Page 23 of Darcy's Legacy Tortoise
“It is not exhausting,” I said. “It is what friends do.”
“Is that what you call it? Friendship?” Her voice was light, almost teasing, but her eyes—those fine, dark, devastating eyes—studied me with an attention that made my walls feel made of glass. “You have a very exacting definition of friendship, Mr. Darcy. And you are most noble, I find.”
And it was this exact sentiment that made me squirm. If only she knew…
“I do not find friendship a duty to be noble about.” I attempted to lower her opinion. “I protect those I care about for my own reasons.”
“Yes, you do. And I wonder sometimes whether you are as generous with yourself as you are with others.”
I opted not to answer. The truth would have been a confession of failures I had yet to set right, and anything less would have insulted the only woman who deserved nothing less than the truth.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE TRUTH BETWEEN US
Darcy
My conscience would not letme rest. I had to tell Elizabeth before Caroline’s letter reached Jane. A Darcy does not cower, after all, and certainly not before a Bingley. My father’s voice echoed in my head, telling me to take the responsibility. So I sent my card to Gracechurch Street and braced myself for the consequences.
Elizabeth was free on a Monday, and I arranged to escort Miss Elizabeth to Harding and Howell on Pall Mall, where a new shipment of Italian silks had arrived and where, I suggested, she might find something suitable for spring. The Gardiners gave their consent although they did not know that the courtship contained a confession that would, in all probability, end it.
She appeared on the steps at half past ten, in yet another green dress. Willow green this time—calmer, or so it pretended. She wore it with the careless confidence of a woman who has stopped pretending she does not dress for a particular man.
I was grateful, but I was also terrified, because the green dress meant she trusted me, and trust was the one thing I was about to betray.
“Mr. Darcy.” She took my arm with a familiarity that had become—when had it become?—natural. “Italian silks. How very cosmopolitan. I had no idea you took an interest in fabric.”
“I have an interest in quality. The Italians understand drape in ways the English have never mastered.”
“I see. And here I was, under the impression you wished to take a walk with me. But no—it is the drape that compels you.”
“The drape and the company.”
Her smile was entirely without guile, the one she had recently bestowed on me over strawberry ice when she had let down her guard. It made me feel as though I were standing in a room with all the windows open and the air coming in from every direction at once. I wanted to stop walking. I wanted to stand on the Cheapside pavement and look at her and commit every detail of that particular smile to memory, because I did not believe I would see it again after today.
We walked. The morning was mild, the sort of London morning that pretends to be spring and then changes its mind by three o’clock, and Elizabeth talked as Elizabeth talks—quickly, wittily, with the verbal agility of a woman who uses language the way a fencer uses a foil. She told me about a letter from her father in which he expressed bewilderment that both his eldest daughters were still in London and that neither had proved useful. She described Rose’s latest demand that Sir Bertram be granted a seat at the dinner table. She asked whether I had heard from Georgiana, and when I said I had, and that Georgiana had sent a new piece of music, Elizabeth said she should very much like to hear it, and the sentence contained a future tense that cut me open.
Once we neared Harding and Howell, I steered us down Half Moon Street, toward the lending library where we could converse in relative peace. I would need the dusty calm because my heart was, at the moment, fencing with my stomach.
“Mr. Darcy?” Elizabeth said at my arm. “I believe this is not the way to Pall Mall. Are we taking a scenic route through the lending libraries of Mayfair?”
“I thought we might need literary fortification before we wrap ourselves with silk.” I hated the bait and switch, but I feared she would not have been so eager to accompany me if not for the prospect of beauty. This was, I reflected, another evidence of my failing, so I added, “I should like to speak with you, Miss Elizabeth, and the conversation requires more privacy than a silk warehouse can provide.”
Her easy smile faded, the way a fire dims when no one feeds it. What replaced it was a careful wariness—Elizabeth’s intelligence at full capacity—her dark eyes moving across my face as if scrutinizing a document for the second or third time.
“You are very serious this morning. Has something happened?”
“I will explain, and I only hope you will use your judgment and consider my contrition.”
“Sounds ominous.” Her voice cooled by degrees. “Then let us go to your library and take a dose of literary fortification.”
The library was small, bright, and—thank Heaven—empty, save for an elderly gentleman dozing over Gibbon. The proprietor, familiar with my subscription, waved us to chairs by the window. Elizabeth sat. I hovered at the glass, searching the pavement for any of the dozen opening lines I had rehearsed since the musicale.
Not one of them was suitable. There was simply no graceful way to confess a betrayal of this magnitude—that I had been the architect of Bingley’s separation from Jane. I could not blamethe Bingley sisters, as I was the one who had noted the many improprieties of the Bennet family at the Netherfield Ball. I had been appalled at the parents’ lack of social comprehension and their failure to rein in their younger daughters. I was sure Elizabeth had felt the mortification, and the Bingley sisters had witnessed her consternation.
However, Bingley had been so besotted he was on the verge of proposing marriage to a woman who had held herself silent, smiled at everyone, and did not seem to distinguish him from any other gentleman she had danced with.
I now knew it was her manner of masking the mortification she must have felt—persuading herself to see the good in every situation.
