Page 27

So, now, she and Louisa were stuck together and they were only the third people to have arrived, and there was no one to talk to. It was ever so awkward, and she was nervous, and she had nothing to say to her sister.

Caroline had been present during a few of the times when callers had come to the Darcy house over the past week, and she could see that everything was going well for Elizabeth, but she did not see how any of this was getting her closer to finding a match.

Elizabeth seemed only to eliminate men. Everyone who called seemed to only wish to say awful things about the eligible bachelors.

Caroline thought Elizabeth was narrowing it down too much, anyway.

She had tried to explain that she did not need everlasting love or anything like that.

She needed a good match with a man who would not treat her too despicably, really.

That was all. As long as they respected each other, it was enough.

She would not mind living mostly separately from her husband if they grew tired of each other.

She could make many, many different sorts of situations work.

She had already been moving about through society and getting no interest for some time now. She did not need to get a reputation as being too choosy on top of everything. After all, no one actually wanted her.

A man entered the room, head down, looking through the pockets inside his jacket, not looking where he was going.

He was going to run directly into Caroline and Louisa, but Caroline thought they should simply move out of his path.

Louisa however, spoke up. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, quite affronted.

The man looked up. He had an interesting sort of countenance, she thought, almost weathered, craggy.

Not handsome, not exactly, but compelling in another way.

“Oh, pardon me. I was looking for my snuff tin, and I think I may…” He reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled it out.

“Ah, there it is.” He proffered it. “Care for any?”

“No, indeed,” said Louisa.

Caroline shook her head. “Thank you, no.”

“I suppose this is the height of impropriety, here, us conversing without an introduction,” said the man. “Let us simply pretend to have known each other all along, shall we?”

Caroline smiled. “Of course. Why, you have always known my sister Mrs. Hurst and myself, Miss Bingley. ”

“Yes, and you have always known me, Colonel Fitzwilliam,” he said. “We are old, old friends.”

“The oldest,” said Caroline.

“The very oldest,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Why, I have already claimed the first two dances on your card, have I not, Miss Bingley?”

She let out a little laugh. “So, you have.” She looked at the card. “There you are, right there, written in.” She pointed to the empty lines.

“We have, indeed, been planning on meeting up here tonight for positively ages.”

“Months, truly,” said Caroline. “We have been speaking of simply nothing else every time we see each other.”

“And, being such old and faithful friends, we see each other very often,” said the colonel.

Louisa looked back and forth between them, shaking her head. “I think I am going to seek my husband in the whist room.”

“Of course,” said Caroline.

The colonel gave her a wave. “Best of luck. Safe travels.”

Caroline smirked.

“It is only the next room, sir,” said Louisa. She looked at Caroline. “You will not go off somewhere with this strange man.”

“Strange man?” said Caroline. “We have known Colonel Fitzwilliam since infancy, my dear sister.”

“Yes, really, how could you forget such a thing?” said the colonel to Louisa. “You wound me.”

“You two enjoy your little joke,” said Louisa and fled.

They watched her go.

“You’re much more fun than your sister, aren’t you?” said the colonel.

“Oh, indeed,” said Caroline, even though no one at all would describe her as fun.

“It’s a good thing you’re the one who’s not married, then,” said the colonel. “That’s excellent luck.”

“Is it?” she said. “Are you single, sir? Are you looking for a wife?” My, she was forward now, wasn’t she ?

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that any single man at a ball must be in want of a wife,” said the colonel. “But in my case, I want a wife much more than any wife must want me. You do not know of me, truly?”

“Fitzwilliam,” she said. “Not those Fitwilliams?”

“Oh, yes, can there be any other Fitzwilliams?”

“Then you must know my dearest friend, who I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of, Mrs. Darcy,” said Caroline.

“Yes, my cousin’s wife! She’s your dearest friend, you say? Good, then, she can introduce us.”

Caroline laughed. “We are much in need of an introduction, I must say.” She tilted her head to one side. “But I don’t understand why you would not be wanted by prospective wives if you are… you’re the son of an earl, are you not?”

“Yes, but with no title, no income, no property, nothing at all! Who would marry this?” He gestured. “You… Bingley, Bingley… hmm. Doesn’t ring any bells. Shall I be frightfully gauche and come out with it?” He raised an eyebrow and she only smiled, so he pushed on. “Trade?”

“Silks,” she said.

“Silks.” He nodded.

“Some tobacco, some spices, also.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “You have a dowry, don’t you?”

She flushed.

“But a girl with a dowry is looking for a title,” he said. “Which I do not have, not unless I murder my brother.”

“Oh,” she said. “No, I’m not so nakedly ambitious, you mustn’t—”

“I have thought about murdering him, of course. Have you ever considering murdering your sister?”

She laughed. “Hasn’t everyone with siblings fantasized about killing them?”

“Just so,” said the colonel. He smiled at her. “I am utterly overcome by the fact you have not run away. I can think of twenty things I have said and done in this conversation which would have warranted your expedient exit.”

“You are a bit rebellious, aren’t you, sir?” she said, looking him over, thinking that he actually was handsome, very handsome in a rough and tumble way that was stirring her somewhere.

“Rebellious? I like the sound of that,” he said. “No, no, I’m just honestly a mess. Can’t get myself together even if I wish to, you see. You don’t truly have to dance with me, you know. I didn’t rightly ask, did I?”

“I would love to dance with you, sir,” she said, smiling at him.

How was this happening? Why was he so easy to speak to? Why was he interested in her? “You should know my dowry is not so very impressive as all that,” she said.

