Posted on: 2012-05-09
This is a story inspired by Michele A.'s "Her Price".
"Caroline Bingley, as it happened, was not in the least bit inclined to make amends to Elizabeth Bennet.
When her brother approached her with Darcy and Elizabeth's generous gesture of offering her forgiveness for her shameful meddling, she erupted in a fit of spiteful rage so vocal and dramatic that Charles, had he not been such a peaceful man, might have been tempted to physically throttle her!
"Apologize? You want me to apologize to that lowly creature, Charles? I should as soon spend the season in the wilds of the North as offer one word of apology to Darcy's little country piece! And as for Darcy, he should be grateful for my concern!"
"Caroline! How dare you?" Bingley exclaimed. "A season in the wilds of the North, eh? I shall do better than that, my dear.
"Cousin James and his wife Catherine have recently welcomed their ninth child and they write me that they require assistance in caring for the other children. Cousin James, as you know, has not fared well in the recent past and does not have adequate resources to retain a governess. The two-year-old triplets are quite a handful, I hear.
"I shall respond that you, Caroline, will be delighted to come to their assistance. I could easily provide them with hired help, but during these first difficult months, I do believe having a family member with them will be most comforting. How long you remain with them will depend on how long it takes you to write a sincere letter of apology to Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, for they will be married the middle of next month. The operative word here is 'grovel,' Caroline, am I understood?"
"You cannot be serious, Charles!"
"I have never been more serious in my life. A few months in the Scottish highlands will make Hertfordshire look like the London season in full swing."
Caroline began to stammer an insincere apology, but Charles stood his ground. Caroline was bundled off to Scotland by the end of January, after Charles indicated he would accept her first attempt at a letter of apology after a month had passed.
"You have proven your considerable skill in writing letters, Caroline. I suggest you give this one your best efforts!"
And so it was that on the morning of February 14, as Elizabeth Bennet dressed for her wedding to Fitzwilliam Darcy, Caroline Bingley was ducking Scottish oat gruel flying through the air at her from three directions.
Despite their tender age, the triplets had exceptional aim."
A fortnight after Charles's scolding, Caroline left for Scotland. She was not happy to find that her brother had ordered the coachman to make good time, and so after two and a half weeks, she arrived in Muirshearlich. The snow had made the last couple days of travelling exceedingly uncomfortable, and she was glad to be done.
It was late in the evening - the coachman said that it was only a couple hours more, so she had told him to keep going. She was so cold and tired and hungry and sore from the long journey that she asked to go straight to her room. Not even noticing the other beds in the room, she soon fell fast asleep.
Waking the next morning to sun streaming in the window, she groggily realized someone had opened the drapes.
"Close the drapes," she moaned.
All she heard in reply was giggling. Annoyed, she raised herself on her elbows and saw three small heads peeping over the footboard at her.
"Who are you?!"
The three children stared back at her, wide-eyed, but didn't say a word. Caroline looked around her at the unfamiliar surroundings, and was shocked to see a second bed beside hers and a cot on the far side of that.
The door opened and a young girl about fifteen years old entered. The three children cheered and ran over to her, grabbing at her skirts.
"Good morning," she smiled at Caroline. "I'm Cecily. What's your name?"
"Caroline Bingley," came the answer. "Close the drapes."
"But it's morning," she objected.
"What kind of servant are you?" Caroline cried. "I told you to close the drapes."
"I'm not a servant!"
Caroline blushed at her mistake. In a softer voice she asked, "Who are you then, and who are all these?"
"I'm the oldest, Cecily, and these are the triplets, Andrew, Alice and Arabella." Cecily indicated each child. Caroline couldn't see any difference between them, aside from that the hair on one seemed shorter. She assumed that was the boy.
"Who else sleeps in here?" she asked, indicating the other beds.
"This is their room," Cecily replied, indicating the three young children. "We brought the cot in for Andrew, so you'll be able to have this bed."
Caroline could hardly believe her ears. Sharing a room with three children, basically infants? What if they cried in the middle of the night and woke her up? How was she to get her beauty sleep if she was constantly interrupted?
Then she realized. No one here cared how she looked. London was miles away. Her brother and sister were so far away and didn't even care to hear from her. Charles had been preoccupied with Jane for months, and Louisa had distanced herself from Caroline after the fiasco of her letter to Lady Catherine. Mrs Hurst, married to a man of more fashion than fortune, preferred to stay on good terms with her rich brother rather than her disgraced sister.
Caroline bowed her head on her knees, her eyes watering. She felt so alone, trapped among people she hardly knew, in conditions she was not at all accustomed to. And the crowning indignation of it all was that it was due to that impertinent, upstart Eliza Bennet.
