Page 6 of Caroline Bingley’s Last Chance At Love

"You are quiet this evening Caroline," Charles observed, which was rich coming from a man who had spent the last seven minutes silently gazing at his wife's profile with the focused attention of an artist studying a masterpiece.

"I am always quiet at dinner," Caroline replied.

"True…but not usually like this."

"Then perhaps I am making a change." She reached for her wine. "People do occasionally."

Charles looked at her for a moment with the expression he had been perfecting since approximately age eleven, the one that suggested he suspected she was being difficult on purpose but could not quite decide whether to say so or let the matter pass. After a moment, as was his usual custom, he let it pass. His gaze drifted back to Jane with the helpless ease of a compass finding north, and Caroline returned her attention back to her plate with a roll of her eyes.

The candles guttered once in a breath of air from somewhere and then steadied again. Silverware clinked softly against porcelain. Outside, the streets of London had finally gone quiet.

It was Jane who broke the silence next, which surprised Caroline somewhat. Jane did not, as a rule, volunteer herself into conversational territory that held any possibility of conflict, and she had always seemed to approach Caroline's particular brand of silence with the same careful respect one extended to an unfamiliar animal of uncertain temperament.

"The lamb is very good," Jane offered, which was not, admittedly, the most daring conversational gambit Caroline had ever witnessed.

"Yes," Caroline agreed, because she could not in good conscience disagree with that particular statement and because she was, when all was said and done, the daughter of a women who had raised her to have manners even when she would have preferred otherwise. "It is."

Charles smiled at them both in a way that suggested he was choosing to interpret this brief exchange as a profound moment of sisterly warmth, which was, Caroline thought, a testament to his relentlessly optimistic view of human nature. Or possibly just a testament to the fact that he was not paying very close attention to the state of his own household.

It was sometime between the removal of the fish course and the arrival of whatever was to come after it that Charles set down his fork with the particular deliberateness of a man who had been composing a sentence for some time and had finally decided it was ready.

"Jane and I," he began.

Caroline looked up, already not liking what he was about to say.

"Have been giving considerable thought," he continued, with the careful pace of someone who wished to make clear that this was a prepared announcement and not an improvised one, "to the matter of a celebration."

"Have you," Caroline said in a tone that was carefully not condesending. She wished whatever it was that her brother wanted to say you would just come out with it already. It really was almost comical that the most timid man in all of London seemed to find the most timid women in all of England to marry. What a couple they made. She quietly feared for their children’s future oral capabilities.

"We have." He glanced at Jane, who gave him a small and encouraging nod, and then seemed to draw from that nod the remaining confidence required to proceed. "Given the news, we felt it only appropriate to mark the occasion in some meaningful way. Something with friends, and family, and," he paused, clearly pleased with himself, "perhaps a little dancing."

Caroline looked, without particular subtlety, at Jane's figure, which at seven months along was communicating the relevant information on the matter of the reason for celebration without any assistance from the conversation.

"You wish to host a ball," she said.

"Yes," Charles confirmed, with the particular brightness of a man who had not noticed or had chosen not to notice the subtle dryness of her tone. This level of obliviousness, she thought, was a remarkable and perhaps even admirable quality in a person. "In a week. To celebrate the arrival of–." He looked somewhere vaguely in his wife's direction. "well."

"Well," Caroline repeated in a deadpan tone.

"The baby, Caroline."

"So I had gathered," Caroline says as she reaches for her glass.

Jane's lips pressed together in a way that might, in another person, have been the suppression of a smile, but Caroline did not examine it too closely. The idea of what fond thoughts she must be having of her husband in her head right now made her feel physically ill. It had already been one full year of this. Must she still be tortured with this constant affection?

"And," Charles added, with the air of a man saving the most significant detail for last, "I had thought to rent Netherfield again for the occasion. Given that it holds so many happy memories for us." He turned to Jane, and here his voice shifted into a register that Caroline felt almost physically ill to be in close proximity to. Lower and softer and entirely too sincere for the dinner table. "Very many happy memories."

Jane looked back at him with an expression that suggested she was in complete agreement with this assessment. The dreamy smile she exchanged with her husband just added to Caroline’s misery.

Caroline took a long and dignified sip of her wine.

"Netherfield," she said, when she had set the glass down and the moment between her brother and his wife had concluded or at least paused for breath.

"Yes," said Charles.

"You would like to host a ball at Netherfield Park. Next week."

"That is precisely what I would like."