Page 10 of Friendship and Forgiveness (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #7)

As inclement weather had prevented the normal easy interaction between Elizabeth and Caroline, they did not see each other for the five days preceding the ball at Netherfield.

Thus Elizabeth hurried with more eagerness than usual to enter the ballroom, fully anticipating a night filled with pleasure and interest, even though she would be required to dance the second sprightly set of the night with the heavyset Mr. Collins.

Fortunately when Charlotte had braved a break in the rain to run over and visit, she’d taken sufficient pity on Elizabeth to engage the clergyman in conversation and gain his hand for the third dance of the night, so for at least one set after her first with Colonel Fitzwilliam she would be free of his bothersomeness.

“Caroline!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “So lovely! What fine silk and lace!”

Her friend turned side to side to show off the newly made dress, the papillote curls, and the bit of color from rouge in her pale cheeks.

Elizabeth looked at her friend with delight. “I ordinarily do not envy you for your pale skin, but tonight! — you look exquisite.”

Caroline’s eyes were bright and she glowed. She embraced Elizabeth. “Just from London — I was very unhappy that you were not able to come by to see me fit for it.”

The glow from hundreds of candles hanging down from chandeliers, the murmuring of the crowd, the first achy chords from the violins as the band warmed up, the slight chill on the air of the ballroom that would turn into heat from the exercise and presence of so many guests.

A ball!

A single glorious word in which the greatest happiness in all the world could be packaged.

Colonel Fitzwilliam stepped up to them, and with an intrepid look at Caroline, he said in a considered tone, “I do not know, Miss Bingley, but I prefer you without those curls.”

Caroline groaned and rolled her eyes. “You always say such things just to be contrary.”

“No, no — besides I heard them tell of a girl who set her hair on fire while ironing them in. Horrid story, quite the sort of morbid tale of wounds you expect from battlefield exploits” He shivered. “I may be a brave man. Simple soldier. All that. But I’d rather—”

“Face the grapeshot of the French?” Caroline laughed, and Elizabeth was glad to see how high her spirits were. “I believe the chances of mortal wound are higher with the French than with the iron.”

“Rather I would say,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied, “that I would rather face the bared bayonets of a French brigade — alone, without even the singlest man to support me. They are iron also you know, those bayonets. Alas! Such loveliness will be danced with first by Mr. Darcy.” He placed his hand on his forehead and sighed theatrically.

Caroline rolled her eyes once more, but Elizabeth thought she could perceive that her friend had reached a point of accommodation with Colonel Fitzwilliam’s tendency to absurdity, and that she was more than a little pleased by his attention.

For her part, it was impossible for Elizabeth to not take Colonel Fitzwilliam at least a little seriously after watching how he had dealt with Mr. Wickham.

“Miss Elizabeth,” the officer added. “I hope you are most sensible of what joy and happiness this dance with you shall cost me.”

“Yes, but you have the second dance with Caroline.” Elizabeth said that with arched eyebrows and a dimple. “You’ll not allow yourself to die of disappointment in the next half hour will you?”

“What a lovely creature you are. Your mind is as beautiful as your, ah—”

“Ahem.” Darcy approached them.

He glowered at his cousin, and Elizabeth wondered why. Perhaps he really was unhappy to have a ball held at the house where he was residing. He bowed stiffly to all three of them. “Miss Elizabeth, Miss Bingley.”

“Mr. Darcy,” Caroline replied with a smile.

Elizabeth said, “Does my friend not look better than ever? A flower and a gem.”

“And what is more,” Colonel Fitzwilliam added with an exaggerated leer, “a woman.”

Elizabeth slapped her fan on his arm, since Caroline was too busy hopefully staring at Mr. Darcy to do so herself. “Be civilized.”

“Simple soldier. Can’t help it.”

“If I were married to you,” Elizabeth replied, “I would beat you till you ceased the act.”

“Married to me?” Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. “That would be worth the endless beatings, for I shall never cease to be naught but a simple soldier.”

Darcy stared at the two of them with a deepening glower on his face.

Was he jealous?

Elizabeth could not help but like that idea, and she smiled at him, but before she could decide what to say to Darcy, the music began, and Colonel Fitzwilliam took her hand to lead her into the line.

Jane and Bingley opened the set at the top of the line, as Elizabeth was rather beginning to expect.

Darcy and Caroline settled a little higher up into the line than Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam.

There was a cheery glow in Caroline’s face, while Mr. Darcy… Elizabeth sighed and shook her head.

She could not read him — or rather she could, but wished that the reading suggested something different.

The music began, and they went around and around in turn.

Elizabeth began the conversation with Colonel Fitzwilliam with a laugh, “My anxiety upon the matter of my clerical cousin proved well founded — he is determined to marry me and he did ask me to dance the first with him.”

With a grin Colonel Fitzwilliam replied, “But you do not yet know if he is fat toed, perhaps he is the finest dancer in the county? — you know he is my aunt’s parson. She might have advised him on how to dance.”

“The famous Lady Catherine de Bourgh! You are connected to her?” Elizabeth replied with delight. “Is she everything I have imagined? — shall you wish me joy when I find myself serving as a fourth player at her card table. A role Mr. Collins has suggested several times I will serve elegantly in.”