Cecily heard her first muffled sob and kindly ushered the triplets out of the room, leaving Caroline to the full indulgence of her misery.
Fatigued from the long journey, the cold weather, and a good cry, Caroline fell asleep again and didn't wake until late in the afternoon. Lying in bed she thought over the last six months: how close Mr Darcy had seemed to be to proposing to her, the move to Hertfordshire, the feeling of losing control of her life as Darcy seemed to slip out of her grasp more and more as he was captivated by that Eliza Bennet, the devastating news of their engagement, writing the letter to Lady Catherine de Bourgh and then the awful aftermath when it didn't have the desired effect, and the humiliation of her brother's scolding.
She got up and shivered in the chill air. All she was wearing was her chemise, and the light fabric did nothing to warm her. She looked for the bell pull for a maid. After searching for some time the realization seeped in that she didn't have a maid here. She had to dress herself.
Caroline was used to packing at least three or four trunks whenever she moved around. Of course, taking that much of her wardrobe had been necessary to preserve her image as a lady of high society. She had been in such a bad mood in the weeks before leaving for Scotland that she hadn't done any of her own packing, leaving it all to her maid.
Lifting the lid of the trunk, she looked through her clothes. Her stays, stockings, and a dress were pulled out with shivering fingers. The stays she eventually abandoned, as she could not figure out how to lace them properly without the help of a maid. Looking through the trunk again for a shawl proved fruitless, and so she went downstairs without it.
Just as she reached the front hallway, the door burst open and a whirlwind of little children ran in, bundled in woolen jackets and trousers. The blast of freezing wind through the door struck Caroline and chilled her to the bone. The draft blew up her skirt and she felt the cold most acutely on her bottom and at the top of her legs (for in those days women did not yet wear drawers; just petticoats and chemises). Cecily shut the door quickly, but not soon enough for Caroline's goosebumps.
"Miss Bingley!" she cried, turning around. "You look chilled to the bone. Come, sit by the fire and warm yourself."
Caroline allowed herself to be led to a seat by the fireplace in the parlor. Seated beside it was an old woman, whom Caroline guessed to be around eighty.
"This is my grandmother Charlotte. Grandmamma, this is Miss Caroline Bingley who has come to help care for the triplets."
"Ní Charlotte, Teàrlag. Ba cheart duit a fhios sin, Cecily."
"Tá a fhios agam, seanmháthair. Ach tá sé níos éasca do Caroline," Cecily replied, dropping into the Gaelic. Aside to Caroline she said, "Grandmamma does know English, but she has the Gaelic much more these days. Little Charlotte, one of the seven-year-old twins, is named after her. Grandmamma says it in the old way - Char-lak instead of Charlotte. And the Gaelic spelling is something stranger yet. Do not fret if you cannot understand her. All us children have some Gaelic and can translate, and as I said, she does know English."
Caroline nodded thankfully, staring into the fire.
"Crossed in love, she was?" piped up Grandmamma's wavering voice. "Run away to Scotland but not to Gretna Green, eh?"
Caroline and Cecily both started. Caroline blushed deeply, and Cecily's eyes widened as she took this in.
"How exciting!" she cried. "Oh Miss Bingley, was he handsome? Who was he? a daring rogue? a highwayman? pirate? Were you chased down by your father, who sent you here after he beat the rogue to a jelly?"
"No!" Caroline exclaimed. Then she caught herself, and would say no more. The young girl was just at the age where a romance thrilled her beyond anything. But Cecily kept asking, and the younger children joined in, begging for the story of Caroline and the Rogue. Finally she gave them a version of her story.
"My brother Charles had a friend, who was the handsomest man you ever have seen. He was tall and dark, and rich and well-connected. I loved him at once, but he was engaged to his cousin, Miss Anne de Bourgh. Overwhelmed with despair, I took to my room for a week. Judge of my delight when I learned that it was only that his aunt wished for her daughter to marry her cousin and unite their estates. I endeavoured to show him that I would be the perfect bride for him, but to no avail. Charles (my brother) let an estate in Hertfordshire, and there we met a family of five sisters. Jane, the eldest, was a sweet girl, although the next sister Elizabeth was highly impertinent, and the three youngest were vain, ignorant, and uncontrolled. But my brother was quite captivated with Jane, and his friend with Miss Eliza, and even though Charles, my sister and brother Hurst and I all left Hertfordshire after a few months, Mr Darcy stayed behind and the next thing we knew, he was engaged to Miss Eliza! Nothing we could do could persuade him to break off the unfortunate alliance. He would not even listen to his aunt, who is not a woman to be gainsaid. And now that they are to be married, it is not unlikely that Charles will marry Jane. I had so hoped for him to marry Mr Darcy's sister Georgiana. But nothing turns out as it should. Now I must die of a broken heart..."