“No?” he said. “Well, drat. I suppose I shall have to make a number of surreptitious inquiries about that, while we are waiting to dance.”

“You don’t have to dance with me if you don’t wish to,” she said. “You wouldn’t have even spoken to me if you hadn’t misplaced your snuff tin.”

“I very much wish to dance with you,” said the colonel. “I am not so mercenary as all that, in the end, you know?”

“Are you not?”

“No,” he said. “You and me, we are very pure in spirit, I can tell. You are not ambitious. I am not a mercenary. We are drawn to each other on pure regard for each other’s wit, you see. It’s a kind of clean burning attraction, the fuel of the truest kind of admiration, in the end.”

No one would call her witty, of course, but it was easy to be witty around this man. He made her feel at ease in a way that almost no one did, except perhaps Elizabeth.

“Quite pure,” she said, grinning widely.

“Incredibly pure,” he said.

By the time Elizabeth had arrived, the dancing had begun, and she and the colonel were on the dance floor. The conversation had flowed easily between herself and the colonel, and she was feeling happy and pleased, almost radiant.

She was sad that their two dances would end, but when they did, he stayed with her, walking alongside her as they left the dance floor.

When she and the colonel approached Elizabeth, the woman was alone.

“Mrs. Darcy,” said the colonel. “Here you are, then. I believe I claimed a dance with you.”

It took Elizabeth a moment to look up at the man, and to smile. It was only a moment, but it was enough that Caroline caught it. Something was bothering her friend.

“Oh, yes, of course, sir,” said Elizabeth. “I did agree to a dance, did I not?”

“Before that, of course,” said the colonel, “you must introduce me to your friend Miss Bingley.”

Elizabeth looked back and forth between them, confused. “But you two were just dancing…?”

Caroline laughed and explained the entire story to her friend, all about their meeting, and Elizabeth laughed in all the right places, but her laughter wasn’t meeting her eyes.

It wasn’t until after her dance with the colonel that Caroline got the chance to speak with Elizabeth.

It meant there was half an hour when Caroline was essentially alone, but she was used to that.

No one spoke to her most of the time, after all, and the only way she had been able to have any social interaction at a ball was with Elizabeth’s intervention.

She went into the whist room looking for Louisa at one point, but her sister was paying more mind to her husband’s cards than her sister.

“She’s done something,” Elizabeth muttered when Caroline found her.

“Who has done what?” said Caroline.

“The Countess of Matlock, my husband’s aunt,” said Elizabeth.

“She called upon us recently, and the next day, the callers dried up, and I did my best not to panic, but then here we are, and everyone is pointedly snubbing me. Everyone I have attempted to speak to has barely acknowledged me. Three people have walked away from me whilst I was speaking. All of that work, all of that effort, all of it ruined.”

Caroline looked around and could see that people looked away when she lifted her gaze, as if they had been staring at them and were trying to conceal it. “She doesn’t approve of you, I suppose.”

“It’s more than that,” said Elizabeth. “She is threatened by the way I was pushing my way into society. She wishes to preserve the gates that keep people like me from getting in. She is affronted by the way I have been going around the obstacles. It’s a point of pride for her, I suppose.

You and I did talk about how difficult it is for women to be accepted into good society by other women, especially when they have done so by charming a man. ”

“We did,” said Caroline, remembering.

Elizabeth sighed. “Well, I have cultivated an image of being unruffled, so I must remain unruffled.” She looked around the room.

“No matter. We shall switch tactics, I think. I’ve been spending far too much time on the women of society, anyway, and they have been doing nothing except warning us off every single eligible man.

We are no closer to a match for you, and that has been the point of all of this, after all. ”

“Well, you needn’t worry over me,” said Caroline. “I quite, erm, I feel as if I may have a connection with Colonel Fitzwilliam.”

Elizabeth looked up at her. “The colonel? Oh, no, Caroline, I don’t think so.”

Caroline felt hurt. “You don’t think he’s appropriate for me?

I own he’s not exactly the right sort of match.

He’s practically penniless with whatever the awful salary a man is paid in the army.

It’s really nothing. He must have some money from his family, I suppose.

My dowry would have to keep us, and my dowry is…

well, there would be struggles, but it might be worth it, because—”

“No, you mistake me,” said Elizabeth, smiling a gentle and sympathetic smile.

“I only mean that he’s the sort of man who flirts with everything.

You should not take his general geniality to mean he has any especial interest in you.

Why, he flirted with me . Openly. In front of my husband.

He was not the least bit subtle, either. ”

Caroline straightened. “Oh,” she said in a very different voice. Of course, she had never been flirted with, not really, so she would not know how to tell the difference between a man being friendly and a man being interested.

“Don’t do that,” said Elizabeth, shaking her head.

“It is not your fault. The fault lies with him. He’s the sort of man who makes unspoken promises and then acts as if he is unaware of what he has done.

I’ve seen it before, I’m afraid. Men don’t realize how much it hurts us when they toy with women thus.

I think the colonel likely doesn’t realize how despicable he is being.

I shall have a talk with him, however, I think. ”

“No!” Caroline shook her head. “No, I’m quite, quite embarrassed now. I beg you to say nothing.”

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. “Speaking of the colonel, however, we can use him for introductions. He’ll be ever so much better at it than my husband is. Where has Colonel Fitzwilliam gone?” She searched the area with her gaze. “No surprise there. He’s dancing.”

Caroline’s stomach turned over. Yes, she had been very foolish.