16. Imprudent Words
Imprudent Words
The following day, with the paths muddied and tree branches littering the yard, Mr Collins occupied himself with cleaning his garden.
Elizabeth kept to her rooms, pleading a headache.
Maria expressed her dismay at losing her good humour in the parlour, but Charlotte knew her friend well and understood that headaches were a monthly affliction.
Elizabeth chose not to disabuse her of that thought, especially when an invitation to dine at Rosings was announced by a dampened, agitated Mr Collins.
If Maria was disappointed to lose Elizabeth’s company, Mr Collins was incredulous at the notion that a mere headache could keep her from the sacred privilege of dining at Rosings’s ‘twenty-foot-long oaken table, lit by eighty-eight candles in two French chandeliers, commissioned by Sir Lewis himself’!
But keep her, it did. Elizabeth watched from her narrow bedroom window as the trio climbed into one of Rosings’s carriages to be driven to the great house to dine.
“Never before has Lady Catherine sent a carriage to us,” Mr Collins had cried when it appeared. “We have received a great honour. She wishes to protect us—even you, Cousin Elizabeth—from the mud.”
Elizabeth had ignored his indignant glare. She understood the lady to be more mindful of Rosings’s carpets than the comfort of her guests.
Grateful for the quiet at the parsonage, she went to the small front room to seek some tea and re-read Jane’s last letter.
It lightened her mood, and when Sarah, the parsonage’s maid of all work, asked to walk out to visit her mother, Elizabeth was happy to agree.
A few moments of solitude were all she was granted, however, for a knock at the door soon stirred her from her contemplations.
Upon opening it, she was surprised to find Mr Darcy, looking sombre. Alarmed, she stepped back. He entered and studied her closely.
“You are ill, Miss Bennet?”
If she were, of course, such a call would have been even more improper. “No, merely fatigued.”
He looked at her sceptically. “You are not easily tired.”
“I am wearied by a headache which overtook me during my walk yesterday.”
Her words softened his expression. He stepped forwards and took her arm, leading her to a chair and enquiring as to any relief he could summon for her.
“I am well. The storm last evening was unpleasant, but the quiet of the house has eased my discomfort.”
Mr Darcy nodded, but he showed less understanding than she had expected, for he made no move to depart or even smile at her quiet jibe. She sighed as he began speaking.
“The dining room at Rosings is no place for you, then,” he said. “I am sorry if my cousin’s escort yesterday is to blame. He is known to find his own conversation rather more interesting than others do. I was loath to abandon you. Pray he did not plague you with a loquacious display.”
Despite her anger at his intrusion, she could not miss the sincerity in his voice and the striking brightness of his eyes. She wondered whether Mr Darcy was aware of what she and his cousin had discussed on their walk. Such knowledge might explain his abrupt appearance at the parsonage.
“Colonel Fitzwilliam’s conversation intrigued me greatly.”
Her reply seemed to alarm him. He stalked to the hearth, where he turned to face her.
She could not but notice the consternation in his expression.
She shifted in Charlotte’s green chair, the room’s second-most comfortable piece, and anticipated his apology for his cousin’s misunderstanding of the events in Meryton.
“You understand that I would not importune you if it were not important to me that you are in health.” He tugged at his cuff and stepped nearer. His eyes held a disarming degree of emotion.
“You are concerned for my health?” Elizabeth recalled he had been attentive to Jane’s as well. “I thank you but assure you I am well.”
“I am glad to hear it. I could not rest until I knew,” he murmured, gazing at her earnestly with eyes darker than she remembered. “You see, I must… I have come to speak to you, to declare myself. I should not tell you, not like this, but I can no longer repress my feelings. I love you.”
Elizabeth was astonished. Every thought and word vanished. Mr Darcy must have considered her silence sufficient encouragement, for he began assuring her of all that he had long felt for her.
He loved her? How was it possible? Then, as his paeans to her character continued, she realised the reasons behind such a display. He must desire to best the colonel in distressing me with flippant flirtations and professions.
Her sense returning, Elizabeth raised a hand in hopes of ending his outpouring of feeling.
“Sir, please,” she said, perhaps more sharply than intended. “I cannot speak to your imprudent affections.”
“Imprudent?” Mr Darcy stepped back, looking at her hand as if she had slapped him with it. “Imprudent?”
“You and Colonel Fitzwilliam should compete elsewhere, not in a farcical game over who can win a lady’s affection.”
“What has my cousin to do with it? This is no game.”
“Disingenuous professions of affection seem to come as easily to some men as avowals of their conquests or victories in debate.” Elizabeth’s voice wavered, and she was as shocked by her bold words as Mr Darcy appeared to be in hearing them.
Lest he take the deepest insult to heart, she quickly continued.
“You have paid me a pretty compliment, but I must know—did you boast of separating your friend from my sister?”
After a long moment, his face ashen and marked by confusion, he said, “Your sister? I did not separate Bingley from Miss Bennet. On the contrary, if her feelings were sincere, albeit completely incomprehensible, in contrast to those of your mother, I thought her exceptionally well-suited for him.”
