Chapter Sixteen
Lady Lucas’s teas had never previously required anything of Elizabeth beyond moderate attention and good manners.
She had attended half a dozen of them in the past year without incident.
It was therefore a testament to the difficulties of the past several weeks that she arrived at this one already watchful, already aware that the room contained Caroline Bingley, and already certain that Miss Bingley had not come merely to drink tea.
She arrived with her mother and sisters, greeted Charlotte in the usual way, and had been in the room perhaps twenty minutes before Caroline Bingley approached with a small smile and an air of studied casualness.
“Miss Eliza,” Miss Bingley said with an impeccable imitation of warmth. “I wonder if I might steal you for a moment. There is something I have been wishing to say; I should be remiss if I did not seize the opportunity for a private word.”
Miss Bingley’s expression was composed and pleasant and entirely unreadable, putting Elizabeth on her guard. In her experience, that was precisely when Caroline Bingley should be watched most carefully.
“Of course,” Elizabeth said evenly, concealing her unease.
They moved to the window embrasure at the far end of the room, sufficiently removed from the nearest conversation to allow for privacy without being remarkable.
Miss Bingley moved with such deliberation that Elizabeth rather wondered if she had choreographed each movement in advance.
Watching that elaborate care, Elizabeth felt her disquiet grow.
Whatever this was, it was not the result of an idle fancy on Miss Bingley’s part.
Far from it. This was very much a part of her plans.
“I hope you will take what I am about to say in the spirit it is intended,” Miss Bingley began. “Which is one of genuine concern. For you, and for Mr Darcy.”
“I will do my best,” Elizabeth said dryly.
“I find myself deeply troubled,” Miss Bingley said, “by the situation as it stands. Not for any want of respect for either of you, naturally. It is only that Mr Darcy has been my brother’s closest friend for many years now.
I understand him rather well, and I have observed things these past weeks that have concerned me.
” She paused, selecting her next words with care.
“He is not a man who speaks easily about what he feels. I expect you have found that as well.”
“Mr Darcy keeps his own counsel,” Elizabeth replied.
“Indeed. Which is why those of us who know him well are perhaps better placed to interpret his feelings.” Miss Bingley looked at her with an expression of delicate sympathy.
Elizabeth felt a shiver pass over her body.
If she had not had reason to suspect everything Miss Bingley might say to her, she would have believed in that sympathy without question.
“I had occasion to speak with him recently. Privately, at Netherfield, and I must tell you, Miss Eliza, that I came away from that conversation with a heavy heart.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” Elizabeth said, keeping her voice carefully neutral.
“He spoke of the engagement,” Miss Bingley said in a hushed undertone, as though each word were difficult to say.
“Of his sense of obligation. Of his genuine concern for your happiness. He is not a man who would say directly that he feels himself bound by honour to something that causes distress on both sides, but the implication was clear. At least to someone who knows how to listen for it.”
Elizabeth looked at the winter garden through the window. The frost had held all week. A bare tree at the lawn’s edge made a precise dark line against the white sky.
“Miss Bingley,” she said at last, “I appreciate your candour.”
“I hoped you would.”
“I find, however, that I cannot discuss Mr Darcy’s feelings with you.
Whatever he may have said, or implied, in a private conversation is between himself and the person to whom he was speaking.
It is not a matter I can take up through an intermediary.
” She looked at Miss Bingley directly. “The engagement is strictly a concern of Mr Darcy and myself. I hope you will understand.”
Caroline Bingley’s expression flickered for only a moment before it settled back into sympathy.
“Of course. I only wished you to know in case it were useful that there are paths available. Quiet ones. That need not damage either party unduly, if both were agreeable.” She held Elizabeth’s gaze.
“I should hate for two people to remain in an arrangement that neither of them —”
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said. “You are very kind.”
The words fell between them with the weight of finality. Miss Bingley almost startled. Her lips parted, and for a moment, Elizabeth thought she would challenge them.
