Caroline Bingley was not happy with her brother.
Ever since they had left Netherfield at the end of November Charles had been out of sorts and he had been taking his pique out on her. She had given him every opportunity to meet another angel and move on from that inappropriate Miss Bennet, although admittedly the opportunities were few over Christmas, and he had refused them all.
Then at Candlemas he had developed an unhealthy obsession with her expenses. According to him, certainly she did not keep track, she had exceeded her income every quarter going back ad infinitum, and it had to stop. To think he had the gall. How did he expect her to maintain her éclat on only two hundred fifty pounds a quarter? Did he expect her to confine her shopping to Cheapside? She had protested his highhandedness, oh how she had protested, but to no effect. He had cancelled all her accounts and vowed not to advance any funds to her until Midsummer Day.
And then he decided, without consulting her or Louisa, to leave town and go visit their aunt up north in Scarborough. To undertake such a trip, in the face of winter, to such a destination, when the season would be starting within a month; what was Charles thinking? And he would not be forestalled. When had the reliably malleable Charles developed a backbone? The Hursts, whose high living at the expense of Charles had also drawn his ire, begged off on traveling north, choosing to visit the senior Hursts in Wiltshire. She had thought to take advantage of her close proximity with Charles on the trip to shape him back to her way of thinking but she had perhaps been a little too forcible, showing the sharp edge of her temper a little too soon, and at the first rest stop, on the first day, he had forced her to trade places with his valet and she had ended up riding in the servants' coach with the luggage and her maid. No amount of pleading on her part had swayed him and she had had a most unpleasant trip north.
To top off all the humiliation, the mortification, the ignominy; he, without a prior word of warning to her, had declared that, failing her marrying before then, on her twenty-fifth birthday she would be crowned with a spinster's cap. That day was not four and ten months away and how was she to find a husband within that time in such a backwater as Scarborough? To rub her nose in her possible fate he and their aunt had taken her to visit a spinster cousin of their aunt who lived in a small cottage, with just three servants, outside Filey, a fishing village to the south of Scarborough. Caroline swore to herself that such a cottage, with chickens scratching in the yard, was not to be her destiny. She was not consoled when the cousin assured her that after a few months she wouldn't even notice the odour of fish. About this time, she began to have dark speculations about whom Charles had named as his heirs, and where one might obtain arsenic without leaving a trail that would lead one straight to the gallows.
And there was his outright refusal to take her from Scarborough to London for the season. How was she to find a husband? She thought, but dared not say aloud, that in view of her brother's ultimatum, she would hunt down Mr. Darcy and thoroughly compromise him. If Charles wanted her wedded then wedded she would be. But no, there was no chance of that, she was trapped in Scarborough. Charles told her there were plenty of marital candidates in Scarborough – to be sure, there were plenty of yokels and bumpkins, a surfeit of farmers and fishermen, an abundance of tradesmen – but where were the gentlemen, rich gentlemen in particular. Did he not want to be proud of his sister and happy for her?
To show her off, he said; to market her, she thought; Charles insisted on dragging her to every private ball to which he could inveigle an invitation as well as to every public assembly within a ten-mile radius. He scoffed at her objection that her dresses were a year out of date; asking her if she thought any of her dance partners would care, especially if she left off her fichu. She knew he was right; men were such pigs; and, as far as the women were concerned, even last year's fashions would far outshine those drabs. Given that Charles, in any introductions, always seemed to hint that her fortune was twenty thousand pounds, she could have dressed in sackcloth with a bag over her head and still would have been declared the Incomparable of Scarborough's Season. And Charles warned her that any supercilious behaviour on her part, which he seemed to define as anything which would be seen as proper and expected behaviour in the ton, would bring forward the awarding of that dreaded spinster's cap. So, she danced and smiled and faux flirted; all the time biting her tongue to a stub.
Midsummer Day came and Caroline had looked forward to being once again in funds. But her anticipation was dashed when Charles asked her for a budget, showing how she intended to spend her income. When it became apparent that no monies would be forthcoming until a budget was produced acceptable to Charles much squawking ensued. Her position, that it was her money and she could do what she wanted with it, fell in the face of her father's will which made Charles the trustee of her inheritance until she married or obtained the full age of twenty and five years. But enough was enough, her whole life she had bent to his wishes, but no more, and so she refused to prepare a budget. In a display of magnanimity, that stuck in her craw, Charles gave her ten pounds, for walking around money he said, to last the whole quarter, and waved away any need to account for it. How generous of him.
And Charles would not bend on even the little pleasures of life. He refused to subscribe to her London newspaper of choice, one that reported news of the ton. It was just a gossip rag, he sneered and told her that she could buy it herself at the newsagent if she wanted it so much, after all she had ten pounds burning a hole in her reticule. Such hypocrisy when he subscribed to a London newspaper that reported news about things he was interested in – parliament, the war, the price of corn, and the like. And he paid for his aunt's local newspaper, which was nothing more than fish wrap wherein someone's pig getting loose was big news. But he would not pay for her newspaper. It was not to be borne, but bear it she must – but her brother had better not stand too close to the edge of a cliff, or too near a runaway team of horses, if he knew what was good for him.
Caroline found a newsagent that carried her preferred newspaper and every Wednesday she (Charles would not let her send a footman) bought the proceeding Saturday's issue (it took that long to get from London to Scarborough), which issue contained a summary of the week's on-dits, at a cost of a shilling. When she protested the cost, telling him it only cost a penny in London, the newsagent invited her to purchase her copy there.
Caroline now had a source of ton gossip but she did not understand all the insinuations and innuendoes given the five-month gap in her information and it took her four Fridays before she thought to ask the newsagent what happened to newspapers he did not sell. He sold them to a tradesman who pulped them and made new paper with the fibre. Caroline whined at Charles until he agreed to approach that tradesman and see if any back issues were still available. The deal Charles negotiated on her behalf was that she would pay six pence for any issue found from the last five months. Sixty-three issues were found, none dating before the past Easter, and at a cost of one pound, eleven shillings, six pence, which Charles made her pay out of her funds, Caroline had her archive of gossip.
Caroline mined her pile of newspapers, starting with the oldest, taking her time, savouring the dirt, until a day in early August when she came upon news, unpleasant news, of Mr. Darcy, the lodestone of her being. That same day her brother read a certain report in his newspaper, and received a much-waylaid letter from his good friend, Mr. Darcy, both of which touched upon the Bennets. The convergence of these writings that day would soon lead to an unhappy divergence in the Bingley family. A tale for another day.
Next: a look in at what has been happening in Longbourn