Bingley found him twenty minutes later, still standing in the library, staring at the dead fire.
"Darcy." Bingley's voice was careful, the tone of a man approaching a wounded animal. "Caroline told me."
"Of course she did."
"She told everyone, actually. Or at least, she told Louisa, who told Mrs. Long, who --"
"I understand the mechanism, Bingley." Darcy's voice was flat. "How quickly can we reach Mr. Bennet?"
Bingley blinked. "You mean to propose?"
"I mean to do what honor demands."
"Is that all it is? Honor?" Bingley studied his friend with an uncomfortable perceptiveness. "Because Caroline described something rather more enthusiastic than a man acting out of obligation."
Darcy closed his eyes. Behind his lids, Elizabeth's face in firelight. The sound she had made when he kissed her throat. The way her fingers had gripped his coat as though she were drowning and he was solid ground.
"It does not matter what it is," he said. "What matters is what must be done."
"Darcy --"
"Can you send a rider to Longbourn? Mr. Bennet will need to be informed before morning. Before Caroline's version reaches him."
Bingley went. Darcy poured himself a brandy from the sideboard, drank it without tasting it, and tried to organize his thoughts into something that resembled a plan. He had been making plans his entire life: for Pemberley, for Georgiana, for the tenants and the estate and the thousand small obligations that constituted his existence. This should be no different. A problem had arisen. A solution existed. He would implement it.
The problem was that the solution was Elizabeth Bennet, and she was not an estate to be managed or a ledger to be balanced. She was a woman who did not want him, who had kissed him with a passion that still burned in his blood and would, he suspected, despite him for it by morning.
Mr. Bennet arrived at Netherfield at half past seven, before the household was properly awake. He was shown to Bingley's study, where Darcy waited with the careful stillness of a man facing execution.
Thomas Bennet was a small, dry man with clever eyes and a mouth perpetually poised between amusement and contempt. He surveyed Darcy with the air of a naturalist examining an unfamiliar species.
"Mr. Darcy. I understand you have compromised my daughter."
"Mr. Bennet. I --"
"Before you begin, let me establish what I already know. My second daughter was found in a dark room at this ball, in your arms, with her hair in a state that suggests either a vigorous kiss or a close encounter with a hedge. The witnesses includeyour host's sister, who has the discretion of a town crier, and half the assembled company of Hertfordshire, who are by now aware of the situation through the usual channels of gossip, speculation, and Mrs. Long."
Darcy said nothing. There was nothing to say that would not sound like excuse.
"I also know," Mr. Bennet continued, settling into a chair with the deliberate comfort of a man who intended to make this interview as painful as possible, "that my daughter returned to the ballroom after the incident, danced two more dances, and smiled the entire time as though nothing had happened. This tells me one of two things: either she is in shock, or she is so furious she has entered a state of composure indistinguishable from calm. I suspect the latter."
"Sir, I must offer for Miss Bennet's hand. I am aware that my behavior was unforgivable --"
"Unforgivable is a strong word. I should call it uncharacteristic, based on what I know of your temperament. You are not, by reputation, a man given to snatching young women in libraries. Which leads me to wonder what possessed you."
Darcy's jaw tightened. "I have no adequate explanation."
"Try."
The silence stretched. In it, Darcy heard the truth he could not speak: that he had been possessed by a wanting so fierce and so long denied that one moment of proximity had shattered every restraint he possessed. That he had kissed Elizabeth Bennet not because he forgot himself but because, for a single incandescent moment, himself was all he could feel. That her taste and her fury and the sound she made when hislips found her throat had rewritten every equation he had ever used to govern his life.
He said none of this. Instead: "I admire your daughter. I have admired her for some time. My actions last evening were inexcusable regardless of the sentiment behind them, and I am prepared to do everything in my power to repair the damage to her reputation."
Mr. Bennet regarded him for a long, uncomfortable moment. "You admire her. That is your explanation. You admire her the way one admires a painting or a prospect -- from a distance, dispassionately, with good taste."
"Not dispassionately, sir. No."
Something shifted in Mr. Bennet's expression. "Well. That is at least honest." He stood. "I will speak with Elizabeth. If she accepts you -- and I warn you, Mr. Darcy, she is her father's daughter, and stubborn beyond all reason -- then you have my consent. Not my approval. Not my blessing. My consent. You will earn the rest."
