Chapter 9
NINE
A GRAVE MISAPPREHENSION
In the morning, as early as he could, Darcy again visited Bingley in his rooms at the Albany. He found him drunk as a lord and stinking to high heaven, but as trickery was his object, he supposed it was for the best.
It had been his cousin, Viscount Saye, who suggested bluffing. Darcy had mused, aloud, on how best to get someone to admit to a truth when they are determined to lie, and Saye had a ready answer. “Pretend the truth is already out and see what might come forth.”
Darcy took a seat on a leather armchair in Bingley’s sitting room as Bingley, clad only in what appeared to be last night’s breeches and shirt, did likewise. Bingley’s man settled the coffee service on the table between them and then excused himself. “My head is throbbing,” Bingley moaned.
“So it seems,” Darcy replied. “Where were you last night?”
“In truth, I hardly know,” said Bingley with a rueful chuckle.
“The night began at Boodle’s and moved on to the Fairleigh ball, but then I have some dim recollection of supper at the Hursts’?
I cannot think how or why I found myself there, but my next memory is being here, so it seems to have ended well. ”
“Hm,” Darcy said, hoping to disguise his disgust. “I had not realised drink had such an effect on you, to make you forget entire pieces of an evening.”
Bingley understood his meaning immediately. “I assure you, Darcy, I would not forget shaking the bedposts with Miss Bennet.”
It was a comment which positioned Darcy perfectly. “As the report goes, the act occurred on the rug, so bedposts would not have been involved.”
“Report? What report? I told you, the lady is mistaken. There was nothing of that sort that happened,” Bingley said in an aggrieved tone.
“The lady might be mistaken,” Darcy owned. “But I should not think that everyone could be so mistaken.”
“Who is ‘everyone’?”
Darcy sighed heavily. “This is the trouble with a rented house and servants not your own. There is no loyalty and nothing to stop tongues wagging.”
“If someone has been bandying about gossip that will ruin my name, it will not go unanswered!” Bingley said loudly and then put a hand to his head.
“Servants’ gossip can be very persuasive.” Darcy poured himself coffee from the kettle. “Everyone presumes they know what they are about. For all we know, he might have heard one of his fellow footmen and a maid!”
“He?” Bingley asked. “Who is ‘he’?”
“I assumed one of the footmen,” Darcy said. “Do you think it was one of your guests?”
“Was what one of the guests? The person spreading the gossip?”
“You are right,” said Darcy with a decisive nod. “But have you asked Miss Bingley about it? She was exceedingly fond of Miss Bennet, was she not?”
“Caroline?”
“Or Mrs Hurst. You raise a good point.”
Bingley leant forwards. “Darcy, you are making my head ache. Do you mean to tell me that there is gossip going round Hertfordshire about that night at the ball?”
Darcy nodded very gravely. “Someone saw you, or else claim that they did. Indubitably.”
Bingley stared in round-eyed disbelief and then shot to his feet and thrust his arms akimbo. “It was only once!”
Darcy pretended to confusion. “What was once? One embrace? One kiss?”
Bingley scowled. “Obviously I speak of more than a kiss, as do you!”
“Do you? But you told me—”
“I know what I said, and yes, ’tis true, it did go further than kisses. But it was only one time!” he cried out theatrically. “Things went beyond my control.”
“One time is all that is required.” Darcy took a measured sip of the coffee.
“A moment’s foolishness. These things happen! Particularly in the country!” He spun on his heel and stalked towards the mantel, giving it a light punch when he arrived.
“I am not sure what you mean by that, but a gentleman’s daughter is a gentleman’s daughter, be she in the country or town or swimming by you in the open sea.”
Bingley turned, and there was something in his face now that Darcy had not seen there before, something uneasy and self-justifying that sat poorly on features generally so open. “Is it even certain? How would she know?”
“She knows,” Darcy said. “And I daresay her disbelief is the equal of your own.”
