But now, he had a duty to perform. He had promised her he would meet Bingley. He had offered to convey her regards.It was a penance, a way to atone for the Great Interference of November.
"Darcy! There you are!"
Charles Bingley bounded into the room with the energy of a Newfoundland who had just been promised a walk. He looked healthy. He looked rested. He looked, to Darcy's immense confusion, entirely cheerful.
"Bingley," Darcy said, standing to shake his hand. He searched his friend's face for signs of the devastation he had assumed was there. Hollow cheeks? Dark circles? A tendency to sigh at the moon?
There were none. Bingley's cravat was tied with intricate perfection, his coat was new, and his eyes were bright.
"Good to see you, old chap!" Bingley beamed, signalling a waiter for his drink. "I feel like I haven't seen you in an age, though I suppose it has only been a few days. London is frantic this time of year, simply frantic."
"Indeed," Darcy said, resuming his seat. "I trust you have been well? Since we left Netherfield?"
Bingley's face fell for precisely three seconds. It was a practiced melancholy. "Oh, Darcy, it was dreadful at first. Truly dreadful. I was quite low. Caroline was worried about my constitution. I spent the first week doing nothing but staring out the window and thinking of Hertfordshire."
"I am sorry to hear that," Darcy said, guilt twisting in his gut.
"But then," Bingley brightened immediately, "Hurst insisted I join him at the theatre, and then Lady Jersey sent a card for her ball, and well... one cannot be rude to Lady Jersey.And the air in London is so bracing in December, don't you think?"
Darcy stared at him. "Bracing. Yes."
"And the company! I tell you, Darcy, I had forgotten how lively town can be. Why, just last Tuesday, at the impromptu dance at the Daventrys', I realized how much I had missed the sophistication of the capital."
Darcy took a slow sip of his port. This was not the conversation he had rehearsed. He had rehearsed comforting a broken man. He had rehearsed carefully navigating the subject of Jane Bennet to a friend who was pining for her.
He had not rehearsed listening to Charles Bingley discuss the merits of the Daventrys' punch.
"So," Darcy said carefully, "you are recovered? From your disappointment?"
"Recovered? Well, I suppose the heart is a resilient organ," Bingley said philosophically, swirling his wine. "One must carry on. And really, it was for the best, was it not? You said yourself she was indifferent. And Caroline agreed. It would have been foolish to pursue a connection where the affection was one-sided."
"Yes," Darcy murmured. "That is what I said."
"And you are always right, Darcy. That is the annoying thing about you." Bingley laughed. "Imagine if I had stayed! I might have made a fool of myself over a country girl who didn't care a fig for me, and missed out on..." He paused, a dreamy look entering his eyes. "Well, everything else."
Darcy felt a chill that had nothing to do with the snow outside. "Everythingelse?"
"Oh, just life! Society! The season!" Bingley waved a hand. "I tell you, Darcy, I am ready for the new year. No more looking back. That is my resolution."
The conversation meandered for a while—politics, the price of horses, the scandal involving Lord Byron—before Bingley circled back to his social calendar.
"You really must come out more, Darcy," Bingley chided gently. "You are turning into a hermit. Why, at the masquerade last week, everyone was asking for you."
"I find masquerades tedious. It is a room full of people pretending to be someone else, usually badly."
"You are such a cynic. It was magnificent. The costumes! The music! And the ladies..." Bingley sighed, a sound of pure contentment. "I must tell you, Darcy, I saw the most beautiful creature I have ever beheld in my life."
Darcy froze. His glass hovered halfway to his mouth.
"The most beautiful creature?" Darcy repeated.
"An angel," Bingley confirmed, his eyes wide with sincerity. "Miss Ellington. She was dressed as a shepherdess. Or a Greek muse? I am not certain, there was a lot of chiffon. But she smiled at me, Darcy, and I swear, I forgot my own name."
Darcy set his glass down very carefully. The words echoed in his head, bouncing off the walls of memory.
She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld!
Bingley had said that about Jane Bennet. Standing in the Meryton assembly rooms, sweating in his evening clothes, he had pointed at Jane and declared her the apex of female perfection. He had been ready to lay his heart, his fortune, and his life at her feet.
