Page 49 of Regrets

“Oh! Then I suppose they are married and living with their husbands.”

“I wish that were true,” he said, with feeling. “My eldest sister is now Mrs. Hurst, but her husband is impecunious until he inherits, and so they live with me. My younger sister…well, she is as yet unmarried.” Should he tell her that Caroline had her eye on Mr. Darcy? No, perhaps not.

“I am surprised they did not join you at Netherfield,” Jane said.

Mr. Bingley laughed. “They think the country dirty.”

“Dirty?” Jane said, disbelieving.

“Yes; and since I preferred to come here alone, I did not try to convince them otherwise.”

“Then where are they?”

“London.”

“But London is completely filthy!” Jane exclaimed, and then put her hand over her mouth in some consternation at her outburst.

“I agree with you wholeheartedly,” Mr. Bingley said, laughing. “But, as I said, I preferred to come alone, so I let them think what they liked.”

“But you are not alone,” Jane said, puzzled. “You have Mr. Darcy and his sister.”

“I invited Darcy, as he is to help me learn to run an estate. It just happened that his sister accompanied him; it was unexpected, but not unwelcome. Miss Darcy has taken on the role of hostess, though there is not a great deal to do.”

“I suppose Mrs. Hammond has everything well in hand.”

“She does; I think she allows Miss Darcy to look over the menus more as a courtesy than anything else.”

“That sounds like Mrs. Hammond,” Jane said, smiling.

“So you know her?”

“The Netherfield servants have been there for many years. We are not intimate with them, of course, but we all know and value their worth. Mary visits Mrs. Hammond with some frequency; I suppose they are better friends than I had imagined, come to think of it.”

While Mr. Bingley was enjoying his tête-à-tête with Miss Bennet, Elizabeth was trying to talk some sense into her youngest siblings. “You do understand that he is flirting with all of you, do you not?” she asked. “The two of you and Georgiana?”

Lydia protested at once. “No, he definitely looks at me directly.”

Kitty shook her head. “It is me that he looks at, certainly more than you, Lydia.”

Elizabeth said, “This is what a practiced flirt is able to do; he can make each of the young ladies around him think that they are being singled out!”

Kitty put in, “Actually, I think he looks at Georgiana most.”

Lydia shook her head, firmly. “Absolutely not!”

“Are any of you listening to me?” Elizabeth asked, her frustration evident in her voice. “This is exactly what he wants you to do! To fight over who is getting the most of his attention!”

“But why?” Kitty asked.

“For his own amusement, mainly, but he may also have other intentions.” Elizabeth’s voice dropped on those last two words.

“Other intentions?” Lydia repeated.

“Well, think about this. Could you and he live on what he earns as a lieutenant? It is less than your pin money, Lydia.”

“I suppose not,” Lydia muttered.

“And do you think you could live off the interest on your dowry? I do not know how much it has grown to, perhaps two thousand pounds. The interest on that is eighty pounds a year.”