Chapter 9
The scandal sheet lay open on Darcy’s desk, illuminated by bright winter sunlight.
He had already committed its contents to memory.
This latest rumour was egregious in its insinuations.
It was cruel and cowardly. Darcy, who had begun with little patience for the scoundrel’s antics, now had exactly none.
His ruminations on how he would best exact his revenge when he finally caught the culprit were interrupted by the arrival of Charles Bingley. Darcy felt an immediate sense of relief at the sight of him. If there was anyone who could speak plainly, it was his friend.
Bingley entered the study with a restless energy that could not disguise his fatigue. His usual easy cheer had dimmed, replaced by a brittle and overly-bright composure that faltered the moment he sat.
“You sent for me?” Bingley asked.
Darcy tapped his fingers on the broadsheet absently. “I thought it best that we speak privately.”
Bingley smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “Privacy has become a rare commodity of late. Even one’s silence seems to provoke speculation.”
Darcy studied him closely. The rumours had taken their toll more quickly than he had anticipated. Bingley, whose disposition had always been buoyant and unguarded, now carried himself as though every word must be weighed.
“I imagine you have heard the latest,” Darcy said.
“Heard? I can scarcely escape it. One would think I had committed some grand crime, rather than fallen in love.”
Bingley could always be counted on to display candour, yet the readiness with which he freely admitted his affections was disconcerting.
“You still love her,” Darcy said quietly.
His friend looked away, as though ashamed of the admission he had never made aloud. “I have not ceased to love Miss Bennet for a single hour,” he said at last. “But what use is that, when my affection seems only to injure her?”
Darcy felt a strange surge of guilt. He pushed it away, telling himself he had only had Bingley’s interests at heart. “It was never my intention to estrange you from her.”
“I know.” Bingley said. “And I do not blame you.” He faltered, fingers tightening upon the arm of his chair. “But I begin to wonder whether there is any course left that does not end in harm.”
Darcy leaned forward. “Explain.”
“Every time I think of calling upon her, I am reminded that my attentions have already made her the subject of gossip. They say she schemed to secure me. That her family encouraged it. That she and Mrs Gardiner conspired to entrap me.” His voice broke despite his effort to keep it steady.
“Even if every word is false and Jane is as innocent as I know her to be, what does it profit her if I persist? I only give the scandal-mongers more fuel.”
Darcy felt the sting of that logic, for it mirrored thoughts he had begun to entertain himself. “You believe your absence will protect her?”
“I believe my presence might destroy her,” Bingley replied.
Silence settled between them.
Darcy prided himself on his ability to foresee consequences and avert them. Yet now he wondered whether all his caution had merely paved the way for greater harm. “The gossip will not cease merely because you withdraw,” he said at last.
“No, but perhaps it will quiet down more quickly. People tire of repeating a story when there is no fresh chapter to add.”
Darcy’s thoughts immediately went to Elizabeth Bennet.
She was intelligent, courageous, and refused to cower to unjust opinions.
He found that over the past few weeks his estimation of her had changed.
Where once he’d dismissed her, now he found her tenacity and stubbornness admirable; her softness and caring endearing.
She had unsettled him, which was in itself a disorienting thought.
“And you?” Bingley asked suddenly, eyes fixed on the open broadsheet on Darcy’s desk. “What of your own situation?”
Darcy stiffened.
Bingley’s tone was gentle, but it carried concern. “If I am not mistaken, you have read that damnable paper and are aware of the most recent rumour: that you regret your interest in Miss Elizabeth Bennet. That you have been manoeuvred into an attachment you do not desire.”
Darcy’s jaw tightened at the notion. It was laughable that the ton thought him so easily swayed, that he would entertain the company of those with whom he did not see fit to socialise with, much less attach his heart to.
The gossip-monger had turned their attentions now to him, and therefore to Elizabeth.
“It is a contemptible falsehood, from first to last.”
“I know that,” Bingley said, rising from his chair. “But society is not so discerning. The rumour has gained alarming traction. Why, I overheard a pair of ladies discussing it as I passed them by on my way here.”
Darcy rose and moved toward the window, clasping his hands behind his back.
“They say she has manipulated you, even tricked you into an entanglement,” Bingley followed him to the window. “That she pursues you with unbecoming boldness. That you are too honourable to extricate yourself.”
Darcy felt heat smoulder in his chest. “Miss Elizabeth has conducted herself with nothing but propriety.”
“I am certain of it,” Bingley said. “Those who know her would never believe such falsehoods. But there are many who do not know her, and they are quick to repeat gossip — the more scandalous, the better.”
Darcy stared out at the street below, observing the carriages rolling past, the groups of the ton’s most fashionable scurrying between shops, and the clerks who darted between it all, carrying parcels of printed news. They very machinery that fed the monster of gossip.
“I feel much the same about Miss Bennet,” Bingley said softly. “If this continues, her reputation may suffer more than mine. And hers is the one most vulnerable.”
The words landed painfully because they were true.
Darcy had already witnessed how swiftly a narrative could turn against the Bennets. He had watched Elizabeth defend Jane and Georgiana with a dignity that only increased his admiration. But that admiration could not shield her.
“I have an appointment to call on her this afternoon,” Darcy said slowly.
Bingley looked at him with surprise. “You have?”
“Yes.” Darcy’s voice lacked conviction.
Bingley hesitated, tapping his fingers restlessly. “Then I must speak honestly, though it pains me. I know you would do the same for me.”
Darcy turned to face his friend, not wishing to hear what he had to say, yet knowing that refusing to listen would be as foolish as it was cowardly.
“If the world already believes she has ensnared you, will your visit not confirm it? Might it not suggest that her supposed schemes have succeeded?”
Darcy understood Bingley’s meaning immediately. “You advise me to withdraw,” he said softly.
