Chapter 18
“Confound it all!” Darcy exclaimed, blotting at the ink that had splashed onto his writing paper at the moment the doorbell cut jarringly through his deep concentration.
Tutting at his own clumsiness, he shuffled together the complete pages already covered with neat, purposeful handwriting.
There were only a few more paragraphs to add, and then it would be done.
It had not been an easy letter to write.
Darcy had spent considerable time and effort on its composition, never mind the waste of paper as he crossed out or added to his thoughts.
It was only too likely that Elizabeth Bennet would never respond to the letter or even acknowledge it, never mind alter her feelings towards him. So be it. It was only important that she know the truth, as far as he could tell it, and judge him on that alone.
Darcy swore again when he realised the ink had also splotched his shirt sleeves.
He considered going to his room to change and ask his valet to get the maids to deal with the stained shirt, but some unknown person was at the front door.
His jacket would cover the stains if he could remember where he took the infernal thing off.
Looking irritably around the library, he hoped that the caller downstairs would be for Georgiana or Mrs Annesley, who had gone out together half an hour ago. It would be even better if the caller had the wrong house entirely. In any case, Darcy was in no mood for visitors.
He had just found his jacket on the back of a chair and was pulling it on when his elderly butler, Soames, entered the room.
“There is a visitor, Mr Darcy.”
“Whoever it is, can you tell them I am not home, Soames?” Darcy asked immediately. “I am not really in a state to receive unexpected guests, and no mood for it either. If it’s a friend of mine, tell them I will return the call as soon as I can.”
Looking back over his shoulder, Soames seemed unusually uncomfortable and distracted, as well as slightly pink in the face. “Sir, unfortunately, I could not…”
“Mr Darcy,” rang out Miss Caroline Bingley’s voice, cutting across his butler’s attempts to explain the situation. “How lovely to see you. I was just passing, with nothing in particular to do today, and thought it might be a good time to call in and see Georgiana.”
Darcy nodded to the butler, wordlessly communicating his understanding that the man had been steamrollered by Miss Bingley at the front door and unable to prevent her entering the library unannounced.
He also gestured for Soames to remain at the door, not wishing to be alone with a woman as persistent as Miss Bingley had shown herself to be.
Darcy was glad that he had had time to at least don his jacket.
And was Miss Bingley indeed ‘just passing’, as she had claimed? Her neat teal walking suit and carefully arranged hair under her matching hat told a rather different story. He half-wondered if she had even waited outside for Georgiana to leave, although perhaps that was moving into paranoia.
All the same, Darcy forced himself to smile. However much she grated on his nerves, Miss Bingley was still his friend’s sister and a lady to be respected.
“Georgiana and Mrs Annesley have gone out for the afternoon,” he said briefly. “I cannot say what time they will return. I am sorry that your journey has been wasted, Miss Bingley. May I get Soames to call you a cab, or do you have a carriage with you?”
“There is no need to trouble yourself, Mr Darcy,” Miss Bingley returned, coming further into the room, despite his lack of invitation and the faint impropriety of their meeting alone like this.
“I have a carriage. Charles kindly left the larger coach in London for me and Louisa to use. He does not intend to go about much in Hertfordshire and does not need more than one carriage there.”
Darcy did now vaguely remember seeing a familiar carriage in the street as he saw off Georgiana and Mrs Annesley earlier. Alarm bells rang in his head – perhaps his suspicion that Miss Bingley had lain in wait to get him alone was not too wide of the mark after all.
“I had thought you would have gone to Netherfield Park with your brother,” Darcy observed, wishing that it had indeed been the case.
Charles Bingley had departed for Netherfield Park the morning after the Suttonfield ball.
Darcy had seen his friend’s mood lift on seeing Miss Jane Bennet again at the ball, and then crash the following day, on having to accept all over again that she was engaged to another man and he had no hope of ever winning her hand.
“No, my own personal interests are very much here…in London, I mean,” Miss Bingley said, glancing down at the ground and then back at Darcy with a flirtatious smile.
He winced, embarrassed to have Soames witness this scene but knowing that his situation could become far worse if he sent the butler away. Was Miss Bingley really expecting him to offer her tea?
