Bingley studied him for a moment longer than politeness required. “You are avoiding something.”
Darcy’s mouth curved into something that was not quite a smile. “I am prioritizing.”
“Then allow me to be plain,” Bingley said. “You are in no condition to inspect anything else tonight, and you are certainly in no condition to collapse in a hallway because you refuse to admit you are ill.”
“I am not—”
“Darcy,” Bingley interrupted gently, “may I have a word?”
The request landed with quiet finality. Darcy considered refusal—and found he lacked the strength to sustain it.
He turned instead and opened the door to his study, gesturing Bingley inside. Then he closed the door behind them. “What is it you wish to say?”
Bingley did not speak at once. He came to stand near the desk, hands clasped behind his back as though unsure what to do with them, his expression carefully arranged into something that might pass for ease if one did not look too closely.
“At the risk of being indelicate,” he began, and stopped. Shifted his weight. Tried again. “Is there some… attachment between you and Miss Elizabeth Bennet that I ought to be made aware of?”
Darcy did not answer immediately. He moved instead to the edge of the desk and set his hand upon it, fingers splayed, as though the solid wood might anchor a thought that had begun to slip.
“I do not know what you mean.”
Bingley winced. “Darcy.”
“There is no attachment,” Darcy said, evenly. “Certainly, none that concerns you.”
Bingley drew a breath through his nose. “Then you must forgive me for being very nearly convinced otherwise.”
Darcy lifted his head.
Bingley met his gaze squarely now, the discomfort he had worn so carefully set aside. “I found you together in the library tonight. Alone. Long after the house had gone to bed. Miss Elizabeth was not dressed for company, and you—” he hesitated. “You looked scarcely able tostand.”
“That proves nothing.”
“It proves more than nothing,” Bingley said quietly. “It proves intimacy. Or at least the appearance of it.”
Darcy’s jaw tightened. He said nothing.
“And that is not all,” Bingley went on, emboldened by the silence. “At the Netherfield ball, I watched you speak together through the whole supper. Why, you entirely ignored your tablemates. You were not bored. You were not quarrelling. You were… engaged. Happily so, it seemed, until some altercation. Whatever passed between you ended badly enough that you left Hertfordshire the next morning without explanation.”
Darcy turned away.
Bingley followed him with his eyes. “When Miss Elizabeth collapsed in the fields and came to us to recover, one of the maids mentioned—quite by accident—that she had seen the two of you together on the servants’ stair, late at night. I dismissed it at the time as confusion or fancy.” He paused. “I am less certain of that now.”
Darcy’s hand curled against the edge of the desk. He loosened it again by force.
“And then,” Bingley added, more gently, “there is her illness. I do not believe she pretended. Caroline’s insinuations are ungenerous, and I told her so. Miss Elizabethwasunwell. That much was evident. But she is not unwell now. Not even a little.”
Darcy closed his eyes.
The room felt smaller with them shut. He opened them again at once.
“You see the difficulty,” Bingley said. “I am not accusing you. I am asking you—how am I to understand any of this?”
Darcy drew a slow breath. It did not go as deep as he wished.
He could dismiss it all as rumour. He could call it coincidence, misinterpretation, the natural consequence of nerves and proximity. He could even—if pressed—confess to some brief, ill-considered folly and insist the matter was ended. Forgotten. He could urge Bingley to remove the Bennets at once, to carry Elizabeth as far from London as possible, and leave him to recover in peace.
But he knew, with a clarity that admitted no evasion, that none of that would serve.
