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“State your reasons,” he demanded.
Elliot crossed his arms, crumpling his hat beneath them, and Darcy was just about to reach out and uncross them, perhaps take the other man into his arms, do something to cease whatever this was, when Elliot spoke.
“Had not my feelings decided against you, had they been indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved brother?” he asked.
Darcy stilled his hands.
“I have every reason in the world to think ill of you,” Elliot continued. “No motive can excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted there. You dare not, you cannot deny, that you have been the principal, if not the only means of dividing them from each other—of exposing one to the censure of the world for caprice and instability, and the other to its derision for disappointed hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest kind.”
“Elliot—”
“Can you deny that you have done it?” he repeated.
And Darcy knew then that all was lost.
“I do not deny it,” he said at last. “It is true that I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your brother.”
Thirty-Seven
Elliot’s astonishment was beyond expression, and he simply stared at the man he now knew himself to be irrevocably in love with because what else could possibly explain the agony that Elliot could now feel squeezing every, single part of him?
“But…how,” he eventually whispered. “How could you do it?”
“I had no choice,” Darcy said.
“No choice?”
“I watched them most closely and realised that your brother’s affection was not as deep as Charles’ was,” he said.
“As deep?”
“They could not be fated mates, not when one felt it more keenly than the other.” He paused. “It must be felt by both, Mr. Bennet, for it to be real.”
“But how could you possibly know that?” Elliot asked, confused beyond reason, as this was not at all what he had expected Darcy to say.
“I surmised it.”
Elliot gasped. “You surmised it…on the shortest of acquaintances…on knowing almost nothing about my brother…you surmised his feelings, his entire feelings.”
“Bingley too was persuaded that Jack simply did not love him in the same way.”
“Because you suggested it.”
“Because I was right.”
“You were wrong!” Elliot shouted, his composure breaking at last. “Jack is…Jack is modest, careful, he shows his true feelings to almost no one, not ever. But he felt them, he feels them, he loves Mr. Bingley. Deeply. Completely. They are meant for one another.”
“That is not possible,” Darcy said, and he looked shocked, as well he should, Elliot thought!
“Because you suggest it is so,” Elliot snapped. “Because you are always right. Because you make a decision and then expect all to follow it. Just like all other alphas!” He paused, the next words almost dragged from him in agony again. “I suppose that our want of connections, our lack of fortune, our ranks were all considered as part of your advice to Mr. Bingley.”
“They were,” Darcy confirmed.
“And my family?—”
“Their lack of propriety was also a consideration,” Darcy said and if Elliot had thought the pain could not worsen, he had indeed been wrong. Those damnable scenes at the ball flashed through his mind once more, and Elliot wished he could burn them away forever!
“But they are not a consideration for you, in your proposal?” he demanded, because that made no sense! His family was poor enough that it prevented a connection between Charles and Jack but not between them. Or else…did Darcy feel so much for him that the objections which prevented his friend’s mating could be ignored here? Surely not! That would suggest a depth of feeling which Elliot could not readily believe.
