Page 39 of The Work of a Moment

“Mr Catesby has proposed.”

“Oh! But when? Did Aunt Gardiner leave you two alone for a moment?”

“A very long moment and a most fruitful one,” Jane replied, her eyes dancing with joy. “Mr Catesby and I thank her for her kindness and discretion.”

Elizabeth laughed with delight and requested a full accounting. When Jane finished, Elizabeth said, “Mama will be so pleased. ‘A large estate and a house in town. You will have the finest gowns and carriages!’” She rose and spun round, fluttering her hands and sending her sister into peals of laughter.

“Mr Catesby has spoken to our uncle, who asked him to come dine with us tomorrow. He suggested escorting us to Longbourn so he may speak to Papa.”

Elizabeth’s reluctance to leave London could not have been more profound. She had spent weeks—months—consumed with ensuring Jane’s felicity. Now it had been attained, and she wished desperately to consider her own happiness. I do not know whether Mr Darcy is to be part of achieving it, but my curiosity about his dealings with Miss Bingley must be satisfied even if my heart is not.

“I told him he may escort me, but you will remain with my aunt,” said Jane. “I believe it unfair to remove you from town and a man I believe may be your suitor, one who is unlikely to feel at ease at Longbourn.”

Elizabeth could hide neither her surprise nor her relief and pressed her sister into yet another embrace. “And Papa says I am the clever one,” she said, laughing, before demanding Jane provide her every detail of Mr Catesby’s proposal.

CHAPTER 29

Brotherly Love

“Caroline, what have you done?”

Caroline stared at her brother. She could not recall seeing such fury in Charles’s expression since Hurst told him she had spied on him and Mr Darcy swimming in Pemberley’s pond.

She could still recall the sight of Mr Darcy’s broad shoulders, his bare chest emerging from the water, his arms lifting to move his damp hair from his face. So paralysed was she with a strange mix of exhilaration and fear, her eyes trained on Mr Darcy’s perfectly sculpted form, she had stepped back and bumped directly into the solid, half-clad form of her sister’s husband. Begging him for his silence and excusing herself for having followed the wrong path, she had fled, running as no lady should run, until she reached the rose gardens. There, out of breath, she walked rapidly towards the house, overwhelmed by the scent of the blooms and cursing the snags and tears she felt as her gown was caught by the blasted thorns. Weeks later, only hours after they had arrived home in town, Hurst had joked that his favourite memory of their holiday had been Caroline’s expression when he had found her swooning over a soaking wet, bare-chested Mr Darcy.

Charles had been red-faced with anger and mortification, shouting outrageous threats about the family’s reputation if it had been intentional rather than the accidental glimpse she claimed. “What if Darcy learns of it?” he had asked.

In the end, after much simpering and pretended chagrin on her part, she had been barred from Mr Darcy’s company for the next half-year. Livid about her brother’s set-down, she had made Louisa dismiss the footman who had smirked in her presence the very next day.

Now, as her brother was losing his temper behind the closed doors of the small morning room Louisa had decorated with such dull colours and fabrics, Caroline comforted herself that she would not have to replace any servants, for she had done nothing wrong. After all, she had not even left her chambers today until he arrived in a lather.

“Do sit down, Charles,” she said. “I have only just had breakfast, and watching you stamp about is bad for my digestion.”

He ignored her and planted himself in front of her chair. “Being called on the carpet before breakfast by both Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennet is far worse for my digestion.”

At this, she was speechless. “I do not understand.”

“Nor did I, but you have made me quite the chawbacon. Had you not thrown that hairbrush, Darcy would not have needed to bring a maid for you from London, one whom I would need to speak to about the well-being of both you and your injured lady’s maid, and Miss Elizabeth would not have misunderstood what she saw and thought me a rake and ensured her sister would no longer care for me.”

His face as red as his hair, he stamped away, circling back to say, “Small actions can have great effect, and as you hoped, I have lost my chance with Miss Bennet.”

Small victory that, but as usual, her brother was speaking in scrambled sentences. “You met privately with a lady’s maid? That was quite indiscreet, and of course that impertinent Miss Eliza Bennet was lurking about to entrap Mr Darcy. And the nerve of her, ringing a peal round you! Why is she here, in town, rather than tramping about the fields of Hertfordshire?”

He shot her a look, clearly displeased with her very innocent question, before saying, “Miss Elizabeth was mistaken but acted as any good sister would in protecting her sister.”

“Protecting her sister? What is any of this about?” Caroline sniffed. “You have found yourself enthralled with at least two ladies since leaving Netherfield, and my lady’s maid, who provoked my anger, is unscarred. Nonsense. None of it matters.”

“None of it matters? I cared for Miss Bennet, and any hope I had of gaining her affection was dashed when you wrote to her of my affection for Miss Darcy!”

Caroline felt an uncomfortable flush of heat.

“I might have been thoughtless in my actions, but you were quite deliberate in yours, Sister. You wrote to Miss Bennet and boasted of the growing closeness between us and the Darcys. You said that I was to marry Miss Darcy, a girl of scarcely sixteen years and whom you know I have never looked upon as anything but my friend’s sister. It was a wretched thing to do, injuring two ladies of gentle dispositions by stirring up gossip.”

Caroline could not see how anyone was injured but herself. She had been stared at and asked impertinent questions about her brother and Miss Darcy, had been laughed at by those ‘friends’ who knew she had hoped for Mr Darcy to wed her. If anyone had cause for distress, it was she!

“I did write to Miss Bennet, as was proper, when we left Netherfield. You, I believe, gave no formal goodbyes to anyone in the neighbourhood, particularly to the young lady you now profess you cared for. Clearly, there was upset on Miss Bennet’s part, resentment from her sister and that harridan Mrs Bennet, so hasty was she in announcing your marriage. She must have used my letters to convince herself and others that she was not at fault for your departure.”

“You assert she imagined this attachment between myself and Miss Darcy as a means of absolving herself of blame for my disinterest? Why? What did you write?”