“I will not,” Elizabeth suddenly said, “listen to such with silence. Caroline is still my dearest friend in the world. She acted wrongly. She knows she acted wrongly. She heaps more abuse upon her own head than anyone else could. She suffers more grievously in the heart from that sense of wrongdoing than from the scorn that society has heaped upon her. I will not despise her. I will not listen to you despise her. I will not stay silent.”
“It surprises me,” Darcy said coldly, “that you still consider yourself such a dear friend to that woman.”
To her surprise Elizabeth feltsadat Mr. Darcy’s continued insistence on hating Caroline. She didn’t want him to be her friend, to have everything simple and straightforward, but something in Elizabethneededhim to accept that Caroline did not deserve eternal hellfire and damnation for her wrong actions.
“I do not abandon my friends, neither over trifles nor over serious matters,” Elizabeth sharply replied.
“You know. Elizabeth, youknowthis is no trifle.” He glared at her, and then seeming to recollect himself added, “I mean Miss Elizabeth.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam snorted.
Elizabeth replied, “The Holy Book instructs us to forgive those who have sinned against us.”
Darcy replied not at all. She could not read the frown on his face. She pressed her fingers together tight enough that they hurt. She had sweat on her forehead from the fire kept over hot for Miss de Bourgh’s sake.
“Well?” Elizabeth demanded. “What do you have to say to that?”
He let out a long breath. “Give me time to gather my thoughts.” Darcy smiled at her. “You are loyal, and it is impossible to not admire loyalty, but not every person is worthy of your loyalty.”
“Caroline is worthy ofmyloyalty.”
They glared at each other again.
Eyes clashed. At first it was an angry glare but then there was a change, a softening. Now their eyes kissed.
He looked down. “Miss Elizabeth, it is terribly difficult to construct a clear argument when you look at me in that way.”
“My goal achieved.”
“To triumph in such a way?”
“Any triumph is a triumph.”
And Darcy laughed, and the anger was gone.
He looked up at the corner of the room. “To force a marriage, to destroy someone’s reputation, to besmirch the honor of another, to seek to remove a man’s freedom in perhaps the most important decision of his life — to make me into a slave, an unfree creature subject to her whims. All of this is most serious. Perhaps not so serious as a murder, but no trivial, no small, no forgettable thing. But then as I was the one attacked, the one who she attempted to enslave, perhaps I take that more seriously than I ought.”
“Oh, don’t make a melodrama of it,” Colonel Fitzwilliam exclaimed. “I’ve been to the sugar colonies. I’d damned rather be married against my will to a pretty creature with twenty thousand than an actual slave.”
Darcy replied annoyedly, “And perhaps I also in my rhetoric meant to presuppose the conclusion I wished to draw. But a forced marriage is a deep and animal form of unfreedom. I’ll not forgive her soon. My good opinion once lost is lost forever.”
Elizabeth could not help but feel a sort of coldness in her soul at Mr. Darcy saying that.
Colonel Fitzwilliam replied, “I’ve killed a man. Probably several, but only one who I am certain of the corpse.”
“As a soldier,” Darcy replied. “In the course of your duty.”
“Ah, so I had good reason — all that it takes to transform the most serious crime, murder, into a matter of glorious duty.”
“You cannot seriously compare the selfish, grasping, controlling action of such a woman as Caroline Bingley to the noble pursuit of duty, standing in the line of danger, bravely facing the flying bullets and chance of death for God and Country?” replied Darcy.
“I merely mean to say that she tried to marry you for the position you were born into, instead of trying to kill you for it.”
“I never acted againsther. England must defend itself, and that is the key difference you pretend, for reasons I cannot understand, to not understand. The intent. The purpose — that is what matters. Good intentions are the proper domain of morality, what is in the soul. That Miss Bingley lacked the capacity to harm me does not change how I judge her.”
“Oh, Zeus! You sound very much the philosopher,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied sardonically. “Quite like you must have sounded in Oxford club. She was in love. My good man. In love. Love leads to stupidity.”
“I am wholly convinced that her attachment to me had no substance in it. Nothing beyond a general desire for my position and money, and a great liking for the idea of being admired by her fellows for making an excellent match.”
