Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Sixteen

Gloomy, gray, and grimy.

London in the second week of January was an unpleasant place to be.

At least it did not stink like in summer.

Much.

And your selfish disdain for the feelings of others.

For the first week that he was back, Darcy slept on the sofa in his study.

He did not want to go back to the joint suite where in one of the two bedrooms he had spent his wedding night with Elizabeth.

He'd been filled with lust and anger that night. And yet that night and its memory had become precious to him. And painful because he did not know if he would ever be able to touch Elizabeth again.

Darcy took long endless rides and walks around the city, pounding the cobblestoned streets in his fine Hessian boots, going miles and miles around, seeing markets, churches, bridges, filthy narrow alleyways, palaces, parks, canals, and docks.

Several times he watched the swans in the Round Pond at Hyde Park. Children would come out with their caretakers to throw bread to them. There were also geese, ducks, and seagulls.

At the end of this week, caught by a posted notice in Haymarket for a new performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni , Darcy went to the opera. As he sat down in his usual box, he realized his mistake at once. Many of the faces in the other boxes studied him, and not the show.

Yes, London society, where a display employing dozens of people using years of studied craft to entertain the guests was seen chiefly as an excuse to stare at the other people who attended.

Darcy had returned to London without his bride, less than two months after his sudden marriage to a wholly unsuitable and penniless girl.

The assumption that everyone must be making was, unfortunately, correct.

The next morning more than a dozen visitors left their cards, though Darcy was not at home for any of them. Seeing the cards though, several from members of the peerage, and several from dear friends, he knew it was unprofitable to pretend that he would not need to return the calls.

However, Darcy had not yet readied himself to face society once more.

The next day when he returned from a three hour ramble through the least fashionable parts of London, Darcy found to a mix of dismay and pleasure that society, in the form of his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam, had finagled its way past his butler's insufficient guard of the door, and charmed from Mrs. North a wide selection of fine pastries and a plate of a diced hothouse pineapple.

"Darcy, old boy! Coz! In London for two weeks, and you haven't called on me yet. Hurt. Terrible hurt."

The officer speared a piece of pineapple with a silver toothpick and put it in his mouth with clear delight.

"I am here on business," Darcy replied grumpily.

"I am here," Colonel Fitzwilliam echoed in a deep voice that was clearly intended to mimic Darcy's, though it did a poor job of that, "on business." Slammed his hand on the table. Pressed his hand against his forehead. And dramatically leaned back. "Business. That evil crone! Leaves me no time to visit my beloved cousin, the man who has been like a brother to me — no, closer, like a twin! Like my own shirt. And who—"

"Richard." Darcy raised his eyebrows.

"Alas," Colonel Fitzwilliam said dramatically, "the only time I can spare from business must be spent upon a third rate play, produced by fourth rate actors."

"It was one of Herr Mozart's famous operas," Darcy replied. "And the actors were at least second rate."

"Were you going to visit me at all?"

Darcy shrugged, poured himself a brandy, and grabbed a piece of the pineapple.

"The pineapple is mine." Colonel Fitzwilliam mimed slapping Darcy's hand away.

Darcy laughed.

"I was the one who convinced Mrs. North to have it cut up."

" My pineapple, and you were not invited in."

"Mrs. North happily welcomed me for a chat. Ha! ‘The master is not at home, but Master Richard, you are always welcome. You look too thin, why aren't you eating more?'"

"I literally was not at home when you sweet talked yourself into my house."

"Right of family, eh — but enough about my business. Messed up properly with your wife?"

"I," Darcy replied haughtily, "am here on business."

"That explains why Mrs. North spent five full minutes worrying about how little you've been eating, and talking about the way you go out every day to just walk in circles, and how you never visit anyone."

"She should not gossip."

"She was in the Fitzwilliam house before your mother poached her. She knew me when I was in drawstrings."

In Darcy's view, that Mrs. North had been employed by his mother's father until several years after the birth of Darcy's cousin was no excuse for her telling said cousin about his habits.

"You look like the bit of pineapple you ate was rotten through." Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. "Devoted old servants are the chief unchangeable constituent of society. Can only work with, not against. She's right. You look terrible. Half a stone lighter than a month and a half ago. What happened?"

"I am not going to tell you in any detail."

