Page 90 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
BARELY AJAR
Darcy
I did not lookat Bingley as we marched into his study. My heart was in turmoil, but I could not show weakness. Of course, I didn’t believe Mrs. Hurst’s accusations and Caroline’s false assurances that this scandalous behavior was innocent and could be easily repaired by forcing marriage.
I would have none of this, but I had not been watchful, and this negligence cannot be attributed to a copy ofBelindafound in the blue chamber after Jane and Mary had packed Elizabeth’s belongings, because, naturally, they would not take what didn’t belong to her.
Closing the study door, I steadied myself with my hand on the latch before facing my best friend and companion from our Cambridge days.
“Please, sit,” I said.
“I will not sit down. I will stand here and be furious, if it is all the same to you.” His color was high, and his jaw set in a way I had never seen in all our years of friendship. “Darcy, I need you to hear me.Louisa came to me in this very study where I attempted the ledgers you pointed out this morning. She said Georgiana was struggling with sheet music in the library and could use assistance. Those were her words. I walked in, saw the mess, and helped. The door was open when I entered. I did not close it, and I did not touch your sister except to hand her a torn page, and I was on the floor because the pages were on the floor, and that is the whole of it.”
“I know you would not.”
“Then why did you look at me like that? In front of Lady Lucas and Mrs. Long and my own sisters, you looked at me as though I had compromised your sister, and I was picking up a page of Haydn, Darcy. Haydn! The most morally unimpeachable of all the composers!”
“I know.” I moved to the desk. My hands wanted occupation, and the desk offered the pretense of order—papers, the letter tray, my pen, a coffee cup left from this morning with a ring already forming on the wood. The ring was my fault. The ring was always my fault. Elizabeth had once observed that I left coffee stains across Hertfordshire like breadcrumbs, and the observation had been delivered with several inches of irony over something like affection, and I had not identified the affection until it was no longer being offered.
I gave Bingley a look to convey my belief in our friendship. “You are honorable and always helpful, and the entire county knows you are in love with Jane Bennet. Georgiana knows it. I have known it since you dropped seven shuttlecocks in one afternoon and blamed the wind. You would no more compromise my sister than you would fly.”
Bingley’s shoulders lowered by an inch. He dropped into the chair opposite and ran both hands through his hair. “Then you understand what happened in that library was arranged.”
“Yes.”
“Orchestrated by my sisters.” The bitterness was new. Bingley’s natural register was warmth; bitterness sat on him the way a formal coat sat on aretriever.
“Elizabeth warned me.” The admission scraped against my pride like a blade drawn across stone. “At the assembly. She told me Caroline was engineering something, and I dismissed her. Not because she was wrong, Bingley, but because the alternative was too monstrous. That a woman I had permitted to guide my sister and to advise me on Georgiana’s presentation—that she would use my sister as currency in her campaign to secure herself as Mrs. Darcy.”
“She is not that subtle, Darcy.” Bingley leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Forgive me, but you have been blind, and I have been complicit because I did not wish to make trouble. Caroline has been redirecting, managing, and positioning since we arrived in Hertfordshire. She arranged for me to dance the first set with Georgiana instead of Jane. She announced the London departure without consulting me. She coached Georgiana on her dress, hair, and music until the girl sounded like an imitation of her inflections. I watched it happen, and I said nothing, because she is my sister.”
“And I trusted her.” I picked up the book that had been haunting me.Belinda. The cover was worn at the edges where Elizabeth’s fingers had held it, and a green ribbon marked a page near the middle. I had been staring at it for three days, telling myself I meant to return it, and not returning it, because returning it would require going to Longbourn, and going to Longbourn would require facing the woman I had driven away.
“Why, Darcy?” Bingley’s voice softened. “You have been walking around this house like a man attending his own funeral. I see you reaching for a cat that is not there. You burnt the contract letter and admitted to Georgiana that you caused this rift. And yet you have not gone to Longbourn. Not once. I ride there every day to call on Jane, and I see Miss Elizabeth in the garden or at the window, and she does not ask about you, which tells me more than if she did.”
“I do not signify in her thoughts.” My spirits dropped even lower, to the depths of Hades.
“On the contrary.” Bingley seemed to perk up now that we are perusing my dilemma. “Jane tells me she has not opened a booksince she came home, and she looks out the window a great deal. I am not an observant man, Darcy, but even I can recognize a woman who is looking for someone who does not appear.”
I turned the book over in my hands. The ribbon slipped between the pages. “This belongs to her. Or rather, it belongs to this library, but she was reading it. I have been meaning to take it to her.”
“Then take it.”
“I cannot simply arrive at Longbourn with a book and expect?—”
“Expect what? That she will receive you? She is a gentleman’s daughter, you are a gentleman, and you are returning a borrowed item. It is the most ordinary social transaction in England. Any other man would have walked through the front door three days ago.”
“I am not any other man. I am the man who said Miss Bennet in a cold alcove with every ounce of the Darcy name behind it and told her to manage her concerns while I managed mine. I do not have the right to walk through any door she occupies until I have earned it back.”
“Then earn it now.” Bingley stood. “Because the woman I intend to marry has a sister who is wretched, and the wretchedness is your doing. The only remedy I can think of is for you to stop managing from behind this desk and go and be honest with her. Besides, we have a crisis to manage. News from Lady Lucas and Mrs. Long will no doubt reach the Bennets.”
He looked pointedly at his watch, and for the first time, I realized Bingley’s wisdom and hidden strength behind the frequent smiles.
A knock followed by the study door opening without invitation, and Mr. Hurst filled the frame with the disheveled authority of a man roused from his afternoon chair by domestic warfare. His waistcoat was unbuttoned at the bottom, and his cravat was stained with wine.
“Darcy. Bingley. I wish to make it abundantly clear that I had nothing whatsoever to do with the sheet music.”
