Chapter 8 A Winter’s Tale #2
“Thank you. I am nearly mad to see her again.” Bingley heaved a sigh that could only be described as lovelorn. “I think often of our dances together.”
“There were certainly a good many of them, enough to get you banned from Almack’s.” Darcy gave his friend a gimlet-eye over the edge of his glass.
Bingley smiled sheepishly. “I know what you are thinking, Darcy, so you may save your glowers for another. She is desperately poor, her family would not be received, connected to a shopkeeper and the town solicitor. Your censures yet ring in my ears!”
“My censures may be in your ears, but it seems the lady is still in your thoughts.”
Bingley looked down into his glass, swirling it about a bit. “Famed though I am for falling in and out of love easily, it seems in this case, the lady has entrenched herself.”
“Seeing her again has bestirred your heart.”
“My heart needed no bestirring, but yes, seeing her was…delightful.”
“Did you speak to her? Who was she with?”
Bingley shook his head. “We did not speak. She was shopping, with another lady, and I do not think she perceived my presence.”
“Shopping? On Bond Street?”
Bingley gave Darcy a pointed look. “Do you truly imagine that a woman whose father is lately deceased, who has been cast out of her home, is shopping for frocks on Bond Street? No. She was leaving a bakery in Cheapside.”
“Cheapside? What did you do down there?”
“My land agent has offices down there.” Bingley quirked a brow at Darcy. “You know, there is quite the thriving commerce in Cheapside. Much to see and buy, and at far better prices, than round here.”
Darcy smirked at his friend. “Excessively vulgar to economise, is it not?”
Bingley laughed. “I know my sister believes so! But she overspent her income last year and threw an absolute fit when I told her I would not see her through the Season. So off we went to the City to find something suitable and affordable.”
Darcy grinned privately at the idea of Caroline Bingley being forced to retrench and raised his glass to his lips to conceal his mirth.
“I must confess to you, however…I did have some idea that she lived down there.”
“In Cheapside?”
“Or thereabouts. She told me straightaway that night we danced that her situation was…not good and that their uncle had helped them secure lodgings in London.” With a wince, he said, “Five of them and their mother, on two thousand pounds.”
“Two thousand a year? That is a decent enough sum to survive.”
“You mistake me. Two thousand pounds total,” Bingley clarified. “Eighty pounds a year, in the four percents.”
“Good lord.” Darcy shook his head, feeling sympathetic to the ladies’ plight and yet concerned for his friend. “But you must surely see… It is none of your concern.”
The look his friend gave him was nothing short of disgusted. “I am concerned for any person who finds themselves in such straits, much less someone who is dear to me.”
“Dear to you? Your acquaintance was formed in mere hours.” Darcy felt the twinge of hypocrisy even as he said so. Had not he been obsessing over a woman for these months on the basis of a few hours?
“And that was precisely why I went down there,” Bingley said.
“Or at least the purpose which was hidden beneath forcing Caroline to seek out bargains. Because I am going absolutely mad thinking about her and I had hoped I would see her and realise it had been the stuff of an evening, or castles in the air that I had built since I saw her.”
“And was it? Castles in the air?”
Bingley shook his head slowly. “Would that it had been! Alas, it only increased my longing for her.”
“Shall you call on her?”
Bingley shrugged. “I cannot. I know she lives down there somewhere; I know not where.”
“Nor should you,” Darcy said gently.
“Why not?” Bingley asked belligerently. “Surely the fact that all this time later I am unable to put her out of my mind means something.”
“The allure of the forbidden, the enticement of the unknown,” said Darcy dismissively. “The lady remains unsuitable, Bingley, and to form a lasting connexion with her would mean forming a lasting connexion to all her sisters and mother.”
“Women marry,” Bingley shot back. “The sisters would find husbands; perhaps the mother would too. She was an attractive lady, still rather youngish.”
Darcy sighed. “You have thought on this a great deal.”
Bingley shrugged, still with the peevishness on his countenance. “Some days it seems I think of little else.”
Darcy winced. What wizardry had been performed in Hertfordshire that night! He and Bingley had both fallen to it! My advantage is that Miss L at least is a young lady of distinction. Bingley’s advantage is that he knows, at the very least, his lady’s name.
In a more mollifying accent, he conceded, “It is something, I daresay, that you have not fallen in love with anyone else in these months. That must be some indication that Miss Bennet is far beyond the common way.”
Bingley laughed, peevishness gone in an instant. “You see my way of it! I have not spent so much time devoted to one woman since…well, since I fell in love with my governess when I was a lad!”
Darcy chuckled; his chuckle turned to alarm when Bingley added, “So you will come with me, then?”
“Come with you…where?”
“Cheapside,” Bingley said, slightly tauntingly. “I assure you that you will be none the worse for it.”
“As it happens, there is a bookseller down there I particularly like. Yes, shocking I know, but I have been in the City and not infrequently. But why should you require me to accompany you?”
“Meryton was a small place, and I daresay everyone knew each other, did they not?”
“As it is in a country society.”
“By my estimation, then, it is likely my Miss Bennet knows your Miss L.” Bingley smirked. “No doubt you thought I forgot about that.”
Darcy tried to look indifferent, if a bit bemused, but felt a betraying flush spread over his face.
Bingley evidently saw it too and crowed delightedly. “I am happy to know it is not merely I who have suffered the pangs of love lost this winter! Tomorrow, Darcy…I shall come for you in my carriage.”
A refusal was on the tip of his tongue. After all, knowing Miss L did not mean she would be found in Miss Bennet’s company in London, did it?
But then he remembered that whichever Miss Bennet was the companion of his cousin would be treated to thorough descriptions of the blackness of his character.
Would it not be better to run ahead of it?
To meet the lady on his own terms and establish his good character with her, in case she did know Miss L?
And if she does know Miss L, she might provide some indication of who she is.
He nodded and said brusquely, “Very well.”
“By the by,” Bingley said. “What is this I hear about a breach of promise suit?”
Darcy barely stopped himself from groaning. “What have you heard?”
“That your family will have no part with you, that they have taken Georgiana from your influence.” Bingley offered a sympathetic clap on the arm. “Stuff and nonsense. No one believes a word of it.”
Darcy frowned severely at his glass. “Alas, it is mostly true, albeit wholly unfair. Lady Catherine wishes for a pound of flesh more than the money and does not seem to mind that the stain of scandal will cover her too.”
“Why now? I thought it was years ago that you told them you would not marry Miss de Bourgh.”
“One year, Christmas.” Darcy shrugged. “I daresay they believed their silence would crumble me. Now that has failed, they will take it further.”
“What I cannot comprehend,” said Bingley with his usual earnestness, “is how they think you might respond. Would they have you now say, very well, I shall marry her?”
Darcy chuckled, but regretfully. “I daresay they would.”