“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, because you’re not. You’re… that.” He gestured at me, making a face. “Really, Darcy, must you be so tall and so broad-shouldered and so very rich? Could you not have a flaw of some kind?”
I had nothing to say to that either. I sipped at my brandy instead, glaring at him.
“Anyway, you know, she was in a great deal of pain on that day, and she refused the laudanum, and she may have changed her mind since then, that is all. You were trapped with her in a house overnight. Did you two simply quarrel the entire time?”
“Sort of,” I said. “Actually, I said awful things to her at one point. I said that I could easily say I had compromised her, and that it would not matter what she said otherwise, that I could force her hand if I wished.”
“Oh, because you do not wish to marry her,” said Bingley into his own brandy, rather sarcastic.
“It does not matter what I wish!” I protested. “Anyway, I did not mean it, but she was quite appalled and said she would not marry me if I were the last man alive or something of that nature, and I shall not be the man that does that, that does what I said I would do, that forces her into a marriage!”
“So, you will instead be the man who forces her family into ruin, who prevents the happiness of every single one of her sisters, because no one will marry into a family like that, and will ensure they are all turned out when Mr. Collins inherits and—”
“All right,” I said. “That’s enough.”
“I’m only saying, if it’s about being honorable, Darcy, you—”
“Yes,all right, I said.” I got up from the chair where I had been sitting. I looked into the fire. “All right. You have made your point. It is well taken. I shall go and speak to her in the morning.”
“You will?” Bingley stood up, too, quite surprised. “That is all it took. Well, why am I surprised? I should have made it about honor to begin with, should have made it about whatever is expected of you.”
I looked over my shoulder at him, a bit wounded.
“You have an odd sense of honor, though, I may say,” said Bingley. “One that is less concerned with people’s actual feelings or with actual harm and instead concerned with appearances.”
I turned away and said nothing to that either.
“Well, that is, Darcy… I repent of saying that,” said Bingley. “I should not have been so forward with you, really. It is not my place, and I—”
“Stop it,” I said. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re rather spineless?” I turned to him.
He drew back.
I shrugged. “Since we’re trading insults, are we?”
“I didn’t mean to—” He broke off and licked his lips. “Yes, fine. You are an insufferable prig and I am spineless. And all it takes to break us of these things are those Bennet women.”
I looked back into the fire.
“She changes me, Darcy, you see? She makes me… herentirefamily’s reputation is in danger. How can I stay silent?”
CHAPTER TEN
So, I did not quit Netherfield.
I stayed for dinner, and I sat up that evening composing letters to members of my family explaining why I must marry Elizabeth Bennet. But I could not make any of them work. I kept crumpling them up and throwing them into the fire, and then beginning again, and eventually, I was yawning too much to make any sense of what I was trying to say, and I gave up on the entire business and went to sleep.
I woke in the morning and dithered about.
At first, I told myself it was far too early to go and disturb the family in that way, and then I told myself I must finish my letters first. I sat down at my desk and gazed down at the blank page, but I was even less capable of composing anything now than I had been last night.
Eventually, around ten o’clock, I rode my horse to Longbourn, the Bennet house, where I had never been.
The house was small but stately, rising up out of a neatly tended garden, with a cobblestone drive running in a half-circle round the front of the house. Longbourn itself stood silent and still against me as I tied off my horse and made my way to the front door.
A servant greeted me and visibly started when she heard my name. “Oh, yes,” she said in a different voice. “Mr. Darcy, then. Well, wait here, sir.”
