Page 71 of Elizabeth and Caroline
However, she wasn’t entirely sure if it mattered or not. If the story got out, it would be very damaging to both girls’ reputations and it would affect both families. She was sick about that.
After they had gotten back home, fed both Lydia and Georgiana and sent them off to rest, it was only her and Caroline, sitting together in the downstairs sitting room, both drinking port to calm their frazzled nerves. They had sent servants after Mr. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam, sending word for them to come home, that Miss Darcy and Miss Lydia had been recovered. A servant had also been dispatched with word to the Bennet household.
But this, Elizabeth said, clutching her wine glass, was the real problem. “We are reliant on the servants to hold their tongues, I think. And we cannot control that.”
“We are reliant on servants for all manner of things,” said Caroline. “It is true what Mr. Simmons says, that preserving the good name of Darcy reflects well on them as well. It’s possible this all blows over. After all, no one knows of what befell Miss Darcy last summer.”
“True,” said Elizabeth. “But this, twice now, it is tempting fate. I can hardly think that nothing comes of it a second time.”
“It is not only their tongues that must stay still,” said Caroline. “Mr. Wickham has simply disappeared. We do not know what has become of him or what tales he may tell or spread. Why did you let him go?”
“Well, you and I had no hope of physically stopping him,” said Elizabeth.
“We had some hope,” said Caroline. “The two of us together might have fought him, you know. We’re not entirely helpless.”
Elizabeth considered that, her and Caroline working together to subdue the man. She began to laugh. She almost wished they had attempted it. It might have been a good bit of fun, at that.
Caroline laughed too. “I just don’t like it, his gettingaway. He should be held to some sort of justice.”
“Hmm,” said Elizabeth, her laughter dying out. “I think he has already suffered, though. I think he has been warped by the amount of suffering he has gone through.”
“But that doesn’t excuse his behavior.”
“No,” agreed Elizabeth. “However, I don’t know that making him suffer more will ever do anything to curb his behavior. He did choose to leave, not to do anything worse.”
“Well, we had caught him! What other choice did he really have?”
“He could have hurt us,” Elizabeth said, dolorous. “He could have kept us at that boarding house somewhere and done awful things to all four of us. If he prevented Mr. Simmons or the footman with us from returning here, perhaps no one would have even known where we were.”
Caroline shuddered. “We didn’t think of any of this before we left here.”
“Yes, it was foolhardy,” said Elizabeth. “I doubt my husband will be pleased.”
The two women sat in silence for some time.
Caroline finished her glass of wine and set it down, sighing. “You must know, what Mr. Wickham said about our matchmaking, Eliza, it is not true.”
“I do,” said Elizabeth. “We never harmed anyone with what we did. We never set out to do the kind of trickery that he was attempting.”
“And even what Colonel Fitzwilliam said last night at the ball,” said Caroline. “I don’t think he can quite understand. What can a man like the colonel know of the plight of women like us, how much hangs in the balance in making the right marriage, how it can change a woman’s fate entirely?”
Elizabeth picked up the bottle of port, poured more into Caroline’s glass and topped off her own. “He cannot,” she said.
“If we have behaved as if we were desperate, Eliza,” said Caroline, “it is because, in some ways, we have been desperate. What I said before, the night before yourmarriage, about women being pitted against each other? Is that not what happened to us both at the ball, with Lady Matlock working against you? And then also me, by extension? For the colonel to call us Machiavellian, well… I don’t agree.”
Elizabeth sipped at her wine, thoughtful. “Will you tell him that?”
Caroline considered. “I don’t know. Maybe if it works out between us and I do marry him, maybe then. But until then, I think I’d be foolish to do anything that I think might displease him. And that, you see, makes my point.”
“It rather does, I’m afraid,” said Elizabeth. “But I think you can trust the colonel.”
“I hope I can,” said Caroline with a little smile. “It warmed me that he cared enough to send a message that he would not call. That, even when he was concerned with the wickedness of Mr. Wickham, he was thinking about me.”
“Yes, it speaks well of him,” said Elizabeth. “Dare we even hope that everything works out well for us all? That we escape unscathed into a genuine happy ending?”
“Oh, nothing’s ending, Eliza,” said Caroline. “We have our whole lives ahead of us.”
MR. DARCY ANDColonel Fitzwilliam both returned in time for dinner, though there was no formal dinner in the house that night. Food was delivered to Lydia and Georgiana in their rooms, and Elizabeth and her husband ate together. Both Caroline and the colonel had returned to their respective homes by that point.
