Page 7

All at once, he knew that he had been wrong.

In the stillness of Jane Bennet’s face, and the firm set of her jaw, and the way that she was holding Elizabeth’s hand as if it was the only thing that was keeping her upright, he saw too late how very much she cared. She looked, he thought, very much the same way he felt at that moment.

And still the painful silence dragged on. They stood in the ruined quiet of the library, the music still drifting from the ballroom, and no one said anything. Darcy looked from Bingley, who was engaged to the wrong woman, to Elizabeth, who was engaged to the wrong man, to Jane Bennet, who was holding herself together by the force of a strong, quiet determination that he respected greatly and wished fervently that she had not needed tonight.

He had no idea what to do. That in itself was unusual enough a state of affairs to be alarming. He always knew what to do, or at least he believed he did, which amounted in practice to much the same thing. However, standing in this library in the quiet among the wreckage of the evening and the party and his best friend’s quiet hopes, Darcy could not find a single useful thought in his head.

He only knew that this was a colossal mess, and that the four of them stood in the ruins of that disaster, together but still very far apart, and that he was going to have to find a way to fix it. That task fell to him, if only because of the grim awareness that was slowly becoming the only thing he could accept as real about this night — the awareness that there had been a moment, several moments, perhaps, earlier in the evening where a different decision might have led to a very different library. So, he was going to have to find their way out.

Unfortunately, he could not begin to think of a way to do it.

Chapter 4

Darcy stood outside the door to Bingley’s study. The door was open, and Darcy could see the fire burning, and his friend’s legs stretched out so far that his boots were almost nudging the grate. It was well past two in the morning, and the guests, who had lingered far longer than Darcy felt seemly, were finally gone.

The announcement of Bingley and Miss Elizabeth’s sudden engagement had swept through the ballroom like the tide coming into shore after a storm: it had been terrifyingly fast, unbearably loud, and altered everything in its wake. Finally, though, the tide had gone out again, carrying the Bennets and their dramatics with it, and Netherfield Park rested in the tense quiet of a house that has recently contained within its walls a great deal of noise and furor, and is still adjusting to the absence of it.

Darcy had managed the latter part of the evening badly, though he had to acknowledge to himself that he would most probably not receive any commendations for his behaviour in the first half of the affair either.

He was painfully aware of the fact that his cold words and thunderous expressions would likely become part of the evening’s lore. His part in the aftermath of the disaster had been to stand in the drawing room and accept congratulations on Bingley’s behalf. Darcy had done his best.

Admittedly, he had done so with an expression that several guests had admitted to each other within his hearing that they found alarming. He could not regret that, not when he suspected his expression had forestalled the offering of further inane expressions of felicity. To those that had dared approach him, he had said more or less the right things in approximately the right order, he had directed the servants and the groomsmen, and, above all, he had been inordinately grateful when the last carriage finally disappeared down the drive.

He had done these things because Bingley had not been there to do it himself, having disappeared shortly after the Bennets had departed, Lydia Bennet loudly protesting at having to leave the party early. With the host absent, someone had to stand in the hallway and shake hands and accept thanks and congratulations, and Darcy, to the equal dismay of the guests and himself, was the only one on hand to fill that role.

Even at the best of times, Darcy was not a man who excelled at performing emotions he did not feel, and tonight he had been required to perform happiness for an event that had produced in him nothing but dismay. He suspected several of the guests had noticed that his thanks had been perfunctory at best.

Just when the last carriage had left the drive, and he thought he was finally free to process the events of the night, Miss Bingley had found him.

Before she spoke a single word, he could see that she was furious. Worse still, she was carefully controlled in her fury. That was more dangerous, as it meant she intended to act upon her feelings rather than just seethe to her foolish sister. Her hand slid into his arm, and she looked up at him, her face arranged into an expression of concerned sympathy that did not reach her eyes. Then she pressed herself against his arm and began to speak before he had fully turned to face her.

