How did Elizabethnotsee it?
Or did she?
But Elizabeth still had that awkward half flushed look, and it seemed to Caroline that her friend refused to meet Mr. Darcy’s eye.
He loved Elizabeth.
She had known it already.
Now she really knew it.
He loved Elizabeth.
It was too painful to look at. Too painful to even think about.
Caroline stood and hurried away from the room, only noticing as she went out that Colonel Fitzwilliam was ignoring his partner to look at her in concern.
Darcy loved Elizabeth, and he would never love her.
That was the simple fact.
She had lost, and there was nothing that she could do about it.
At this point Caroline had the very great good fortune to be one of the residents of the estate at which this ball was held. She was not forced to seek some isolated corner, some seldom traveled hallway, or a cold corner of a cold corridor: She simply retreated upstairs to her own warm and welcoming room.
Caroline entered the familiar room, decorated to her own exacting requirements, and to the height of fashion, with a vase of fresh flowers sitting on her dressing table. She threw herself on her bed and sobbed.
It just wasn’t fair.
It took a long time before Caroline calmed sufficiently to have proper command of herself.
She pushed herself up from the bed and looked at herself in her dressing mirror.
Ghastly, and hideous.
Everyone would know she had been crying — though her disappearance for what must have been an hour would be sufficiently suspicious.
Caroline rang for her maid, a fine French woman who commanded a large salary, and deserved every pence.
When Aliette came up, she gasped. “Mademoiselle! Your face. Oh no, oh no. You must not go down like this. Oh no!”
The woman splashed cold water over Caroline’s face and on her wrists. “I shall need to completely scrub everything, and put it on again. It shall not be so quick.”
“I do not mind — how late is it?”
“They are dancing the last before they sit down for supper.”
“Ah.” She’d missed her dance with Colonel Fitzwilliam.
Would that gentleman despise her for it?
Caroline sat in silence for a while, still stunned, like a rider who'd been thrown and fell badly.
Wipe, wipe. Wipe.
All the rouge, foundation and tears on her face were roughly scrubbed off.
Aliette began the steady work of reapplying the cherry juice to bring out the red in her cheeks.
