“Yes!” he said pitifully. “I ran into her the first time just after Christmas, completely by chance. It was excruciating, and we both did an excellent job of pretending nothing had happened. But that was when I met Juliette.” He cleared his throat. “That is, Mrs Randall.”
Darcy made no reply, and Bingley stammered over the next bit of the story.
“It was she who arranged the meeting in Gunter’s. Mrs Bennet asked to see me. It turns out she wished to apologise for what happened. She blamed herself.”
“I hope you corrected her!”
“In a manner of speaking, although…shewascoming on mightily strong?—”
“You should have walked away.”
“I know! I was just so dashed fed up with being a failure with the opposite sex. I had barely recovered from Miss Coltrane’s rejection before I met Miss Bennet—and I thought she did not want me either. You have no idea what it is like, Darcy. No one in their right mind would refuse you, but trust me, it hurts like blazes.”
“I know better than you think, but the solution is not…what you did.”
“No,” Bingley said dejectedly. “No, it is not. I saw her but once more after that, and only then to conduct the meeting that you prevented from taking place at Gunter’s. We talked, webothapologised, and we parted ways. That is all. Indeed, I almost ran into her again on Bond Street yesterday and went out of my way to avoid her notice.”
“She is still in town?” Darcy asked stupidly, for evidently she was. He felt it like a tangible blow when Bingley nodded. The only thing that had kept Elizabeth in London, tolerating theton’sgossip for so long, was her object of finding her mother and persuading her to return home. If she had left for Kent without resolving the matter, he could conclude but one thing: she had decided that being talked into marriage with him was a worse fate than her family’s scandalous downfall.
“But I give you my word, I have not pursued the acquaintance beyond those few meetings,” Bingley went on. “If I have seemed to be in the same places as her, it is probably because I have been with her friend.”
Darcy sipped his drink morosely. “And what of Mrs Randall?”
Bingley shrugged. “She is fun—and unattached. I have made so many mistakes, you must agree it is safest for me to avoid innocent young women.”
“It would be safest to exercise some self-control—and I hate to break it to you, but she is not unattached. She is under the protection of a man with three times your fortune and some very influential friends.”
“I know, but she was not when I first met her. Mr Redbridge is a recent acquirement.”
“That does not seem to have put you off, if your activities at the Four Feathers are any indication.”
“That was a final farewell,” Bingley mumbled sheepishly. “I have no plans to see her again. But you must admit, if it were not for Mrs Bennet, you would scarcely have raised an eyebrow at my acquaintance with Mrs Randall. I have been discreet. If you had not been looking for me, you would never have even known that I was seeing her.”
Darcy regarded Bingley steadily, unable to counter his argument, despite how much he wished to.
Bingley wilted in the face of his silence. “I beg your pardon. I keep venting my spleen at you, when it is I who am in the wrong. I am too used to depending on your judgment—it makes me feel your disapprobation more keenly. Nobody likes to think of themselves as a disappointment. It is making me captious, and I apologise.”
Darcy shook his head. “You are not the first person to point out your reliance upon my judgment. You should not have to answer to me for your actions. I will nevercondoneyour conduct at Netherfield, but it is not for me to judge. That is for the Bennets alone to do.”
Bingley sucked in a deep breath, his expression repentant and glum. “I may still call you a friend, then?”
Darcy was vastly relieved to have discovered that Bingley was not the cur he had feared, sneaking about with a married woman; he was still the same man he had always been, and his act of adultery, whilst no less egregious, remained in the singular. Yet there were other considerations.
“I should like to say yes, for ten years of friendship ought to count for something. But if I have my way, my future wife is unlikely to be so forgiving.”
Bingley sat up a little straighter in his chair. “Miss Elizabeth? I thought you said you were not attached?”
“We are not—and it is looking less likely by the moment that we ever shall be. But I am not ready to give up on her yet.”
“Gads, Darcy. I really have given you some bother, have I not?”
He had indeed, although it was also true that, had Darcy not been required to chase Bingley about town, he would not have been thrown together so frequently with Elizabeth and would never have come to understand that he loved her. For that alone, he could forgive Bingley a great deal.
“Yes, you have,” he replied. “But if I am ever fortunate enough to win Miss Elizabeth’s hand, I shall be in a good humour for the rest of my life, so you never know—I might be persuaded to recognise you again in ten or twenty years.”
Bingley gave a small, grateful smile. “If only at the club, eh?”
Darcy inclined his head. “Only at the club.” He knew not how he was ever to bring it about, but if he were to make Elizabeth his wife, then Berkeley Square, and Pemberley especially, would be for her above all others.
