Whilst yet in nodding genuflection to them both, Dr. Brumfitt attempted to polish the tops of his boots on the backs of his leggings. This manoeuvre only partially cleaned his boots and when he made a quick check, he noted a menacing smudge on the back of his calves. Therefore, he edged uneasily around her ladyship and navigated his considerable bulk into an armless chair, which he then drew as near as he dared to Lady Anne’s knees.
There, all thoughts of sartorial disgrace were forgotten. He once again took measure of her sickly pallor and was truly (very truly) distressed. The surgeon pressed his ear to her wheezing chest, and clucked and shook his head as he had each time he called. This day he clucked a little more vehemently. Whilst he did, Lady Anne sat with impassive reserve at his implied prediction of doom. Quite inured was she to being the object of pity.
“Pray, what say you, Mr. Bumfitt?” Lady Catherine said.
Having long past given up reminding her of his correct name, he, with all due commiseration, solemnly pronounced, “I fear every winter steals a little more of her breath, your ladyship.”
It was indeed a dismal prognosis. Lady Catherine either grimaced or gave a thin smile (it was difficult to determine which one) at his words. By considerable linguistic pussyfooting, Dr. Brumfitt had already ascertained that Lady Anne’s menses troubled her only four times a year. The withered little twist to Lady Catherine’s lips lingered just a bit as she gazed upon her daughter’s frail figure and pondered those unhappy certitudes. If Dr. Brumfitt’s foretelling was true, she knew that the fertility of Lady Anne’s unreliable womb would ebb with her lungs.
Unused to abiding disappointment on any front, her motherly concern battled utter disgust quite unsuccessfully. It was essential that feminine frailty not impede her designs. Her daughter may not have yet learnt what her mother knew well: consequence had its debt to generation.
Although initially Lady Catherine had been vexed to distraction when she learnt of Mrs. Darcy’s successful confinement, the post from Pemberley was the impetus she needed to take decisive action. Still, she cautioned herself that one must use one’s resources efficiently. She had assayed them carefully and pondered the unkind fact that her daughter might not last many more seasons. This one was all but over. She concluded that a suitor must be found with all due haste. But where? With keen deliberation, she drew up her hand and stroked her chin. Whilst deep in contemplation, her forefinger and thumb located a few stray hairs that abided at the corner of her mouth and twirled them into a single queue. As her thought deepened, her eyes narrowed ominously, imbuing in Brumfitt no small alarm.
Now faced with imminent loss of his cash cow through sheer attrition, he posed a suggestion, “Perhaps Bath, your ladyship. The healing waters may be the answer.”
“Bath, Mr. Bumfitt?” She ceased her twirling, stroking, and squinting, and announced, “The healing waters will be ideal. We shall depart for Bath directly.”
She announced this with such resolve, it left no possibility that such a notion originated with anyone other than herself. (She was, by all reports—even some not her own—a most clever and sensible woman.) Although she agreed most heartily with the suggestion of taking Lady Anne to Bath, it was not for the waters. It was for the society. London was the epicentre of the beau mode and the shrine of the socially ambitious, but its season was all but over. In Bath the season knew no end. With the answer to just where to commence her behindhand search for a match for her daughter suddenly before her, she would waste little time to set her scheme into action. Her dour mien brightened ever so slightly as to be barely visible to any eye upon her.
However, she was quite pleased. Lady Catherine now had a plan in place that would satisfy both avarice and revenge in one fell swoop. Perchance an alliance may have been no longer tenable between her nephew and daughter, but another generation was at hand. Tainted though it might be by Miss Bennet’s inferior family connections, it still bore the Darcy name! It would do quite well enough!
The corners of her mouth creased again, this time into a mean little smile. She knew the springs of Bath drew the titled and the rich (and those with titles looking for those with riches) like flies to honey. It would be little effort to arrange a betrothal most advantageous to all parties. A pregnancy initiated and a baby born. Time was of the essence. A wrong to be righted at last! The de Bourgh and the Darcy fortunes united!
