Caroline stopped pacing and rang the pull bell.
When a servant tapped upon the door, she threw it open.
"Ask Mr. Bingley to send up Mr. Darcy's letter. I wish to read it."
The servant curtsied.
"Yes, ma'am."
Caroline watched her depart, then resumed her restless pacing. Something was amiss, and she was determined to discover precisely what had happened while she had been away.
She should have insisted on reading Darcy's letter herself.
Her eyes narrowed further. Charles had hidden this from her. Deliberately.
She crossed to the window and stood gazing at the landscape beyond without seeing it. Her thoughts kept returning tothe reserved, cold man she knew. How had he changed so profoundly? Mr. Darcy had looked at that woman in a manner she would never have believed him capable of. He had not been distant or cold. He had been...
Besotted.
There came another tap upon the door.
"Come in."
The servant entered with a letter in her hand.
"That will be all, Hannah."
"Yes, ma'am."
When the door had closed behind her, Caroline dropped into a chair and unfolded the letter.
Tears filled her eyes before she reached the end.
He wrote of his happiness. Of his good fortune in having met and married a woman superior to any he had ever known. He wrote of her beauty and the sweetness of her character. He wrote as though he had discovered every happiness he had once believed beyond his reach.
Caroline's gaze dropped to the bottom of the page.
F. Darcy.
The signature was unmistakably his.
The letter had most assuredly been written by him, and yet it struck her as so warm, so heartfelt, that he seemed almost alien to her. He seemed a stranger. A man she had never truly known.
She sank back against the cushioned chair and closed her eyes.
Fitzwilliam Darcy was in love.
How could this have happened?
She had pursued him for seven years. And this woman, this nobody, had snatched him away in what seemed the space of a moment.
What did this Elizabeth possess that she did not?
Certainly not a fortune.
She was a Bennet from an insignificant estate situated scarcely three miles away. She was the sister of Jane Bennet, the very woman who had nearly ensnared Charles.
Caroline should have known it was an ill wind that blew nobody any good. Even then, she had known that leasing an estate in Hertfordshire had been a mistake. She had hoped instead for an estate in Derbyshire, where they might have been near neighbors to Mr. Darcy.
