Chapter Twenty-Three
Mr Darcy did not leave Elizabeth to wait long for his visit the next day, but arrived almost as soon as good manners could well allow.
Though his punctuality was very welcome as a sign of affection equalling her own, it yet meant that the moment of truth could no longer be delayed.
Elizabeth met him in the hallway before her mother could organise the room to her satisfaction, which saved several minutes of chair arrangements and allowed them to settle comfortably in the east parlour.
Her mother made a brief and unsuccessful attempt to position herself near the door and was redirected by Jane with the focused kindness of long practice. After the initial excitement, they were then left in privacy, if not complete, at least sufficient to allow for discussion.
“Good morning, Elizabeth,” Mr Darcy said.
It still pleased her to hear him address her with such warmth and intimacy. She smiled. “Good morning.”
They settled into chairs, and Mr Darcy looked at her keenly. “I had rather received the impression you had something particular to tell me.”
Elizabeth took a deep breath. “I do. Perhaps we might say, rather, that I have something to confess, for I know how our compromise came to be — who caused the door to be locked, and why. I have known for some weeks.”
Mr Darcy looked at her in astonishment, but only for a moment. Thoughts seemed to pass rapidly behind his eyes, and he nodded slowly. “Since you began to say that you saw no new leads, I imagine.”
Elizabeth pressed onward. “Yes.” She kept her voice level. “I owe you an apology, for I knew, and I did not tell you.”
“Why?” he asked without accusation.
“Several reasons,” she said. “The proof points at someone whose exposure would damage people who had no part in what was arranged. I could not do that, not for my own freedom. But I cannot pretend that my motives were entirely noble, though I am ashamed to admit the truth. Using it would dissolve the engagement. I found, when I was holding the means to end it, that I could not make myself want to. And I was not entirely certain, at that point, whether that was for those people’s sake or for my own reasons. ”
Mr Darcy said nothing for a moment. A log in the fire snapped loudly. “You held the means to dissolve it and chose not to use it.”
“Yes.”
“Because, at least in part, you wished to marry me,” he added, sounding astonished more than anything.
“In part,” Elizabeth said. “You have every right to be angry with me. In making such a choice, I took away your own right to do the same.”
The morning light through the window had shifted slightly, the winter sun making its low, brief attempt at the day. Outside, the lawn sparkled with silver frost.
“Perhaps I ought to be angry, but I find I cannot,” Mr Darcy said at last. “We have both been struggling under an impossible set of problems and desires. Not to mention bearing up under all the attention of society, and of an impossible array of bystanders, some better intentioned than others.”
“You are generous,” Elizabeth said, “and I am grateful for it.”
“You need not be grateful,” Mr Darcy said, shaking his head. “But I must know. Why did anyone wish to arrange a compromise between us? The answer to that has eluded me to this day. And perhaps more to the point, who was responsible?”
Elizabeth looked at him directly, studying his face for the distress she knew she was about to unleash. “When you know who, you will know why. I was not intended to be in the study when the door was locked. The architect of the compromise was Caroline Bingley.”
She watched him receive it. The stillness that came over him was not entirely the stillness of surprise, but rather of pieces fitting into place, too perfectly aligned to be doubted.
“I think I ought to have known it before,” Mr Darcy said, a little hoarsely. “Certainly Miss Bingley made no secret of her ambitions. Only I did not imagine that she, that any lady would dare to — well. I shall not speculate. Tell me what you found.”
She told him of the errand to Meryton, of the draper’s doorway and the housemaid’s voice, carrying further than its owner knew.
The payment, and the key turned when she was told.
The mistress who had been very put out that the wrong woman had been on the other side of the door.
She relayed the questions she had asked, the answers she had received, and what she had assembled from them on the walk home.
Mr Darcy listened without interrupting. His expression, by the time she had finished, was one she had not seen before. He was not composed or indifferent, nor did he possess the careful civility of recent weeks. His eyes had gone cold, dark, and rather still.
“She used Georgiana’s name,” he said. It was not the first point she had expected him to arrive at, but with a moment’s thought, Elizabeth found she was not surprised. Mr Darcy cared deeply for his sister.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “The note that brought you to the study.”
