Page 30 of The Happiness of a Most Beloved Sister (Pride and Prejudice Variation)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
U pon returning to the Gardiner residence, the gentlemen regretfully declined the offer of refreshments, citing other engagements, and bid their respective ladies adieu at the doorstep.
Once Mr Bingley had driven his curricle out of sight, both Jane’s hand and smile dropped, and she turned to go inside, desirous for some quiet solitude.
Mr Bingley was handsome enough, but he certainly liked to rattle away at her, and it was fatiguing to always appear interested in his nonsense.
Jane had no particular fascination for horseflesh or whatever shops his sisters visited, but of course he could never know that.
Towards him, she must always be encouraging and captivated—at least until they were married.
Elizabeth entered the house behind her, and they both began mutely stripping off their hats and gloves, as Jane preferred.
She had already endured an hour’s worth of twaddle from her beau and had no care to hear whatever her sister might be thinking.
After handing her pelisse to the housekeeper with her other articles, she made for the staircase with the intent of lying down until dinner.
“Jane?”
Jane was arrested in her ascent by the tremulous invocation of her name, though she did not bother to turn round. “What?”
“I…” Elizabeth’s voice warbled to a stop, and Jane heard her inhale a deep breath. “I would like to speak to you. Please.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” replied Jane, resuming her climb.
From behind her, she could hear Elizabeth’s feet scurrying in her wake. “Please, Jane, I hate that we are so at odds with one another. Will you not hear me?”
“You have nothing to say that I could possibly wish to hear.”
“I am your sister! Surely you owe me at least a hearing.”
Stopping on the top landing, Jane at last pivoted and fixed Elizabeth with an icy glare.
Her sister froze as if beset by a winter storm.
“I owe you a hearing?” She laughed, a short and concise ‘ha’ at the notion.
“I owe you nothing after what you have done. Not only in driving away Mr Bingley but also tattling to Mr Darcy about my enduring resentment. You are, as you have always been, an interfering wretch, and I am sick to death of you!”
Having said her piece, Jane turned and stalked off down the hall towards her bedchamber, where she fully intended to shut herself inside and lock the door against all intruders. Alas, it seemed Elizabeth had not yet finished, for her footsteps followed at a fast clip.
“I have said nothing to Mr Darcy about you other than to defend your attachment to Mr Bingley!” was Elizabeth’s hot rejoinder. “If he has said something to wound you, it is only because he took notice of your coldness towards me.”
Jane reached her bedchamber door and stopped, her hand resting on the latch as she turned to glower at Elizabeth once again.
“It was not Mr Darcy who offered the insult but Mr Bingley on his behalf. Because of you, I was scolded by the man I intend to marry, all to keep your lover happy. Whether or not you complained to him is immaterial, for I am suffering the consequences of it nevertheless. Why can you not mind your own business?”
Jane was satisfied to see Elizabeth’s cheeks burning and her gaze lower. “Mr Darcy is not my lover,” she mumbled. “He is a good, kind friend who does not wish to see me ill-treated.”
“Oh, Lizzy.” She indulged in another hollow laugh at her sister’s expense. “You think yourself so clever, yet you can never see what is directly in front of your nose.”
“I told you, Mr Darcy is only?—”
“A friend, yes, so you said.” Jane rolled her eyes. “Be wilfully blind if you like, but stay out of my way. I am tired of you coming between me and Mr Bingley—in fact, you are to avoid any communication with him entirely. Lord knows what you will say or do next to ruin my prospects.”
To her shock, Elizabeth did not shrink away but stood straighter and threw her shoulders back.
“I have already apologised to you in as many ways as I know how as regards my insignificant part in the events of last autumn, and I am unable to conjure any others. I might have spoken out of turn, but I have it on good authority that Mr Bingley’s defection was only slightly influenced by what I said, that others played a far more significant role—including you. ”
Frosty affront hardened Jane further against her sister.
“This ‘good authority’, I assume, is Mr Darcy? An unbiased source, if ever there was one.” She scoffed.
“But you forget that it is not merely this affair on which my anger with you is founded. You have been constantly underfoot ever since Mr Bingley entered our neighbourhood, always sticking your nose where it is least wanted, and thwarting all my best-laid plans to capture him.”
“What do you mean?”
“You truly do not know, do you? I went to so much trouble to garner an invitation to dine at Netherfield and install myself there only for you to traipse in and ruin everything. It was no accident that I rode there on a day that threatened rain, or that I fell ill after dinner. I meant to spend as many days there as it took to achieve a proposal from Mr Bingley, but then you arrived covered in mud, and it all came to nothing!”
Elizabeth gasped as if this concept never would have occurred to her. For one so purportedly discerning, she was sadly lacking acuity in this case. “You were pretending to be sick?”
“Do not look so shocked,” said Jane with an exasperated huff.
“It is no less than any other unmarried lady would have done. I would have got my way, too, if it were not for a certain meddling sister. With you nursing me, I could not leave my room whenever it pleased me and lavish Mr Bingley with my wiles. I might have brought you in on the scheme, but you are so tiresomely principled that I knew you would object and insist we leave immediately. I could not even get you to trespass on Mr Bingley’s hospitality for a full week—what hope did I have of joining you to my cause? ”
As Jane made her speech, she witnessed the shock drain steadily from Elizabeth’s countenance to be replaced by disgust and indignation. Through her clenched teeth, and with her eyes ablaze, she succinctly replied, “None.”
“There! You see?” Jane wagged her finger in Elizabeth’s direction. “Just as Mama always says, you are too noble to do what needs to be done. Were it left up to you, we would all be crouched in the hedgerows when Papa dies.”
“You would take Mama’s side? Her method of getting husbands is ridiculous!”
“I shall admit, some of her ideas are…”— Silly. Nonsensical. Idiotic. —“unconventional, but she is not wrong in that we all require husbands and that we must do everything we can to catch them. She has some sound advice if one can look beyond her nerves.”
“Sending you to a neighbour’s house in the rain so you could pretend to be sick and overstay your welcome is ‘sound advice’?”
Jane could feel the tingle of a flush in her cheeks at Elizabeth’s derisive tone, but she quickly controlled it with frigid righteousness.
“That was my idea, actually, and it would have come off beautifully had you not inserted yourself where you were not wanted. I had fully intended to hint that I was strong enough to join them downstairs in the evening, but you arrived before I could. A well-placed swoon would have done the rest.”
Elizabeth was now staring at Jane as if she had never seen her before. “You would have seduced him into offering for you?”
“If it came to that, yes. I am not ashamed to admit it, for unlike you, I am prepared to make sacrifices to secure my future. You might have done the same had you but accepted Mr Collins.”
Elizabeth’s lips pursed before she replied heatedly, “I suppose you would have married Mr Collins in my place, then?”
In actuality, no, Jane likely would have refused him in the same fashion as Elizabeth—and Mr Collins would not have misunderstood her rejection.
But then, her beauty was too dazzling to be wasted on the likes of such an oaf, even though he was the heir to her father’s estate. “I would have done what was needed.”
“So you say.”
Jane sniffed at her sister’s off-handed tone. “Believe what you will, but heed me in this—if you get between me and Mr Bingley again, or cry to Mr Darcy that I have mistreated you, you will regret it.”
Having said her final word on the subject, Jane turned and let herself into her bedchamber. She slammed the door behind her and secured it with a satisfying click of the lock.