Title: Miss Bingley's Herbal Tea

Setting: Regency

Rating: T

Chapters: 7/17 (PIP)

Blurb: Mr Darcy doesn't want to drink Miss Bingley's new disgusting, sketchy, ancient-super-secret-recipe herbal tea. Lizzy does instead.

I would be very happy if you could let me know about any spelling or grammar mistakes :) Thanks and enjoy the chapter!


Now that you have made it this far, I would like to share with you my unofficial name of this very important chapter: "You may as well have murdered me".

Enjoy.


"I have thought about it too and I believe that we should definitely steal the herbal tea from Miss Bingley."

"W-what?" Mr Darcy had not been thinking about stealing tea from anyone at that moment. On the contrary, he had been trying to ask her when he should call on Mr Bennet to ask for his blessing. "I beg your pardon?"

"It is a drastic solution, I know," Elizabeth conceded, "but she must be stopped and we can not afford the risk of asking for Mr Bingley's help. It is of the utmost importance to get the herbal tea before the pantry inspection tomorrow morning. Otherwise, the physician Mr Bingley is going to send for from London may find the tea and realize its properties and then the truth of our… accident will be out. We would both be ruined and left with no other option but to marry."

"No other option. Of course. Go on."

"Furthermore, if we replace Miss Bingley's tea with an innocuous one and you drink it repeatedly without consequences on her sight, she will think that it doesn't work and will abandon her idea. And all those poor servants. We don't know what happened with them exactly, so the only way to prevent it from happening again is to eliminate the problem at the source."

She then explained her plan in detail.

Mr Darcy listened attentively, asking questions and making clever remarks and suggestions. After their discussion, he thought deeply on the matter and finally spoke:

"I have another solution, Miss Bennet. We should get married. Then the servants would be safe from the tea, you from scandal and I from Miss Bingley's schemes."

Elizabeth laughed.

"Is it not a valid solution, Miss Bennet?" He snapped.

"Yes, it is." She tried to stifle her laughter. "But I fear that marriage would be too drastic a solution."

"Why? I believe it to be the common course of action after a compromise."

Elizabeth was taken aback. "I can't consider it a compromise, sir, when it was nothing more than a kiss and under such circumstances. Tomorrow I will go back to Longbourn and we can pretend that the whole matter never came to be."

Mr Darcy looked very dark, and Elizabeth had the disastrous idea to attempt once again at humour. She began to say, with a lively air: "Furthermore, in the matter of marriage, I have always been resolved to act in that manner which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness and I am fairly certain that should we ever get married, we would bicker even more than we do now and thus lead quite a miserable life."

"Miserable!" Cried an astonished Mr Darcy. "Indeed, madam, I believe we shall be exceedingly happy together."

Elizabeth was astounded. She did not know what to think, nor what to say. Never could she have imagined finding herself in such a situation — to have Mr Darcy declare that they could have an exceedingly happy marriage. It was extraordinary.

Mr Darcy started pacing around the room. "Am I only good to kiss and not tell, Miss Elizabeth? Is this a common practice in Hertfordshire?"

"How dare you? We have already established that I was under the influence of—"

Elizabeth, stopped, suddenly struck by a thought. When reconstructing that morning's events, she had assumed that he too had been inebriated during their encounter, but he had not been. He had not been under the influence of anything at all but his own wants and desires when he had kissed her. And she could remember, quite vividly, that he had done it in a way that would have been impossible for a man that didn't find her attractive.

She had tempted him. But what was more astonishing, he had tempted her. She suddenly, embarrassingly, realized that her reaction would have been very different if it had been Mr Bingley or, God forbid, Mr Hurst to find her.

He had tempted her. Having a secret tête à tête late in the evening suddenly did not seem like such a good idea.

"That you were under the influence of whatever that herbal tea is, is no matter." Was saying Mr Darcy. "Had Miss Bingley, had anyone else been in your place, I would have asked them to marry me. Because I am a gentleman and that is the gentlemanlike thing to do."

"You may consider yourself a gentleman, Mr Darcy, but you forget that I am no Miss Bingley." She interjected coldly. "I am not a schemer nor a fortune hunter. I did not wish for any of this to happen. Consider your duty fulfilled with your asking and my refusing."

Darcy froze in the middle of his pacing. She was right. He should have been feeling relief now that she had released him from his obligations. He had never intended to propose to her and connect himself to such a family in the first place. Then, why was his heart suffocating?

"But—" He was grasping at straws. "Someone. A gardener might have seen us."

Elizabeth laughed. "And who shall believe him? Not even my mother could be persuaded that you and I—" She stopped. It was quite enough.