“Have you heard from your brother?” he asked, having received no letters from Netherfield yet and imagining Bingley to be moping about the place rather than attending to his correspondence.
“No, not a single letter,” sighed Miss Bingley. “I do miss him.”
“Perhaps you will soon go and join him at Netherfield,” Darcy suggested, hopefully more than with any conviction.
Caroline Bingley only laughed at the idea, a very artificial and silvery laugh.
“I should have said that I miss having Charles in London,” she corrected herself.
“I have so many social engagements right now and no gentleman to escort me. It is most trying that my brother should remove himself from London a second time during the Season.”
“You have Mr and Mrs Hurst,” Darcy pointed out, having no inclination to fall into the trap of agreeing to escort Miss Bingley about London and being mistaken for her admirer, or even prospective husband.
Miss Bingley had moved to be directly in front of him.
Darcy felt a shiver pass over his body, and he walked slowly away from her.
He remembered the sensation when she had grasped his arm at the Suttonfield ball, and he had recoiled with something close to revulsion.
He felt something of that now, merely from her proximity without any contact.
This encounter in Darcy House’s library was very different to being alone with Miss Elizabeth Bennet in that candlelit room at the Suttonfield ball, where she had upbraided and railed at Darcy, and he had madly suggested they marry.
Elizabeth’s proximity had sparked entirely different feelings in his breast, even when she was shouting at him.
“Yes, there is Mr Hurst, but he is generally…fully occupied.”
Miss Bingley’s answer left it open whether she meant occupied with drink, or with escorting his wife.
Everyone knew the man was a sot, but no one ever acknowledged it publicly, Darcy thought with distaste.
Seeing his visitor’s eyes fall on the desk where he had been writing, Darcy hastily gathered up his letter and slipped it into a drawer.
Walking over to the window, as if to make clear she had never any intention of reading his private correspondence, Miss Bingley looked out briefly and then smiled back at Darcy again, with a rather conspiratorial glint in her eyes.
“May I ask you something, Mr Darcy? I am sure you must know the truth if anyone does.”
“I cannot say until I know the question,” Darcy said tersely. Miss Bingley’s arch and flirtatious manner was as uncomfortable as her too-deliberate proximity.
“There is a rumour going about that Miss Jane Bennet has broken her engagement with Lord Grantchester. Had you heard of it? Is it true?”
Darcy turned sharply and looked hard at her. Was there really such a rumour abroad? If it were true, he would be very pleased indeed for Jane Bennet’s sake.
“I have heard no such thing,” he told her. “Then, I have not heard from Grantchester this full week. He and Keeble are always very busy at this point in the Season.”
When Miss Bingley continued to gaze upon him, Darcy dropped his eyes and checked his pocket watch, deciding that such mild rudeness was quite acceptable by this point, given Miss Bingley’s own lack of good manners.
How he wished she would go away and leave him alone to finish his letter to Elizabeth…
“We are all busy,” Miss Bingley responded, seeming finally to take Darcy’s heavy hint, or at least accept that she would not get the intimate tea and conversation she was looking for. “You and I, as well as Lord Grantchester and Lord Keeble. I should go.”
Darcy only nodded. “Of course. Soames will show you out, Miss Bingley. Do give my regards to your sister and Mr Hurst.”
“I shall. I do hope we shall see you at the Conway musical afternoon with dear Georgiana.”
Again, he inclined his head while silently determining to send his sister with Mrs Annesley instead.
After one more bow of Darcy’s head in response to her curtsy, Caroline Bingley was finally gone from the room and Darcy let out a long sigh of relief, closing the heavy door after her and leaning heavily against it, as if to prevent her re-entering.
Miss Bingley’s interest had always been evident, as he supposed that she might have interested herself in any rich and well-born friend of her brother.
In previous years, however, she had not overstepped his boundaries, and they had maintained a tolerable truce, where Miss Bingley advanced and Darcy side-stepped to avoid her.
