Caroline turned to look at the cretinous butler. “Is that so, Peabody?”
“Oh yes, ma’am, quite so.”
“And do you know where he went?” Colonel Fitzwilliam enquired.
“To Longbourn, sir.”
At last, some welcome news! Darcy had persuaded Charles against marrying a Bennet before; there was every reason to expect he would do so again. The Bingley name was secure for another day.
“Why would he go there?” Colonel Fitzwilliam muttered, shaking his head.
“Indeed, why would anybody?” Caroline agreed. With a delicate chuckle, she added, “I believe he will be safe, though, for my brother is there with him.”
“I see,” the colonel replied, looking no less uneasy. “I shall nottrouble him while he is with his friend. Might I impose upon your hospitality and await his return here?”
“But of course!” Caroline instructed Peabody to have a room readied, and once he had left to arrange it, she turned back to her guest. “You are wise to steer clear of Longbourn. It is the home of the Bennet family, and while they fancy themselves one of the leading families in the area, in truth?—”
“I know of the Bennets.”
“You do? But, of course, Mr Darcy has mentioned them to you. I assure you, they are every bit as dreadful as I know he will have described them. Regrettably, my brother fancies himself in love with one of them. I live in hope that your cousin will persuade him against…offering…for…” She faltered as Colonel Fitzwilliam’s expression grew ever more indignant.
“If Bingley has not yet made his addresses,” he said, “he will not be able to for the foreseeable future.”
“He will not?”
“No. The Bennets are in mourning.”
“Oh, thank God!”
There were occasions when Caroline wished her sense would make a more determined effort to precede her sensibility. Nonetheless, Colonel Fitzwilliam’s evident displeasure vexed her, for what were the Bennets to him? “That is quite shocking news,” she continued tartly. “Was it Mrs Bennet who passed? That must be a great loss to her family, though I daresay she will be impossible to forget.”
“Your compassion astounds me, madam, but it is Miss Elizabeth who has died.”
This time Caroline was more successful in keeping her thoughts to herself, which was fortunate, for they were not significantly less unfeeling than the last. Though she would not wish an early death upon anyone, if there must be one less Bennet in the world, she was quite sure she could not have chosen a better candidate. She expressed the customary dismay with what she considered laudable verisimilitude, but the colonel was apparently not fooled.
“You are right not to trouble yourself too much with grief, Miss Bingley. It is an irrational sentiment, best left to those with a susceptibility to the inconvenience of feeling.”
She gritted her teeth. It was not every day the son of an earl gracedone’s home, yet his consequence notwithstanding, his ill-humour was making an already exasperating day worse still. “I assure you, sir, I amvastlygrieved. I merely prefer to refrain from exhibition. We may console ourselves with the knowledge that a family as demonstrative as the Bennets can have little need for anyone to feel aught further on their behalf.”
Into the silence of his incredulity, she bade him make himself at home and excused herself. ColonelThe HonourableRichard Fitzwilliam, third son of the Earl of Matlock, could entertain himself with his own righteous anger until Charles and Darcy returned. She had lost the will to be civil.
Darcy saw little and cared less as he rode the familiar path between Netherfield and Longbourn. Bingley was there already, the butler had informed him,“mourning the loss of Miss Eliza.”That remark had almost toppled Darcy into the chasm of grief awaiting him. Only his resolve to pay his final respects before submitting to his despair lent him the fortitude to continue. He journeyed to bid his love farewell.
“Excusing me, sir,” said a groom when Darcy arrived at Longbourn’s stables, “but none of the family is at ’ome. Was it the master you was after?”
“I understood Mr Bingley was here.”
“Oh, yes, ’e be visiting up at the churchyard with the other Miss Bennets.”
Of course—mourning the loss.Mumbling his thanks, Darcy walked in the direction of the church, and as he walked, memories of Elizabeth fell upon him, threatening to crumble the fragile walls that shored up his anguish.
They had sat at table together—she avoiding the ragout but taking extra salmon. They had read together—she humming quietly, eyes downcast, long lashes resting on her cheeks. They had danced together—she with obstinacy fully engaged and eyes aflame. They had walked together at Rosings—she with her dusky pink dress pressed full against her form by the breeze. They had almost walked together at Netherfield, but she had run away, nymph-like and laughing. In his dreams, he ran after her. Now she was forever beyond his reach.
He came to the towering oak that grew in thelane beside the churchyard and steadied himself against it with one hand, running the other over his face. He took a deep, steadying breath and forced himself to look over the wall into the sea of gravestones.
And there she was.
Pain lanced through him as her perfect, beauteous spirit, wreathed in radiant sunlight, pierced him anew with its ethereal splendour. Her head was bowed, but he would know her from a thousand miles afar. He felt his heart, motionless in his aching chest, break all over again. “Elizabeth.”