“Yes,” Lady Anne’s mother announced with finality. “Bath.”
***
To those not of her acquaintance, Lady Catherine’s facial expressions were an enigma. As she was a woman not known for her good humour, the one she bore then left the surgeon feeling unsettled. He was not usually offered tea, nor did he expect it this day. He hastened back to his curricle with such rapidity that he did not catch his breath until he was well up the road. Had anyone been watching they would not have seen him turn and look back, for soon a cloud of dust once again engulfed his figure.
24
Bingley’s Betrayal
The near-tornadic chaos that embraced the Darcy family in the year ’15 excited that of the Bingleys with similar vehemence. There was no travail that Elizabeth had weathered that was not suffered with all due excruciation by her sister Jane. Indeed, was it within her power, Jane would have happily appropriated all of Elizabeth’s worriment for herself.
Elizabeth knew that Jane’s nature was one of boundless compassion and limitless consolation and she fervently desired to keep her own counsel when it came to her most terrifying fears. But in light of Georgiana’s disappearance, Darcy’s pursuit of her, Fitzwilliam’s battle wounds, their young friend John Christie’s death, the typhus epidemic that kept their party abroad, and her own ill-timed and precarious pregnancy, she had been able to shield very little from her sister. Had there not been enough grief to share, those perilous months saw Jane endure an unprecedented imbroglio—but certainly not one of her own making. Although she did not initially apprise Elizabeth of it, for it was of a particularly delicate nature. Elizabeth had learnt of it through rather odd circumstances. Indeed, it had been an odd and humiliating business for all parties concerned.
When later she recalled how scrupulously she crept about the surrounding countryside searching out the woman with whom she believed her husband philandered, she was mortified beyond words. So humiliated was she, even uncovering that the actual culprit was not Darcy at all, but rather Bingley, she could not allow herself to be relieved.
She was enraged beyond words that her sweet sister would be injured should she learn of it. And she knew it was entirely possible she might. The evidence was irrefutable. The baby was named Charles after the man who fathered him. But Jane had astonished Elizabeth (to a staggering degree) when she brought the incident to light herself. As the baby’s mother was deathly ill with consumption, Jane wished to take the baby home with her to Kirkland Hall, but she was loath for Bingley to know that his indiscretion was no longer private.
Elizabeth was inclined to abuse Bingley’s backside with a carriage whip, but she had acquiesced to Jane’s wishes to secret the baby away at Pemberley. They had only just fetched the baby when Bingley happened upon them. He recognised the infant in a trice. Elizabeth found herself silently smug, happy for Bingley to have to pay the proverbial piper. Yet, as it was not hers to cast stones, she left them to sort it out alone.
“He who hath sown the wind shall reap the whirlwind,” she had whispered as she listened behind the door for retribution to be paid.
Bingley was compleatly chastened, utterly remorseful, unconditionally penitent, and wholly self-condemnatory. Such was his wretchedness that it very nearly provoked Elizabeth’s pity—but not quite. (To Bingley’s good fortune the granting of forgiveness fell to his loving wife, not his infuriated sister-in-law.)
So quickly did other events unfold after that revelation, Elizabeth had small opportunity to talk to Jane about it or what came to pass in its aftermath. Kno
wing her dear sister’s compassionate nature, there was little doubt that she had forgiven Bingley with all the generosity of her exceedingly kind heart. It was a private matter, yet as it was Jane who had brought the issue to the forefront and asked for her assistance, Elizabeth believed enlightenment on the repercussions was obligatory. Jane, however, was not of the same mind. Thither went the Bingleys with the baby to Kirkland Hall and introduced him to one and all as “their son.” Upon that occasion and thence, if anyone dared so much as raise an eyebrow, it was met with benign silence by Jane.
