“Are you?”
“Darcy!” Bingley turned to him with annoyance. “You have such a disapproving tone. There is no one else who I know who can express so clearly what they think while saying so little.”
Darcy smiled at that.
“If I want to marry Miss Bennet it is my business, not yours.”
“I would never presume to disagree with you uponthat, I would merely beg you, as your friend, to take your time, consider carefully for yourself what you are about, and determine whether you believe that the obvious disadvantages incumbent upon such a match are worth it.”
“Obvious disadvantages?”
“Have you not observed the behavior of Mrs. Bennet and the younger sisters?”
“You seem to like Miss Elizabeth a great deal — leastwise the two of you have talked several times.”
“I donotrefer to Miss Elizabeth.”
“Eh.” Bingley rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve no idea what the rest of her sisters are like in honesty. But I wouldn’t be marryingthem— now I say, do not look at me like that. I’ll not be precipitate in this matter. I’ve made no promises, and I know that our acquaintance is still too slight for a reasonable man to marry without at least a few more weeks of knowledge of the woman. But this is the way that my thoughts tend.”
“Do you think she likes you as much as you like her?”
Bingley’s eyes went wide at this question. “I… She speaks to me a great deal. And she is sweet. She always has a light in her eyes when we speak. And she smiles at me every time we talk.”
“Miss Bennet smiles at everyone,” Darcy replied.
“Eh.” Bingley slapped his hand against his thigh several times. “Eh, I do not know — but my feelings must be matched by hers. Must be. No other chance.”
“None,” Darcy replied dryly. Athena shuffled forward and bent her head to snack on the grass.
“Not that disapproving tone again! — I promise, I’ll observe her carefully the next time we speak, and try to determine what her sentiments towards me are. I’ll rush into nothing. I am not a fool. But cannot a manknowafter a brief time? Is that not also a reasonable thing, and spoken of by the poets?”
“The poets,” replied Darcy, “as is well known, are not reasonable men.”
Bingley laughed. “Let's get off this hill. Too exposed to the wind.”
Once they’d reached the bottom of the hill, and turned back towards Netherfield at a walk, Bingley said, “I’d been worried when you accepted my invitation to come.”
Darcy’s lips tightened. “About what?”
“Upon my honor — do not get that angry look on your face. I had not seen you since your illness. You’d spent all your time simmering in hot water at Bath — you know what a horror I have of the place. Besides… you remember my mother.”
It took a force of will to unclench the tight grip Darcy had on his saddle horn and reins.
Bingley was one of his dearest friends, and he did not wish to be offended. “I only saw her once, and we did not speak,” Darcy said in reply.
“She was different before she became blind. Wholly different — I returned from Eton, and everything had changed. We’d been happy before, and after… quiet everywhere. Never allowed to shout. Never allowed to run and play. Nothing — lest we unsettle her nerves. Barely allowed to speak at all. And she… she could not see me… Papa doted on her helplessly for those years. Everything was changed, ruined, awful. I hated it. That is part of why I begged for those opportunities to visit you during the holidays. I could not stand to be at home once it was so changed by my mother’s blindness. The presence of a cripple ruined everything.”
“And you were afraid,” Darcy leaned forward in the saddle, “that I would be like that?”
“Well… I confess I’d had some concern.”
It was hard for Darcy to decide what he felt about this confession. At last he just said, “As I have said, I do not consider myself a cripple.”
“Precisely.” Bingley jovially looked at him. “Precisely the point — there are a few matters you cannot manage. Billiards is not the same since you need someone to hold you in place. No fencing — but trivialities. We can entertain ourselves with shooting, riding, cards, whatever. You are still my friend. In your…” He waved his hand around in a circle several times. “At the deepest level there has been no change.”
“Precisely.”
Bingley turned pensive. “I wish everything had not changed with Mama. I… I miss my childhood, before she was sick, before Papa was changed by anxiety, and when… when we were happy.”
