Charles pushed the door open.
Mr Bennet was situated in his large armchair, a book balanced against one knee and a glass of port resting on the table beside him. He did not glance up at once. Instead, he turned a page with deliberate, almost ceremonial slowness, as though Charles had interrupted a sacred rite.
"Mr Bingley," he said at last, peering over his spectacles. "I was informed you had returned to the county. Rumour has it that you are presently engaged in draining the local topography."
"Yes, I have been in the fields, sir." Charles stepped further into the room. The weight of the book-lined walls pressed upon him, the scent of aged paper and polished leather thick in the air. It reminded him of Darcy's study. "Greene and Iare digging in the north pasture. But I am afraid I lack the expertise, or it is a matter of geological stubbornness."
"Geological stubbornness." Mr Bennet flashed a crooked smile. "An admirable phrase. It describes a considerable portion of the local populace. Do sit, Mr Bingley. You appear to have emerged from a campaign against a particularly tenacious clod of earth."
Charles lowered himself into the opposite chair. The leather seemed to bond at once with his still-damp breeches. July heat seeped through the windowpanes, and he felt, more acutely than anything, the urgent need to demonstrate that he was no longer the pliable weathercock of the previous year.
"I have come to request your assistance, sir," he blurted.
Mr Bennet's eyebrows shot up in question. "My assistance? I am a man of books and sarcasm, Mr Bingley. I am hardly equipped for manual labour. If you require aid with digging, I recommend a fellow with fewer opinions and a sturdy shovel."
"It is not the shovel I seek. I have labourers aplenty," Charles answered. "It is the expertise. Greene informs me that Longbourn successfully drained the valley field a decade ago. He claims the plans were yours. I wish to examine them, to understand how you overcame the silt."
Mr Bennet leaned back, his eyes narrowing. He studied Charles: the residual mud on his boots, the faint sheen of sweat on his brow, the unaccustomed resolve in his posture. He searched for the familiar vacancy, the eager puppyhood of the prior autumn, and discovered instead a new gravity, a weight that had not existed before.
"The silt," Mr Bennet murmured. "You wish to discuss silt. In the midst of a July heatwave, when a gentleman of yourfortune might be in Brighton, sampling costly wines and avoiding the indignities of the countryside."
"I have found the reality of soil considerably more compelling than the realities of the Pump Room," Charles replied.
"Is that so?" Mr Bennet emitted a short, arid chuckle. "A revolutionary sentiment indeed. I suppose next you will declare an admiration for the internal structure of a turnip."
"I hold turnips in the highest respect," Charles said, the image of Mary Bennet rising unbidden in his mind.
Mr Bennet stilled.
He regarded Charles for a long, measuring moment. The silence in the study acquired tangible presence, broken only by the measured ticking of the mantel clock and the distant, muffled crescendo of Mrs Bennet lamenting her nerves in the drawing room.
"Assistance," Mr Bennet said at length. "You seek assistance from the very man whose household you transformed into a lamentation factory for half a year."
Mr Bennet reached for his port. He took a slow, deliberate sip, his gaze never departing from Charles's face. The earlier amusement had vanished, replaced by a keen, dissecting edge, fully prepared to enjoy the careful evisceration of an intriguing specimen.
"Tell me, Mr Bingley," he began, his tone deceptively conversational, "why should I extend aid to a gentleman who has wrought such exquisite disorder upon my domestic tranquillity?"
Charles felt a prickle of unease along his spine. "I... do not quite follow, sir."
"Do you not? The arithmetic is elementary. You arrived at Netherfield. You danced. You smiled. You issued promises with your eyes that your resolve proved unable to honour. And then you departed." Mr Bennet gestured vaguely towards the door. "The ensuing chaos, forgive me, the ensuing disorder, has been prodigious. I have endured months of Mrs Bennet's nerves. I have heard the name 'Bingley' invoked more frequently than my own. I have resided in a house whose chief manufacture was sighs and whose primary consumption was lavender water."
Charles studied his hands, clasped tightly in his lap. "I am acutely aware of the distress I caused."
"Distress in my daughter's heart, perhaps," Mr Bennet continued. "But more pertinently, distress in my own ears. I prize my silence, Mr Bingley. I regard this study as a bulwark against the emotional theatrics of the world. You breached that bulwark. You delivered the campaign directly to my desk."
"I did not intend—"
"Intentions are the indulgence of the shallow," Mr Bennet cut in smoothly. "Results are the currency of the deep. You departed. Jane suffered. Mrs Bennet lamented. And I was compelled to listen to every note of the symphony. Why should I assist a man who has demonstrated such mastery of the abrupt exit?"
The barb struck true. Charles felt its cold precision, the unflinching truth of his former vacillation. He saw himself reflected in Mr Bennet's eyes: a creature of caprice, likely to vanish once more the instant the clay grew too adhesive.
"I remain now. I am purchasing the estate," he said for the hundredth time, with a voice low yet unwavering.
"Purchasing it!" Mr Bennet's laugh emerged crisp. "An extravagant method of avoiding an awkward exchange! I suppose when one commands metropolitan fortunes, one may acquire an entire county merely to persuade the neighbourhood one possesses a soul."
Charles felt heat rise to his ears. The remark echoed Mrs Philips's earlier thrust, Hertfordshire's collective verdict, now cloaked in scholarly irony.
"I am not purchasing it to prove anything." Charles lifted his chin. "Only because I have discovered I belong here. I have learned that I am not solely a man of leisure, but a man of lasting commitment. I wish to render Netherfield prosperous. I wish to become a neighbour who contributes."
