Page 17 of Mr. Darcy's Christmas Letters
Charles’s smile disappeared. “Caroline, we are standing but a few feet before you. Need you speak so loudly?”
“I fear I must, for you rarely listen. Perhaps your wife will be kinder to me.”
“What may I do for you, Caroline?” Jane inquired calmly.
“I am certain it was accidental, Jane dear, but you have given your sister my rooms. Would you kindly instruct the staff to remedy that oversight whilst we dine?”
Charles began to speak, but Jane placed one hand over his and spoke instead. “Caroline, you sent no word of your coming, and therefore the rooms were assigned to Elizabeth.”
“I forgive you,” Caroline said loftily, and Elizabeth squelched an urge to pinch the woman.
Jane’s expression was sympathetic, but her words were direct. “Caroline, you quite mistake me. I did not apologise.”
This brought Miss Bingley up short, and Elizabeth cheered silently for her sister. Miss Bingley had only ever seen the demure, quiet, eager to please Jane, the one who had been a guest in this house. She had never seen the Jane who had acted as a mother to four younger sisters and who would be a stalwart mistress of her household.
“I beg your pardon?” Miss Bingley said, shocked.
“Caroline, those rooms were yours very briefly and are now not yours at all. They belong to your brother and to me.” Jane angled her head to look at Elizabeth. “Lizzy, are you pleased with your rooms?”
“I am.”
“Excellent. We will leave things as they stand, then.”
“Dinner is served,” Carstairs announced, rather smugly, Elizabeth thought.
“Shall we go in?” Jane asked, taking her husband’s arm when he offered it.
Charles was not smiling, but the admiration in his eyes could not be mistaken. The Bingleys strolled away, entirely absorbed in one another. Elizabeth watched them go with an abiding affection, but Miss Bingley made a sound Elizabeth was more used to hearing from the pigs.
“Nauseating,” Miss Bingley said with disgust. “They ought to at least pretend to propriety when in public.”
“They are in their own home, and we are their family, Miss Bingley,” Elizabeth reminded the shrewish woman. “Must we bow to such pretensions even here?”
Miss Bingley looked her up and down, and when she finished, her nose was in the air. “I would expect such an unfashionable sentiment from you, Miss Eliza.”
Elizabeth smiled. “Thank you,” she said.
Chapter Seven
Bingleyspoketohiswife rather loudly as they passed the door of the study, no doubt to alert Darcy to their whereabouts, and he was sure that the sharp, shrewish complaints that came later—for the tone suggested they could be nothing else—belonged to Miss Bingley. He determined to wait another quarter of an hour until he could be certain they were all seated at dinner before making his way upstairs. He took the last drink of his brandy and set his empty glass down next to Bingley’s before extracting his watch.
Elizabeth’s sister was in this house. Perhaps that was why he detected the faintest trace of Elizabeth’s lilting voice, though he had never thought the sisters sounded alike. Darcy sighed. His mind was playing some rather cruel tricks on him of late.
When enough time had passed, Darcy stuck his head out of the study to check whether the halls were clear. All he could see were several servants headed to the dining room with platters. He slipped out of the study and moved towards the stairs to the guest wing. If he was closer to running than walking, who could blame him? Just before he dashed up the steps to his chambers, he glanced over his shoulder. Carstairs was staring back at him, shaggy grey eyebrows lifted in amusement.
Darcy was tired of being a joke. He could not wait to get away.
Dinner arrived only a few moments after he did. He ate quickly and in peace, then looked over his scant belongings. He swung open the door of his wardrobe only to find a single nightshirt hanging there.
Well. That was disconcerting.
Scripps entered the room as Darcy stood staring at the space where his clothing ought to be. “Your things should be back soon, Mr. Darcy. Mrs. Bingley suggested I have everything laundered this morning before packing it. As you did not expect to be here long and packed only that you believed you would require, I thought it a sound notion.”
Darcy was amused by this. Had it been Bingley, he would have been irritated, but he thought it might be close to impossible to be aggravated with the man’s wife. He understood almost instinctively that because Bingley had not been much in need of Scripps for the past four days, the valet was at loose ends, and Mrs. Bingley would have seen this as a way to please her guest and placate her husband’s man at the same time. Mentally, he calculated a generous vail for the valet, but outwardly, he simply nodded. “Very well.”
“Do you mind, sir?” Scripps asked, motioning over to the items he would use for Darcy’s morning ablutions.
“Not at all, Scripps. Carry on.”
