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“Caroline, for heaven’s sake, I am right here. Please stop shouting as if I am in the next field. As for when Darcy returns, it is one day less than the answer I provided you yesterday morning.”

He sipped his coffee, knowing that there would be more.

“Are you sure there are no invitations that you have mislaid? You know what you are like.”

Bingley had had enough. He did not even lower The Times when he responded.

“Of course I am sure. As for misplaced invitations, you are the one who has hidden them from me, not the other way round. Do not judge others by your own standards.”

“Well I never. How dare you speak to me in that manner. One invitation that fell down the back of the unit. Nothing but an accident by one of your uncouth and undertrained servants.”

Three of these undertrained servants were currently serving breakfast. And Caroline wondered why her bath water was never quite hot enough.

She turned as her sister entered the dining room. Hurst was still abed.

“Where is your husband Louisa? Surely he must have some connections that are socially acceptable?”

Louisa Hurst was sure this had been the case when she first married him, but little did she know that her husband refused to inflict his sister-in-law on his acquaintances. Caroline Bingley was not welcome in the gatherings of Hurst’s peers.

None of the three Bingleys realised they were outwearing their welcomes throughout the city. And that tense might no longer apply. They had outworn their welcome.

--

“You claim that you are not going to marry Anne, we touched on that very subject on the drive down into Kent. Yet you do not tell Aunt Catherine that it is naught but a dream.”

“It is not a dream Richard, it is a bloody nightmare. Do you realise that I don’t actually know what Anne is like as a person? I have hardly had a conversation with her since my father died. Suspiciously it was only after that event that Lady Catherine started to blather on about a childhood engagement between Anne and myself. Suspiciously convenient timing when there is not a word of it in either my mother’s or my father’s correspondence. No mention in his will either, just a loud ignorant windbag sitting on her throne in Kent.”

“That is all well and good, and I think that is word for word the exact same speech you gave me last year. Let me turn it back on you, why have not told Lady Catherine that you will not marry Anne?”

“She is our aunt, my mother’s older sister.”

Richard Fitzwilliam thought this was weak, even for Darcy.

“My father is your mother’s older brother. I do not see you listening to his latest tirades against. Well he is always moaning about something.”

“Richard, enough!”

“No Darcy, not this time. I have to shield you from Lady Catherine most days, and I have better things to do with my time. Next year I will suggest to the Viscount or the Earl that they should accompany you.”

These were his older brother, heir to the Earldom, and his father. The thought of two weeks of Darcy, Lady Catherine and the Earl in each other’s company made him smile. Darcy was less than impressed and forgot himself.

“Need I remind you that you get an additional allowance from the Darcy estate as well as the Matlock one.”

Richard maintained his composure although he was inwardly seething. Nothing but a hired man, and the arrogant bastard had thrown it in his face. It was a silent journey the remainder of the way back to London.

--

“Miss Bingley, how lovely to see you.”

Miss Francis Carlisle was equally as vicious as Caroline. There was not a back she was not prepared to stab if it could be to her advantage. However, she was several magnitudes more clever than Caroline. There was never a sign that she was the source of any rumour. She had every weasely phrase learned, and perhaps most importantly, she spoke in a low refined tone. Caroline Bingley could scare horses 20 yards away, Francis Carlisle struggled to be heard at the other side of the table. And she used it to great effect.

She was also realistic. She was no great beauty and her reticule was thin. She wished for a town dweller rather than a country gent. She was happy to spend a month or two going from house party to house party, but she had no desire to spend the two months either side of Christmas in rural Norfolk under a foot of snow. As an example.

What Caroline also did not realise was that Carlisle enjoyed goading her into stupid actions. Caroline Bingley was the stooge, the one who was going to get caught. Despite the words, she was not going to end up in Newgate, no her fate was going to be much worse. Social oblivion.

Francis Carlisle did not know when this situation would occur but she had no doubt it was a matter of when rather than if.

“Have you any interesting pieces of news?”