21. The Gentleman Protests #3
“Goodness no!” Bingley exclaimed, dropping his knife underneath the table. A footman discreetly retrieved it and replaced it with a clean one. “But, Darcy, Miss Bennet has been indisposed. She has not received any calls.”
“I am aware.”
“She sent a note,” Bingley said, tracing the rim of his glass. “Flawless and civil. She expresses regret for missing Tuesday and hopes for a future engagement. It is the sort of perfect writing that offers nothing to lay hold of.”
“And you require an opening.”
“I require a change in the weather.” Bingley pushed a potato across his plate, his focus entirely consumed by the movement.
“She is always pleasant—smiles at the musicale, walks with me on the promenade, never a hint of coldness. But she has established a boundary, Darcy. She remains entirely kind while keeping me at a fixed, unyielding distance. Caroline insists that such consistency is merely a London dismissal wrapped in country good manners. Am I a fool for continuing to knock at a closed door?”
“You are observing what is there, Charles. That is not foolishness.”
“Then should I withdraw? Step back, give her the space of the Season, and allow her to look at other men without my shadow over her?”
“No.”
The word arrived with more force than Darcy had intended, and Bingley looked at him with the startled attention of a man whose friend had just shouted in a club dining room.
Darcy’s knuckles tightened against the stem of his wineglass. He had promised her, Elizabeth, that he would not steer Charles—that he would remain a neutral observer and let the match live or die on its own merits.
But Bingley was wretched, doubting Jane’s affections, and Darcy knew, with a fierce certainty, that Elizabeth cared too deeply about her sister to allow her to be hurt.
Jane Bennet did what every woman was told—to hide her affections behind a wall of indifference, and with rumors flying and her reputation at stake, she had no choice but to withdraw.
She could not appear to chase a gentleman.
“No,” Darcy repeated, more quietly. “You should not withdraw.”
“Is there yet hope?” Bingley’s innocence was so blatantly obvious.
“I am not after her sister’s fortune. God knows, my mines and textile mills have more than enough to provide for her and her mother if it comes to that.
I do not covet a titled lady. I know your father put that on you, and only a ducal connection would do, but I am a simple man. ”
“Bingley, you do not need to convince me. You should consider Miss Jane Bennet and the metrics of the ton . I believe the appropriate next step is a formal address to her father. Perhaps a letter or a call.”
“To Longbourn?” Bingley spluttered on his claret. “A year ago, you told me to leave Netherfield. You said her smiles were general. You said she did not distinguish me.”
“I was mistaken.” The admission cost him less than he had expected, which itself was evidence of how much Elizabeth’s word—“improving”—had altered his pride.
“I observed what I wished to observe. Jane’s reserve was not indifference.
It was the caution of a woman whose family’s position made her afraid to show what she felt, because the consequence of showing and being rejected would have been devastating. ”
“And now?”
“Now everything is different,” Darcy said.
“The Bennet sisters are having their first real Season. They are being courted by men they never dreamed would notice them—viscounts, fortune-hunters, the whole parade. It is intoxicating, as it should be. They are finally seeing what the world looks like when it decides to open its doors.”
“You are saying Jane wants the Season.”
“She deserves it, Charles, and she deserves a true choice. If you love her—if you are the man of character I have known since university—you will stand your ground and let her see the gentleman who loved her in Hertfordshire, not a coward who flees the moment his sisters make a noise.”
There. He had not persuaded. He had honored Elizabeth’s wishes to the letter, merely laying out the costs before his friend’s feet.
He loved her too thoroughly to manipulate her world from the shadows or claim a false merit in Jane’s reconciliation.
If he won Elizabeth Bennet, it would be cleanly, or not at all.
“I am not a coward,” Bingley said, his chin lifting with a sudden, northern grit. “I believe I shall submit my name for her schedule tomorrow night. You, my friend, are not managing the elder sister’s arrangements, are you?”
“No. Miss Jane Bennet will make her own decisions,” Darcy said, taking a sip of the vintage and noting its sharp, clean tartness. “As does her sister. I shall deliver Elizabeth’s card into her own hands tomorrow morning and allow her to make the final decisions.”
Bingley did not reply immediately. He set his empty glass upon the linen, his gaze fixed on Darcy with a rare, penetrating intelligence that always surprised those who mistook his good nature for simplicity.
He looked at his friend’s rigid posture, looked at the uncharacteristic vulnerability masking itself behind that old Derbyshire granite, and a sudden, quiet understanding dawned in his eyes.
“You have changed, Darcy.”
“I am improving.”
The words escaped before he could intercept them. It carried the exact, warm vibration of the woman who had said it to him. Darcy heard it leave his lips and realized he did not wish to recall it.
“Improving,” Bingley repeated, tasting the word. “In what?”
He did not wish to answer. The experience was too humbling. A woman who teased him with his most devastating words, disgusting, and whether he was still the last man. Was she reminding him of the great gap? The distance that would forever remain, or had the wordplay been an invitation to hope?
He raised his glass, his hand perfectly steady even as his chest tightened with a sudden, breathless longing. “To improvement, Charles,” while a pair of very fine eyes sparkled behind the claret.