Bingley searched my gaze. “Yes.”
I considered. Could I go along with that? Would it be easier for all of us, in the end?
“And if you were to go and start spreading rumors, Darcy, you must realize it would have repercussions far beyond simply tarring me, it would affect Louisa and her husband and Caroline’s prospects, and if you mentioned James by name, it could ruin him as well. So, of course, I am denying it. And I need to know that you are not going to go telling vicious lies about me.”
I let out a breath. I was not sure what to say. I started to walk. “I know of it, obviously. I have heard about this. I know about those houses in London for whatever you call yourself, molls or mollies or—”
“Darcy,” he said, falling into step with me. “All of that is mad.”
I glanced sidelong at him.
His face fell.
“If you’re going to keep denying it, I don’t know how it is you expect to speak about it,” I said.
“I have no recourse but to deny it,” he said.
I sighed. It was silent as we walked.
“You’re worried,” he said, finally, clearing his throat. “I would never touch you. I know you wouldn’t welcome it, and I don’t even think of you in that way.”
I was not sure I believed him. I remembered his hand patting my chest before the ball. I remembered too many times that he had smiled at me in such a way. I walked a bit faster. “I think you do think of me in that way, actually. I can tell.”
“No,” he said. “No, I swear to you.”
“But I believe you when you say you would not do something I didn’t welcome,” I said. “In all my time with you, you’ve never given me reason to suspect otherwise.”
He let out a very relieved breath. “All right, thank God in heaven, you are being much more reasonable about this than most people.”
I was not sure how I felt about that either. “You wish me to keep your secret, and I suppose I can do that. Not if pressed or something, though, you understand? If someone comes to me and there’s some story of your having corrupted some youth—”
“I don’t corrupt anyone, Darcy,” he said. “Lord, you must see it yourself. Men cannot be convinced to try such a thing if they don’t already have the inclination.”
I supposed that was true enough. I considered as we walked. “Still, even so, if I find you are harming anyone at all, I will be forced to speak up.”
“Well, I do not harm people.”
“And… and Bingley, it is simply unnatural.”
He did not say anything.
“And I wish you to stop…” I looked at him and then I did not finish my sentence, because perhaps that was not a thing in a person’s power. “Stop communicating it to me, I suppose, even if you cannot help feeling whatever you feel.”
“Communicating what to you?”
“Don’t look at me in that way you look at me,” I said. “Ever again.”
He scoffed. “Darcy, I am not drawn to you.”
I wasn’t going to press the point. He could say whatever he liked. “And it goes without saying that I must leave immediately.”
“If it must be in a rush, because you cannot bear to be under the same roof as me, with all my unnatural tendencies,” he said, “then I beg you to make some other excuse, something like an emergency within the family. I shall support your tale that a servant came to us in the wood this morning as we walked, all right? Will you do that for me, at least?”
Odd that he had come, just then, to such a similar excuse for my leaving as I had already thought of. “Yes, all right,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “And you shall not say a word of it, to anyone, for indeed, I have admitted nothing.”
I nodded at him.
