But then he saw that Elizabeth was walking directly towards Caroline, and he approached just as he could hear her speaking to the other woman gently, “You look a bit unsteady on your feet there, Miss Bingley.”
“No, I’m fine,” said Caroline.
“Well, I wonder if you might wish to retire to a chair somewhere at least.”
“I have to go and find a husband,” Caroline told her, gulping at her drink. “It is what is expected of me, after all, and I have wasted a great deal of time on someone who has never been interested in me at all.” She turned, noticing him. “Oh, look, there he is.” She threw back her head and laughed.
He cleared his throat. “I have heard others saying the favored activity of the afternoon is a nap.”
“Oh, yes,” said Elizabeth. “Just so. I have heard the same. Everyone is napping. You mustn’t miss out on the nap, Miss Bingley, don’t you agree?”
“I think,” he said, “if you weren’t to nap, others in the company might get the wrong idea.”
“We are both, even now, heading back to the house,” said Elizabeth. “You must walk with us, yes?”
Caroline looked around. “A nap?”
“Many people have already gone inside,” said Mr. Darcy, and it wasn’t a lie.
Caroline sighed heavily. “All right, I suppose, if everyone is napping, then I shall, too.”
“Come along,” said Elizabeth, supporting the other woman.
Mr. Darcy came along the other side of Caroline.
The three of them headed up to the house together.
IT WAS OPPRESSIVELYwarm inside the house, even with all the windows open.
Elizabeth could not fault Caroline for wishing to take her outer garments off before falling into bed, but the other woman was far too drunk to realize that she must not do this in front of Mr. Darcy, who immediately excused himself.
Elizabeth rang for Caroline’s maid, waited until the woman appeared, and then went into the hallway. She expected Mr. Darcy to have gone elsewhere, but he was lingering, pacing in the hall outside Caroline’s room.
“Oh,” she said, “you are still here.”
“I have things I would like to relay to you,” he said. “I was musing over ways to get you alone. I confess I did not think of the idea of taking a drunken Miss Bingley to her bed.”
Elizabeth laughed softly. “Oh, dear, it is alarming how much she indulged. Honestly, this can’t go on, can it? This much drinking, this many lawn games, all day and all night? People will grow weary, will they not?”
“Oh, yes, quite soon, I imagine. Soon half of the guests will likely leave, and we shall find ourselves spending the afternoons in boredom for a week, at least. Then there will be some renewed sense of excitement and someone will have some mad idea, maybe that we should all put on a play or something, and this will be all the rage for two weeks until everyone grows tired of it.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You have been to these sorts of things before.”
“Indeed,” he said. “Is there not some ball at the duke’s home, at some point? That will provide a necessary diversion.”
“Yes,” she said. “So, it is always this way? I sort of thought that being admitted into the circles that I wasn’t usually invitedinto would be different, that these sorts of people would be more proper and more, erm, staid.”
“No, I think not. As a general rule, it seems to me that the more wealth one has, the more likely one is to indulge overmuch in drink and revelry, and the less wealth one has, the more likely one is to work.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding.
“Of course, we are always looking down upon the working classes and thinking of them as quite wont to wish to indulge, which may be true. I rather imagine everyone wishes to indulge—”
“Not you,” she said. “I wager you’ve not had a drop of anything strong to drink today.”
“Very strong tea,” he said.
She chuckled. “Yes, only tea. That is Mr. Darcy.” She felt a strange wave of affection flood her, and she could not say why this was.
