Page 202 of The Long Road Back to Yesterday

Caroline left the room and found her sister in her dressing room.

“Mr. Darcy has suggested that we take the Bennets to Berkhamsted Castle in three days, and Charles has agreed. Do come, Louisa.”

Louisa looked at her sister in the glass. “Mr. Darcy proposed taking the Bennets?”

“He thinks they have been too long confined to Longbourn. I have taken charge of the luncheon. Charles would have remembered the wine and forgotten the food.”

Louisa laughed. “That sounds very like Charles.”

Caroline moved to the window. “Mr. Darcy was quite pleased with the arrangements.”

Louisa was silent for a moment. “Caroline, you know I do not wish to discourage you, but Mr. Darcy has known you for years. I am not certain he has ever thought of you as anything beyond Charles’s sister.”

“That is precisely my point. He has always known me principally as Charles’s sister. We have never lived beneath the same roof. Here he sees how I manage a household and entertain his sister. He sees what sort of home I am capable of making.”

“And you believe that will alter his feelings?”

“I believe a gentleman contemplating marriage must eventually consider more than a woman’s face.” Caroline smiled. “You need not look so concerned. I am not planning our wedding. I merely say that circumstances have given Mr. Darcy an opportunity to know me better than he has before.”

“I hope you are right.”

“I am right. This extended stay in Hertfordshire has given him an opportunity to know me as more than his friend’s sister.”

Caroline left to speak with the housekeeper, and Louisa went in search of her husband.

Hurst was still in his bedchamber. His valet had just helped him into his coat when Louisa entered.

“Charles has planned an excursion to Berkhamsted Castle three days hence. Caroline is arranging a luncheon, and the Bennets are coming.”

Hurst regarded her with resignation. “So, I am to be dragged about a ruined castle in the heat while two young bucks court their ladies.”

Louisa laughed. “Two? Charles, I grant you, but Mr. Darcy? Mr. Darcy of all men! Who never looks at a woman except to see a blemish! I am excessively diverted, Edwin. I think you know nothing of it.”

Hurst dismissed his valet before answering.

“Caroline is not the woman he wants.”

“You cannot know that for a certainty.”

“I can. Your sister is handsome enough to suit any man. She has thirty thousand pounds, good manners when she chooses to employ them, and she knows how to run a gentleman’s house. Darcy has known all of that for years, and he has done nothing about it.”

Louisa’s amusement diminished. “You think he prefers Elizabeth Bennet?”

“Miss Elizabeth interests him.”

“Because she is pretty?”

“Miss Elizabeth is a beauty, though not in the same style as your sister, but that is not the point. Have you seen what Miss Elizabeth reads? She had Virgil open in the drawing room when we visited last. Darcy stopped to ask what she thought of it, and twenty minutes later they were still talking.”

Louisa regarded her husband with growing curiosity. “You conclude from a conversation about Virgil that Mr. Darcy intends to marry her?”

“No. I conclude from the way he listened to her that he wanted another twenty minutes.”

Louisa had no immediate answer.

Hurst adjusted his cuff. “Do not misunderstand me. There is nothing wrong with Caroline. But Darcy is a man who reads when nobody requires it of him. Your sister scarcely opens a book unless she has some purpose for doing so. If they married, what would they talk about for the next forty years?”

Louisa stared at her husband for several seconds. “You have given this a remarkable amount of thought.”