"No, it was not Mr. Darcy."
"Who then?"
Jane shook her head.
"I explained my predicament now you must reciprocate. You promised."
Again she shook her head.
"Jane," I urged, "If I am to believe D—You Know Who—is not the primary villain in this tale you must tell me who is."
"There is no villain, Lizzy. It is all just a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding on my part. I wanted to believe Mr. Bingley cared for me, but I was wrong."
I sighed again very audibly this time. "You were not wrong. Nowtell me who."
"Miss Bingley sent me a letter after they left Netherfield."
Miss Bingley, of course. I stared at Jane expectantly, silently urging her to continue.
"She told me—well, she just implied really—that Mr. Bingley would soon be engaged to Miss Georgiana Darcy."
I gasped. It was such an outrageous falsehood. "And you believed her?"
"I did not, that is to say I did notdisbelieve her, but I thought perhaps, in her enthusiasm to have a closer connection to a friend she so greatly admired, she had imagined a deeper friendship between her brother and Miss Darcy than was truly present. I felt she must be mistaken because it had seemed as though Mr. Bingley had singled me out—"
"He had."
"—and he would not have done so if his affections were already engaged."
"Exactly."
"But her words put me on my guard. I was determined to observe objectively Mr. Bingley's behavior to myself as well as to Miss Darcy. And what I found was . . . what I found—oh, Lizzy I am so embarrassed, I must have seemed so ridiculous, so conceited to everyone in Meryton. But I had thought—I had so believed he cared for me."
Unable to stop myself I exploded,"He does care for you!" It was with great self-control I kept from adding, "you ridiculous goose."
"I know that is what you want to believe because you want me to be happy."
I can now concur with what Belinda told me just yesterday; elder sisters are exhausting.
"It is not a matter of what I want to believe, it is what is actually the truth. Bingley cares for you. From what I can see he has the exact amount of affection for Georgiana that any gentleman would have for the much younger sister of a friend—a detached, cautiousregard. His manner toward her conveys the utmost respect, but nothing more."
Jane was already shaking her head before I had finished. "What about last Tuesday?" she asked.
My social calendar was so full I could barely remember what I did yesterday much less last Tuesday.
"I recall nothing significant about Tuesday and if Mr. Bingley had declared his undying love for Georgiana you would think I would remember."
"We went to the museum," Jane said, ignoring my sarcasm.
"Yes, we went to the museum." I wanted to add, "Where Bingley attentively guided you around, for the most part ignoring the rest of us," but I am certain she would have found some way to dismiss this fact in her determination to ruin her own happiness.
"Mr. Bingley was very insistent that Miss Darcy come with us, if you will remember."
If this was her evidence of Bingley's secrettendreI really was going to have to throw something at her.
"Yes, he was," I agreed, casually reaching for my now empty breakfast plate. The plate was light enough not to cause any permanent injury, but significant enough to jolt her out of this idiocy. Who am I kidding? It would probably bounce right off her head, everything else seemed to.
I waited for her to elaborate. People must be given every chance to come to their senses before one starts chucking plates at them. A precipitously tossed plate is the portent of the end of a civilized society.