Mr Darcy moved quickly, stopping in front of her chair. "I do not understand. You are willing to risk your reputation? How can you be so imprudent as to refuse a marriage that would elevate your social standing, your circumstances, make you Mistress of Pemberley, and instead decide to— To stay here, in this family, to prefer this society to becoming my wife?"

Elizabeth's cheeks flushed in rage and she sprang to her feet. "That is exactly why I do, Mr Darcy. You may be too proud to believe it, but the thought of marrying you has never crossed my mind. From the very beginning, from the first moment of our acquaintance, you have done nothing but despise and belittle me, my family, my neighbours, my county. I have been entirely beneath your notice but for when you are looking for fault. You glare at me, you mock me, you detest me. How could I marry such a man?"

"You willfully misunderstand me, madam! When have you been beneath my notice? When have I done any such thing?"

"Oh, ever since my arrival at Netherfield, you and Miss Bingley have exerted yourselves to make me feel most unwelcome—"

"I have, only last night, asked your hand on a dance. How is that unwelcoming?"

"It is unwelcoming when the only purpose in asking is laughing at the lady's taste in music!"

"Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds, Miss Elizabeth? When a man asks a woman to dance, it merely means that he wishes to dance with her."

"When a man refuses to dance with a woman and defines her 'tolerable but not tempting enough' in front of her whole neighbourhood, the woman has every reason to doubt the man's intentions!"

Mr Darcy could not, for the life of him, understand that last accusation. The expression on his face must have been eloquent of his confusion, because she said, while catching her breath and still trembling with anger: "The Meryton assembly."

It took him a moment to remember those unforgivable words. He paled. "You heard." She nodded. He paled even more. He clenched his fists and wished he could take her in his arms and shake her into reason. "You cannot hold that night against me."

"Pray, why shouldn't I?" She mocked him and he glared.

"Because I was a fool." He snarled. "I was in a bad mood and Bingley would not leave me alone. It was the only way to—" He stopped and closed his eyes. When he reopened them he was the image of the perfect, glacial gentleman." "I have long since come to regret my behaviour."

The words had been conceding, almost apologetic, but his tone was dismissive. Elizabeth pressed her lips together and was quiet for a moment.

"Yet you have not stopped." She started slowly, her voice rising with every word. "You keep behaving the same way. You are still a fool, Mr Darcy, you are always a fool, even if you don't realize it. You can not pretend to be a gentleman when it suits you, and neglect such a claim when you don't like it anymore. Your arrogance, your conceit, your selfish disdain for the feelings of others are the reasons why I would refuse marriage to you even if it had been more than a kiss and I was to be ruined."

He did not think he would survive that, but he did. He stood there, holding on tight to the emotionless mask on his face, while the woman he loved — yes, because he now understood that he had loved her — crushed him.

He would not let her see his suffering.

Elizabeth's vehemence died with her pretty speech. Seeing how stoically he stood in front of her, without even reacting to her words, yet with something of the agony of a wounded, dying animal in his stance, she felt the first bitter pangs of remorse.

"You have said quite enough, madam." He said firmly, matter of factly. "I am grieved, grieved indeed that you have such an opinion of me. But I perfectly comprehend your feelings on the matter."

No, you do not, you do not. I do not comprehend the half of it myself. She did not know, for example, why she was on the verge of tears.

She strived to control her voice: "Are we in agreement that no one, especially my parents, will ever know of what happened this morning?"

"Yes."

"And, are we in agreement on what we are to do tomorrow?"

"Yes."

She looked into his eyes, which were staring into the distance behind her shoulders. They were void of any feeling.

Elizabeth left the room without looking back.

Mr Darcy did not turn either. He stayed motionless in his position for he could not say how long, incapable of doing anything but to stare at that wall, striving to not let himself shatter in Netherfield's library.

He repeated these words like a chant: I will retrieve the tea tomorrow and then I will leave Hertfordshire.

I will retrieve the tea tomorrow and then I will leave Hertfordshire.

I will retrieve the tea tomorrow and then I will leave Hertfordshire.

I will retrieve the tea tomorrow and then I will leave Hertfordshire.

I will retrieve…

He left the library.


Author's note

I am late because I wanted to post two chapters at once. :)

I suppose you won't agree with me but this is my favourite chapter in the whole fanfic. I might be biased but I really like the dialogue in E & D's confrontation. And yeah it's very angsty, bla bla bla. But don't worry, I'm not a terrible person. The worst is past. (after the next chapter) we will move past the pique of angst and into the greener pastures of screwball comedy and self-doubt.

ALSO: we reached 120 reviews on 5 chapters. That is mind-blowing. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

See you next week :)