“Ah, you remember!” he said. “And here I thought you were not paying a bit of mind to anything I said to you at that ball.”
“I do listen to you,” I said. “I suppose we are all to go in one carriage?”
“Indeed,” he said. “It will be a nice diversion, I think.”
“Yes,” I said, and it would be, actually. I would be pleased to talk to anyone besides Caroline Bingley, after all.
“I want to say, also, Darcy, that I know I made it out that this would be a large party of us, and I see that you are, well, bored—”
“Oh, no, of course not,” I protested.
“You may go back to London without any repercussions from me is all I am saying,” he said. “I would not think it impolite.”
“I am not eager to leave you,” I said.
“Of course not,” he said.
I eyed him. “Wait, are you eager for me to be away?”
“Oh, no, absolutely not!” he said, shaking his head. “No, you are welcome here as long as you like.”
“Perhaps I shall stay a fortnight,” I said, grimacing.
“Oh, quite, indeed,” he said. “A fortnight, yes.”
I was confused. Did he, in fact, wish me to go? “Bingley,” I said, “you begged me to come here with you.”
“I am not asking you to leave,” he said.
“It seems to me that perhaps you are.”
“Oh, this is preposterous, because all you do is go on walks at the uncivilized hour of eight o’clock—”
“Since when is eight uncivilized?”
“You leave before anyone has scarce had breakfast and then you are stony silent during all the card games, and yesterday, you went on six walks. I counted them.”
I scratched the back of my head. “Yes, well, I was just trying to get some solitude, but your sister, Miss Bingley, she seems to be following me around.”
He groaned. “She is also bored. Perhaps I should simply take everyone back to London and come back here on my own.”
“A fortnight,” I said.
“Yes, you’re right, of course,” he said with a nod. “A fortnight is quite respectable. After a fortnight, I shall escort everyone back to London.”
I went away from that conversation quite confused.
I had never been alone with Bingley, not that I was exactly alone now. We had all been together at a large gathering in the country that summer, though I’d had to leave to deal with the business with my sister, Georgiana. There had been a great many people staying there, and it had been quite a diverting time, lots of games of lawn bowling and lemonade on the lawns and late nights gathered round the piano forte, all singing at the top of our lungs.
I had been in Bingley’s company during the summer, but rarely with Bingley himself alone. What tended to happen, now that I thought about it, was that Bingley would pull me in to go along and some other man to do some activity or other.
Often it was Danvers, I seemed to recall.
Mr. Jeremiah Danvers was the second son of a viscount, and he had seemingly no profession except to gallivant about tovarious people’s country houses. He was a professional guest, perhaps. Bingley and Danvers were often together, walking here and there, sitting close in the evenings in the sitting room, engaged in eager conversation. But from time to time, Bingley would collect other people, and I was one of them.
The collections could be awkward. Bingley and Danvers seemed to laugh at things that other people didn’t find funny, and they would apologize, saying it was a private joke between the two of them. They would almost pointedly ignore each other during these outings. I remember once, the three of us out riding horses, we had dismounted to look at a waterfall, and the two of them spoke exclusively to me and never to each other.
It was odd that Danvers hadn’t come, truly, was it not?
