Darcy gave a tired smile. “Miss Elizabeth would argue the sky is red in defence of a friend.”
“I see how it is! The sky is really blue, and she believed me guilty of caprice all along, eh? I suppose I must be grateful she defended me so loyally, regardless of my defect.”
“I should say you were served as well by her obstinacy as her loyalty.”
“Mayhap, but I prefer to think the loyalty was all for me and the obstinacy all for you.”
Darcy’s smile vanished. “What makes you think so?”
“What would make me think otherwise? I got on famously with Miss Elizabeth. The pair of you quarrelled incessantly.” If only her sister had been half as animated, Bingley would not be in his present fix. The thought drove off his smile as well and not even the inclusion of sweetmeats on the tray sent up from the kitchen could restore it.
Darcy did not want tea. He had come to redress the injury to his friend, only to be accused of a host of far worse offences, and he was in no humour for social niceties. He left it on the table and continued to watch his friend rake both hands through his hair, dismayed to be the cause of his evident distraction.
“It has been many months,” Bingley said glumly. “Think you Miss Bennet’s regard has endured?”
“If I could not tell that when in her company, you can hardly expect me to know it in her absence, but her sister certainly believes it has.”
“I should dearly like to see her.”
“Then perhaps you ought to return.”
Bingley looked up. “You think so?”
Darcy wished his friend looked less like he was asking permission. “She might not welcome your renewed attentions,” he said with a shrug, “but in that case, you would be at no greater disadvantage than you are now. And as long as you are at Netherfield, you will at least have the pleasant company of your neighbours.”
“Pleasant company?” Bingley scoffed. “You dismissed my neighbours as having little beauty and no fashion. How have they become pleasant to your mind?”
Darcy started. True, apart from Elizabeth, he had not found the company in Hertfordshire particularly inspiring. Indeed, he would admit to taking pains to avoid some of Bingley’s more tiresome neighbours, and there had been precious few he had not considered tiresome…
He clenched the arms of his chair. Never, ’til that moment, had he given the slightest credence to Elizabeth’s charge of conceited manners. “Was I uncivil to any of them?”
“Lord, no! A little aloof, perhaps. And, of course, incorrigibly argumentative with Miss Elizabeth.”
Darcy’s jaw began to ache from being clenched. “That is the second time you have alluded to antagonism between Miss Elizabeth and me. Actually, I found her company very pleasant indeed.”
“You did? Well, good! I am not surprised. She is a lovely girl, almost as pretty as her sister. Though she did not impress you at all, did she? What was it you said? Something along the lines of her being tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt you.”
“I said no such thing,” he replied, with the abysmal feeling of being wrong.
“Yes, you did—at that first assembly. I attempted an introduction, but you refused and made some remark about her being slighted by other men and it being a punishment to stand up with her or some such nonsense.”
Blood rushed in Darcy’s ears. “Pray, tell me nobody heard.”
“None but the lady herself!” Bingley said, chuckling as though this were not the most ruinous piece of news Darcy had received all year. “I hardly think she could have missed it. We stood not two yards away.”
Darcy surged to his feet. “I am taking Georgiana to Covent Garden in less than one hour. You will forgive me, but I must leave.”
He is here!
Elizabeth stared in alarm at the familiar silhouette. She had never thought to encounter him again. Certainly, naught could come of it but mortification on both sides. She turned to leave—too late, for he also turned, and their eyes met. She exhaled forcefully and stepped backwards, swaying slightly. It was not Mr Darcy after all.
The gentleman’s gaze brushed past hers to an older woman on his other side who could be heard berating him for being uncivil. Elizabeth smirked. Though the man’s features did not have the same definition as Mr Darcy’s, nor his expression any of the same intelligence, he exhibited all the same hauteur of rank, and she took a good deal ofsatisfaction in his set down. She strained to hear what excuse he gave in reply.
“Cara is barely a twelvemonth in her grave, and you would have me flirt with these women? I miss my wife, madam.”
She gasped and turned away.
“Lizzy?” her uncle enquired. “Are you well?”
