“Hell’s bells, Darcy, what in blazes does it say in that letter?”
He looked up to meet Fitzwilliam’s troubled gaze. “I will kill him.”
He thrust the letter at his cousin and turned in mute rage to slam both hands down on his desk. The nearest candlestick skittered sideways, its flame guttering. There he stayed, forcing air in and out of his nose. He could not speak. There were no words to express what he felt and no way of unpicking the knot of deception such a letter presented. The bastard was there now with Elizabeth!
He shoved himself away from the desk and stalked across the room. There was not enough space to contain his savage indignation. The sheer audacity of Bingley taking up in his house, dining at his table, conversing, joking, playing cards, dancing with Elizabeth—all the while wishing she were his! It was a worse betrayal than Wickham’s, who at least had done him the courtesy of being furtive.
Behind him, Fitzwilliam let out a long, low whistle. Darcy whirled about, having almost forgotten he was there. “A whistle?” he challenged, barely able to contain his fury. “The discovery that my brother by law, who has been one of my closest friends for above ten years and who is presently at my house under orders to safeguard my wife from harm, has in truth coveted her since before we wed draws naught more from you than a puerile whistle?”
“Untwist your ballocks, Darcy. I do not make light of it. It is objectionable in every way. Yet, it is evidently drunken prattle written, if I am not mistaken, before he knew of your attachment to her.”
“I care not when he wrote the damned thing. He is in love with my wife!”
Fitzwilliam flicked the letter straight and ran his eyes over it again, shaking his head. “Nay, it says nothing of love in here. ’Tis naught but sot’s ardour. I daresay Bingley has lusted after ’most every woman of his acquaintance at some point or another in his cups. He no doubt forgot the sentiment as soon as his head cleared.”
Darcy wished with all his being that were true, yet foreboding had pursued him all the way from Kent, and it would not be so easily satisfied.
“Indeed, he must have,” Fitzwilliam insisted, “for it was her sister he married.”
“He did not intend to.” Icy tendrils of alarm knifed through Darcy’s gut. “Jane threw herself at him and contrived to be discovered. He had no choice.”
Fitzwilliam squeezed his eyes closed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are you certain? I cannot imagine why a woman such as Jane Bingley should need to entrap a husband.”
Jane’s pitiful objection last Wednesday rang in Darcy’s mind:He does not esteem me!“She must have known he meant to offer for Elizabeth.”
“There is no evidence of that beyond these few impolitic ramblings,” Fitzwilliam said, gesturing at him with Bingley’s letter, but Darcy’s mind was already far beyond that point.
“He all but admitted it the night before the wedding,” he muttered incredulously. “How could I have forgotten? He drank himself into oblivion and came to me complaining that he doubted his affection for Jane.”
“Perhaps he was merely nervous of marriage.”
“That is as I assumed at the time.” He sneered bitterly. “No wonder he claimed he could not speak of it with me.”
His cousin made a dismissive noise and stalked to the sideboard, slapping the letter into his chest as he passed him. “This is all too tenuous for my liking, Darcy. You are too apt to see the worst in every situation. Besides,” he said as he refilled his glass, “Bingley is hardly the most discreet of men. Were he enamoured of Elizabeth, more people than Jane would have seen it.”
Such a comment was guaranteed to send Darcy’s mind whirling off into the annals of his memory, searching for evidence of just that. Regrettably, he found it.
“Mr Bingley is at Longbourn, sir, mourning the loss of Miss Eliza.”
Even the damned butler had known it!
“True to form, gentlemen! One has his bird in the bag afore the other has decided which to aim for.”
Facetiousness had masked that speaker’s better knowledge admirably, but retrospection stripped all such allusions bare. “Bennet knew,” he said with utter, sickening conviction.
“And pray, what sudden penetration that was not previously in your power has led you to this unhappy conclusion?”
“Retrospect is a pitiless exponent, Fitzwilliam,” he retorted, in no humour to be persistently gainsaid. “When I sought his permission forElizabeth’s hand, Bennet remarked that had I offered sooner, I might have saved Bingley weeks of indecision.”
“So Bingley dithered about a bit? It is not unreasonable to think he was uncertain of his reception, having abandoned the lady once already.”
Darcy clenched his teeth. Each of Fitzwilliam’s objections was sound, yet he could not share his sanguinity. Too many unexplained anomalies were piecing together, though God knew he wished they would contrive to make a different picture. “I asked him recently why he continued visiting Longbourn after he had decided against Jane.”
“And? What reason did he give?”
“Elizabeth.”
“What, just that?”