As they were not only sisters, but dear friends and closest confidantes, Elizabeth had been anxious to the point of agitation to know what exactly had come to pass between the Bingleys. That Jane was so unforthcoming about it all—especially with her—was highly vexing. Even the supposition that Jane’s silence was out of respect for her husband’s privacy did little to mitigate Elizabeth’s unrelenting curiosity. Curiosity about whether Bingley’s betrayal had damaged the fibre of their marriage was unflinching whilst Elizabeth waited both for her parturition and in unmitigated terror for Darcy to come home to her from across the water. Little did she want to admit that her sister’s marital difficulties served her as a distraction, yet that was the only other subject that she could ponder with if not calm, at least relative composure. Once her own husband was home and she had two babies to dote on, Jane and Bingley’s marriage had slipped from the first tier of her concerns. Hence, it was several months before Elizabeth had either the time or the wherewithal for that particular query to resurface.
The time had long passed for the subject to be broached in conversation with any kind of nonchalance. Hence, she sought to ascertain the level of and direction Jane’s forgiveness had taken from visual clues. That study was to prove profitable. For she eventually persuaded herself that all was well in the Bingley house by a means once almost forgotten. Although discourse upon the subject was forbidden, she resorted to what had been, for all intents and purposes, a special language known between themselves as children. A look, a glance, a nod bespoke volumes. Hence, when at last Elizabeth’s attention was not so compromised as to overlook a further nuance upon Jane’s countenance, she could at last observe that to which she had heretofore been blind. When she did, she was all but taken aback.
For overspreading Jane’s aspect was the barest hint of a smile. It sprang from neither amusement nor disguise. It was a smile of a very particular kind. Elizabeth would not have reckoned from whence it sprang had she not seen its exact replica each morning in her looking-glass when she had arisen from her own husband’s bed.
25
The Hapless History of Lady Anne
Lady Anne de Bourgh was not only a bit bird-boned and very plain featured, she was unobtrusive to the point of insipidity. Good society would not have suffered the tedium of her company if not for her illustrious birth. Still, poor Anne was hardly the first young gentlewoman whose only charms rested in the vaults of her banker.
Beyond her lack of bloom, her insignificant features and soft voice suggested her a bit dull witted. This was not so. Her predisposition for sniffles and chills kept her away from most engagements, hence society had little chance to exhibit its tolerance or understand it misplaced. The poor girl, it seemed, was always either in fear of coming down with a cold or in the throes of one. Frail health demanded that she keep mostly to her room. Hence, if she was uncompanionable, it fell to her lack of opportunity to practise being otherwise. It was within this void that the oft-observed practise of one who is denied diversion supplied by others was put into place. When deficient in outside amusement, invariably one produces one’s own.
This truism was allotted further credence in the draped recesses of Rosings Park Manor and at the hands of its young mistress. However, this came to pass in no such manner as to excite the concern of her companion, Mrs. Jenkinson. Indeed, it was what one might expect from a girl of middling sensibility and not high spirits. For, already predisposed to introversion, Anne de Bourgh sought further obscuration between the covers of the nearest book. Regrettably, both her mother and her companion were quite unaware that those nearest happened not to be the most scholarly of choices.
Most correct in her public conduct, Lady Anne de Bourgh was a little less circumspect when under the guidance of her own free choice. When out from under spying eyes, her mind was quite curious. That in and of itself was scandalous, for any well brought up young woman was taught first and foremost that curiosity not only killed the cat, had she been a female feline, she had it coming. Curiosity was a masculine trait—any female exhibiting such comportment was to be branded in compleat want of gentility.
Excused from dance lessons and possessing no ear for music, little was provided but needlework to engage the mind of a girl whose governess was disinclined to tempt her intellect with tutorials. Although she had little taste for wit, Anne’s feelings were not insignificant. What her family and acquaintances did not understand was that Lady Anne’s dolorous countenance reflected general indisposition rather than a sombre spirit.
Hence it would have been a compleat astonishment to them all that her taste in books did not favour treatises or biographies. Indeed, the waters of her mind may not have coursed deep, but it was not for lack of stimulation. Lady Anne had become an unadulterated devotee of England’s most shameless novellas of romance.
