To this end, she sought out her sister Jane, who she found playing at battledore and shuttlecock with a group of others. Elizabeth watched and cheered her sister’s side on until the game was over.
Then she and Jane sat down together on a blanket and Jane looked dolefully into her wine punch and said that Caroline had told her that Mr. Bingley was going to marry Miss Darcy.
Elizabeth spent hours dissecting every thing that Mr. Bingley had done, this way and that, with regards to both Jane and Miss Darcy, and trying to assure her sister that Caroline was a sour person who was willing to say sour things.
Of course, Caroline had been noticeably absent after lying down for that afternoon nap the day before. She had not come down for dinner last night and she had not appearedfor breakfast either. Elizabeth thought this likely meant that Caroline regretted her behavior the day before.
Jane, however, could not be cheered, and she fled back to her room at midday, claiming the sun and the wine had given her a headache. When Mr. Bingley found Elizabeth later and inquired after her sister, she could not help but be a bit sharp with him.
This was his fault, really.
“You once told me,” she said to him, “that everything you do is in a hurry. So if you are decidedly not in a hurry about something, ought we take that to mean anything?”
Mr. Bingley’s eyes got quite huge. “You are in a bit of a temper, are you, Miss Elizabeth.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Or should I say Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”
She shrugged. “I shall neither confirm nor deny that rumor. I know it is spreading like wild.”
“What I see, I must say,” said Mr. Bingley, “is you and Mr. Darcy together a great deal of the time, and he confessed to me that he carried a torch for you. But you married elsewhere?”
“Do you wish my sister to marry someone else?” she said imperiously.
He said nothing at all.
That night, after dinner, Mr. Bingley proposed to Jane, who cried and said yes immediately, and spent the rest of the evening writing letters to all her relations who might be interested to know.
Mr. Bingley came to Elizabeth and said that he was glad to have her around to set him straight. “You’re rather like Darcy in that way, you know, or at least the way he used to be before he got your scent. You’ve got him all confused now, I suppose, but he used to see things quite clearly. I relied on his advice in that way.”
She didn’t know what to say about Mr. Darcy, so only fell back on apologizing, saying she had been too forward and that she ought to have kept her own counsel.
Mr. Bingley continued to speak about Mr. Darcy. “I wonder if the two of you wouldn’t have suited. I suppose it doesn’t matter now, of course.”
“It does not,” she said, eyeing him. “I wonder at your saying anything like that at all. What good could come from an observation like that, even if it were true?”
Mr. Bingley looked abashed. “You’re right, of course. Sorry.”
Elizabeth ended up retiring early that evening, but it was partly because she could not seem to stop looking at Mr. Darcy, who also seemed to be having trouble with stopping himself from looking at her.
Their gazes kept finding each other, across crowded drawing rooms, whilst others were playing the piano or the violin or harp, during a comedic recitation of Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and as the singing grew more and more raucous, all the company gathered round the instrument.
She could not say what drew her to look at this man, or what it was she found in his eyes when she fell into them, but she did find something.
It wasn’t something she found in her husband’s eyes.
She was in love with her husband, it was true, but it all felt far away now. She had a great deal of resentment towards Richard Fitzwilliam, she was finding, and she knew not quite what to do with it.
She tossed and turned in her bed that evening, unable to sleep, thinking of the way her husband had treated her, how he had plied her with temptation, how he had promised to bring her pleasure in the bedchamber and how she had acquiesced.
The fault was her own in some ways, she knew, for she should have remained strong against such ideas.
But some of the fault must lie with Mr. Wickham, who had deceived her into thinking she was already ruined. She had felt as if she had no value or meaning anymore. What did any of it matter?
Richard had even said it.What is the harm? You are already ruined. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
He had promised her she would like it, and she had believed him, and shehadliked it.
But then… oh, then, everything seemed different.
With Wickham, everything had been ripped from her, taken without her understanding or consent.
