“I believe that your sister has become so obsessed with rising to the top of English society, she has forgotten everything she ever knew about civility, compassion, and what it means to be truly ‘accomplished’. I have given this a great deal of thought, Bingley, and although I am angry, furious even at her machinations, I wonder if she has almost been shoved into this obsession.”
Bingley protested immediately. “I certainly have never told her who she ought to marry!”
Darcy sighed. “It is not you—it is everything and everyone she knows. She has grown almost insanely fixated upon wedding a highly born, wealthy husband, I believe, in order to protect herself and establish control. Well, if she truly wants management of her own life, she must forfeit that control for the next two years. Perhaps, in setting that preoccupation aside for a time, in seeing a broader world than the tiny fraction of it she lives within now, she can learn something better. It is time for her to be of service to someone else, rather than be waited upon and further spoilt. And if Thomasina cannot influence her for the good, and the travels do not expand her views, nothing can—you may as well wash your hands of her, and allow her to create her own ruinous consequences.”
Bingley appeared unconvinced. “It seems too light a punishment if you ask me.”
“It will not seem so to her. As impatient as she is, two years will seem like a life sentence. Only the temptation of possessing the wealth she dreams of would entice her, I think.”
“But surely she should be penalised beyond simply charging off on some feminine, elderly version of a Grand Tour,” Bingley worried aloud.
At this, Darcy found a smile. The methodical, manipulative Caroline Bingley would have her hands full trying to pressure, persuade, prod, and otherwise prevail against the hurricane in human flesh that was Mrs Thomasina Darcy.
Bingley, wasting no time, had Miss Bingley immediately called to the study. She entered, obviously preoccupied enough to fail to observe Darcy standing off to the side near the window, only noticing her brother behind his desk.
“What is it, Charles?” she snapped. “I must supervise preparations for this stupid wedding breakfast you forced upon us, and I have a hundred things to be done still, while you do nothing except gallivant off to Longbourn.”
“You may leave the supervision of all such matters toLouisa,” her brother replied. “Darcy, do you wish for Caroline to attend your wedding breakfast?”
She turned pale as she swivelled, looking round the room and spotting his frown.
“Oh, Mr Darcy! I-I am so very sorry, it is only that I have been so busy. You know how servants can be?—”
“Actually, Bingley, I would prefer she came nowhere near anything to do with the breakfast—or any food I might ingest, in particular.” Striding over, he placed the brown laudanum bottle on Bingley’s desk.
Miss Bingley stared at it as if it were an adder, hissing.
“I can explain!” she cried. “I never meant?—”
Again, he interrupted her. “You never meant me to marry Elizabeth, that is for certain. Tell me, how would you feel if your little plot had worked as you planned, only forcing you to discover that the man you connived and schemed to wed despises you with every fibre of his being? Is that your idea of a happy life?”
She gawped at him, as if searching for some hint of softness in his features and finding none. Tears began flowing as her mouth opened and closed like a fish. She, evidently, was frantically trying to invent an excuse that might earn his pardon. She would not find it.
Miss Bingley turned to her brother. “I only thought of our family!” she cried, weeping in earnest now. “You know that our family must overcome our father’s birth and profession! YouknowI must marry well! Should I do as Louisa did, accept a drunkard of good birth becauseno one else will take her? I have had few offers, and no one who could help us! I have grown wretched! I could have made him a good wife! I would have worked my whole life to become the ideal Mrs Darcy!”
Darcy’s anger faded a little as he listened to her pathetic attempts at obtaining absolution.
“Listen to me now,” he interrupted her diatribe with his severest tone. “You would never have been the ideal Mrs Darcy. Not because of your family or your birth, but because I am in love with another, who is, thankfully, the woman whom I shall wed tomorrow. I would never want to be connected to someone who would even consider such a devious design as you attempted to enact upon me. You have made of yourself the veryoppositeof someone acceptable, to me or any other decent man. Do not attend the breakfast tomorrow. Never speak to or approach me or my future wife in our lifetimes. Your brother has some options for your future, none of which include any imminent connexion between us; I, personally, do not care which option you choose. It makes no difference to me, as long as I do not have to ever set eyes upon you again.”
He stalked from the room, closing the door softly behind him, the sound of her sobs following him out.
Calling for his carriage, he felt he could not reach Elizabeth soon enough—Bingley could come along later. It was not in his nature to be purposely cruel, and yet he had been compelled to say just what he had said,however harsh. It would be wrong and even, possibly, heartless to allow her to believe that if she accepted Thomasina’s companionship, it meant she could repair what she had broken. He could not imagine ever trusting her so far as to allow her near his wife and family.
Yet he did feel pity for her, for her desperation for the life she had been raised to covet—one, always, just out of reach. The offers she had managed thus farwerefrom men of Hurst’s ilk—not drunkards, perhaps, but those who had need of her fortune far more than they wanted her. The world to whom she listened had taught her to believe that if only she perfected her French accent, danced a flawless cotillion, played an impeccable Beethoven sonata, and missed no notes in her warbling solos, it would qualify her to be the ‘woman of his dreams’. Unfortunately, she had never possessed that certain something he required above all—a loving, loyal heart.
13
A PROMISE KEPT
Elizabeth slept ill the night before her wedding; it was almost a relief to arise and face the day. Jane came in to brush out and help style her hair—always a trial. Thankfully, she did not try to talk too much, as the nerves were nearly overpowering, and her mother and other sisters left them alone.
Mr Darcy was a good man, she could see that now. Even, he seemed to be everything she had hoped for in a husband. However, she was notinlove with him, and she had never envisioned marrying a man with whom she was not head-over-heels in love. After all, she barely knew him! A week ago, she had imagined that he despised her. If only there were more time!
But time was a luxury she did not have.
The night before, Mama had entered Elizabeth’s bedchamber and made an embarrassing, convolutedexplanation of what was supposed to happen upon her wedding night. Her words had made everything worse, and now Elizabeth was not only full of nerves for marrying a near-stranger, but she was half appalled and afraid to even consider what was to follow.
“Him being such a big man, you can expect to feel as if you were going to split in half. It hurts something terrible at first, but it is over with very quickly,” her mother had instructed. “I usually ponder something else entirely until your papa is finished. Lately I have been planning to repaint the larger drawing room from that awful bottle green. I found a paint colour called ‘Stifled Sigh’ that I believe would be pretty, the palest of lilacs, but ‘Dust of Ruins’—which is a bit lighter than ‘Noisette’—is bolder and possibly more elegant. ’Tis nearly impossible to decide. What do you think?”
