CHAPTER ELEVEN
Darcy did not sleep that night either.
He rode the boundary of the park at dawn, alone, letting the horse pick its own pace along the water meadow, and found his thoughts circling the same ground they had circled for a month: the six items, unanswered, and the letter that had explained everything except the one thing she had asked him to explain.
He had told himself, at Rosings, that he could not answer the list without repeating the offense in gentler language.
He understood now, riding through mist that had not yet burned off the grass, that this had been a coward's reasoning dressed up as delicacy.
A man who truly regretted a debt did not refuse to discuss its terms simply because discussing them was uncomfortable.
He had spent a month telling himself he had done enough by explaining Wickham and Bingley, and had avoided, carefully, ever once sitting down and answering, item by item, the actual accusation she had made against him.
He resolved, turning the horse back toward the house, that he would begin doing so today, however clumsily, however much it cost him to say the words a second time.
He did not expect the opportunity to arrive so soon, nor in company he had not chosen.
Bingley arrived that same morning, unannounced, full of the particular restless energy he had carried since Hertfordshire, and Georgiana's shy eagerness to meet Miss Bennet filled the drawing room with a warmth Darcy had not felt in that house in longer than he cared to count.
Elizabeth came with her aunt and uncle at noon, and Darcy watched, from across the room, the careful way she drew Georgiana out of her shyness, patient where a lesser woman might have grown impatient with a girl too nervous to finish a sentence, and felt something in his chest tighten that had nothing to do with arithmetic and everything to do with simple, undefended want.
Miss Bingley, arrived from London with her sister the week before and clearly still nursing her own disappointed hopes, could not resist the opening the moment presented.
"How very ill Miss Eliza Bennet looks this morning," she said to Darcy, low enough not to carry, once Elizabeth had drawn slightly apart to admire the view from the window. "Quite brown, I think, from all this traveling. I recall you once said she was hardly handsome enough to tempt you."
"I recall saying a great many foolish things in Hertfordshire," Darcy said, "and I have had occasion since to regret most of them."
Miss Bingley's mouth tightened, and she said nothing further, but Darcy found, watching Elizabeth across the room, that the exchange had clarified something he had been circling for weeks.
He had spent his whole life believing that honesty, however unwelcome, was owed precedence over kindness.
He understood now, watching the woman he loved comfort his sister with a patience Miss Bingley had never once extended to anyone, that the two need not be opposed at all, that a man might tell the whole truth and still choose, with care, which truths were worth the saying and which were simply cruelty wearing honesty's coat.
He crossed the room before he had fully decided to.
"Miss Bennet. Might I show you the new instrument in the next room? My sister has been wanting an opinion on it."
It was a poor excuse and they both knew it, but she came, and Georgiana trailed after with evident relief at escaping Miss Bingley's company, and for a quarter hour the three of them stood over the pianoforte discussing nothing of consequence, Georgiana gradually finding her voice, Elizabeth drawing her out with easy questions, Darcy saying very little and watching a great deal.
When Georgiana was called away by Mrs. Annesley, he found himself, for the first time since Kent, alone with Elizabeth by design rather than accident.
"I owe you an answer," he said, before he could talk himself out of it. "You told me, at the Parsonage gate, that I had written a full accounting of Wickham and Bingley and left the other matter entirely untouched. You were right to say so. I have thought of little else since."
Her expression sharpened, wary. "And have you an answer prepared now?"
"Not a full one. I do not know that I ever will have, item by item, the way you seem to want it. But I can tell you this much honestly: I was wrong to say what I said, in the manner I said it, and I have not, since that morning, been able to convince myself the wrong was only in the delivery."
"That is not nothing," she said, carefully, "but it is also not an answer to any single item."
"No," he admitted. "It is not."
She studied him a moment, and something in her face eased, fractionally, the same careful thaw he had watched happen in the gallery the day before. "I did not think you capable of saying even that much, a month ago."
"A month ago I did not think myself capable of it either." He held her gaze. "I have been doing sums my whole life, Miss Bennet, and finding myself right nearly every time. I begin to suspect the habit has cost me more than it has ever earned me."
Something moved in her face that he could not name, warmth and wariness both at once, and neither of them said anything further, because Mr. Gardiner's voice carried in from the next room, inquiring after the fishing, and the ordinary world reasserted itself before either of them could decide what came next.