I caught up to him, hunching into my jacket. “I have treated you ill, I think,” I said.
He glanced at me sharply.
“I do not have much to say for myself. It has very little to do with you, truly. Something happened this summer before I metyou. It involved that man who was loitering about in Meryton, the one who gave me that awful grin—”
“Oh, it was him,” interrupted Bingley, halting his movement to look at me. “I wondered about that. He is with the regiment, I understand. An officer taking over someone’s commission.”
I stopped walking too, but it was cold, and I did not wish to explain that entire situation to Bingley. It was not that I did not trust him, not exactly. However, I could not go around telling my personal business to everyone. It was quite mad I’d confessed it all to Elizabeth Bennet, now that I thought about it. She had promised not to tell anyone, but did I believe her? “I cannot go into all the particulars, I am afraid, but know that I am sorry for, well, a number of things, the way I have latched onto you and followed you all over, and the way I have spoken to you on occasion, and the way I have, perhaps wrongly, assumed your intentions have been untoward, when it has been my own.”
He was confused. “What are you going on about?”
“Nothing,” I said with a sigh. “No, never mind all of this. I shall be going, though, and I shan’t be your concern any longer.”
He wavered for a moment. “If you don’t mind, Darcy—” Then, he broke off and shook his head. “No, no. What am I saying? Off with you, then, I suppose. What else am I to say?” He sighed.
I furrowed my brow. “Do you have something you wish to say?”
He jammed his hands into the pockets of his trousers and looked at the ground and shook his head.
“You clearly do,” I said. “Well, not out here. Let us go in to your study and talk.”
“I would not wish to inconvenience your hasty exit,” he said, a bit of heat to his tone.
“Is it involved, what you have to say?”
He sighed again. “Never mind it. You will go. We shall no longer be each other’s concern. None of this will be your concern. You can gallop off and leave everyone to pick up the pieces. It is what men like you do, I suppose.”
“Men like me?” I said. “No, let us talk. If we have things to say, let us have them out. If it festers, it will only turn everything sour.”
He considered and then gave me a curt nod.
We went back inside and went together to his study.
He sat down in front of the fire, and I sat down, too. Now, I felt a bit apprehensive. I had never seen Bingley upset before, I had to say.
But he didn’t say anything. He poured himself some brandy, and he offered me some, and I didn’t think I should be riding horseback after drinking brandy, but perhaps I was going to have to put off my departure until the morning, and so I acquiesced.
Then, we sipped and stared into the fire, and he was still silent.
“What have I done?” I finally said. “Is this about your sister, about Miss Bingley?”
He turned to me. “No. Why, is there something I need to know about that?”
“I don’t think so. She spoke to me earlier, and…” I cleared my throat. “You are agitated about something.”
“I’magitated,” he scoffed. “What about you, running off in a hurry, to leave everything behind?”
“Bingley, if you have nothing to say, then why are we seated here together?”
“I don’t suppose it will matter,” he said. “But what you have done to that family, I do not think you have any sense of it. And perhaps it does not matter at all, and perhaps Miss Elizabeth was going to get herself into some scrape or other anyway, runningabout with her skirts six inches caked in mud, but Miss Bennet, Miss Jane, she does not deserve it, and neither do the rest of them, I have to say. No matter what they are, they are all quite agreeable, and you have done them a bad turn.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “What bad turn?”
“Well, they are all ruined, are they not?” he said. “That Collins had come to marry one of the sisters, but now he has heard the rumors, and he will inherit Longbourn after Mr. Bennet’s passing—”
“Wait, that man is Mr. Bennet’s heir?” I said.
“Aye,” said Bingley. “He sent a letter ahead of himself, saying that he intended to make the Bennet sisters ‘every possible amends’ or something of that nature. He clearly intended to marry one of them, but he has not done so, not since hearing all about Miss Bennet’s situation.”
