“We’d fallen into a conversation while I walked with Emily. There is nothing odd there. Or disreputable.”
Bingley grinned and raised his hands. “You are awfully quick to imagine that someone might imagine something disreputable.”
Darcy frowned.
“I of course imagined nothing disreputable, and I could not imagine anyone imagining anything disreputable.”
“Do not say anything, the reputation of a young lady can be fragile. And—”
“You are a devastated widower,” Bingley replied laughing. “Simply tell everyone that you spent the time talking about thelate Mrs. Darcy, and — good God. The deuce.” Bingley then continued in a quiet, serious voice, “I apologize. I should not have made sport. You were talking about Mrs. Darcy, I could see that from your start. And you have every right to still be unhappy. Mrs. Darcy was a kind woman, a good woman.”
“An angel.” Darcy stared out at the landscape and the slowly setting sun.
The chittering bird had fallen silent. The air was colder. The light was dying. It was late in Autumn. Winter cold was soon to be with them all.
But Emily was in her earliest Spring, and Darcy would cling to that thought.
“Speaking of angels, I think Mrs. Collins was the loveliest woman I’ve ever seen,” Bingley replied. “It’s a damned pity — Darcy, you cannot live your whole life thinking about Mrs. Darcy. Time heals. And… well… how might I say this… she is beneath what you might expect, but Miss Bennet likes you a great deal, and you clearly like her well enough. I’d say that—”
He fell quiet under Darcy’s fierce glare.
After a minute of silence, Bingley grinned once more and said, “Well, and now I have done what I have always known I ought never do, and proffered advice to you, and what is worse, advice which I knew you would not take kindly to. Do ignore what I have said, as I know you shall.”
“Do you think me so… incapable of listening to advice?”
“No one listens to advice they do not like. When I am asked for my opinion, I make a practice of agreeing with people if I consider them to be correct, and I say nothing when I do not.”
“I will not marry again,” Darcy said quietly. “I do not wish to. I have determined not to. And I shall explore no possibility, whether that chance be splendid or lowering.”
They went back to Netherfield, keeping the horses to a comfortable walk, and the two of them soon ended their silenceto chatter about the fineness of the land, the plans that had been set for hunting over the next few weeks, and Bingley announced that he’d determined to have a ball in another week or so. “And if you think it shall be a punishment rather than a pleasure, you may go to bed before it begins!”
Darcy grinned. “The true soul of hospitality.”
“And though I can’t stop you, I’d rather you not spend the whole night standing about in that stupid manner you did at the assembly ball.”
“You may depend on me dancing half the night. I am now acquainted with many persons in this neighbourhood, and so I might dance without it being a punishment.”
Bingley’s raised eye was quite sceptical. Then he grinned, and asked, “I take it you’ll ask Miss Bennet for the first two?” And then before Darcy could answer, Bingley whooped and hurried his horse off down the road.
Two days later, when Bingley and Darcy rode out into town to deliver the invitations to the ball, they discovered the Bennet sisters walking into town. Both Bingley and Darcy dismounted, with Bingley exclaiming as he did, and chiefly speaking to Mrs. Collins, “My dear friends, we were on the road to call upon you. That ball we talked of — the date is settled! Tuesday next. Here is the invitation.”
And Bingley pressed the envelope into the blushing hands of Mrs. Collins.
Darcy was aware of how he had been too assiduous of Elizabeth’s welfare of late, and he purposefully looked about the rest of the group before settling his eyes on her.
She smiled at him, with a rather worn look. And next to her stood a gentleman whose name Darcy could not recall, but who was one of the members of Lady Catherine’s neighbourhood, and who had been chiefly remarkable for being known as a brute to both his first and second wives.
Anger went through him at seeing the possessive way he hovered about Elizabeth.
The short, wiry, greying gentleman did not even attempt to hide his leering gaze at Elizabeth. Darcy hurried over and inclined his head to them. “Miss Bennet.”
“Mr. Darcy.” She smiled at him, a look of relief in her eyes. She gestured towards the other gentleman. “This is Mr. Sykes, a friend of my cousin.”
“We are acquainted,” Mr. Sykes said to Darcy. “Condolences on the loss of Mrs. Darcy, and all. But,” Mr. Sykes lowered his voice, “between you and me, and do not tell your aunt, she was such an ugly little thing that you must be happy to be rid of her.”
The only thing which made the production of such a statement understandable to Darcy, even given the man’s poor character, was the strong scent of brandy already present on the gentleman’s breath despite the early hour.
Darcy contemplated challenging him to a duel, and then he rejected the thought. There always was a danger when guns came out, and he would not risk leaving Emily an orphan.
