connected people with things that signaled poverty, and lack, and limits, and the need toworkfor success, while a proper aristocrat was nearly a god, with no limits except for the king and, Caroline supposed, any dukes of his acquaintance above him.
For a moment the only thing which stopped Caroline from waking up a servant to heat her milk for her was a certainty thatElizabethwould judge her harshly if she woke a servant for something as pointless as warming milk for her when she could do it perfectly well herself.
And Caroline suddenly saw in her mind’s eye that thing that had been there constantly, and that she’d been trying as hard as she possibly could to not see: The way that Mr. Darcy looked at Elizabeth.
And she started sobbing.
It was as though sheknewDarcy did not care for her, and that he never would.
Caroline wrapped her arms around her knees, forgetting about the boiling milk and just cried and cried.
