I raised my eyebrows at him.
He flushed and looked away. “All right, I shall stop.” He was smiling, though, amused.
I should have been angry, but maybe I was amused, too. I smirked.
He noticed and his smile widened. “It’s not my fault you’re so tall, is it? I mean, you have seen yourself in a looking glass.”
It might have been my turn to blush. “Stop it.”
“All right,” he said. “No more of that. You are likely the ugliest man I have ever seen, Mr. Darcy, and I could not be prevailed upon to think any untoward thoughts of you.”
I started walking again. I pointed at him. “It’s remarkable that you aren’t taking this seriously at all.”
“It truly is.” He fell into step with me. “You could ruin me entirely. Ruin my sisters. Damnation, I could be taken to a hangman’s noose.”
“Oh, I think that’s unlikely,” I said. “We’re not so barbaric these days.”
“But you’re not going to say anything.”
“You’re frightfully sure of yourself.”
“I am, in fact, not, but I like to think I know you. I do not think you would do anything to directly cause me harm, even if you do not truly approve.”
I glanced at him. He was correct about that. “All right, all right. I shall take your sisters back to London with me. I shall stay a few more days.”
“Capital,” he said.
CHAPTER FOUR
But two days later, Mr. Bingley came down with a frightful illness and could not get out of bed, because he was so poorly.
With his being so sick, I did not think I should leave right away. We sent for the apothecary, who looked him over and supplied a few tonics but said that primarily we were to simply allow him to rest until the worst of it was over.
“Seems to be going around,” he said. “Mr. James Bennet is down with the exact same thing.”
I supposed that sharing a bed with someone did tend to mean you caught their sickness.
That afternoon, we had a visitor, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, who had walked all the way from Longbourn with a letter from her brother to Mr. Bingley. “I am here to convey his apologies. He is certain that he is the reason why Mr. Bingley has fallen ill.”
She left the letter and her message with me and I delivered it to Bingley, who insisted upon scratching out a very hasty reply and said I must make sure that someone had stopped Miss Bennet from leaving the house before he was finished, so I had to leave his room in search of a servant to prevent her from leaving.
But I couldn’t find any servants, so I ended up at the front door of Netherfield, calling for her to come back, and she turned round and came back over to me.
“Mr. Bingley wishes you to deliver a return note to his brother,” I said.
“Oh, does he.” She looked me up and down. “How do you feel about that?”
“Me?” I touched my chest.
“I know when we spoke that I said that my brother was not the sort to entangle himself wherein he wasn’t wanted, so I suppose I feel a bit of a fool in that respect,” she said. “James is too ill to explain to me what he is about here, so I do not understand any of it, but I do love my brother, no matter what he does entangle himself in, so I suppose all I shall say is that I would hope that you and Mr. Bingley would both consider his feelings.”
I only stared at her. What was she saying? Why was she saying it?
“You are clearly quite happy for Mr. Bingley to be writing letters to my brother.”
“Why should I not be?” I said.
“And for them to be close enough to catch each other’s illnesses.”
