“With all due respect, Lady Ashby does not know my brother. He evidently liked you better when you did nothing but smile at him incessantly. By all means, continue as you have been in public, but if your wish is to make Charlesloveyou, I am afraid you will have to indulge him occasionally.”
Histrionics rendered Jane’s next speech all but incoherent, though Caroline gleaned the gist: Jane’s efforts to be a good wife had only pushed him into her arms.
“Whose arms?” she enquired, certain she already knew the answer.
“Lizzy’s!” Jane cried, collapsing face first into the handkerchief. Caroline pried it from her grip lest she poke herself in the eye with the needle.
“I had hoped he would overcome that little fascination before you discovered it.”
“You knew about it too?”
“Regrettably.” She wondered who else did.
“For how long have you known?”
“Since he decided to offer for her and somehow got himself engaged to you instead.”
Colour flooded Jane’s countenance, and Caroline wondered belatedly whether she had only worsened matters. “Forgive me, I assumed you knew about that.”
“I did,” Jane whispered. “It is what we argued about at Netherfield—though I suspected long before then that he had feelings for her. I have been so anxious to make him admire me more than he does her. How insufficient have been all my pretensions to becoming a woman worthy of being loved! Had I only shown him more affection than I felt instead of less, he might never have done what he did!”
“What he did? What do you mean?”
“He got a child on her!” she howled.
“What? Mrs Darcy’s child is my brother’s?” They were all doomed.
“No. He got a child on the next best thing—Miss Greening.”
Caroline stared, nonplussed.
“Amelia. The maid at Netherfield. The one who looked like my sister.”
Well, how completely, absolutely,utterlysplendid. The buffoon had truly outdone himself on this occasion. “Is that why you dismissed her?”
“No. I dismissed her because she looked too much like Lizzy, and I did not want Charles to have any reason to be reminded of her. But either I acted too late, or he sought her out afterwards, for she is with child.”
“This is disgraceful. How—when did you discover it?”
“In September when Lizzy was at Netherfield. Mr Darcy found a stupid little picture of her on Charles’ desk that my cousin had drawn, and I knew instantly why he had kept it.”
She sniffed grotesquely. Caroline gave her back the handkerchief, needle and all.
“I went to his study to find it—well, to burn it, in truth, I was so cross. But instead, I found a letter from a Mrs Pence, who wrote that Miss Greening had felt the quickening and asked that the agreed funds be forwarded.”
Caroline grew angrier by the moment. She wished her brother had shown half as much flair for cunningbeforeentangling himself withthe Bennets. “But you do not know when it happened?” Nor if it had continued, she dared not add.
“No. I have tried to guess. I asked my mother how long one usually waits to feel the quickening, but she misunderstood why I was asking and announced to everybody that I was with child.”
Caroline recalled that evening all too well. This new information only made her loathe Mrs Bennet more. “Is Charles aware that you know?”
Jane shook her head. “I could not bear to hear him admit it.”
Caroline peered at her dubiously. “I confess I am struggling to account for your having been so concerned with earning his esteem, given all this.”
“As have I on occasion, but I—well, I suppose it is simple, really. I love him. I do not believe I know how not to. I have loved him from the very first moment I met him.”
Caroline’s every moral fibre protested as the words, “He does not deserve you,” reluctantly crawled off her tongue. “Why on earth did you not mention it to anybody else?”
