Chapter 12 #2
Although Miss Bingley’s lip curled at the unearned familiarity with her name, she let it pass without comment.
“Why, I have heard from numerous sources, including the Times, that you have been dangling after our dear Mr Darcy for weeks now. It is a terrible shame to see such lofty ambition come to such an unceremonious end.” She winced—Elizabeth believed mostly for effect.
“This speech is no reflection on your own aspirations, I am sure.”
A smirk dissolved any pretence Miss Bingley had of offering sympathies. “It was all sadly inevitable. Mr Darcy could never have attached himself to your family in the end—you must see that.”
Knowing that Miss Bingley sought to vex her did not prevent Elizabeth from bristling. “I do not see that at all. He is a gentleman. I am a gentleman’s daughter. We are equals.”
“With a mother and sisters such as yours?” Miss Bingley hid her malicious titter behind her hand. “How painfully na?ve. I thought you cleverer than that.”
Elizabeth sharpened her tone to a fine edge. “And I thought you too genteel to openly insult another lady as a guest in someone else’s house, yet here we are. I suppose your expensive education cannot overcome every disadvantage.”
Miss Bingley’s eyes hardened a moment, but she was all ease and false friendliness when she replied, “Poor, simple Eliza. You really thought you could charm him out of his pride? Even after he tried to pry my brother away from your sister?”
If Miss Bingley had slapped her across the face, Elizabeth could not have recoiled so severely. “What?”
“Oh, I see how it is.” Miss Bingley’s smile unfurled, and it was a wicked thing. “He did not tell you.”
“Because—because there was nothing to tell!” Elizabeth stammered, her heart tripping over itself likewise. “He brought Mr Bingley back to Jane, not the reverse. It was you who schemed to keep them apart.”
“I shall acknowledge a part in it, certainly,” was Miss Bingley’s flippant reply, “but I was hardly the only one with objections. I daresay my brother would not have listened to me alone, even backed by my sister, without Mr Darcy’s intervention.
Charles has always held his friend’s advice as sacrosanct. ”
“I do not believe you.” So Elizabeth said, but memories of past suspicions invaded her mind, and she could not wholly banish them.
Had she not, prior to Mr Bingley’s appearance at Gracechurch Street, assumed Darcy to have been party to the underhanded business?
She had absolved him thereafter, but had she been correct in her first instinct?
Miss Bingley certainly intimated that it was so, even if she was a questionable source of information.
It was not implausible that she might be sowing seeds of discontent to achieve her own ends of dividing Elizabeth from Darcy the same way she had attempted with Mr Bingley and Jane. What was she to believe now?
Scoffing, Miss Bingley replied, “I think you do, much as you would wish otherwise. You were not blind to his behaviour back in Hertfordshire as regards the neighbourhood, and your family especially. He was disgusted by the lot of you, even if your fine eyes”—here, she sneered—“apparently swayed him in your favour. He always thought the rest of the Bennets entirely beneath him, and not just in status—oh no. He was put off by the wild, uncouth antics of your mother and sisters as much as your lack of fortune. As to dear Jane, he believed her a vacuous fortune hunter, only after my brother for his purse. I still say he was correct in that estimation, even if he overlooked it in you.”
The nausea that had been rising in Elizabeth’s stomach all evening threatened to climb up her throat, but she forced it back down with a hard swallow.
“He must have changed his mind, else why would he have brought Mr Bingley back to Jane?” Why else would he have so assiduously and openly paid me attention these past weeks?
Miss Bingley snorted softly, though her derision was clear.
“Because men, as much as they purport to be ruled by reason, are foolish creatures who are led by their own base desires. When he saw you at the theatre last month, he apparently became determined to have you. In order to do that, he was required to do the ‘honourable’ thing and reunite Charles and your sister. Stupid, really, when he could have simply set you up in your own establishment and my brother would never have known the difference, but Mr Darcy is noble to a fault.” She punctuated this statement with a sigh and a sad shake of the head.
“Why should I take your word for any of this?” Elizabeth hotly retorted. “Even if it is as you say, clearly his intention is and always has been marriage.”
“Perhaps he deluded himself into thinking you were a suitable bride, but I know he could never have gone through with it. Not when he thinks so meanly of you and your family—he is the grandson of an earl, for heaven’s sake!”
“That was true all along, so why should he baulk now?” Elizabeth challenged.
Miss Bingley tittered a laugh behind her hand.
“Do not be so obtuse! I know you have seen his mounting distaste the same as I. He could hardly conceal it. Little wonder, given your mother’s frequent attempts to bait him, and your idiot sisters’ laughing at his expense.
What man would wish to associate himself permanently with such vulgarity? ”
Much as Elizabeth wished to counter Miss Bingley’s charge, she knew she could not.
Mrs Bennet, Kitty, and Lydia had antagonised Darcy all evening with their rudeness and poorly concealed giggles.
Further, she could not deny that Darcy’s mien had steadily hardened throughout the meal—had she not noted it herself prior to Miss Bingley’s gleeful attack?
Her stomach churned as if she had swallowed a knot of writhing snakes.
Unfeelingly, Miss Bingley concluded, “Your family’s behaviour tonight has reminded him of his place relative to yours, and I daresay he has come to his senses. If he offers you a…different sort of proposal, Eliza, you ought to take it because it is the best you can hope for at this juncture.”
Elizabeth stood, fists clenched by her sides, but she could think of no intelligible reply.
Miss Bingley simply sat there, smiling smugly, while somewhere in the background one of her relations—Jane, she thought—asked after her well-being.
Her jaw felt locked in place, holding back either words or vomit from spilling forth; she could not determine which.
Behind her, the parlour door opened and the gentlemen strode in.
Mr Gardiner and Bingley appeared affable, if somewhat strained, but Darcy was as cold and closed off as she had ever seen him.
He did not even soften at the sight of her as he regularly did, intensifying Elizabeth’s need to cast up her accounts.
Only when she rushed past him into the hall did his expression alter, albeit only minutely. She thought she read concern in the slight widening of his eyes, but perhaps it was only surprise. She did not know any longer.