"Embarrassing events then. I'm not startled. See. I knew you'd embarrass yourself with Mrs. Darcy — fine looking woman, but it was as clear as a bottle of that overly strong Russian spirit, the one made from potatoes, that she held some resentment against you."

"You could see that, and did not tell me?"

"I did, you may recall." Colonel Fitzwilliam shrugged and popped another piece of pineapple into his mouth. "But there was nothing I could do. And I still hardly know the woman."

Then Colonel Fitzwilliam rose and grabbed a bottle of brandy off the shelf and pushed it and a tumbler towards Darcy. "Come, toss it back. You need to tell someone about your misery."

"I am not miserable."

"You are — here, let me help you." Colonel Fitzwilliam poured the brandy into the glass and shoved it even closer towards Darcy.

He sipped it.

"No, not like that. Drink it all up."

"I have not drunk more than two glasses of wine in the course of a day since that night."

" That night," Colonel Fitzwilliam echoed. "And you speak like I should know which night."

"The one where I kissed Elizabeth and entangled all of us into this mess."

"Ahhhhhh. And you have already told me that much in December. Swallow back the brandy, good fellow — I understand from my father that the man he sent to investigate your wife's connections determined that she seduced you, used arts and allurements to catch an overly drunk man. At least she is—"

"Say nothing of that sort about Elizabeth." Darcy's voice was hard.

The two glared at each other.

"Good," Colonel Fitzwilliam said. "You've still got spirit left."

Darcy sat straighter. "Why did I ever let you visit?"

"You did not."

"I had not in fact forgotten."

"What caused your argument?"

"She truly had not meant to marry me — all this time I thought she was a fortune hunter, but instead… I kissed her, we were seen by her mother and all the gossiping women of the town, and she had to marry me." Darcy glumly looked at the dark walnut table before him. "All because I could not control my impulses."

Elizabeth should never forgive him.

He picked up the drink Fitzwilliam had poured from him and drained it again.

After which he coughed harshly, and Colonel Fitzwilliam pounded his back and laughed.

"Out of practice."

"No," Darcy replied weakly. "Never was in practice."

"Another."

Darcy did as ordered.

"Mrs. Darcy did not want to marry you? That matches how she appeared to me. Poor girl."

"What?"

"She was uncomfortable, and she did not seem the sort who would marry for fortune without affection."

"Was this visible to everyone?"

Colonel Fitzwilliam shrugged. "Most likely not."

"I placed her in an impossible situation, and then I forced her to marry me against her will. I was no better than… than a man who simply forced a woman. No worse, because now she is trapped with me, and I destroyed her ability to choose."

His cousin looked at Darcy with a serious pursed frown.

"That is the guilt that pains me. I wanted her — I love her, and I hurt her. In essence I assaulted her, and—"

"Did she refuse her bed?"

"What choice did she have? We were married."

"The choice to fight. She had a choice, no matter how trapped she felt by the situation, to not marry you."

"If a man puts a gun to the head of a woman and says to her that she must—"

" Not another word ."

The wood in the fireplace crackled, the soft footsteps of a servant walking past in the hall, Darcy's own breathing.

With a terribly loud glass on glass clang, Colonel Fitzwilliam poured himself a glass of brandy, his hands almost trembling.

He threw back the whole thing without a single cough. "I hate when I remember that day. The way that poor brown woman's eyes looked. The bruises on her face. And Colonel Douglas insisted that we could not punish the men responsible. She was just a Hindoo. I'd only been with the regiment for two weeks, and I didn't yet understand the way things had to be done when we were outside of England."

"That is not—"

"That is how it always is! That is what being a soldier, what the whole thing means. And the colonel was right . I have always tried to do what I can to minimize such atrocities, I make sure my men have ample opportunities to buy the favors of the women wherever we are campaigning. And I've hung one or two men to keep discipline — military necessity approves when we keep the natural hatred of the natives as small as we can manage. But I've once or twice needed to let a man ‘scape from any punishment, because that is what it means to be a soldier, whose duty is to see that his king and his country win . Don't pretend, do not pretend that marrying a woman and then taking her to bed, when she would have suffered nothing worse than having people say mean things about her is anything like… like forcing a woman."

"I did wrong. And if you do not punish such men, you do wrong."

