Page 2 of Friendship and Forgiveness (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #7)

Elizabeth Bennet squealed in glee as her best friend in the entire world, Caroline Bingley, bounded into the Longbourn drawing room.

The two girls embraced each other heartily. “Caroline! I hadn’t hoped to see you until tomorrow!”

“Ages! Decadal ages!” Caroline replied laughing and smiling. “Now Charles is settled near you at Netherfield, we shall spend all our time together — no pauses! Like when we were children.” So saying Caroline spun around. “And my dress — the finest fashion. You see how the sleeves have changed since we were in the season. The very height of fashion. Yellow dyed; Spanish wool.”

“Not proper British make?” Elizabeth laughed. “It suits you very well.”

“I owe you for that — I cannot believe it took so long for you to convince me that orange does not suit my complexion — let me see you.”

At the order Elizabeth spun around to show Caroline how she appeared, as she laughingly said, “Not quite so fashionable as you.”

“If only you spent more time in Town! This next season you must stay with us two months entire.”

“Oh no! I can hardly take London in doses that are measured by words greater than ‘weeks’.” So saying, Elizabeth studied Caroline.

She looked happy and in good spirits — though the paleness of her friend, which resulted from Caroline’s assiduous attention to avoiding damage to her milky white skin from the sun, had always struck Elizabeth as being on the edge of unhealthiness. Elizabeth had missed her. While they were devoted correspondents, posting reams and reams of paper when apart, the written word lacked the vividness and the intensity of life.

Perhaps Elizabeth was still used to the way that they had always been looked after in the same room as children, playing together in the library of the Bennets’ townhouse in Manchester while Papa pored over his sketches and drawings of machines and engineering diagrams to improve the devices upon which the great fortune that he and Uncle Bingley, as Elizabeth had always known Caroline’s father, were building.

Caroline was quite as pretty as anyone Elizabeth knew, except of course Jane, and no one needed to despair over not reaching Jane in looks. Caroline made a fetching figure: Clear alabaster skin, bright blue eyes, ample piles of papillote curls made out of her naturally straight auburn hair, a few artfully stray hairs falling around her cheeks, and a red lipped smile.

With a grin, Elizabeth predicted what Caroline would say to her .

Caroline clucked like a motherly hen, “Brown and freckled. Again! How many times must I recommend you not spend so much time in the sun — especially in the summer!”

“You shall need to recommend many more times before I shall listen,” Elizabeth replied with a dimpled smile.

“Oh, if only I could dimple like you do! I would die of happiness. Dimples will be all the rage next season. Lady Amelia told me. And your eyes — you are so pretty, it is a pity that you are always so unfashionably brown! If I had eyes like yours…” Caroline sighed.

“You sly creature.” Elizabeth laughed and made them both sit. Mrs. Hill brought in the tea and biscuits on the silver tray as they settled. “I can only reply the truth, which is that every man will be your slave upon seeing you, and that with your complexion, which is a milky perfection, you shall never fear an empty slot upon your dance card. There — you succeeded in gaining your compliment.”

Caroline pushed her arm. “No, no! ‘Twas not my aim. I do hope though… that well…”

The way that she trailed off significantly was amply informative between two such friends. Elizabeth exclaimed with high-pitched delight, “Aha! There is a particular gentleman whose enslavement you hope to complete! I knew it from your letters.”

Caroline blushed. “I can only hope.”

“Now who is it — no let me guess.”

“Do not guess, I beg you.”

Elizabeth pouted.

“I shall simply tell you — but I am so scared when I think about it. As I can hardly determine his sentiments towards me.”

“If he is not a fool he will see that you like him, and then as the natural consequent he will like you.”

“Oh, do you think? I wish—” Caroline sighed and pressed her hand against her cheek. “Yes, but he is so very handsome. He is quite feted everywhere he goes. But I am hopeful.”

“Now you told me not to guess, but I noted in your letters that you spoke of a certain friend of your brother’s whose estate you visited this summer in a particular way. Now speak if I am wrong.”

With a blush, Caroline said, “I cannot hide anything from you.”

“At least you must try if you hope to hide! Those references to Mr. D — and the praise you heaped upon his sister in your letters. I would have gone quite jealous of your affection had I not suspected the true cause — this Mr. D— he is to stay with Charles now that your brother is settled in Netherfield?”

“Yes, for a month or two. At least six weeks is projected upon.” Caroline hugged her arms and shivered. “I am so nervous. I say the silliest things when I am in the room with him. And he is so… certain. Calm about everything. It is impossible to know what he thinks.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Mr. Darcy, is that not the family name signified by the ‘D’?”

“Yesssss.” Caroline sighed longingly, as though all the happiness in the world was contained in that name.

Elizabeth herself sighed, with the most miniscule and mild spot of jealousy.

She was already past her twentieth birthday, and she had yet to ever even fancy herself in love.

Oh, Elizabeth had made the spinning acquaintance of her share of gentlemen to whom she had no objection to dancing once — or even twice in an evening — with. Men whose conversation entertained her; men with well-informed minds, well-mannered comportment, and well exercised bodies.

