Chapter Twenty-Four
Upon returning to Netherfield, Darcy did not at first seek out Caroline Bingley.
There would be time enough, and it was a conversation that would require considerable privacy and focus.
Instead, he attended to the correspondence that had accumulated, and went over an account his steward had sent from Pemberley.
Supper that evening was a subdued but civil affair, with little of interest being said.
Though outwardly at ease and as carefully charming as ever, Miss Bingley seemed to feel the difference in his manners.
More than once between the soup and the roast, Darcy caught her in the act of casting a rather uneasy glance at him.
Afterward, the party dispersed to their various pursuits. Mr Hurst, upon finding out that no one but himself wished to play at cards, resigned himself to dozing on the couch. Mrs Hurst played a complicated aire on the pianoforte, while Miss Bingley said she had letters to write and withdrew.
Elizabeth had told him she did not think Caroline Bingley was without feeling on the subject of what she had produced.
Perhaps there was something to that conclusion.
He could not say much for Caroline Bingley, but she was at least unable to sit at a table with him and perform ease.
That was not the behaviour of someone entirely without feeling.
Darcy gave her twenty minutes before he went to speak with her.
Miss Bingley was at her writing desk when he came in, though the paper before her was unmarked. She looked up when he entered. Alertness and expectation moved across her face. “Mr Darcy,” she said, “you wished to speak with me?”
Darcy left the door open, and he did not sit. “The secret is out, Miss Bingley,” he said, carefully level. “I know what you did.”
Miss Bingley went pale, her eyes wide. “Why, Mr Darcy — I cannot imagine what you mean —” she protested.
To his surprise, Darcy found that the anger that burned hotly in him still permitted a rueful smile.
“Come now, Miss Bingley. Let us be honest with each other, at least. Almost from the first, I did not believe that my — accident — with Miss Elizabeth was entirely a matter of chance. I know now that it was not. It was entirely intentional; a scheme of your design.”
“You cannot think…” Miss Bingley’s voice wavered and trailed off. “I would not wish to arrange for you to marry Miss Eliza, Mr Darcy. Surely you know that.”
“I do,” Darcy agreed. “And I know, likewise, that you intended the compromise for another woman; namely, for yourself. In this much, your calculations were quite correct: I would not abandon an innocent woman in such a situation.”
“Of course you would not,” Miss Bingley said at once, her voice ringing falsely sweet. “No one who knows your sense of honour would think otherwise. But I would not — it would be scandalous, it would be unthinkable —”
“The truth, Miss Bingley,” Darcy interrupted flatly.
“It was scandalous and unthinkable, and you did it anyway. Do not attempt to prevaricate. I ought to have known as soon as I asked you about the note that brought me to the study, and you could not produce any item of real gossip about my sister. Were your actions not so unthinkable, I could not have been deceived even then. Now, it is quite impossible. You see, I know everything, Miss Bingley. Not only about the note and your intentions for me, but about the maid and the bribe as well. You see, not only do I know what you did, I can produce the proof.” He kept his voice level, because he had promised himself he would; the promise was requiring rather more of him than he had anticipated.
Miss Bingley looked at the unmarked paper on the desk.
Her hands, he noticed, were entirely still.
“What will you do now?” she asked. Her voice trembled slightly.
“Please! I know very well that no amends can be made. But the consequences of this — think of Bingley, your closest friend, if not of me —”
“I have not come to tell you that this will be made public,” Darcy interrupted her. “Quite to the contrary. There will be no formal accusation, no social consequence, no conversation with your brother.” He paused. “I would have you know that is not my decision. It is Elizabeth’s.”
Miss Bingley looked up at that.
“She found the proof,” Darcy said. “In Meryton, because of a maid whose conversation she happened to overhear, and whose account she had the presence of mind to pursue carefully.” He held Miss Bingley’s gaze, letting her understand the gravity of Elizabeth’s restraint.
“Not because the proof was insufficient. Because she considered how the exposure would impact Bingley, Jane, and yourself. She decided that those costs were not ones she was willing to impose.”
Darcy took a deep breath. “That much, I wished you to know. But I have a message for you from Elizabeth as well. She asked me to tell you that she knows you did not intend to hurt her. That she has not reduced you to the worst thing you have done.”
The candles on the writing desk burned without moving. The air in the room was perfectly still, mirroring Miss Bingley’s frozen posture.
Miss Bingley said nothing for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice had a quality he had not heard in it before, as if stripped of its usual calibration. “She said that?”