Caroline's voice trailed off despairingly.
"Did 'liza cast a spell on Mr Darcy?" piped up a small voice.
"We have five sisters too!"
The children continued chattering about the story, which in their inventive minds grew more elaborate and fantastical every minute. After Caroline had partaken of some refreshment, Cecily took her to see her mother, who was still in her confinement.
"Thank you so much for coming, Miss Bingley," Catherine welcomed Caroline warmly. "Being delivered of little Philip here has quite worn me out." She gestured to the infant beside her. "You'll know it yourself, when you are married with little ones of your own."
"Mamma!" exclaimed Cecily dramatically. "Did not you know that Miss Bingley's heart is broken?"
Catherine's face bore simultaneous expressions of weariness, amusement at Cecily's dramatics, and sympathy for the heart-broken Miss Bingley. She apologized for her unintentionally hurtful remark.
Caroline could not but be struck by the kindness of the exhausted woman. Had it been herself lying there, tired and weary, she could not have tolerated any company at all, let alone kindness to them.
Cecily urged her closer to take a peek at the little baby. He appeared to Caroline to be a wrinkled red little thing, and she could not fathom why he would inspire such looks of adoration from his mother and older sister. But of course there was no accounting for taste, or else why would Mr Darcy have chosen that upstart girl with no family, connections, or fortune... She did not even notice the tears that streamed down her face; the pain in her heart overwhelmed her.
Stumbling out of the room, she managed to find her way back into the triplets' room and fell onto her bed, where she cried herself to sleep, mourning the loss of the man she desired, the estate she coveted, and the exalted position she had craved.
*Teàrlag:
**translation of the Gaelic words above:
"Ní Charlotte, Teàrlag. Ba cheart duit a fhios sin, Cecily." (Not Charlotte, Teàrlag. You should know that, Cecily.)
"Tá a fhios agam, seanmháthair. Ach tá sé níos éasca do Caroline," (I know, grandmother. But it is easier for Caroline.)
***One does not speak Gaelic, one has the Gaelic. Don't ask me why - the etymology of words and languages is amazingly complicated.
Posted on: 2012-05-14
Caroline longed to be home in London, with a maid to care for her wardrobe and to dress her hair properly. It had been four weeks since she arrived in Scotland, and not once had her hair been put up properly. Caroline had never needed to know how to do her own hair, and her attempts now frustrated her to such an extent that she just left it loose, sometimes tying it back with a ribbon. This degradation in her appearance was the final straw in her self-loathing.
She hated everything though, from the dreary rain that confined her indoors to the muddy children to Grandmamma by the fire. Nothing could compare to the elegance of Pemberley, and what she hated most was the country upstart who had cheated her out of that grand estate.
The snowstorm that marked Caroline's arrival in Muirshearlich was the only snow seen that winter. The rain that succeeded the snow did not prevent the children from playing outside, and quite frankly Caroline welcomed the time that their noise was out of the house, although she did not look forward to the mud that inevitably tracked in behind them. Her fashionable London wardrobe was quite given up. Catherine lent her some plainer clothes until some new dresses could be sewn; which, as Caroline could embroider beautifully but couldn't sew a dress to save her life, didn't actually materialize. Catherine was shorter and built on a larger scale, and her dresses were only long enough for Caroline because they hung so loosely on her tall frame.
Catherine offered the dresses to Caroline after what came to be known as the Great Porridge Debacle...
The previous day, the children had come in covered in mud, but sighting Caroline came swarming around her, begging for a story. By this time she was quite famous for her fairy tales; and if they reminded her of Mr Darcy and Eliza Bennet she saved her tears until she was alone. It was better than trying to explain. But after this story, she realized that their muddy hands had ruined the last clean plain dress she had.
The next morning, for lack of anything else, she put on a velvet morning gown. The cook Margery soon came up with the breakfast of a pot of porridge and a pitcher of cream, and also distressing news.
"Milady is ill," she said. "I am to her chamber this moment, and Cecily has the care of young Philip and the other bairns. Do you endeavour to carry on here."
And with that she hastened from the room, while Caroline was left to try and feed porridge to three children who rather preferred to wear it.
Not content to merely smear it all over themselves, they pelted her with handfuls of the stuff, laughing hysterically at her shrieks. Despite their tender age, the triplets had excellent aim. Her velvet gown was completely ruined. The oat gruel dripped through her hair, and one large clump had hit her neck and fallen into her décolletage. When the oaten rain had finally ceased (primarily due to a shortage of ammunition), Caroline stood dripping and horrified for a moment, before running out of the room. The only place she knew of where she might have some way of cleaning herself was the kitchen, and so she hurried down the stairs.