Colonel Fitzwilliam shrugged insouciantly and lifted his refilled tumbler nice and high. "To pretty principles. If only they could prevent mutiny, and to a world where only the worthless soldiers rape, and never the capable or popular ones. At least when I was in Spain everyone thought we ought to keep a closer reign on ourselves as this was in Europe, and I was the colonel whose distaste for such behavior was widely known, instead of a freshly purchased captain."

"Such things cannot be so common. Not amongst our men."

"Common? They are not common . But certainly not unknown." Colonel Fitzwilliam added, "That bastard Douglas is now a general without employment who bought himself a fine estate with his share of the booty from the campaigns in India. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't rape a woman on his own." Poured himself more and took a decently sized swallow. "God damned bastard. Douglas knew very well that the peasants in the area were almost all Mohammadians. He just liked to call them Hindoos to sneer."

There was not a great deal to say.

"I don't think a month has gone by when I don't remember that woman's bruised and bleeding face. Her brother demanding that we give satisfaction and punish the one who'd raped his sister and made the family honor worthless. Colonel Douglas had him beat until he went away. I think they shattered his wrist."

"What happened to her?"

Colonel Fitzwilliam took another drink of brandy. "Why do you think I'd have any notion? They came to demand satisfaction while we organized ourselves for the morning march. The man was beaten with sticks, and then the regiment marched off."

A sort of rage at that unnamed soldier who had done this to this poor woman. A rage even against his cousin who in the end had stood aside and let it happen filled Darcy's soul. "And the man who did it to her?"

"Men. There were a half dozen."

"They were never punished?"

The officer shrugged. "When I joined my current regiment, one had died in battle, one had died from disease, another had been honorably discharged with military pension at the end of his term of service, and the other two were still enlisted."

The two were quiet.

Darcy drank more, Colonel Fitzwilliam drank more. They absentmindedly finished the pineapple and half the cheeses and meats that had been set out.

"Jove," Colonel Fitzwilliam exclaimed suddenly. "Nearly as dull as drinking by yourself. Tell me more about this quarrel you had with your woman."

"With my woman?" Darcy said with a small smile.

"The soldierly, campaigning word for a wife."

"Ah. I… I suppose I thought I had made a fair trade to her. My position for her person and conversation… and then I learned I had paid her in false coin."

Colonel Fitzwilliam said, "You always have been terrified of being taken advantage of by those beneath you, like Wickham would when he took out debts in your name. I suppose it makes sense that you'd then equally be in fear of taking advantage of another."

"And yet I did."

"Perhaps you ought not think of marriage as a fair exchange. A partnership, where both partners work for the benefit of the whole."

"She would not have joined me in partnership. I'll not argue that our situation is wholly different from forcing her in the sense you speak of. But I had placed her into an intolerable situation, and I never asked."

"Past is past." Colonel Fitzwilliam seemed well on the way into a maudlin drunkenness. "The future is what matters."

"No. If nothing else, the past determines how the present is understood."

"Ideas that are present in the mind determine how the present is understood. The past can influence these ideas, but it is the past. What is present are those ideas."

The afternoon sun had nearly sunk, and Darcy was already far drunker than he had been since that night.

When he finished his current glass, Colonel Fitzwilliam went to pour him another, but Darcy put his hand over the glass.

"Bad form," his cousin said. "You cannot expect me to drink alone."

"I do not expect you to drink at all — billiards. We'd accidentally kill each other if we went fencing."

"Would not, destroy an eye at most."

They went to the billiards room and laid out the balls. Colonel Fitzwilliam watched Darcy line up a shot, and said contemplatively, "It is wholly possible to poke out an eye by chance with billiards, just as possible as with fencing blades."

Darcy's ball rolled true.

As Colonel Fitzwilliam lined up his shot, Darcy said, "That is what has kept me in London, I cannot bear the thought of seeing her every day, being married to her, yet never being able to share her bed again."

"Talk to her."

"I will not pressure her, I will not make any threats, I will not even tell her that it is her duty. If she does not want my presence, I will not impose it on her."

"I suggested you talk to her. But what do I know? I am sure your situation is hopeless."

It was clear that the memories Darcy had brought to the fore had given his cousin a depressed mood.

His play was also worse than it usually was, and it usually was not at Darcy's level.

"You do not mean to tell me that it is a husband's right to take his wife, and furthermore that my duty to my noble blood demands that I ensure that there is an heir, no matter how ill my wife may take the making."

