“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 inthattoo. 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 amcertainshe 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?Yourdishonorable 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 sensesrefuse you?”
“She would have,” Darcy said confidently.