Elizabeth swallowed a bitter laugh. “Did you? Should not your friend and his sisters feel the joy of their escape from ‘a connexion to the daughter of a minor squire with connexions in trade’?” From his expression, Elizabeth knew he recognised Miss Bingley’s words and understood what she had overheard at Netherfield.
He exhaled, then swallowed heavily. “Your father is a gentleman. His house is on an estate run by generations before him. Their portraits hang in Longbourn’s drawing room. Bingley’s father found his fortune in trade.”
“And yet Mr Bingley’s sisters believe Jane beneath him. Do you as well?”
“Miss Bennet is a sweet, patient, genteel lady who I felt would ground my friend and provide him some sense and wisdom.”
Elizabeth was overcome by disgust hearing of the role he had envisioned for Jane. “You would assign my sister the task of maturing your friend.” And possibly tolerating a mistress!
“You mistake my meaning, madam, a habit I believe you enjoy.” What might have once sounded like a harsh rejoinder instead carried a note of what she thought might be pain.
“If you felt Jane to be such a paragon, a suitable companion for Mr Bingley’s future life, then why did you boast to Colonel Fitzwilliam of your success in separating your friend from an unsuitable lady?”
He threw back his head. “This is what he told you? I did no such thing. I neither encouraged nor discouraged Bingley’s interest. The separation was not my doing.”
“Indeed, it was not,” she said, almost in triumph before recognising her behaviour was little different from that of which she had accused him.
His puzzled expression, marked by a furrowed brow, made for a rather boyish display of innocence.
Glancing away, Elizabeth asked, “Can you deny a description of Mr Bingley as a man who falls in love easily? Such brief flirtations are diverting for him, though far less pleasant for the ladies he forsakes.”
I wonder that you would trust him with your sister. The words nearly fell from her lips before she managed to control her tongue. She cared little if Miss Bingley’s reputation was blackened for airing such delicate matters in a letter, but she would protect Jane from being tarred as a gossip.
Mr Darcy’s aspect, which had paled moments earlier when she called his own affections ‘imprudent’, now flushed brightly. In a low voice marked by injured disbelief, he asked, “Easily? From whom did you hear this?”
She stilled, feeling the awkwardness of the answer as it was her aunt Gardiner who had said it, assuring Elizabeth only weeks ago, when told the reasons for Jane’s melancholy: ‘A young man, such as you describe Mr Bingley, easily falls in love with a pretty girl for a few weeks, and when accident separates them, he just as easily forgets her’.
She took a breath before replying. “My sister deserves a man who loves her steadily, who offers her a reliable, deep, and faithful love rather than inconstancy.”
“Do you express your own opinion, or are these the words of some romance gone wrong in a novel?”
His scornful tone offended Elizabeth nearly as much as the expression of hauteur that had returned to his countenance. He thought her mean and provincial! Perhaps you are, whispered a small voice inside her.
“My dear aunt, with whom I lately visited, is wise in her counsel and well aware of the inconstancies of men like Mr Bingley.”
“‘Well aware’?” He gazed at her curiously, making Elizabeth conscious of the meaning he might take from her phrasing.
“I assume you do not refer to your aunt’s private matters when you mention ‘inconstancies’, so may I ask how she knows Bingley and his character?
I was unaware they had an acquaintance.”
Angrier with herself than with Mr Darcy for what she had stupidly implied about her aunt, Elizabeth repeated Mrs Gardiner’s words to the grave-faced gentleman, who nodded and looked away as she finished.
She stared at his neck, her eyes drawn to the flushed—or was it tanned?
—skin peeking above his collar. Suddenly, he turned back to her.
“And she has not met Bingley?”
“No.” She felt heat in her cheeks as the impact of her accusations, formed by an aunt and based on her own words, hung in the air between them. From the sceptical frown he wore, Mr Darcy must have thought her as capricious as she accused Mr Bingley of being.
He rubbed his jaw. “I must concede, Bingley has fancied himself in love after one dance or a mere glimpse in a drawing room.”
“Hardly an endorsement of his steadfastness, sir.”
“I did not come here to debate my friend’s character, but I will defend him.
He is younger than I, with no responsibility save finding a husband for his sister, maintaining his reputation, and improving his fortunes by marrying well.
Some would see that as marrying an heiress or a lady whose family and name are well-established in town. ”
All of which could be accomplished through his connexions to the Darcys.
“You do not?” Elizabeth asked.
“Bingley has a disposition inclined towards happiness, so yes, he does fall in and out of love easily. He is young, na?ve in some ways. Such openness is not to his benefit.”
Elizabeth’s eyebrows rose.
Mr Darcy continued. “Ladies in town who might disdain his links to trade would eye his fortune and happily spend it. Miss Bingley has friends, but there are those who dislike her and who would be pleased to displace her as his hostess and remand her to her own establishment, should she not marry soon.”
“You are protecting her as well?”
He shrugged. “As the sister of my friend, yes. That is the extent of my ties to her, however.”
Shaking her head in disbelief, she said, quietly, “And what of the maids and servants in his homes, and yours? Will you protect them?”