Page 93 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
STREAM OF CONSEQUENCE
Elizabeth
Charlotte Lucas arrivedat Longbourn just before four, damp at the shoulders and breathing harder than a woman who had walked briskly through a drizzle should have been breathing. That alone told me the errand was not social, because Charlotte did not hurry unless the thing she was hurrying toward, or away from, had teeth.
“Where is your mother?” she asked without preamble, which was unusual for her, because she had come every morning since I left Netherfield to sit with me, the emotional invalid, as she termed my pensive moods. It had been raining off and on, and my usual avenues of escape, like Oakham Mount and even the back gardens, were clogged with mud.
“Mama is in the drawing room with Jane and Mary, but Charlotte, you look as though you have run here. Do you require refreshment?’
“I walked very quickly.” She rubbed her boots over the boot scraper beside the door. “And your father? Where is he?”
“Library, as always.”
“Good. Leave him there for now.” She untied her bonnet and looked at me steadily.
“Charlotte, you are frightening me.”
“Good. You should be frightened.” She released my arm and strode past me toward the drawing room.
Mama was at her embroidery. Jane was reading, or rather holding a book open and staring at the same page she had been staring at for the past hour. Mary sat at the small writing desk, copying passages into her commonplace book. Cinnamon dozed, and Lydia, well, she was upstairs being Lydia and arguing with Kitty, although I could not hear Kitty’s muted counterpoints.
“Charlotte!” Mama looked up with pleasure. “How lovely. Shall I ring for tea?”
“No tea, Mrs. Bennet. I have come with news that will not improve with refreshment. And shall we close the door? Lydia and Kitty must not hear this.”
Mama set down her needle and called for tea anyway, the good tea. “Sit down, dear, and tell us.”
Charlotte sat, looked at me, and then at Jane, as if signaling her condolences, and then, with a sigh, told her tale.
“My mother and Mrs. Long took tea at Netherfield this afternoon, at Miss Bingley’s invitation. During the visit, Miss Darcy was asked to play the pianoforte. Her sheet music was missing, and she was sent to the library to fetch it. Mr. Bingley followed shortly after, sent by Mrs. Hurst. They were alone in the library for approximately a quarter of an hour, and found on the floor. By four witnesses, including my mother.”
Jane’s book closed with a snap, her features draining of color. The silence that followed was not the gentle, absorptive kind that cushions bad news. It was the kind that sucks the warmth from a room the way an open window lets in the November air, sharp and immediate and changing everything it touches.
“On the floor,” Mama repeated.
“Collecting pages. The music had been scattered. Mr. Hurst hadtaken it from the music room, and the pages were everywhere. Miss Darcy was on her knees, and Mr. Bingley was beside her, retrieving a torn sheet. Their fingers touched as he handed it to her.”
“Their fingers touched?” Jane’s voice was barely audible.
“According to my mother, yes. And the door was, and this is the point of contention… Mr. Bingley says it was open. Mrs. Hurst says it was barely ajar, which in the grammar of Meryton society amounts to closed, and the distinction between open and barely-ajar will be debated in every drawing room within three counties by Wednesday.”
I had not moved nor reacted, because my mind was refusing to feel, and in the not feeling, it arrived straight to the source.
“Caroline.” The word left my mouth like a verdict. “I warned Mr. Darcy about her intentions, but he told me to mind my family, not his.”
“I have not finished. There is more.” Charlotte drew a breath. “My mother came home and told my father. Mrs. Long was with her, sharpening her tongue and preparing to call on Mrs. Goulding.”
Mama’s jaw tightened. She did not speak immediately, which meant she was calculating, and Mama’s calculations were more dangerous than most people’s proclamations.
“Charlotte,” Jane said, leaning forward with the distress of a woman whose faith in human goodness was being tested. “Do you believe Mr. Bingley intended?”
“No.” Charlotte’s voice softened, because Charlotte was pragmatic but never cruel. “I believe Mr. Bingley walked into a room and helped a young woman collect sheet music, because that is precisely the sort of uncomplicated kindness Mr. Bingley would offer without a thought for how it might appear. He is not a schemer, Jane. He is a man who sees a problem and attempts to fix it, and the fixing never occurs to him as dangerous because he does not think in terms of danger.”
Jane let out a breath, her shoulders sagging. I watched the relief move through her like water finding its level, and I envied herability to hear a good account of the man she loved and believe it without building seventeen fortifications around the believing.
“This was done deliberately by the Bingley sisters,” I said. “Every piece of it. The tea party with witnesses who would talk. The scattered music as bait. Mrs. Hurst sending Bingley after Georgiana had already been sent. The timing of the interruption—a quarter of an hour, enough to establish that they had been alone for a duration the neighborhood would consider compromising.”