Now, however, either her interest in him had grown stronger, or her spirit more reckless. It seemed foolishness to Darcy, when Miss Bingley’s generous dowry, regular features, and fashionable figure could easily have secured a less discerning man of fortune.
From what he had seen of Caroline Bingley’s scheming character and her dislike of being thwarted, Darcy suspected she saw his coolness as a challenge rather than discouragement, and sought to capture him by any means she could.
Her attentions were now too marked and embarrassing to ignore, and the situation could become dangerous, Darcy reflected. Nor did he wish to risk offending Bingley, who had been a dear friend for many years.
But he would not be able to help causing offense in the end — not if Miss Bingley continued to throw herself at Darcy and eventually forced him to reject her, whether privately or publicly.
Wildly, thinking of his obsession with Elizabeth Bennet, Darcy wondered how Miss Bingley would react if he confided that his own personal interests were already engaged elsewhere, although against his will.
No, even that would not drive her away. Like his cold manner, it would only make her more determined and desperate.
Darcy must take the same advice he had given to Bingley and leave London.
If he took Georgiana up to Pemberley for the next few months, that would remove him from the orbit of Miss Bingley and the Misses Bennet at a stroke.
What a blessed relief that ought to be, released both from threat and lure at once!
He might stop at Netherfield Park first and see Bingley too. First, however, Darcy had a letter to finish and deliver. He was not a man to leave a task half done.
∞∞∞
Wearing a clean shirt and a freshly pressed dark suit, Darcy descended from his carriage at Gracechurch Street an hour later and looked up at the neat and respectable townhouse where Mr and Mrs Gardiner lived with their family.
With its painted white front and red door, the house had a welcoming air that Darcy suspected did not extent to him.
With a sigh, he strode up the steps and pulled the doorbell, before asking the young maid who answered if Miss Elizabeth Bennet was at home.
“Who is it, Ettie?” called out a familiar voice from beyond the hallway. “Uncle will not be home for another hour.”
“It’s for you, Miss Elizabeth,” the maid squeaked, looking at Mr Darcy in something like awe and seeming not to know whether she ought to bring him inside. “A gentleman has come to call on you.”
“A gentleman?” queried Elizabeth’s voice, coming closer as her footsteps approached. “I was not expecting…Oh!”
Elizabeth Bennet stopped dead in the hallway, her cheeks reddening and her eyes full of something that Darcy took for dismay.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he addressed her from the doorstep with a bow. “I will not detain you. I have only come to —”
“Do come in, Mr Darcy,” she said with polite efficiency and then turned to the maid. “Ettie, please take Mr Darcy’s hat and cane and put them on the rack. Do excuse our maid, Mr Darcy. It is the butler’s half day and Ettie is very newly arrived.”
Had Darcy really expected Elizabeth Bennet to shout at him and throw him into the street? Well, he had been prepared for it, if it came, although he preferred that she rail at him privately.
“My uncle is at work and my aunt has accompanied Jane back to Longbourn,” Elizabeth explained as she showed Darcy into the drawing room. “I am sure they would wish me to offer you some hospitality in their absence. Would you take tea?”
Darcy shook his head. Really, it was no more proper for him to take tea alone with Elizabeth Bennet than with Caroline Bingley, but Elizabeth’s straightforward and capable manner somehow made the offer seem perfectly appropriate.
Her cold tone also told him that she had no desire for him to accept it.
She was only doing what she thought her relatives would do.
“Do not let me put you to any trouble, Miss Elizabeth,” he told her, producing the letter from his pocket and holding it out. “I came only to give you this and ask that you read it. I am going to Pemberley now and plan to stay there until winter. You need not see me again.”
“Very well,” Elizabeth agreed, taking the letter after a very brief hesitation. “Do give my regards to Miss Darcy. I hope she enjoys the remainder of the summer in Derbyshire.”
After that, she only waited, clearly wanting and expecting Darcy to leave. Did she feel the same way about him as he felt about Caroline Bingley?
It was a bleak thought, and not one that Darcy wished to test. Bowing a polite farewell, Darcy took his leave.
There was nothing else to be done. He would have to accept Elizabeth’s feelings and attempt to conquer his own.