“I advise you to consider whether your attentions will protect her, or endanger her further, if you truly care for her,” Bingley replied.
Darcy thought of the spark of anger in Elizabeth’s eyes, and of the hope she had so stubbornly clung to. Would she see his withdrawal as prudence or rejection?
Or worse, a confirmation that he believed the terrible rumours. He did not want to disappoint her, not when he had asked her to put her trust in him, and she had done so. His chest tightened at the thought.
But what right did he have to indulge his feelings for her if they risked causing her further harm? It was altogether selfish to maintain such an attachment, even one orchestrated as a ruse.
Wasn’t it?
“You know I am not guided by vanity,” Darcy said at last. “Nor by a fear of censure. But perhaps you are right. I will not be the cause of Miss Elizabeth’s disgrace.”
Bingley nodded, visibly relieved. “Then perhaps a temporary distance until the worst of the storm abates would be an act of kindness rather than cruelty.”
A temporary distancing. The notion offered little comfort.
After Bingley departed a half hour later, Darcy was left alone with his thoughts and the accusations of the scandal sheet, still lying on his desk. He sat down, picked up his pen, and began to write, keenly aware that the hour of his appointment was upon him.
Darcy drafted three original notes, each more unsatisfactory than the last. It was impossible to communicate the truth: that he wished to see Elizabeth and reassure himself that she regarded him with something warmer than civility. Such radical honesty would be disastrous.
Instead, he focused on drafting an apology.
When he finished, he regarded his work with a critical eye.
It was cold, formal, and entirely insufficient.
But it was better than leaving her with no explanation at all.
Resigning himself to accept less than perfection, he sealed his letter.
Ringing the bell on his desk to summon a footman, Darcy instructed the man to deliver it immediately.
The footman bowed and left, bearing the letter away on a silver salver.
It was the right thing to do, the honourable course of action to take. So why, then, did he feel so entirely miserable? Darcy did not move from his desk for some time, feeling an agony that was all the more painful for being mixed with guilt.
∞∞∞
Elizabeth read the note twice, trying to make sense of it. She read it a third time, then folded it with unnecessary sharpness, endeavouring to ignore the torrent of despair that welled up inside her.
She had expected Darcy with an eagerness that she now realised was foolish.
Their conversation the day before, as fraught as it was with frustration, resolve, and something dangerously close to confession, had left her restless and hopeful in equal measure.
Now her lightness of spirit curdled into stinging hurt.
Despite herself, Elizabeth opened the letter once more.
To Mrs Gardiner,
Circumstances compel me to postpone the pleasure of calling on you today. Please accept my apologies — and if you would be so good, convey my regrets to your niece, with the assurance that my intentions remain guided by the utmost respect for her comfort and peace of mind.
Yours faithfully,
F. Darcy
She crumpled the letter in her fist. “Circumstances compel him indeed. What convenient tyrants circumstances always are.” At first, she accepted it as nothing more than a postponement of their planned meeting, but as she paced in her room, more worrisome thoughts took hold.
The scandal sheet that morning had issued a fresh attack on her reputation by targeting Mr Darcy himself.
It had a sly, insinuating tone, suggesting that he sincerely regretted their attachment, and that honour would see him bound to her despite her relentless pursuit of him.
There were hints that Elizabeth wished she had not understood — hints of a most compromising nature, and which, if believed, would prove dangerous either to her reputation or to Mr Darcy’s freedom.
Elizabeth bit her lip. She could not deny the connection between the latest scandal sheet and Mr Darcy’s absence.
Had he lost heart? Had he, like everyone else in London, begun to believe the rumours about her intentions? Or, worse still, had he decided that associating with her was too great a liability?
She thought of Jane, whose gentle patience had been tried beyond endurance in the wake of Bingley’s absence, and of the cruel insinuations that had ensnared her family and friends.
And now Darcy, retreating just as the battle grew fiercer. It stung more than she cared to admit.
“Why should I be surprised?” she muttered. “His constancy has never been tested, and his pride has never been modest.”
The thought was sharp, and not entirely just, but it soothed her wounded pride to believe it.
Elizabeth felt the familiar burn of indignation at being cast aside, but beneath it lay a more troubling unease.
She recalled Mr Darcy’s recent reserve and the careful distance he had maintained.
He was keenly aware of how they appeared in public and of their reputations.
She remembered how earnestly he had insisted upon protecting her, how swiftly he had assumed the burden of decision upon himself.
At the time, she had admired his concern. Now she wondered whether it had been something colder than care.
Perhaps he has discovered that I am not the conquest he imagined, nor an ornament he might display without reproach, Elizabeth thought bitterly.
She prided herself on her independence of spirit and her ability to laugh at vanity and withstand foolish opinions.
Yet the possibility that Darcy’s regard had cooled, that his attentions had been extended only to be withdrawn, struck at a vulnerability she rarely acknowledged.
It was not his pride she feared, but his regret.
If he truly regretted his attachment, their sham courtship, then what did that say of her and her judgement, or of the regard for Darcy she had so carefully tried not to name?
Elizabeth halted before the window, staring out at the indifferent street. “I will not be pitied,” she said aloud. “Nor will I be cast aside under the pretence of delicacy.”
If Darcy could withdraw from her so easily and without explanation, she could not sustain her confidence in his constancy to their cause.
They had agreed to pursue the truth together, to share discoveries openly, to trust one another in a matter that demanded courage and discretion in equal measure.
His apologetic note had thrown more than his resolve into question.
Elizabeth’s trust, once shaken, was not easily restored. She found herself wondering whether he remained committed to unmasking the author of the rumours, or whether he had already begun to retreat from the danger, and from her along with it.
The mystery before them suddenly felt more perilous, not merely because their enemy remained hidden, but because she could no longer be certain of her ally.