“Mama is my family, sir. You are a stranger.”
A stranger. That was all Darcy was to her. She had no idea of the stabbing pain those words brought him.
“I wonder why you did not send me away when I came to your assistance, since I am nothing but a stranger?”
“You may recall, Mr. Darcy, that Ididtry to discourage you, but you were most persistent.”
And he had stupidly believed he was doing her a good turn!
“So, you are telling me that while Mr. Bingley and I were running around trying to help you out, you were all laughing at us, secure in the knowledge that Mrs. Bennet was perfectly well.”
“Not laughing, sir. Never that. If you knew how much my conscience—”
“It mattered nothing to you that I took on the expense of sending a carriage for Mr. Bennet?”
She looked away. He was putting her to shame, and he wasgladof it. Let her feelsomething, even if it was nothing compared to the anguish he was experiencing.
He ignored the part of him that was aghast at his conduct.
“Papa will repay you. I will see to it.”
She was offering coin, adding insult to injury.
“I do not need your paltry money,” he answered in clipped tones, her words incensing him more. “You cannot buy your way out of this. You cannot ease your conscience – if it actually exists. How am I to believe anything you say. Do you even begin to understand the depth of your treachery?”
She was silent, her eyes averted, drawing a line in the ground with the point of her half-boot. He noticed that the tip of her boot was encrusted with mud. She was careless with everything, including her own clothes. Stupidly, he had found that carelessness appealing, an indication of her free spirit.
Her face was hidden in the shadow cast by her bonnet. It frustrated him not to see her expression and know what she was feeling. What if she was secretly laughing at him for being so easily duped?
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” he prompted, hoping to rile her up so she would say something. “Or are you so hardened in your practiced deception that you have encountered situations like this before?”
She looked up then, and her eyes flashing with the defiance Darcy had always admired. Even now, he was charmed by the fire in her eyes.
Hating himself for his weakness, he steeled his expression into the usual shield of arrogance he wore against the world.
“I do not know what you expect me to say, Mr. Darcy,” she said, in a quiet, thin voice. “The situation was not of my choosing. I could not expose Mama to ridicule after word began to spread of her illness.”
“Do you think I had not taken Mrs. Bennet’s measure already? She has made herself ridiculous from the very first day I encountered her.”
The tightening of her expression told him that he was going too far by insulting Mrs. Bennet, but he would not abandon his blunt manner of speaking to spare her feelings. Unlike Elizabeth Bennet, Darcy told the truth.
“If you had such a poor opinion of us,” she said, coldly, “then I am surprised you condescended to spend any time with us at all. You have confirmed what I suspected all along—that whenever you were lurking silently in the corners— which was most of the time—your sole intention was to find fault with us.”
When had he everlurkedin the corners? If he hadlurked, it had been because he had been foolhardy enough to harbor feelings for her. He was tempted to tell her so, to make her realize how much she had lost through her villainy, but he would not humiliate himself further.
Instead, he went on the attack.
“So it is for this—this utterly ridiculous reason—that we were compelled to stay at Netherfield instead of leaving for London as we planned?”
Her eyes widened. Darcy pressed on. Now that he knew what she was like, he had no scruples informing her some plain truths himself. If they were hurtful, then she only had herself to blame.
“Mr. Bingley and his sisters are planning to close up Netherfield for the winter and to stay in Town,” he said icily. “Mr. Bingley and I intended to leave the day after the ball. We were on the verge of doing so when Mrs. Bennet was taken sick.”
The Longbourn ladies would discover now that their machinations had failed. He would ensure that Bingley escaped the trap they had set to ensnare him.
“Indeed?” She raised her brow. “I am sorry to hear the events of the last few days have inconvenienced you. Do you intend to stay long in town?”
Her voice had a hard edge to it.
