Page 84 of A Prudent Engagement

Darcy replied, “I can both appreciate the view and congratulate my friend and my future sister. My sincerest felicitations. Bingley, I am delighted, truly and deeply delighted. Jane, I hope you will be very happy.”

“You do not resent me,” Elizabeth’s sister asked, “for what I told you? I must—I was mistaken in matters of importance.”

“You were, but I have already been corrected by one more central to the matter.”

“Do you mean…?” Jane exclaimed, looking between Darcy and Elizabeth. “Lizzy, do tell me that matters are repaired.”

“Quite,” Elizabeth said. “Though I do not know whether I like the metaphor of repair. Rather, we have removed a necessary obstacle while laying the foundation for a house.”

Mr. Bingley now offered Darcy his congratulations. “So the broken engagement is no longer broken?”

Darcy nodded.

“Then do you forgive me?” Jane asked Darcy.

“Yes—I mean to say I think well of you and hold no injured feelings nor ill will. You said what you believed to be true and you spoke from a good heart.”

Jane accepted Darcy’s hand, and the two of them shook as friends.

It made Elizabeth realise that until then there had always been a cautiousness in how Darcy treated Jane, and she thought it was because of his consciousness in his role in separating her from Mr. Bingley.

“Everyone,” Elizabeth said, “we must admire the prospect. It is my favourite view in the countryside.”

“An excellent view, but we have been admiring it this half hour whilst you two dawdled.” Mr. Bingley grinned at Elizabeth. “I do not ask, you note, with what you occupied yourselves on the road.”

“I thank you for not asking,” Elizabeth replied.

“I imagine that it may have been similar to the manner in which Jane and I occupied ourselves.”

Jane sat, cheeks glowing, eyes smiling. It made Elizabeth happy to see her sister so full of joy.

“You may imagine what you wish,” Darcy said as he made a show of seriously studying the view.

If Elizabeth had the opportunity, she would commission a famed portrait artist to paint Darcy looking out over the great countryside from a hill.

He was the very image of the confident English gentleman.

Then his eye was drawn to hers, and seeing her watching him, he smiled, almost boyishly, and the dramatic effect was ruined, but Elizabeth did not mind.

When they returned from their long walk, Mrs. Bennet extracted a promise from Mr. Bingley to come to dinner the next day, with an apology for how the scope of the meal would be limited due to their reduced funds.

Mr. Bingley was quite understanding on the point, and then with solemn bows he and Darcy departed for the evening.

As soon as the gentlemen had left, their mother was all eagerness to know whether they had both come to the point and were now engaged.

Jane did blush, as a newly engaged woman ought to. But she seemed to find her mother’s delight uncomfortable. “He did return, and he has satisfied me upon every point of concern I had. But I assure you, I am marrying him out of affection.”

“Well of course! Why else would you marry?” her mama replied. “And he is very rich. Two girls marrying so well! And Lizzy, I am so happy that you are reconciled with Mr. Darcy. Mr. Bingley, as much as I like him, is nothing to Mr. Darcy.”

Jane wore quite a frustrated expression. “Our characters are congruent—I always knew that about Bingley. Even the details of his failure to offer earlier show that.”

“Well of course, just like me and Mr. Bennet were. Oh, if only he could see our present happiness.”

Jane sat to the side and said very little for the remainder of the evening, only replying briefly and without information to her mother’s enquiry about what she thought Mr. Bingley might like to eat when he came to dine the next day.

They had scarcely gone upstairs and dressed for sleep when Elizabeth walked over to her sister’s door and tapped softly upon it.

She felt anxiety at this—Elizabeth’s occasional sense of anger towards Jane had not wholly disappeared until she was secure once more in Mr. Darcy’s regard.