Elizabeth clapped a hand over her mouth.
Mr. Darcy advanced on Caroline. “All right, all right. Calm yourself. Clearly it doesn’t matter ifmyservants hearmein the house thatIown. Miss Bennet and I are in the middle of a conversation. It doesn’t involve you, so please take your leave. And you will never, ever strike this woman again, is that clear?”
“Mr. Darcy!” cried Elizabeth. How dare he reveal that she had told him that? She sank down in her chair, letting out a noise of distress.
Caroline’s face turned several shades of purple. She looked at Elizabeth with an expression of pure vitriol, and then she turned on her heel and walked out of the room, leaving the door wide open behind her.
Mr. Darcy bowed his head. “This is not going well.”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” said Elizabeth. “I have very little choice now, do I? Miss Bingley will not be inclined to help me in any way, I don’t think.”
He turned to her. “Well, Mrs. Hurst, I suppose I have not thought much about what a blow to her this might be.”
“No, she doesn’t want the babe,” said Elizabeth. “No, they will both be easily shut of me.”
His mistress, then. A shamed woman, cut off from her family, besmirching the reputations of everyone she cared about.
Why was it, no matter how far she had sunk, there was always some lower rung to descend to?
CHAPTER TWELVE
MR. DARCY TRIEDto engage Elizabeth in conversation after that, but she had none of the earlier fire she’d had. She seemed to have retreated into herself, nodding here and there, answering in a faint and slightly sardonic voice.
It chilled him.
He had managed this badly, he knew, and he needed to fix it. He did not know how, of course. But he did not wish her to be his mistress if she was like this about it. That was no way to begin a life together.
He did not wish to let her go or to have her resign herself to some awful life in the Hurst household, but he also would not be the architect of a life she found unacceptable. In all truth, he was at a loss for how to proceed.
When she said that she would like to get herself together, to dress and see to her hair, he said he would go, of course. “Shall I ring for your maid?” He nodded towards the bell pull.
“No, I have no maid,” she said. “I see to myself.”
“What do you mean, you have no maid?” he said.
“Well, in my family, we do not each have our own,” she said. “So, when I travel, I cannot take someone along. Caroline and Louisa are not inclined to share, so—”
“This is unbelievable,” he said, and he quit her room, pounded down the stairs, and looked into the kitchen wherethe two women he’d loaned to the dower house were sitting at kitchen table doing some mending with needle and thread.
They both were startled when they saw him and stood up.
“I wonder if one of you would have a few moments to go up to the bedroom at the far end of the hall on the upper floor, and see to a woman who’s there? Her name is Miss Bennet, and she has been hidden away here. She only needs someone to help her with her hair and into a dress. I don’t think it should take too long. And you needn’t worry it will be a permanent part of your duties. I shall find someone else for her as soon as I can.”
The women exchanged a look.
“I knew there was someone else in this house. Did I not say so?”
“I thought it was rats,” said the other woman. “I’ll go look in on her, sir.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Darcy.
He left the kitchens and was in the process of walking out of the house to go and see what could be done about a maid for Elizabeth when Caroline was there.
She still looked furious. “What were you doing up there with her?”
He licked his lips, looking her over. He had no desire to speak to Caroline Bingley, none at all, but he did wish to put something in this situation to rights, and perhaps there was a way. He did not know. “Shall we speak in the sitting room?”
“Fine,” said Caroline, flouncing away from him.