“But to say that I am to blame for something… I mean to say, how can anyone know it was me? She is a young woman of limited supervision and a great deal of opportunity. You have said it yourself, how oft Mr Bennet fails in his paternal obligation—”
Darcy rose and took two large strides towards his friend. His fists were clenched by his sides, his voice low with fury as he spat, “You surely do not mean to suggest that Miss Bennet has entertained other men?”
Bingley glared at him resentfully. “What makes you so certain she has not?”
“You know as well as I that she is not that sort of woman.”
“Were she not,” Bingley shot back, “she would not find herself in such a predicament.”
Darcy seized Bingley by his shirt, clutching the material as he shoved his friend back against the mantel. The action happened before he had any time to consider it.
“She did not find herself in this predicament. You put her there with words of love and promises of a future. A young woman of good character would surely not do anything of this sort were she not absolutely certain of the fidelity of her suitor. You know that. To say otherwise is to impugn her unforgivably, and it is beneath you.” He released his friend and took a step backwards. “Or it ought to be.”
Bingley silently tugged his shirt into place.
He had the grace, at least, to look ashamed.
“To impugn her is not my intention. Only I had come to see—as you yourself so vehemently observed—that a young woman from such a position and such a family will stop at nothing to see herself married to a wealthy man. And now I am that man, and I am not of a mind to see myself bound inextricably to a child I am positive is not mine! What if it is a boy, Darcy? Hm? Am I to leave my fortune to another man’s son? ”
“It is your child,” said Darcy, accentuating each syllable.
“It simply cannot be,” Bingley insisted. “I know it cannot.”
“What are you saying?”
Bingley lowered his voice, glancing about as if he expected that an audience had formed in his apartment. “It was clearly the first time she had been with a man, and everyone knows you cannot impregnate someone the first time.”
“Good lord! Who told you such a thing?”
“Everyone,” Bingley insisted. “Ask round the club, anyone will say it is true.”
“I do not know what club you refer to, but unless you have joined a group of midwives, I would not take any person at White’s as an authority on the matter.”
“What would you have me do?” Bingley demanded. “You surely do not expect me to marry her? Not when you so energetically warned me against her but weeks ago? Not when you concealed her presence in London from me.”
Darcy drew back, and Bingley crossed his arms over his chest. “You did not think I knew that, did you? Caroline told me not a week ago that Miss Bennet had called in Grosvenor Street and you knew about it and advised her not to tell me.”
“Had I known what happened between you, I assure you that not only would I have encouraged you to see her, but I would have taken you to buy her an engagement present.”
“I am not ready to be a husband and father,” Bingley said. “I do not even have Caroline settled! Miss Abernathy is even now awaiting—”
“You ought to have thought of that before you took Jane Bennet into your bedchamber.”
“But believing, as I did, that one time could not result in consequences…” Bingley entreated. “Surely some clemency must be granted, even if it was but a misapprehension on my part.”
“And what of clemency for Miss Bennet? Or indeed all the Bennet family?”
To this Bingley could make no reply save for a frustrated huff.
Darcy decided he had had enough. It was enough already, to begin his day with such vexation, and he was finished with it for now.
“I have always believed you in manners to be very much a gentleman,” he said to his friend.
“Being a gentleman means you do not always make the easy decision but instead prefer what is honourable and upright.”
“You are right,” Bingley said in a voice of defeat. “I know you are.”
A faint glimmer of hope shot through Darcy, only to be dashed quickly.
“Perhaps I could offer her a bit of money. A thousand pounds should do it, I should think?”
Darcy’s heart dropped like a stone. A deeply disappointed stone. “A thousand pounds?” he echoed with quiet reproach.
“Two thousand?”
Darcy only stared at him for several long minutes.
“This is not the last you have heard from me on this subject,” he said at last, very stiffly.
“I hope that our next meeting will see you returned to an understanding of what decency and honour require, for at present such notions seem to have escaped you.”
He left.