Colonel Fitzwilliam did not reply for a while. "I have seen too much of real rapine to find appeal in anything which touches on it."

Two more shots.

"I do not think that she would refuse me if I demanded my rights," Darcy said at last. "Not once her temper cooled. No violence, force, or any sort of threat would be necessary. Only…"

"You desire to be desired."

" Yes ," Darcy replied. "Is it too much to hope for?"

"For you . You were too blessed with fortune and appearance, and a clever mind, for anyone to ever like you." His cousin grinned at him.

"Is that how you think I see myself?"

"Yes."

Darcy won the game, and they set up the balls for another one.

"I scarcely understand myself," Darcy said while his cousin took the first shot.

"You think too much."

"Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living, but he gave no guarantee that an examined life would bear up to its examination!"

"Stuff that!" Colonel Fitzwilliam slammed his hand on the side of the table, making the balls jump. "I've no patience for that! There are a great many, a great deal of a great many… many… many—"

"Great?"

"Great men who haven't given a single thought to their own lives in the whole of their whole lives that were… uh, lived. But they live lifes worth living."

"You did drink more than I." Darcy tilted his head. "Lifes, you mean lives."

"What?"

"It is lives, not lifes. Lifes aren't a thing."

"Of course they are. We're living our lifes right now."

"It's irregular," Darcy replied.

"That's what comes from too much Latin," Colonel Fitzwilliam replied. "Do you examine your own life?"

"All the time."

"And is it worth living?"

That question hung in the air for a long time.

"Come, man! Come!" Colonel Fitzwilliam suddenly sounded halfway sober. "That was a rhetorical question! Your life is worth living. Damned man like you, I do not usually say this, but a month in the works round a besieged city. Or better yet, inside the besieged city would do you good. They should make you starve to the point where you are delighted to find moldy bread and roast rat. Cure you of this nonsense. Examining your life for its worth, and not finding it. Of course, your life is worth living. Here's where you keep the alcohol in the billiard room. Now drink another glass."

Darcy did so. He then drank another glass. And another.

He was well on his way to being as inebriated as he had been during that horrible ball. At least he was safe at home, and he determined for his own safety that no matter how drunk he became, no matter what Colonel Fitzwilliam said, he would not take any suggestion to leave his house.

"She said I had a selfish disdain for the feelings of others," Darcy said tearily, "and she was right."

Colonel Fitzwilliam thought about that for a while. "It's really not so bad. I mean a little. But everyone does. You are often kind."

Darcy woke the next morning with a blinding headache, and a memory that Colonel Fitzwilliam had grabbed one of his rooms to sleep in for the night.

He dressed more quickly than his pounding headache liked. Without the inducement of seeing his cousin at the breakfast table, he would have simply remained in bed.

Colonel Fitzwilliam sat at the breakfast table, Darcy's copy of The Times spread wide before him, a full mug of coffee in his hand, and a plate of eggs and a curry with a thick smell of those Indian spices that had become popular in England due to soldiers and EIC officials bringing them back.

"Hullo, Darcy. Great day, eh?"

The man sounded as chipper as an old campaigner after a forced march. Which is what Darcy supposed he was.

In lieu of reply Darcy poured himself a cup of coffee. He added no sugar or milk, finding he preferred it was black with his hangover, and then he delicately maneuvered himself into a chair, after helping himself to bread rolls, ham, and butter from the platter prepared by Mrs. North.

"What are you eating?"

"It's a curry."

"I can smell that. I didn't know we had any of those spices."

"Not to your taste, eh?" Colonel Fitzwilliam grinned at him. "Not at least with all the peppers added? Too strong for your refined, aristocratic taste."

" My father is not a peer of the realm."

"I had to explain to Mrs. North how to prepare it, but she was delighted to make anything I promised to eat."

"Yes, yes, you told me about how worried she is about how thin you are. I hadn't noticed."

"She loves me more than you."

Darcy laughed and then winced and pressed his hand against his head.

This only made his cousin laugh more. "Not used to your alcohol."

"I seldom drink so much." And the time before this when he'd drunk, he'd found himself kissing Elizabeth and engaged despite his own best judgement.

"Delicate old man."

"You are three years my senior." Darcy rubbed at his temple.

"I bear my years, you are borne under by yours."

Rather than replying, Darcy pursed his lips. He'd just remembered a time when he'd drunk all night at Oxford with Bingley after an exam. And that reminded him of Bingley .

