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It would not, perhaps, be her choice. She looked around the room, at the faces, at the quality of their attention, at the thing her mother had just done with perfect thoughtlessness in front of everyone she had known her entire life, and she could see, with the cold clarity of real fear, how narrow the path ahead of her had become.

The door at the far end of the room opened to admit a draught of cold air and the butler with a tray, and nobody noticed except Elizabeth, who looked at the open door for just a moment with an expression she would not have wanted anyone to see.

Then she smoothed her gloves, lifted her chin, and went to find Charlotte.

∞∞∞

The part Caroline Bingley returned to, again and again, in the privacy of her room, was that Elizabeth Bennet had ruined everything. It had almost been perfect. Everything else had proceeded as designed. How close it had all come to working exactly as she had intended! The timing was right; the crowd was right; the news was right.

Only Elizabeth Bennet was wrong. Quite unaccountably, she had been in the study, where she had no business at all, and the silly maid, having heard the voice of a female accompanying Mr Darcy, had simply followed instructions.

When Mr Darcy had implored her for the key, she had gone for it at once, as she had said she would, down the servants’ stair and along the eastern passage, moving quickly. Not knowing what had gone wrong, and believing Mr Darcy to be alone, Caroline had hoped it might be possible to salvage the plan. Witnesses were still coming; she might have arranged to have been found in Mr Darcy’s arms, if not locked in. If not, there was still the benefit to rescuing Mr Darcy from an unfortunate situation, and the gratitude he might feel as a result. But she could not locate a spare, nor anyone who might know where it might be.

By the time she thought to seek out the butler, which required her to walk back through the study corridor, Caroline realised she had been a quarter of an hour away. Hurrying back, she heard the steady, authoritative voice of Mrs Nicholls, the whispering of the housemaids, and the collective murmur of a small domestic crisis in progress. The ring of keys was already in Mrs Nicholls’ hand, and the group had assembled. There was nothing left for Caroline to do except arrive at the back of it, slightly breathless, as the door swung open on the wrong woman.

No one paid her any mind, and the door had opened on Mr Darcy and Miss Elizabeth.

Caroline had been quick to mask her irritation, replacing it with concern. But how could she not be irate when Elizabeth Bennet emerged with her hair in such disarray, and Darcy’s jacket was torn? That, and they stood close enough to one another that the gap between them communicated something to every servant present, regardless of what had or had not occurred.

She had watched Mrs Nicholls’ face and studied the housemaids. She had watched the footman studiously avoid looking at anything, which was itself a form of looking. In that moment, she knew her plan had completely and utterly failed.

The rumour had left Netherfield Park before the carriage, just as she had known it would. She had designed it that way. Only it was supposed to carry her name and her dishevelment and proximity to Mr Darcy. The story was supposed to resolve itself in the obvious direction, because it was the right direction, because she was the right person, and none of this was supposed to involve Elizabeth Bennet.

Caroline sat at her dressing table and forced herself to unclench her jaw; unnecessary tension caused wrinkles. She looked at her own reflection with the dispassionate assessment she brought to difficult things, and tried to determine where the calculation had failed.

The maid, of course, was to blame. That wretched, obedient maid, who had done precisely what she was told and had seen a figure entering the study and had not looked closely enough to establish which figure it was. The result was Elizabeth Bennet’s hair loose in a corridor, and all of Meryton viciously speculating on just what had occurred behind those closed doors.

She pressed her fingers briefly to her eyes. Caroline had not intended anything like this. It was meant to be a mild compromise. A containable scandal, resolved swiftly by an engagement that everyone would agree was sensible.

But she had not anticipated that the village would tear at a woman’s reputation with the cheerful efficiency of people who have been given something to talk about in a dull, gloomy November. Through the channel of her maid, she had heard what was being said. Not merely that they had been found together, but the elaborations that had already begun to pile up, the details sharpened in the retelling, the interpretations applied that transformed an accidental confinement into something that required a word she did not care to name.

No innocent woman deserved that, not even Elizabeth Bennet. Caroline was honest enough to admit it, alone at night with no audience to perform for. Whatever she thought of the woman’s family, her manners, her impertinence, her wholly unaccountable effect on gentlemen who ought to know better, Miss Eliza did not deserve this. She had not intended to destroy a reputation. Certainly not her own, nor yet Elizabeth Bennet’s.

She had not intended this. She had intended something quite different, and what she had produced instead was an impending engagement between Mr Darcy and a woman entirely unsuitable for him, and thirty people at Lucas Lodge apparently discussing nothing else.

The guilt lasted perhaps a quarter hour. Then she thought about Mr Darcy’s flat, controlled expression, the tone that said rather more than the words. At that thought, Caroline’s guilt was replaced by something more familiar and considerably more motivating. The engagement was not yet formal. Nothing was set in stone — not yet. She would need to think carefully.

Caroline paced in front of her fireplace as gusts of chill November wind buffeted the windowpanes. The engagement was not yet formal. There was still time to manage this correctly, and she had not exhausted her means. She had only made one miscalculation, which was not the same as losing.

Her lips curved into a small smile. She would need to think carefully, but she was not yet defeated. There was still time for her to claim her rightful place by Mr Darcy’s side.

Chapter Six

The morning after attending the supper party at Lucas Lodge, Darcy woke at six and did not attempt to go back to sleep.

He had not slept well; Darcy was unaccustomed to the feeling of bleary-eyed, listless weariness that had resulted. Under customary circumstances, he was a man whose conscience permitted him rest, not from a lack of feeling but from a general confidence that he had behaved as well as circumstances allowed. The circumstances of the last evening had not allowed very much. His conscience had responded accordingly, and the result was that he was dressed and at the window before the light had properly established itself and the household had begun to stir.

The park below was grey and wet. A groundsman moved along the far edge of the lawn with a barrow, seemingly unhurried and indifferent to the cold. Darcy watched him for some time, unseeing.

All Darcy’s concentration was occupied in going over the incident, not for the first time. He had been going over it since the study door had swung open. For a moment, he had felt pure relief. Then he had stepped into the corridor and read in the faces of the assembled servants what they thought they had seen and what they would say about it before the day was out. He had ruminated on it all day, and still more during supper.

The reactions of the others would have shown him the extent of the disaster, had he not been only too conscious of it himself. Only Hurst was unaffected, drinking his wine and eating his ragout with his usual disinterest in all else. Bingley’s careful kindness had shown only too clearly that he knew something had gone badly wrong. Miss Bingley had been precisely, terribly composed, and Mrs Hurst had talked carefully and brightly about Bath. Darcy had gone over it all again through the night, methodically, knowing that anything that threatened so much disaster required a clear-eyed assessment of damage and response.

The damage was not recoverable by ordinary means. By now, he had arrived at the conclusion often enough to treat it as settled. Elizabeth Bennet had been in a locked room with him, unchaperoned. Her determined attempt to pick the lock and grant them escape had resulted in her unfortunate state of disarray. His brutish attempt to force his way out had resulted in a torn seam in his jacket, which was perhaps more damning.

They had been found by five members of the Netherfield household, and the rumour had done what rumours in small counties do, namely to travel faster than anything that travelled by horse. By the time Mrs Bennet had finished her work at Lucas Lodge, it had been not merely a rumour but a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an assumed end.

That assumed end was, of course, an engagement.