She looked at me and then she looked away.
“Perhaps I don’t please you,” I said. “If so, Miss Bennet, put me out of my misery, please. If you know you don’t want me back—”
“Oh, stop it, Mr. Darcy, everyone knows you’re the tallest and the broadest and wealthiest man to come through this county in ages, and that your hair is so very dark and you are… everyone wants you.”
“Wait, you mean…” I made a face. She meant Bingley and her brother.
“From an objective perspective, you are wantable,” she said. “You are ideal.” She twisted her hands together. “Maybe you’re sort of prim, I suppose, timid, sort of—”
“Prim?” I repeated. “Have you really just now called me—”
“Righteous,” she said. “Maybe you’re just righteous. There’s something appealing about it, because you are noble and serious and I get the feeling that if you were my husband, you’d take that very seriously. There is something about you that is utterly swoonworthy, Mr. Darcy.”
I waited.
She rubbed her forehead.
“But?” I prompted.
She laughed softly. “Oh, no, please, do not press me.”
“But you are still going to refuse my proposal,” I said softly.
“I have not said that,” she said. “Let me think about it, please. Please?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bingley called upon me the next day. He sat in my sitting room and sipped tea and teased me about trying to take his bride from him.
I was disgruntled. “Have you spoken to her?”
“No, no,” said Bingley. “She is shut up in her room, and she will not talk to her brother either, because she says that she knows what he wishes her to do—which is to marry me—and she does not wish to be swayed.”
“You don’t even want to be married to her,” I growled.
“Certainly I do,” said Bingley, smiling brightly at Colonel Fitzwilliam, who was present during this conversation and mucking everything up.
Richard looked back and forth between us. “I have to say, Bingley, this is confusing behavior, your coming here to speak to Darcy. Are you going to try to talk him into dropping his suit?”
“Of course not,” said Bingley. “Though, Darcy, you have to see how quite convenient it would be for me to have a wife. A wife would be just the thing for my situation, and this wife, this one, she’s entirely perfect. I don’t see why you must go ruining it with your feelings.”
“I think you would understand,” I said. “There is someone who you would not wish to see married.”
“There is not,” said Bingley. “If you’re thinking of who I think you’re speaking of, I have even spoken at length with that person about prospective matches.”
Oh, God, of course it wasn’t the same. He and Bennet had talked about marrying their sisters.
“If you wish, you know, to… with her,” said Bingley, waggling his eyebrows. “That could be arranged.”
I shot to my feet, absolutely horrified.
“Oh, God, Darcy, please.” Bingley cast a glance at Richard.
I sat back down, glaring at Bingley.
Richard was rubbing his forehead. “This secret of Bennet’s that involves Bingley, I think I might know what it is.”
Bingley slumped into his chair. “Oh, capital. Just what we need. The colonel, fresh from the war, eager to prove what a very masculine man he is, properly horrified.”