Damn.

He needed to talk to Bingley. Bingley was still in London, since his friend had been one of the group who'd left their cards at Darcy House the day after he'd been seen in the theater.

"Eh, looks like you just swallowed a toad."

"I need to speak with a friend."

"Can't imagine that they are much of a friend if that is how you look at the prospect of discussion with them." Colonel Fitzwilliam chomped at his food. He turned a page in the newspaper. "No wonder you keep so few intimates. Any case, you will soon have to lose my company. I need to return to my business, managing a regiment and keeping us in training and with full complement. Terrible difficult business being the commanding officer of one of the king's regiments."

"Don't you always complain how bored you are, and that your major… What's his name?"

"Mackenzie — stout highlander fellow."

"Yes him, you often brag about how he does the great majority of the work."

"Would be a busier business without him, I'll admit that."

After a while Mrs. North came herself. "Master Richard, did your breakfast match your hopes? I sent Tom down to the market yesterday to get the cayenne peppers."

"Divine! Northy, divine."

Darcy rolled his eyes.

When she left, he said, "Now I no longer wonder how you made it into my house despite my hung up knocker. I am only confused about how I have anything left when you are in the city so often."

Colonel Fitzwilliam brightened. "A capital notion, to dine here whenever I pass by the way. You could tell Northy—"

"Northy." Darcy grinned. "She'd be in an offended snit for a week if I called her that."

"You are a reserved and dignified gentleman. One of the great of England. I am just a young rapscallion who went into the army, and who happens to be the younger son of an earl. But nothing else recommends me."

After the cousins finished their meal, they donned coats against the forbidding sleet. It was one of those days where an icy drizzle mixed with the rain.

"Fine day," Colonel Fitzwilliam said cheerfully as they walked around the corner to the stables two buildings down the road. "I much prefer this to a particularly cool June afternoon in Deogiri."

With a whistle he started off on his own path as soon as he'd collected his horse.

Darcy had already enjoyed a sufficient number of long and rainy walks in the past week; he took his carriage for the not particularly long trip to the house that Bingley had taken on Bedford Square.

He got out wearing his heavy great coat, with a tall beaver cap to keep the drenching rain off. Rain that had become even thicker during the ride.

A knock on the door.

Darcy had no idea if Bingley would still be in. This was an irregular hour for a call, but they were particular friends, which made that all right.

The butler opened the door. He wore the familiar expression of superciliousness that a high servant learned to wear as they firmly announced that the master was not at home. Such an expression would never waver while sending off the unwanted guest, not even in those not uncommon cases when the master could be seen standing twenty feet back in the hall in a dressing robe, glancing over to check who'd come by.

Once he recognized Darcy, the butler's manner changed to show genuine pleasure, without displaying the sort of enthusiasm that was not in keeping with his station. "Mr. Darcy. Do come in. Mr. Bingley told me that he would be eager to see you at any time if you called."

Darcy nodded his head, and followed the butler to the breakfast room, where Bingley, Mr. Hurst, and Bingley's two sisters lolled over a prolonged breakfast.

"Good man! Good man! Look at the married man!" Bingley said expansively as he stood, stretching his arms wide. "You've…" He looked Darcy up and down. "I had not expected to see you for months more, not till the season properly started."

The silent message in the sudden decline of enthusiasm in Bingley's description of his guest was the same one that Colonel Fitzwilliam had openly given him the previous day: He looked awful. The remains of his hangover could not improve his appearance.

"An unfortunate matter required… led to my presence in London." Bingley did not look well either. He was thinner, with rings around his eyes.

"Particularly unfortunate that it took you away from your wife so fast." This was said ironically. After all, Darcy had told him that Elizabeth was a fortune hunter as part of his successful effort to convince Bingley to abandon his interest in Jane Bennet.

Darcy felt sick and guilty. There was a thing in his throat that did not belong there.

Bingley looked unhappy, in a way he'd never seen his cheerful friend before.

"Sit down," Miss Bingley offered. "The food is still warm. Please join us for breakfast."

Her manner was perfunctory. The tone was polite, but barely so. A wholly different greeting from how she'd always spoken to him before his marriage. Likely she nursed a pointless disappointment — he had never considered her for marriage.

"No, I thank you kindly, but I ate before coming over," Darcy replied.

