Page 6 of A Mismatched Compromise

“Of course it was, my dear.” Her mother was not listening to her. Her mother never listened to her, but now she was not even hearing her, because she had arrived at her conclusion and had moved three steps beyond already, and the rest of the room had not yet caught up. “These things happen, but Mr Bingley will, I am sure, make it right. He will not let an accidental mishap destroy your future, Lizzy. Isn’t that so, Mr Bingley?”

Elizabeth felt the cold start somewhere in her chest as Jane stiffened beside her.

She didn’t know what to do. That was not a normal state of affairs, but what about any of this was normal? She was on the floor of someone else’s library, with a pounding headache and a roomful of gleefully scandalised onlookers, and a mother who had already written the next lines in the drama. Elizabeth could see, with a horrible, creeping certainty, exactly where this scene would end.

It was still possible that she could change that ending. She could explain why she was really there, produce the note, explain that she had come to the library to wait for her sister and to bring her back to the ball.

And if she did that, Lydia would deny everything, and it wouldn’t change what the servants and guests had seen. She would have destroyed her sixteen-year-old sister’s reputation to save herself, and it probably would not have any effect, regardless.

She turned her head and looked at Mr Bingley. His face was pale, and he was looking around the room with an expression similar to the one she had seen on her mother’s face: the look of a person working through a calculation, putting disparate pieces together and examining the picture they created. He pressed his lips together and stood very still for a moment. For perhaps the first time since she had known him, there was no happiness or enthusiasm in his open face, and no sign of the easy warmth that so characterised him. But he was looking over the assembled faces of those who had witnessed this debacle, and she saw his jaw tighten.

No, Elizabeth thought. Please, don’t.

Mr Bingley looked at her. His expression clearly told her that he understood, that he empathised, and that he was sorry. Then he spoke.

∞∞∞

Darcy had made it to the corridor to the family wing when he heard the scream.

He had been following Bingley, though he had also been attempting to talk himself out of doing so, which, unfortunately as it turned out, slowed his progress considerably. When the sound had started, though, he stopped arguing with himself and simply moved.

The scene in the library was nothing that he could have imagined, and he had imagined quite a variety of things on his way down the corridor, none of which had been good. This was worse than all of them. Elizabeth was on the floor, which was clearly bad. Bingley was beside her, which was bad as well, but it was bad for Bingley, not because Bingley himself was doing something bad, though Darcy knew that was the way it would be made to sound. He had known Charles Bingley for years, and he knew what the man’s face looked like when he was guilty of something — he was too open to hide something as insidious as guilt, and far too honourable to lie. Right now, Bingley’s face showed alarm, concern, contrition, and the expression of a man who has caused an accident and who is very sorry for it. But guilt was entirely absent.

Darcy knew these things to be true that way that one knows a very good friend: quickly, without needing to think about it, and with unshakable certainty. He also knew, however, that all of that knowledge of his made absolutely no difference regarding this situation, as he was the only person in the room who knew this about Bingley, and one of just a few that would care even if they did know.

He had tried to stop it with his quick command to Lydia Bennet. It was already too late, though. Her scream had already brought witnesses to the scene, her foolish, careless words were out and heard, and nothing could bring them back. As he stood near the door, he felt a cold, methodical despair settle over him. The servants were avidly listening, not even pretending to show the respectful blindness demanded by their position. There were several guests he recognised from the ball spilling through the door, and none appeared to have an inclination to leave. Mrs Bennet pulled herself up to her full height and turned to Bingley. She had the air of a woman who has decided on a course of action, which in his experience was an entirely different and far more dangerous thing than a woman who is merely considering her options.

Elizabeth’s face was turned toward Bingley. He couldn’t see her face from where he stood, but he saw her go very still at almost the same instant he saw Bingley’s jaw set.

Bingley turned to Elizabeth, his face set. He had made a decision, and Darcy could tell it was not a decision Bingley wanted to make, in fact, it was one that he very much had not wanted to make, but one that, regardless, he felt was the only honourable course of action. In that brief instant before everything changed forever, Darcy thought, with a clarity that jolted him, Charles, don’t. But he didn’t say it aloud, and then it was too late.

“Miss Elizabeth,” Bingley said, his voice calm and very even. “I wonder if you would do me the great honour of consenting to be my wife.”

The room went silent. Even Lydia stopped talking. Darcy was aware of a sharp pain in his chest, and he moved, ready to interrupt, to tell everyone to calm down and not to act with undue haste, but he was outpaced yet again.

“Yes!” cried Mrs Bennet, with a fervour that suggested that she had been waiting for the chance to make such an acceptance-by-proxy for quite some time. “Of course she does, oh my yes, what a wonderful thing —”

“Mama.” Elizabeth’s voice was quiet, and as even as Bingley’s had been. Darcy could hear in it the effort that restraint was causing her. “Mama, please —”

“She accepts,” Mrs Bennet interrupted firmly. “Of course she accepts. Elizabeth, you accept.”

Elizabeth was silent for a long moment, long enough that Darcy found he was holding his breath.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said finally. She was not looking at Bingley. “I accept. Thank you, Mr Bingley.”

It was, Darcy thought, the most unconvincing thanks that he had ever heard. Not that it was rude, or ungrateful, or sarcastic. It was quite the opposite — civil, and controlled, and heavy, as with the weight of a door being forever closed.

The silence ended as quickly as it had begun, and the room erupted in excited babble. Lydia turned and darted out the door, making for the ballroom with a speed that suggested she was determined to be the first to spread the news. Mrs Bennet swept after her, calling over her shoulder that she was going to find Mr Bennet, her voice practically shaking with the excitement of her unexpected victory. The servants dispersed, and the guests hurried to the ballroom to add their accounts to the story that would no doubt be spreading throughout the county by morning.

Soon, only four people remained in the room that had been so crowded just moments before.

Bingley had offered Elizabeth his hand and helped her rise from the floor, but he had stepped a bit apart and was looking across the room at nothing in particular. Elizabeth too stood as though she were alone in the room, her face composed but her eyes very bright. Darcy stood where he had been since he entered the library — separate and useless.

He had to force himself to look at Jane Bennet. He had avoided looking at her this whole time, for reasons he could not have clearly articulated, even to himself. She was standing beside Elizabeth, her hand still loosely holding her sister’s. She wasn’t crying, or shaking, or doing anything that could have been called falling apart.

Judging by what he had seen of her to date, Darcy suspected that Jane Bennet did not fall apart in public. Quite possibly, she didn’t fall apart at all, ever. She was the eldest sister, the one who stood straight and strong, who helped others when they fell apart. She just stood there, very still, but Darcy flinched when he saw her face.

Since the gossip linking her with his friend had first begun, he had told himself that she didn’t care about Charles Bingley as anything besides a rich and eligible man, one who would please her mother and secure her future. Her warmth was general, her ease with Bingley was simply the ease that she showed to everyone, and her face when they danced wasn’t bright with eagerness like his was; it was just the pleased expression of a girl enjoying a dance. He had told himself this, and he had believed it, because it was convenient for him to believe it and because it fit the perceptions of her and her family that he had already formed.