“Mr Darcy, I cannot begin to tell you how shocked I am,” she said, leaning against him hard enough to force him to support her as they moved toward the drawing room. “Shocked, and frankly appalled and… and worried, naturally, for Charles. One thinks of his happiness, above all else, of course, and I cannot think that the events of this evening will bring him peace in the years to come. I know you must feel the same.” She paused, looking up at him as she gave him the opportunity to agree.

Darcy looked at her impassively and said nothing.

Miss Bingley pressed her lips together. “Of course, the girl is not entirely without merit,” she continued, her tone indicating that she thought she was being very generous. “She is clever; I have always said that she is clever. And the connection to dear Jane is not unpleasant, since Charles was so determined in that direction, but one can hardly say that it is pleasant either, particularly with those considerations in mind. It is so…disordered, Mr Darcy, and the circumstances are so very…” She paused again, as though selecting the word with care. “Irregular. One cannot help but wonder what people will say. For instance, what will your aunt, Lady Catherine, who trusted you to us because she was certain we would provide you with upstanding company of the sort to which you are accustomed, think when she hears of the events of this night? She will hear of them, of course. These things travel, far faster than one could imagine they would, in many cases.” She paused again. “I only… I only wish that there had been someone who could have prevented this. Anyone who might have been in a position to intervene before Charles took so drastic a step.”

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye for a brief instant as she said it, which told Darcy all that he needed to know regarding whom she meant by someone.

“Miss Bingley,” he said, stopping in the doorway of the drawing room. He stepped back from her, forcing her to release his arm, and looked directly into her wide blue eyes. “I am going to find Charles now. It is late. I suggest you retire for the evening.”

She blinked. She had been expecting a reaction of some sort to that last jab, and she was doubtless prepared to work with whatever he provided, be it agreement or coldness or even argument. The flat finality of his suggestion, though, gave her nothing to push back against and so left her dangling, with no way to direct the conversation.

“Mr Darcy, you misunderstand me. I only meant that —”

“I know precisely what you meant, Miss Bingley,” he said. “Goodnight.”

There was a brief silence between them, during which she seemed to reassess her options and found them wanting. Therefore, she preserved her dignity in the only way available and withdrew. Darcy was not so foolish as to believe that she would not revisit the conversation at a more advantageous moment, and when she had had time to assemble further strategy, but for now, he was simply relieved to see her go. He watched the stairway up which she had disappeared for several moments, then went to find Bingley.

His friend had not troubled to summon servants to light the candles; the study was lit only by the fire. The moon had set, leaving no trace of the moonlight that had illuminated the library with its pale silver light. Bingley lounged in the chair closest to the fire, a glass of brandy held loosely in one hand, staring at the flames as though they might contain the solution to the unexpected and enormous problem that had been dropped upon him with such brutal suddenness. His usual colour was gone, and his customary grin was entirely absent. He looked, Darcy thought, much older than he had looked at the start of the evening, as though the events that had passed had wrung some of his youth away from him.

Darcy sat in the chair across from him and said nothing. Silence in times of turmoil was, he had learned over years of friendship, perhaps the most helpful thing he could provide Bingley, who was able to better discuss a problem when he was given the space to arrive at speech in his own time.

After several moments of quiet, Bingley began to talk.

He told Darcy what had happened, everything that he knew or had seen, from start to finish. He told it plainly, without self-pity or apology, almost as though he were telling a story that had happened to someone else. He turned the glass slowly in his hands as he spoke of the servant who told him Miss Bennet was in the library, his certainty that it meant Jane, which he now recognised as foolish, his excitement as he rounded into the corridor which pushed him on to the door that opened much too fast. He told of the collision, and of the horrible sound of Elizabeth’s head hitting the floor, the panic he felt during the desperate scramble to his knees to determine if she was conscious. He sounded almost practiced, as though he had been running the sequence of events in his mind over and over until he had cemented them in the proper order. When he reached the part about the scream, and the arrival of the servants, and all that came after, his voice remained calm and even, without embellishment, but Darcy could see clearly what both the events and the calm retelling of them cost him.

When he had finished, they both stared quietly into the fire.