"Country hours in the city?" Bingley laughed. "You are fortunate to find us even awake at this hour."

Mr. Hurst grunted. "Nonsense. Time is time." He poured more wine into his tall wine glass.

Darcy rather judged him for drinking with breakfast, but it also was none of his business. In truth, after having spent a whole month in the same house as Mr. Hurst, Darcy could say little in his favor. At least he was excellent at cards, while not being so capable as to be actively unpleasant to play with.

Darcy twisted his wedding ring around his finger half a dozen times, and then without looking directly at his friend, he said to Bingley, "Might I speak with you in private? I've a matter of some importance to discuss."

Bingley paled, nodded, and led Darcy out.

The instant they were out of the hallway and into the room Bingley kept as a small sitting room for himself and his male friends, he exclaimed, "Tell me immediately. Is Jane married already? I tell you, I can handle it. I have ceased, almost, to think of her and—"

"Nothing of the sort," Darcy replied. This was both painful to hear, and yet promising to his second agenda. Bingley showed every sign of still being attached.

"Did she die?" Bingley asked at a panicky rush. "And the business that brought you here — Mrs. Darcy returned for the funeral, and—"

"If she had died, that would be something of the sort ."

Silence.

"Oh. You'd dress in black, also. Even for an unwanted sister." Bingley barked a small laugh. He walked to the gloomy window. A gust rattled the frame. "Even if she does not love me… I imagine… not caring that she is a fortune hunter. Not caring about anything. I feel as though I do not care about anything. I once thought I caught sight of her on Bond Street, but when I crossed the street to look, she was not there."

Darcy stepped next to him.

The window faced down onto the inner courtyard garden, and the rain lashed the windows, and shook the tree branches despite their lack of foliage.

"I dream of her. At night. Less this past week, so perhaps… I am well now. It is… I've never experienced this before… not chiefly her beauty… I thought we understood each other. She smiled at me. In such a way. She looked at me… she seemed to really see me. Her eyes had a particular softness that I thought were just for me. I… It is silly, but I truly believed I had found my helpmeet, my wife, the woman I was meant to spend my life with."

"Bingley, I am so, so wrecked to see you in this way, when—"

"Darcy, do you believe in fate? — no, of course you do not." Bingley half laughed. "Too sensible by far. I've always had this sense… there is one woman put on Earth by God for me, and that I would know her when I met her… I thought Jane was that woman. But I speak too much — you are the one who truly suffers, you are the one who was forced to marry a mercenary creature who cares not a whit whether you live or die, and who seduced you solely for your shiny coins and crisp BoE notes. I survived. I escaped my fate."

"Is that what I said?" Darcy replied quietly. He twisted his ring around the finger again and cleared his throat. "I only half remember."

"You were full of a righteous rage that morning, and I do not believe you'd slept in more than a day."

"And I had drank a great deal the night before."

"Darcy," Bingley looked at him seriously. "Tell me truly. You do not look happy. Has the marriage proved to be the disaster that—"

"I was wrong."

"She seduced you. You must not heap coals upon your own head. When a woman comes for a man in such a way, to run — to run is his only hope. But woe to him when he remembers her!"

Bingley lapsed into his morose expression once more.

"I was wrong in that too. And there are matters beyond honor… But no, that is not what I mean. I—"

This was difficult to say. Darcy's throat closed up.

"Matters beyond honor?" Bingley blinked at him with a sharper expression. "So much of a disaster? What happened? That is a sentence I never expected from you."

Darcy had never been so wrong before, so far as he knew, in the advice he gave another man. And hearing his words from that morning echoed back from Bingley made what he'd said seem almost a crime.

Perhaps it was a crime. He'd been in a towering rage, and he'd wished revenge. He'd wished to exact an added price from the Bennets and Elizabeth. He hadn't admitted that even in his letter to Elizabeth. He hadn't admitted that even to himself.

And revenge for what? Revenge for the fact that he'd found Elizabeth Bennet too tempting to keep himself away from.

He should be thoroughly ashamed of himself, and he was.

Bingley peered at him closely, his expression changing slowly, as Darcy tried to make himself talk, from morose sympathy to something curious and almost amused. "I say, Darcy, do you mean to apologize to me about something?"

"What?" Darcy coughed. "I mean yes, I must apologize to you."

