Chapter 3 #3
And Wickham was perfectly at home beside him.
After that evening, Fitz avoided Grosvenor Square whenever possible. Those few visits increasingly disgusted him.
Cambridge became his sanctuary.
It was there, during Michaelmas term of 1804, that he first noticed Charles Bingley.
The younger student had just begun his first term and looked painfully out of place amongst the sons of old landed families.
His father had earned wealth through trade rather than inheritance, and several students had already seized upon the distinction with predictable cruelty.
Fitz’s first encounter with the young man occurred whilst the boy stood awkwardly near the edge of hall after supper as several boys nearby amused themselves at his expense.
“Careful,” one remarked loudly, “or Bingley will attempt selling us all stockings before dessert.”
Laughter followed, and Bingley attempted a smile that failed almost immediately.
Fitz pressed his lips together in disgust. The boy could not have been more than seventeen. Pleasant-faced, fair-haired, awkwardly eager to please everyone around him.
And humiliated.
Something about the expression on Bingley’s face stirred old memories Fitz preferred forgotten.
Eton. Wickham laughing. Other boys watching.
Bingley possessed none of Wickham’s effortless charm or social instinct. He was awkward where Wickham was smooth, earnest where Wickham was cynical. Yet there was intelligence there too, and openness, and a genuine good nature that seemed almost defenseless amidst Cambridge society.
Without consciously deciding to do so, Fitz changed direction and crossed the room.
“Bingley,” he said calmly, as though they had been introduced to one another. “Professor Pembroke mentioned your mathematics work recently. He spoke highly of it.”
The entire group fell silent.
Bingley blinked in astonishment. “He… he did?”
“Indeed.”
This part was true. Fitz had overheard the remark a day earlier.
One of the other students shifted uncomfortably. “We were only joking, Darcy.”
Fitz regarded him steadily for just long enough to make the young man flush. “Yes,” he replied mildly. “I understood that.”
Something in his tone ended the matter entirely. The others drifted away soon afterward. Bingley stared after them uncertainly before turning back. “You need not have done that.”
Fitz looked at him evenly. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I did. No one should be made to feel as though they are less than, simply at the expense of someone else’s entertainment.”
Bingley looked momentarily startled by the answer. Then, somewhat awkwardly, he laughed. “Well,” he admitted, “I fear I provide irresistible material. My sisters say I attempt too hard to make everyone like me.”
The honesty of the remark caught Fitz unexpectedly off guard. Most young men at Cambridge cloaked their insecurities beneath arrogance or cruelty. Bingley simply… admitted them.
“That is not necessarily a fault,” Fitz replied after a moment.
“Oh, I assure you, it can be.” Bingley smiled sheepishly. “Particularly when one has sisters determined to improve one at every opportunity.”
Against his own expectation, Fitz found himself faintly amused.
The two young men fell gradually into conversation as the hall emptied around them.
Bingley spoke with eager intelligence regarding mathematics and trade, his thoughts leaping quickly from one subject to another with an openness Fitz found oddly refreshing after years spent amidst people who treated every conversation as performance.
There was no calculation in him. No hidden malice.
No endless jockeying for superiority disguised as wit.
When at last they parted for the evening, Bingley paused near the doorway.
“I hope,” he said somewhat hesitantly, “that you will not object if I speak with you again tomorrow.”
Fitz regarded the younger man for a moment before answering. “No,” he said. “No, I do not believe I shall object.”
Bingley grinned with such genuine pleasure at the response that Fitz felt something unfamiliar stir faintly within his chest.
Not suspicion.
Not caution.
Something warmer.
As Fitz crossed the darkened court alone a short while later, cold autumn air curling through the stone archways around him, he found himself thinking unexpectedly of Georgiana.
She would like Bingley, he thought.
The realization came so naturally that it startled him.
Above the college rooftops, chapel bells began tolling the late hour while candlelight flickered softly behind ancient windows all across Cambridge. Fitz paused briefly beneath the shadow of the cloister and looked upward into the darkness.
For years now, he had moved through life expecting disappointment from nearly everyone around him. From his father. From Wickham. From society itself.
But standing there beneath the old stone walls of Cambridge, Fitz experienced the strange and unsettling sensation that perhaps not every attachment in life must inevitably end in betrayal.
And though he would never have admitted it aloud, the thought felt very nearly like hope.