To her great misfortune, her dubious taste in literature could not begin to be satisfied by the grand library at Rosings. The tomes that sat so ponderously upon those shelves may have been important, but so were they ancient. Any literature containing the most innocent allusion to the excitation of the senses had been carefully excised. The barrenness of emotion upon those shelves led Anne to believe that romance was only lately discovered. Hence, she craved contemporary works. And although she enjoyed poetry, it was novels of forbidden love, mystery, and intrigue that most piqued her fancy.
There was but one place she could quench her thirst for self-discovery without unwanted scrutiny. Her bedchamber itself would not do (too many maids about). However, she was left to her own devices beneath her bedcovers. There she could escape both her mother’s unsparing surveillance and the more easily evaded watch of Mrs. Jenkinson. But then only in the dark of night. She carefully (very, very carefully) took a candle beneath her counterpane and thrust off the shackles of inhibition at last to allow sheer pleasure to envelop her. Emboldened with every passing night she lay undiscovered, she betook herself a little farther, delved a little deeper. So furtive was this employment, no one was wise of it at all.
Books often cost as much as a guinea and even the lending library was far beyond the reach of common folk. For a young woman of title, one would have thought them as available as any trinket for which she might hanker. Surprisingly, Anne was in no better access to ready cash than the next person. Where a young lady of modest means would have had a few coins hid away and tied with a knot in the toe of a stocking, Anne was not so fortunate. She may have lived in a grand house and dressed in finery, but she had neither the coins nor the wherewithal to purchase her own books. Still, she was not without resources. The proffering of a gold eardrop influenced a maid-servant that she was quite happy to dig into her own pocket and take a trip to the circulating library on her mistress’s behalf. Anne was not of a deceitful nature, but she reasoned (much like most in want of rationale for a deceit) that if she neither denied nor admitted to squirreling away literature of questionable taste, her honesty was not compromised.
All this hole-and-corner activity was demanded due to her mother’s denunciation of any and all modern authors (by her wholesale extirpation of any and all works of sensibility in her library, it was apparent that she was not all that keen on certain authors past, either). Anne knew that such writing was shameful because her mother dictated that opinion to all within her ken.
Indeed, Lady Catherine despised all things au courant. Not unlike other aristocrats of a cert
ain age, she was disposed to believe any alteration beyond that with which she was familiar in her own youth was of no good to anyone. Her ladyship powdered her hair with Gowland’s no less prodigiously than her face (until it was not freckles she was endeavouring to hide, but age spots). Moreover, she continued to have her dresses cut to the same patterns she had used for her wedding trousseau. She laughed in the face of (or refused to acknowledge) the latest fashion with the abandon that only the very richest could without societal condemnation. The use of a quizzing-glass necessary to peruse their tiny type somehow lent newspapers some credibility, hence they were occasionally tolerated. (Invariably, reading of some Whig outrage would cause her to toss it into the fire, and was she in the vicinity the resultant smoke would cost Anne a coughing fit.) However, Lady Catherine abhorred romanticism in any form. Was not Byron an incestuous Lothario? And that upstart Shelley—expelled from Oxford, his wife a suicide! Blatherings from such men as these were not fit for decent society!
Anne had not dared broach the subject with her mother directly, but she had overheard quite enough as Lady Catherine lectured Mrs. Jenkinson to keep a watchful eye out for such dross lest her daughter be introduced to frivolity and immorality.
Lady Catherine’s daughter did not consider herself of a rebellious spirit. In her pursuit of new works, she understood herself merely in want of innocent diversion. The Castle of Wolenbach and The Midnight Bell were uniformly abhorred by all good society (by her mother’s account), hence Anne held them in the greatest esteem. Yet her favourite by far was The Mysteries of Udolpho. (The chapter that told of the murderous spectacle behind the black curtain was read with particular relish—the telling of strange and ferocious rumblings sent her into the most tremulous state no matter how many times she read of them.)
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