"The only time I ever saw you tongue tied in that way was when you'd given Martin the wrong answer to some question about the declension of — oh I don't remember what the word was. But Professor Smith marked him down and called him an idiot before the class for the mistake." Bingley's eyes grew wide. "Jane isn't indifferent to me?"

Now it was Darcy's turn to gape.

"She isn't. But—" He slumped. "You could only have heard that from Miss Elizabeth, I mean Mrs. Darcy. And she would look to push forward the interests of her sister."

"That was not her intent at the time, I assure you. I was wrong about her as well." Darcy sighed. "I've made a mess royal of my life. And of hers. And… of yours."

"How could you know that was not her intent? — you know her to be scheming."

"She is not." Darcy shook his head. "In the context in which she accused me of having made her sister unhappy, I am certain she did not hope for me to rectify the matter. She accused me of—" Darcy paused. "You need not know the details of our quarrel, but… I discovered that I had behaved very badly, that she certainly had not meant to entrap me in any way, and that — the whole matter was due to my own foolishness and dishonorable behavior."

"What? Your dishonorable behavior."

"I am confident that if Mrs. Darcy had had a way to refuse me without exposing her sisters to scandal after that evening, she would have."

Where did that certainty come from? Before, even after their quarrel, Darcy had said to himself in his anger that he was sure that he had only ever needed to offer and he would be accepted.

But that would not apply to a woman worthy of being admired. Elizabeth deserved admiration. The way she threw herself into her duties, the way she had become friends with Georgiana, the way she stood up to his family, the way she had made Colonel Fitzwilliam, Viscount Hartwood, and his uncle all admire her… she was a woman worth admiring.

"What are you talking about? A woman in her senses refuse you?"

"She would have," Darcy said confidently.

Bingley looked at Darcy with a raised eyebrow.

"She overheard me insult her appearance at the assembly ball we went to when I had just arrived at Netherfield, she believed Mr. Wickham's tales about my dishonorable treatment of him, and… well, I had convinced her of my arrogant disdain for the feelings of everyone."

"That is not fair!" Bingley exclaimed. "How could she say such a thing about you? How could she think such a thing?"

"Perhaps because I looked at anyone in the neighborhood with a sneer — especially her mother and some of her sisters, I refused to converse if I ever could avoid it, and I believed myself fundamentally better than those I was surrounded with. They were beneath me in rank, they were not my neighbors, and thus I had no cause to unbend myself."

This time Bingley did not protest loudly about Darcy's innocence from his self-accusation.

For perhaps the first time in the conversation, Darcy found himself able to look directly at his friend.

Bingley smiled a little helplessly and shrugged, and said, "I was a little embarrassed by your behavior, to be honest, but it is your way. It's not your job to court my neighbors. And they thought it odd that I had a friend such as you. But that was my business, after all. But now that you explain the matter, I do see how Miss Elizabeth might have come to think ill of you. She didn't know you the way I do, after all."

"I embarrassed you?" Darcy flushed and looked down.

"Not important, not important." Bingley waved it away. "Only a little."

"Jove, I am glad Colonel Fitzwilliam is not here to hear this conversation. He'd never cease to tease me about the matter."

Bingley laughed.

"The chief point," Darcy said, "is that I believe that I was wrong. And let me be clear, on the question of whether Miss Bennet admired you, all I did was watch the two of you talk for the best of an hour. I watched to see unambiguous signs of affection… but I also did not want to see them. When you say that you thought she understood you… how would I know? I lived with Elizabeth for six weeks without knowing much of what was most important in her mind — I assumed so much."

"But what if she cannot forgive me? Or what if you were right then, and wrong now? Or what if…" Bingley looked at his hands. "So much could go wrong."

They both looked back out at the inner courtyard. The rain had somewhat slackened, but it was still spraying the window with small droplets, and the sky was wholly overcast.

Darcy said, "I mangled things by recommending you first in one direction, and then in the other — I have proven that I am no fit man to give advice on a matter of delicacy. You love her — the way you greeted me is proof of that. And… love must always be a risk. Perhaps she does not like you but will accept you anyway. Perhaps she does not like you and she will refuse you. Perhaps she loves you… Jove. Bingley, make your own choice."

The young man was looking at Darcy with a twisted smile.

"What?"

"I dare say I've never heard you sound uncertain."

"I dare say I've never felt so uncertain as I have these past two weeks. "