Page 45 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

The footmen moved the trees.

Darcy drew Bingley into the card room and left the door standing open. It was a small propriety, and one that felt, under the circumstances, worth preserving. He gave the account without softening any of it.

Bingley's face went from disbelief straight through to hurt, with no stop in between. "Caroline would not."

"Sarah heard her."

"A maid may have misunderstood."

"McKeever questioned her closely, Bingley. She repeated the order back word for word — the blue shawl, the east saloon, Louisa's part in it."

Bingley crossed to the window and stood there a moment, his back to the room. "Caroline knows you do not wish to marry her."

"She believes public embarrassment might change my wishes."

"It will not."

"No."

"Then what on earth do we do?" Bingley's voice had none of its usual cheer left in it.

Darcy had turned over three possible courses on the way downstairs. Confronting Caroline before the ball would only let her deny everything outright and take her anger out on Sarah afterwards. Ignoring the plan left Elizabeth's shawl in danger, and Elizabeth's name with it. Cancelling the ball outright would injure Bingley and feed the very gossip they were trying to prevent.

"We proceed as planned. Sarah watches the shawl. McKeever brings me any message. If Caroline enters the east saloon, you and I go together."

"Why let her begin at all?"

"Because she will deny the intention the moment she is asked. She cannot so easily disown an act you have witnessed with your own eyes."

Bingley's reluctance was plain in every line of him. "I do not like laying a trap for my own sister."

"We are laying none. We are only stopping hers. She may abandon it at any point between now and the opening pair."

"And if she does not?"

"Then you decide what follows, in your own house."

Bingley scrubbed a hand hard over his face. "I will send her to Louisa's, in Scarborough. They had meant to travel there next week regardless. They can travel tomorrow instead."

"That is reasonable."

"It does not feel reasonable. It feels like sending my sister away for wanting to marry well."

"No consequence feels reasonable to the person who has to impose it," Darcy said, and heard an echo of his aunt's voice. He had never once agreed with her before.

Bingley looked at him properly then. "You speak as though you know that from experience."

"I have a sister."

The answer needed nothing added to it, and Bingley, to his credit, did not ask for anything more.

Caroline swept into the card room a minute later, wearing a morning gown the colour of pale gold and an expression of manufactured sisterly concern.

"Charles, the musicians have arrived. One of them insists the platform is too narrow."

"Nicholls will see to it."

"Nicholls is occupied with the flowers."