“That circumstance could hardly fail to arouse my suspicions.” He paused.
“I questioned her about it, of course. I thought her guilty of a lesser crime, that of wishing to speak to me alone without a proper reason. That she could have intended a compromise had not occurred to me, still less that she had paid for it and then allowed the consequences to fall on you.”
“She did not intend me,” Elizabeth said wryly. “She intended herself.”
“That does not improve the account.” He stood and moved to the window. “Nor was that the end of her attempts. There was the suggestion that the engagement might yet be dissolved.”
Elizabeth looked at him. “Yes. Miss Bingley came to me with a piece of information she had heard — allegedly — from Mr Hurst’s solicitor. About the conditions under which an engagement might be quietly dissolved.”
Mr Darcy rubbed his mouth. “Yes. She brought the same information to me.”
“I know,” Elizabeth said. “Or I suspected. The information was too precisely useful to have arrived at her by accident, and she must have imagined that she might more easily convince you than myself.”
“She presented it as concern for my well-being,” he said wryly.
The expression that crossed his face was not pleasant.
He controlled it quickly, but not before she had seen it.
“I declined it and told her that such an arrangement would not mend that damage to your reputation, which was true. I also —” He stopped and placed his hands on his knees.
“I also declined it for reasons I did not give her.”
“As did I,” Elizabeth said. “It has been a difficult time.”
“It has,” Mr Darcy agreed. Though Elizabeth could not see his face, his voice was grim.
“We have both suffered much to reach so happy an understanding, and Miss Bingley was entirely responsible. This must not stand.” Anyone else might have paced in agitation, but Mr Darcy simply stood with his back partly to her.
Elizabeth could see from the set of his shoulders what the stillness, the control, was costing him.
“This can put an end to all the scandal,” he said. He faced her once more, a determined frown set in his face like stone. “The circumstances of it can now be properly accounted for. The housemaid’s testimony, the payment, all of it is exactly what we needed. It clears your name entirely.”
“It would,” Elizabeth said softly. Wishing, for a moment, that matters could yet be so simple.
“Then we’ll use it.” He said it with quiet certainty, unwavering. “We bring it forward. Everyone who has believed a version of events that reflects badly on you, it can be corrected. The record can be set right.”
Elizabeth tilted her head. “And what happens to Miss Bingley when it is set right?”
Mr Darcy paused. “She faces the consequences of what she did.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth agreed. “She does. And what are those consequences for a woman who is found to have deliberately arranged a compromise?”
His eyes went wide as understanding dawned.
“She is finished,” Elizabeth said evenly.
The bare facts needed no embroidery. “Not censured or embarrassed for a season. Finished. No respectable household receives her. No suitable match is made. Even her family and friends would bear the shame of so great a scandal, while the woman at the centre of it would be as removed from society as though she were dead. Whatever Miss Bingley has, and she has considerable intelligence and not inconsiderable accomplishments, none of it is sufficient to recover from that. I have thought about this at length over many weeks, and I cannot find a version of her exposure that ends differently.”
“She brought it on herself,” Mr Darcy said.
“Yes, she did. I am not arguing otherwise. I am telling you what the exposure will truly do to her, because I think you should have it fully before you decide what you want to do with it.”
Mr Darcy glanced down at her, reading her intentions. “You have already decided what you want to do with it.”
“Indeed, I have decided what I am going to do with it,” Elizabeth said. “I am not certain I have any right to decide for you.”
He sat down across from her. His eyes grew distant as he considered all options. “Bingley,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Whatever happens to his sister, the scandal would also reflect on him.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “He is entirely without fault in any of this. And yet he would also be shamed, perhaps shunned, in the event of his sister’s exposure.
Then, too, his attachment to Jane exists in a world with opinions about such things, and I cannot be certain it survives. I have thought about this as well.”
“Because of your sister,” he said.
Elizabeth nodded.
Mr Darcy was quiet for a long moment. The fire popped in the grate. Elizabeth sat with her hands in her lap and let him think.
“This is,” he said finally, “an argument for your silence that has nothing to do with Miss Bingley’s well-being.”