Page 32 of Knowing Mr. Darcy
“Lovely,” said Mr. Bingley, nodding.
Mr. Darcy sighed again. “That is not what you wanted to hear? Why don’t you tell me what you want confirmed?”
“No more, then, about how you prefer her elder sister?” Mr. Bingley’s voice lilted.
Oh. He cringed. This was an entirely different conversation than he’d thought.
“Why did you dance with her last night?”
He gestured with both of his hands, a conciliatory gesture. “I can’t marry a woman like that, as you well know.There is no need to worry on that score. She is yours.”
“But you think she’s lovely.” There was heat in Bingley’s voice.
He struggled to speak, but then decided it didn’t matter. Best to go with the truth. “She’s extraordinary, yes. I’ve never met anyone like her. But I value my friendship with you far too much to allow some passing fancy in a pretty woman to destroy us. I would not trespass against that. She is yours. I am not even attempting—”
“Oh, that’s obvious,” said Mr. Bingley. “Because you keep insulting her, and she hates you.”
“I don’t insult her,” said Mr. Darcy, annoyed. “She is determined to willfully misunderstand everything I say to her.”
“Well, she really doesn’t like you,” said Mr. Bingley. “She is spreading some rumor about your reputation. She told Caroline about it, too, and she is easily turned against you these days. So, we are in a bit of a troubling spot, I think. Miss Elizabeth is causing a rift here.”
“What rumor?” said Mr. Darcy.
“I don’t even want to know about it,” said Bingley. “I don’t want to give overmuch attention to womanly gossip. I’m sure it’s nonsense.”
“What rumor?”
“It’s about that Wickham person. I know you don’t like him—”
“What about Wickham?” Mr. Darcy’s heart was starting to beat very fast. “What is being said? Is it anything about my sister?”
“No,” said Bingley, furrowing his brow. “No, not at all. Why?”
Darcy’s stomach turned over.
“All right, here it is,” said Bingley. “It’s simply something about some inheritance being denied him or something or other—”
“Lies,” Darcy muttered, clenching his hands into fists. “I cannotbelieve—or, no, I can believe it. I can readily believe it. He is the source of this falsehood, undoubtedly. It isprecisely something he would do.”
“I have no notion what you are talking of,” said Bingley, settling back in his seat in the carriage.
“My father loved him,” said Darcy. “There was a time when I loved him, too. He was my boyhood playmate. We grew up like brothers, truly. He was even sent with me to university. My father paid for his education. My father had this idea that he could be the rector at the parsonage in Derbyshire, but then—after my father died—Wickham didn’t want it. I gave him three thousand pounds instead. What he did with that money, I don’t know, but he was back, frightfully quickly, begging for more. I denied this request and he has been angry with me about that ever after, and has done all manner of wretched things in retaliation.”
“Oh,” said Bingley, shaking his head. “Well, I’m so very, very sorry to have brought that up.”
Darcy waited for the next question, about Georgiana, to come.
It didn’t.
He didn’t volunteer further information either.
Instead, they were both silent for some time.
“You’d tell her this, I suppose,” said Bingley. “I don’t see why you’d wish to conceal that. There’s nothing shameful about what you’ve done.”
Well, now came the bit about Georgiana, Darcy supposed.
But Bingley was still talking. “And you could tell her that you don’t mean to insult her, that you are simply overcompensating because you fancy her.”