Just as she reached the bottom she noticed a man standing in the hallway, who stared at the porridge-spattered woman. Caroline froze, staring in her turn at the gigantic redheaded man. He was nearly seven feet tall, with broad shoulders and a mane of red hair. Her breath caught in her throat - he was magnificent! Petrified, she saw his gaze take her in from head to toe, lingering on the porridge at the edge of her low neckline. Her cheeks flamed red, and she suddenly realized that her hair was also hanging loose. The ribbon she tied it back with had come loose in her haste.
All this took place in in a moment, before the giant let out a great laugh.
Caroline could never remember how she managed to tear herself away from the stranger's magnetic gaze and run on to the kitchen. The room was empty since Margery was occupied with Catherine above stairs
Caroline sank onto a chair by the kitchen fire and buried her face in her hands. Who was this ill-mannered Scotsman? How dare he laugh at her dishabille? And what on earth was she to wear, now that every dress she owned was covered in mud or porridge or torn to shreds?
Jumping up, she found a cloth and began wiping the clumps of porridge off. Meanwhile, she could hear the rumble of the stranger's voice conversing with Grandmamma's quavering voice...
"'S fhada bho nach fhaca mi thu, Angus," Grandmamma said.
"Halò, Teàrlag," he replied. "Who was the bonny lass covered in porridge who came down just now?"
"Och, that be James's cousin, Caroline Bingley. She came ta care for the tríníní."
"And she happens now ta be wearing their breakfast?"
"Go deimhin."
"A bonny lass wearing a tasty breakfast...I might marry her."
"Good luck ta thee, young Angus," Grandmamma retorted. "She's a pridefu knab and doesna say a word wi'out a prickle."
"I be roch and woo not like a bairn. She dinna fears me," Angus laughed.
"I haurd she's rich too, if her brother binna keep her dowry."
"Welcome change then," he chortled. "Too many lassies chasin' me as 'tis. Mayhap it's at last me own turn to do some chasin'!"
'S fhada bho nach fhaca mi thu = Long time no see
Tríníní = triplets
Go deimhin = indeed, in fact
Knab = a person of importance+ snob
Roch = rough (anyone see the oblique quote of Shakespeare?)
Caroline couldn't believe her ears. How dare he!!! (She didn't stop to wonder until later why it was that they spoke in English instead of Gaelic.) She was so infuriated by his possessiveness that she threw down the cloth in her hand and charged furiously out of the kitchen.
"You gudgeon, noddicock, souse-crown, snivel-nose, muckworm, lobcock, rabshackle, gull-catcher, looby, sapskull, rake-shame, scaly scrub, hog-grubber, flea-mint..." Caroline called him every name she could think of. In fact, she called him names she hadn't a notion she knew.
But when she finally stopped for breath, Angus jumped in. "Queen o' the meidae, th'art a fine sweet lass. Wilt tha' marry me?"
Caroline was quite taken aback, but rallying, "Go fool, and command your own amusement. You waste your time on me."
"But I must and will have thee to my wife."
"Ha!" and with that Caroline ran back upstairs, into the triplets' room and slammed the door.
Only when she was back with the triplets did she realize that they still wore rather a lot of porridge. Her fury with the domineering Scotsman left her no patience with oaten toddlers, and she summarily and none too gently changed them. Somehow they must have recognized that there was no mercy to be expected, and submitted meekly.
For all she could never think of that incident without blushing and grimacing, it did shake her out of her doldrums. The triplets learned eventually that porridge was to be eaten, not thrown around; though there were a few more dresses that needed thorough cleaning. When Catherine heard the story from her mother-in-law, she instantly offered Caroline some of her own plainer dresses. And if she was amused, she kept her laughter until she was out of Caroline's hearing.
As the months passed, the Campbell family began to take Caroline, prickles and all, to their hearts. Her acerbic comments on everything from porridge to thistles were oddly refreshing. She didn't notice a bit of it, though. She disliked the food (although hearty and tasty, it was still different than the English food she was accustomed to), she disliked the weather (although you would have thought that she would have been used to rain - England is often rather wet), and most of all she disliked the tall redheaded widower Angus MacDonald (although his two daughters were sweet - Fiona and Agnes often came to play with the Campbell children, and very often it was Caroline and Cecily who watched over the capering children).
One night, Caroline was woken by a cold little body creeping in beside her. Her sour inquiry as to why was answered by little Alice saying she had had a nightmare. Now despite all her prickliness, Caroline was not altogether heartless. She gathered the little girl into her arms and snuggled beside her until they both drifted off to sleep again.
And that was the first crack in the wall.