Page 35 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

The fan stopped.

Alban looked up from his plate. "G'morning, Miss Caroline."

Miss Bingley's whole face changed. "Good morning, Alban. Have they given you the burned toast again? Here." She slid her own honey cake onto his plate. "Eat it before Mrs. Darcy sees."

"I see," Elizabeth said.

"Then look elsewhere, Eliza. A boy cannot grow on eggs!"

Alban ate the cake in two bites. Miss Bingley watched him with her chin on her hand. For the space of a minute she was a woman one might have liked.

Then Miss Bingley rose and shook out her skirts. "You must excuse me. I have something to say to my brother, and it will not keep."

She went out without looking at anyone. Had Elizabeth ever seen Miss Bingley leave a room without a parting shot?

Alban finished his eggs and ran off to the stables. Elizabeth took her husband's letter across the hall to the morning room. Jane was already there with her workbasket, hemming a petticoat for Lydia. Elizabeth was reading the letter for the second time when she heard the argument through the open parlor door.

It was not loud. Mr. Bingley's voice rarely rose above dinner-table pleasantness. But the warmth had gone out of it. What remained was flat, firm and entirely unfamiliar. Elizabeth set down the letter and listened.

She was not eavesdropping. Could she help it if Miss Bingley chose to have this conversation within earshot of the whole ground floor?

Miss Bingley's voice came first, pitched in her most reasonable tone. "I am only thinking of you, Charles. Of your future. You must see that this family, however personally charming, carries a weight of scandal that no amount of good intentions can⁠—"

"Caroline. Stop."

Silence.

"Miss Lydia had a fever," Bingley said, level. "She was nursed at her aunt's in town, and she has come here to recover. That is the whole of it."

"But Charles, the girl eloped with an officer. The family is⁠—"

"I plan to marry Jane Bennet. If you want to protect the reputation of our family, you will remember that Lydia had a fever. You will not spread baseless rumors."

"I am your sister. Your reputation is my concern."

"Then you should take more care with your own." A pause. A drawn breath. "I know what you said to Darcy."

Miss Bingley's silence changed quality. "I do not know what you⁠—"

"You suggested that Mrs. Darcy was unstable. That she should be sent to a professional establishment. You said this to the husband of a woman who was abducted and chained in a cellar, and you dressed her suffering up as madness and offered it to him as concern."

"I was concerned. I am concerned. Elizabeth's behavior since the abduction has been⁠—"

"Has been what, Caroline? Brave? She held this family up while carrying wounds you cannot begin to imagine. If that is instability, I will take it over stability any day of the week."

Elizabeth pressed her hand against her breastbone. She had not known. Not that Miss Bingley had said it, and not that Bingley had heard. A professional establishment! Fitzwilliam had known since the summer, then, and had let it lie. She would hear what he thought excused him, and she would hear it from him.

She had thought Bingley too gentle to notice Caroline's barbs. Wrong! He had noticed every one.

"You will not mention Mrs. Darcy's health again," Bingley said. "Not to me, not to anyone. Not in a drawing room, not in a letter, not in a whisper to the Hursts over dinner. And you will not spread one word about Lydia Bennet. Her reputation is not yours to destroy." His voice did not rise. It did not need to. "If you cannot live under those terms, I will arrange separate lodgings for you in London. You will be comfortable. You will be provided for. But you will not remain in Hertfordshire while you work to dismantle the family I intend to join."

A sharp, wounded intake of breath. "You would choose them over me."

"I am choosing no one over anyone. I am telling you where the line is. You may step back from it. You may not cross it."

Quick heels on the floorboards, wanting to be heard. Miss Bingley passed the morning room without looking in, chin high, color vivid.

Elizabeth looked across at her sister.