Posted on Sunday, 11 June 2006
Caroline Bingley cracked open one eye and closed it immediately. The light that seeped through a gap in the curtains was much too bright. And her head was throbbing something awful. She attempted to sit up, but her tummy did somersaults and her head spun about like a Catharine wheel. She lay back down and sighed. She must be ill – but how, where, and when had it happened? The last thing she remembered was putting on a brave face at the wedding breakfast for her brother and Mr Darcy.
Thinking about the wedding made her sicker still. Oh, she had become reconciled to Charles marrying that angelic Jane Bennet, but Mr Darcy and Elizabeth? Mr Darcy was supposed to be hers! How Elizabeth, with her country manners and muddy petticoats, had managed to bewitch Mr Darcy she hadn’t a clue. None of her attempts to gain his favour had worked, and she was so vastly superior to the chit in every way.
She sighed again, and then wished she hadn’t. The sigh had set off a battering ram in her skull. What had happened at that wedding breakfast? She sank into her pillows and let her mind drift. Sleep overtook her again, bringing blissful relief from the pain.
“Mrs Reynolds, has the sculpture gallery been dusted as I requested?”
“Yes Mrs Darcy.”
“And have the statues been moved to make room for my new acquisitions?”
“Yes Mrs Darcy.”
“What has been done with the hideous bust of my husband?”
“It has been put in his office, according to your wishes, Mrs Darcy.”
“Good. Have the new statues been installed?”
“Yes Mrs Darcy.”
“And is the sculptor making the desired changes?”
“All is as you requested, Mrs Darcy. Your husband is just now sitting for him – I believe they are about ready for you.”
“Very well.”
Caroline languidly rose from her gilt chair. She drifted along the many corridors with Mrs Reynolds in her wake. When they arrived at the gallery, Mrs Reynolds opened the door and deferentially stepped aside for her to enter.
Darcy stood as Caroline entered. A look of heartfelt happiness overspread his face. “My love,” he sighed.
Caroline held out her hand for him to kiss and took the chair he had just vacated. She turned to the sculptor. “How will you want me?”
He gazed at her thoughtfully, his admiration evident. “We must remove the shawl – I need your arms just so. And if you could angle your head ever so slightly.”
Darcy cut in. “I hope you can do justice to her lovely eyes.”
“Their shape I can copy easily,” said the sculptor. “But their expression will be much more difficult to catch. You are a lucky man to have such a pearl for your very own.”
Darcy agreed wholeheartedly and then sat across from Caroline, gazing at her with that look that drove most other ladies wild.
Caroline appreciated his slavish attention, after all her every wish was his command. Pemberley would be the show home of the nation once she was through with it. And the sculpture gallery was to be the piece de la resistance. Especially when the two new statues were unveiled.
In moments the sculptor announced that he was finished. He stood aside, bathed in apprehension, as Caroline surveyed his work. It will do, she thought. It will do very well. Even Lady Catherine would be impressed.
Before her, the marble glazed with the silken light of the morning sun, arose Venus de Milo, her arm reaching out towards Michelangelo’s David. Her face was now more beautiful than ever as it was a perfect copy of Caroline’s own. And David bore Darcy’s aristocratic features.
‘How I will be lauded!’ thought Caroline, even as the sculptures began to melt into the vivid sunlight as the curtains opened wider.
“The light!” cried Caroline, shielding her eyes. “Close the damned curtains!”
“You are awake mistress!” cried a maid’s voice. “The master will be pleased!” And she rushed from the room, leaving the curtains half-drawn.
Caroline shook her head in an attempt to clear it. Every nerve ending jangled. The master? Had she dreamed she was Mrs Darcy? Or had she dreamed the wedding breakfast?
The maid bustled back in. She looked at Caroline hesitantly. “You’ll not be wanting your usual?”
“My usual what?” asked Caroline.
“The Lord be praised – you have finally come to your senses!” cried the maid.
“My senses?” asked Caroline, feeling very much as if she were losing her senses. She did not recognise the maid or the room. If it were Pemberley, it was not her usual bedchamber. She had to admit she had never seen the mistress’ suite. She lay back in the bed, her hand massaging her brow, too befuddled to question the maid.
“We’ll have to ready you for the master,” the maid said, plumping up Caroline’s pillows, finding her a dainty bed jacket, and brushing out and pinning up her hair. As she performed these ministrations, she talked non-stop. “Two months you have been closeted in your room, and in such a state. Two months you have been lost to the world. Your husband, bless his heart, has born it well – but he will be jubilant about this change. He never gave up hope. Every day he said to me, ‘Tomorrow she will change. Tomorrow she will know me. Tomorrow our true life will begin.’ And now the day has come and not a moment too soon. The doctor warned us that your medicine, as you liked to call it, would be the death of you. But you insisted it was the only thing that kept you going.”