“I would delight more in seeing the two of you fight,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied, “than in watching a regiment of the French be overrun by Spanish soldiers.”

Much further down the line they heard a squeal of pain, and when the two of them looked over, Mary was glaring at Mr. Collins while she gripped her foot in pain.

Elizabeth winced.

“Oracle! From Delphi!” Colonel Fitzwilliam exclaimed. “Goddess, proclaim my fate.”

Laughing, Elizabeth replied, “It is no joke to me, I am obliged to partner him for the second dance of the night.”

“If you wish I might, ah, accidentally step on his foot myself.”

Elizabeth snorted with delight. “Do not say such things, or I might become tempted to take advantage of your simple soldierly nature.”

Grinning at each other, they paused their conversation as they made the square with another couple. Elizabeth glanced over to see how Caroline fared.

She still smiled, but Elizabeth thought that despite the exercise her glow had faded.

Darcy did not smile.

“I wonder at it,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said while they walked hand in hand further up the line to their next position, “at your behavior in this matter. You must know that there is no chance that my cousin will marry your friend.”

Elizabeth sighed and said in a quiet voice which would not carry, “Now, now, say not no chance. Perhaps they shall meet again in ten years, both matured and changed by their sufferings in the intervening years, and each widowed and free once more — do not laugh! Such things happen in novels every day.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam did laugh. “So why then do you continue to push her case?”

“What else am I to do? She is my friend.”

“You might counsel her to abandon the effort, to spare herself the heartbreak that will ensue.”

The music now sounded sour, the horde of guests stank, and the heat oppressed. Elizabeth felt all the pleasantness of the ball flee from her. “Oh, please! Do not speak about such unhappy things.”

“You mean it is too late for her to avoid such heartbreak?”

“Even were it not, my counsel upon that matter would do no good — once Caroline has placed a notion in her head, she places her head down, like a bull driving at the fence, and she will follow the scent like a stubborn terrier. She has always been like that.” Elizabeth sighed.

“You care for her very much, why?”

“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked in an offended tone. “Why?”

“The two of you are very different, it surprises me that you keep such a close friendship.”

“We are no more different than… than Charlie and your cousin Mr. Darcy. More similar I would say.”

“She is quite focused upon the consequence and position of her friends, you seem to care upon nothing of the sort. She is not overly fond of reading, while you have a book always in your hands. She is not—”

“Oh, Caroline is the dearest of friends. And she does not care overly about her consequence.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam’s gaze showed frank skepticism and cynicism.

“That is Mrs. Castle’s fault. And maybe Lady Amelia’s. Lady Amelia was our schoolmate, and Caroline was much impressed by her father, the Viscount — Caroline always liked to be at the front of our classes. She got into her head that she was always supposed to outperform in everything. I never had that notion.”

“But why are you so attached to Caroline?”

“Of course I am attached to her!”

“But why?”

“Do not attempt to play with me with such questions. It has always been the two of us. As long as I can remember… My earliest memory is of the two of us playing together in the mud in the garden with toddler fists while the maid watched us. We shared dolls, shared clothes, shared the same house, the same tutors, everything. My Papa taught us both to read. We’d sit in that library room with him on winter days too cold for outdoor play — for some reason I can scarce understand, he always insisted that the sound of child voices helped him to think — we’d waddle back and forth, and spin the globe, and eat jam and cake prepared by the cook. Always very careful to not harm any of the books. And then we’d scheme up such fantasies. I was the princess and she was the knight who would rescue me. Or I’d be the dragon, and she’d be the king trying to defend his castle — or… oh there was so much joy! And now you ask why I shall be devastated and why I shall cry with her when Caroline realizes the emptiness of her hopes? You ask me why I do not attempt to convince her before it is necessary?”

“No, I do not wonder.”

Elizabeth felt odd, as though she were filled with anger. Every muscle tense, her heart racing, but her hands were cold.

Colonel Fitzwilliam said soberly, “She is fortunate to have such a friend as you.”

They continued in silence for some minutes, to near the midpoint of the second dance.

Elizabeth asked him, “And why do you pester Caroline persistently — what is your interest in her?”

“Hmmmm.”

Elizabeth had never seen such a thoughtful expression on the flamboyant officer’s face.

After due consideration he said, “I confess that I do not know.”

“Do not know ?” Elizabeth replied with some stress.

“You cannot judge me as you would a swain who trifles with a woman without knowing his own intentions. She dislikes me, or at least makes a strong pretense of doing so.”

This brought a smile to Elizabeth’s face, though she still had a leaden weight in her stomach from the earlier conversation. “More pretense than reality, at least tonight. But my question is yet unanswered.”

“She is very much like every other seminary girl, decorous yet mercenary, accomplished yet useless, mouthing the same platitudes as every other creature yet hiding vicious thoughts about her fellows.”

“I will not listen to you insult her so.”

“Do not grow so offended, Miss Elizabeth. That is not all that is present in her — the more closely I know you, the more I believe that it is your influence. Without an interesting friend such as you, I am convinced that Miss Bingley would be wholly worthless, but there is something there… it is subtle, and she hides it. But there is some core of value in her. Something that makes her different, less predictable, less decorous, more wild, more interesting . And perhaps more useful than others of her type.”

The dance came to an end, and Colonel Fitzwilliam shrugged. “Maybe I merely like her appearance.”