Then she inclined her head with perfect grace. “I hope we understand each other,” Miss Bingley said.
“I believe we do,” Elizabeth said. “And I thank you for your — candour.”
They parted. Elizabeth crossed the room to Charlotte and accepted a cup of tea. They talked about the lending library, about the next party, and when Lady Lucas intended to visit London. Elizabeth said nothing about the conversation to anyone.
∞∞∞
But though she did not speak of it aloud, Elizabeth thought of it almost without ceasing.
She thought about it through the lending library discussion, through an exchange with Sir William about the weather, and through the half an hour of her mother talking to Lady Lucas about the respective merits of the two dressmakers to be had in Meryton.
She thought about it with the focused, restless energy of someone who has heard something they did not want to hear and cannot determine how much of it to believe.
Caroline Bingley’s performance had been transparent.
She had seen through it from the first sentence.
Perhaps Miss Bingley had not intended otherwise.
The conversation might have been designed not to deceive her, but to unsettle her, to place a set of ideas in her mind and leave them there to do their work.
And if so, it had succeeded.
Mr Darcy had spoken of the engagement as an obligation and had implied distress.
Miss Bingley had framed this as concern for Elizabeth, though it was not.
She had offered a path to dissolution, which she had dressed as kindness, and was not that either.
The offer had been for herself. Elizabeth understood that much without effort.
Caroline Bingley wanted Mr Darcy. She had always wanted him, or at least wanted his name and fortune, his connections and his grand estate.
She had locked a study door and ruined two people’s ordinary lives in pursuit of that name and fortune, and was now sitting in Lady Lucas’s drawing room suggesting dissolution with the elegant patience of a woman who believed she was three moves from checkmate.
That much was all transparent. But one thing was not transparent, and could not be attributed entirely to Miss Bingley’s design: it was not all invented.
Mr Darcy had said something. In that private conversation at Netherfield, he had said something about obligation and distress.
Yes, Miss Bingley had distorted it and embellished it and served it with a sprig of false sympathy, but the original had existed.
Elizabeth knew it had existed because she had heard him herself, through a card room passage, saying words that Caroline Bingley had not needed to invent.
The engagement was made in honour. I will not pretend it was made in anything else.
She had heard that. And Miss Bingley had heard something also, something real, something that required little enough embellishment. Elizabeth feared very much that the two things fit together into a conclusion that she did not want to know, but could not help knowing.
Mr Darcy wanted to be released. He was too honourable to say so, and too considerate to press it, and he was sitting in a library discussing paths forward with Caroline Bingley because he was looking for one.
She knew him too well to think that he would look for a solution for himself only.
Honesty and honour were too much a part of his character for that.
If Mr Darcy cared only for himself, he would not have offered the engagement in the first point.
He might have gone on his way without troubling himself about what happened to her and to his sisters, and if society had judged him for it for a time, they would have forgiven the rich and influential master of Pemberley, nephew to the Earl of Matlock, soon enough.
No, Mr Darcy was looking for something else, a way out for both of them, in honour.
He would look for some means to save her reputation, some plan that would see them both released from their obligations without injury.
Only none of it would work, because Elizabeth knew with sudden, painful clarity that she did not want to be released.
She stood at the window and let herself know it plainly, without management or cavil.
She did not want to dissolve the engagement; she did not want the investigation to produce its logical conclusion.
What she wanted, with a specificity she found both clarifying and mortifying, was for the engagement to become real and one both of them chose with all their hearts.
Elizabeth closed her eyes, ashamed of what she wanted and how much she wanted it.
She was ashamed of how long it had taken her to be honest about it, and ashamed of the relief she felt even at the bare acknowledgment of it, as though wanting something clearly were itself a comfort regardless of whether the wanting could be satisfied.
It could not be satisfied. That was the other thing she was holding. He wanted release, and she wanted the opposite, and the two of them were performing a mutual consideration that was going to result in disaster.