“I insisted? My medicine?” Caroline rubbed her head. “Have I been ill?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said the maid. “But it’s neither here nor there anymore. I’ll go and tell the master he can see you now, shall I?”
Caroline nodded. Her husband would be entering the room at any moment. She had to remember before he arrived. Had she been in the sculpture gallery having the Venus de Milo transformed in her image, or had she been at the wedding breakfast at Longbourne? Which memory was real? The arms on the statue, or the taste of the punch Mrs Bennet had served? It had been a good punch too – Mrs Bennet, no matter what one thought of her, kept a good table. And cellar.
She had been conversing with an officer as she drank the punch. Or was it a clergyman? At any rate, he was wearing a uniform of some sort. She was quite sure it wasn’t a footman. One didn’t converse with footmen. And he had invited her out into the garden. Across the room from her Darcy and Elizabeth were making sheep’s eyes at each other. She had tossed back her drink, grabbed another and taken the gentleman up on his offer.
Caroline shook her head. It was such an unlikely scenario, it could only be the dream. What would she have been doing drinking under the apple tree in that prettyish sort of a wilderness the Bennets thought of as their garden, with a perfect stranger? Just the two of them? And would she have drunk from the flask he produced from his breast pocket? She thought not. But . . . but . . . the Venus de Milo with arms? Darcy’s face on Michelangelo’s David? Her head reeled once more, as the door opened slowly.
“Darling, you have decided to return to the world,” drawled the devastatingly handsome man that lounged in the doorway.
It was not Darcy. Not at all. That meant . . .
“I am delighted, naturally,” he continued as he sauntered into the room, closing the door behind him.
Caroline realised he was vaguely familiar. “Are we . . . married?”
“Oh yes. I can show you the certificate if you doubt my word. A very obliging parson who I had met at a card table did the deed. Luck was with me that night.”
“Clandestinely?” she asked, shocked.
“We were both very eager – you particularly. Though I must admit you were – how can I put this delicately? – somewhat inebriated.”
“I? Drunk?”
“As a lord!”
“But . . . I only had a few glasses of punch. What did Mrs Bennet put into it?”
“It wasn’t the punch, my sweet. Though that did get you started. No – it was the blue ruin we drank as we commiserated about our misfortunes.”
“Our misfortunes?”
“Yes – they were great indeed. You had just lost your dearest, darling Mr Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet, and I was mourning the death of my sweet wife. If it wasn’t for that, Darcy would never have allowed me at his wedding. Surely you must remember that your brother and Darcy had to put off their weddings for six months while the family mourned?”
“I remember very little at all,” said Caroline, backing up against her pillows as he sat upon her bed with accustomed familiarity. “I shall have this marriage annulled.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it gently, then turning it and kissing her wrist in a way that made her feel most uncomfortable.
“It . . . it is?” she asked, pulling her hand away.
“Decidedly,” he said, lying back upon the bed and pulling at his boots. “For the last two months you were just as attached to me as you were to the blue ruin. But I think it was really our mutual antipathy towards Darcy that brought us together, as much as the booze.”
“You are despicable,” said Caroline, pulling her covers up to her chin.
“As are you,” he said, loosening his cravat. “Divinely despicable. I’d say fortune smiled upon us that day when Darcy married Elizabeth. I have quite got over any of the ill will I ever bore him. I think we shall name our first child after him. Fitzwilliam Wickham – how well that sounds.”
“Our first child?”
“Yes my love – did I not tell you? It is not just the hangover that is making you queasy.”
Caroline rolled over in her bed and began to wail. There was no going back. She was married to a fortune hunter with no social standing. The son of a steward! How lowering! And Elizabeth had Darcy, and more importantly Pemberley, and the statue gallery that was to have been her entrée into the highest of society.
And she, Caroline Bingley – no – Caroline Wickham, was breeding!
As she wept, Caroline became aware of her husband taking her into his arms and wiping away her tears, whispering endearments. She slit her eyes open. From her vantage point in his arms she could see his bare shoulder, the muscles shining like polished marble in the sun. And as she raised her eyes she saw his face gazing down at her, more beautiful than the face of Michelangelo’s David.
Maybe marriage to a steward’s son wouldn’t be so bad after all.