“Yes.”
Miss Bingley looked at the candles.
From the quality of her stillness, it was obvious it was not a performance. There was no audience here worth performing for, and Miss Bingley was too intelligent not to know that.
“I see,” she said finally.
“It is by her generosity, her grace,” Darcy said quietly, “that your life will go on without utter ruin and disgrace. Thanks to her, your place in society shall remain intact. It means that the secret will be kept. The engagement continues and will become a marriage. Naturally, I expect you to attend the wedding and conduct yourself accordingly.”
He paused, getting a handle on the reins of a temper that threatened to slip out of his control.
“My future wife has chosen mercy for you, and I intend to respect her choice. But neither of us will forget, and for my part, I do not find it forgivable. You are fortunate indeed that a woman with more cause for anger than most people accumulate in a lifetime has decided that she does not want your destruction on her hands.”
Miss Bingley was quiet for another moment. Then she said with deflated acceptance, “You are in love with her.”
It was not what he had expected her to say. Darcy looked at her in astonishment.
“I noticed,” Miss Bingley said, “some time ago. I told myself it was admiration, or novelty, or the response of a certain kind of man to a certain kind of impertinence.” She looked down at her hands again. “But it is more, I think. You do love her.”
Darcy nodded. “Yes. Perhaps I owe you my thanks after all. I might not have found my Elizabeth so quickly without you.” She flinched a little at the words. That much revenge, at least, Darcy could not bring himself to regret.
“Perhaps I deserve the ruin of all my plans,” Miss Bingley said blankly.
“I am glad, at least, that you are satisfied by the outcome of these events. I have never wished to be your enemy, Mr Darcy. Far from it. And perhaps this is better than I deserve. Miss Elizabeth would have been justified in publishing all my actions. I cannot claim otherwise.”
“Yes,” Darcy agreed. “She has chosen not justice, but mercy.”
Miss Bingley bowed her head. “And I — I am grateful for that mercy.”
Darcy thought about what Elizabeth had said: I do not think she is without feeling on the subject.
He had not been entirely convinced that such generosity was warranted.
Standing in the candlelit room watching Caroline Bingley sit with the full weight of what she had done and what she had been given in return, he thought Elizabeth had been more accurate than he had given her credit for.
But perhaps that was not surprising. Elizabeth was nothing if not perceptive.
“I will conduct myself accordingly,” Miss Bingley promised. “At the wedding, and in all necessary circumstances.” She said it without the graceful composure she brought to most things. Her words were heavy with defeat, which was its own kind of concession. “You have my word.”
He nodded
“I would ask that you tell her —” she stopped. Her face pinched with emotion. “No,” she said. “There is nothing to tell her. What she has done does not require an answer from me. It only requires that I understand it clearly.”
“I think that is a proper assessment,” Darcy said.
Miss Bingley accepted this with the slight inclination of her head that meant the conversation was over. He went to the door.
“Mr Darcy.”
He stopped.
Miss Bingley looked at him across the room, and there was no cunning or careful composure in her expression. Only honest disappointment. “I am sorry,” she said. “For what it is worth.”
“I know you are,” Darcy said. He meant it, which was not something he had expected to mean when he had walked through the door.
He went out and closed it quietly behind him, and walked back to his own rooms and sat for a while in the dark. He thought about Elizabeth choosing mercy for a woman who had given her none, and found that he was not done being astonished by her, and suspected he would not be for a very long time.
∞∞∞
Caroline sat at her writing desk until the candles had burned low.
She did not write the letter. For a long time, she sat with the unmarked paper, the dying candles, and the full knowledge of what she had done and what she had failed to achieve.
And what had been given to her by Elizabeth Bennet, whom she would have given anything to defeat.
She held all of it without trying to rearrange it into a more comfortable shape.
Some things, she was finding, could not be rearranged.
Her ambitions were finished. Of that much, there could no longer admit of a doubt.
Not everything was ended. Not her reputation.
Her position in society was intact, preserved by the same woman she had wronged, which was the part she found most difficult to comprehend.
But the ambition that had sat at the centre of everything else, that had given the scheming its direction and the patience its object, that was done.
She knew it was done not because Mr Darcy had said so, but because she had watched his face as he spoke about Elizabeth Bennet, and she was not a stupid woman.
Caroline blew out the candles and went to bed. She did not sleep for a long time, and did not even wish things to be other than they were. To her own considerable surprise, she found she did not have the heart for it.