A dowry of twenty thousand pounds combined with a reasonable share of beauty and an enticing manner drew all manner of gentlemen, eligible and otherwise. She had seldom sat out a dance during those long nights last season that she spent in London talking about nothing, and then more nothing, and then yet more nothing — it was amazing how young men with rank and breeding and education, and even well-informed minds, could so capably talk about nothing.

She would have previously imagined that a Viscount C, the dearest friend of Lord F, who was the son of the Marquis of Exceedingly Dull could have spoken interestingly on the topics that fascinated Elizabeth — matters scientific, political, historical or even economical.

None of these society gentlemen thought that such topics fell within the scope of feminine interest. Of course they expressed some opinions with full confidence. Opinions which Elizabeth could confidently say were oft better fitted for a village idiot than a peer of the realm.

Caroline had loved the season. Elizabeth had not.

Elizabeth’s mind drifted as Caroline expounded at length upon Mr. Darcy’s virtues: His fine estate with its rolling hills, excellent grazing land for sheep, and the finest park, including those of Blenheim and Chatsworth, that Caroline had ever seen.

“And his connections are the very best. An ancient fortune as well. ‘Twas a lucky thing for us all that Charles fell into such a friendship with such a man.”

“You know I care nothing for wealth, connection or consequence,” Elizabeth replied in a haughty voice, before laughing at herself. “You also know I am absurd. But true, honest, in every frank hard, cold and sweet smelling fact, I detect no connection, close or otherwise, between how much I enjoyed conversation with a man and how closely related he is to the Duke of Dull, or the Marquis, of uh…”

“Maudlin?”

“That does not quite match. It is no synonym of dull, and I have not noted Marquesses to be particularly maudlin.”

“And so far as I know you’ve not met any dukes to dull you.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Yes, but every young gentleman who was introduced to me as the relation of a duke was dull.”

“That cannot be true, what about Percy Montrose — he made you laugh.”

“Catching me in a mistake? What happened to friendship!” Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. “I’ll confess Monty is funny. But only because I like his wife—”

“And you shall like Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley estate when you see it — a grand library over two stories, with a globe bigger than I am, and more than five thousand volumes. And endless mossy stone pathways about the estate to get lost in. No finer estate in England than Pemberley! I only hope that Charles, when he purchases, will make an imitation of it.”

Elizabeth laughed. “The estate of your gallant sounds a delight, and if you make success in landing him, I’ll happily visit you, though the carriage trip was twice two days.”

“I will count upon you.”

The two girls grinned at each other, then Caroline sighed happily.

“What is it like to be in love?” Elizabeth asked with a soft smile.

“A terrifying delirium.”

“That does not sound pleasant,” Elizabeth replied.

“Oh, but it is! I can listen to him talk for hours about his estate — about the little things, the duties, the ways that he manages everything. He is such an active landowner — I’ve been reading books upon agriculture also. Sheep farming, a great sum of his wealth comes from that. I’ll be a perfect wife if… no, when he chooses me. I say ‘when,’ because you know, it is what we say that determines what happens. I heard a fashionable vicar in London quite seriously tell us all, in a very fine sermon, that how we think about things determines what shall happen. If you fear that you will not be worthy of the man who you admire, then you will not be, and he will not see you. It is in the realms of the spirits — this is why one must always pray.”

“I had considered it necessary to pray as that was one’s duty as a good Christian.”

“Yes, yes, but to be a good Christian is good because it makes one in tune with the angels instead of the devils, and if you place your thoughts in proper allegiance with them, then goodness will follow. That is what is meant by the fruits of the spirits.”

Elizabeth laughed. “I had never expected you to have heterodox opinions.”

“No,” Caroline gasped, pressing her hands against her fine boned cheeks. “That cannot be! — this preacher is all the rage. The most fashionable in this year. The most fashionable of all the pulpits in Town. He cannot be heterodox.”

“Well then, I cannot argue, if you say, ‘I shall be Mr. Darcy’s wife’ ten times before you go to bed, and ten more times before you do your toilet in the morning, and if you sincerely believe in what you say, then you shall marry him without any doubt.”

Caroline flushed with embarrassment, and she looked down. “Please, I beg you Eliza, do not make fun — I know you treat all as a joke. I really like him.”

Elizabeth took her friend’s hand and squeezed it. “My dear dear. I then shall not joke. I do dearly love a laugh, but I love you more. I promise you, anything I might do to help promote your case will be done.”

Caroline looked at Elizabeth with a glow in her eyes. “Your care always means a great deal to me!”

The next day Elizabeth looked forward to the assembly ball that night with more than her usual interest. However, while she expected to see much of interest , and despite her eagerness to see the man who Caroline was waving and even wildly flinging her bonnet towards — and to do anything she might to promote the match — Elizabeth did not expect to like Mr. Darcy.

She loved both Charles and Caroline dearly, but Charles could become the dearest friend of a rock, a babbling brook, or the worst sort of general misanthrope, and thus his approbation gave no information.

As for Caroline’s opinion…

She was not, in Elizabeth’s own opinion, the shrewdest judge of character.