Page 68 of Colour My World
The wheels creaked, and the rhythmic jolt of the road barely disturbed the occupants within the carriage. Bingley, elbows braced on his knees, sat forward. He had exchanged disbelief for something like grim pleasure.
“What shall you say?”
Fixed on the brocade pattern in the carriage wall, Darcy counted fifty before abandoning the exercise.
Bingley’s words barely registered. He had heard them all before, in various forms, since he agreed to render an apology that morning.
“You insulted her in public,” Bingley pressed. “She deserves an explanation.”
Beside him, Miss Bingley scoffed. “An explanation? Charles, really. Do not make a spectacle of it. Mr Darcy owes her nothing.”
Bingley turned on her. “Are you saying you did not noticethe way the room reacted? Every person in Meryton took note. The insult was perceived. In such cases, perception is all that matters.”
“I should think not,” Miss Bingley replied, examining her nails. “You speak as though Miss Eliza was the Queen herself. She is merely a country girl with no connections of note.”
“No connections? The Gardiners are of solid reputation—”
“Tradespeople,” Miss Bingley interjected. “A family of shopkeepers. Really, Charles, I despair of your taste.”
Darcy smothered a smile. The irony was not loston him.
Miss Bingley, whose family had built its fortune manufacturing carriages, now sneered at trade as though she had been born into landed gentility. Her silks, her polish, and her practised disdain all bore the gleam of recent money buffed to mimic an old pedigree. The Gardiners were no less respectable. Merely more honest.
He would have preferred to go alone. An apology, particularly one born of private shame, did not warrant an audience. But Bingley had insisted, and Mrs Hurst had made clear that propriety demanded a party call. Darcy bore it, resenting every unnecessary witness.
He had one reprieve yet left to him. If Mr Bennet received him first, he might at least gauge the temper of the household. Perhaps even gain permission for a private word. No apology, however contrived, could succeed under the scrutiny of the drawing room.
He closed his eyes briefly. Then opened them again. Anything to tune out their endless bickering.
Instead, he picturedher.
The exact hue of her hair, not merely brown but chestnut, touched with auburn in the right light. The shape of her eyes, the way one was such a deep green, it might have belonged to the Derbyshire woodlands.
Something deep within him knew the truth. His mother had spoken of her.
“You will know her when you see her, my darling boy.”
As a child, he had clung to those words, envisioning a perfect creature spun from myth and poetry. As a man, he had dismissed them as whimsy. Until now.
She was real. And she was waiting at Longbourn. A sharp jab in the ribs dragged him back to the present.
“Darcy, for the love of God, say something.”
“You overestimate my role in this,” Darcy said.
Bingley flushed. “That is absurd, and you know it. Miss Elizabeth’s reputation is at stake.”
Miss Bingley waved a hand. “Really, Charles, how you exaggerate.” She turned to her sister. “What say you?”
“Any man may err, but only a fool persists in his error.” Mrs Hurst fixed on Darcy. “I, for one, refuse to be made a fool.”
He inclined his head. Like her husband, Louisa Hurst was not one to trifle with.
However, Bingley was a dog with a bone. “I saw the way the room turned against him. Against us. I have heard the murmurs amongst the servants. You have done her harm, Darcy, and you must set it right. This has gone on unanswered for far too long.”
What could he say? That he had never meant to slight her? That he had gaped because she was his fate staring back at him? That he had not stopped thinking of her eyes, wide with astonishment, ever since?
No. He could say none of it.
