Darcy stared at his coffee.
"Where does the dark melancholy come from?" Colonel Fitzwilliam leaned across the breakfast table and poked Darcy hard.
"Georgiana."
"No." He pursed his lips and popped his tongue. "Know you better than that. Not it."
"Why wouldn't it be Georgiana? My dear sister has ruined her life—" Darcy grabbed a spoon and roughly stirred his coffee. "And there is nothing I might do to aid her." At his cousin's skeptical stare, Darcy added without spirit, "Also, she stained the family name."
"Yes, yes." Colonel Fitzwilliam shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth. "We are both miserable about how miserable Georgie is. Miserable." He ripped a bread roll apart with his teeth. "But you weren't beset by melancholy last time I saw you. Then you were raging and full of spit, venom, and a fighting spirit that made me frightened for your wits. Now, bleh… you stare around, sigh longingly. And then stare around more. A woman, isn't it?"
Darcy glared at his cousin.
The aforementioned cousin devoured his meal calmly, in no way perturbed by Darcy's gaze. "Guessed it in one. What is the difficulty?"
"Richard, I tell you, I have no intention to marry at this time, or any other."
"Ha! I said it was a woman. So disappointed that you've decided to never marry. That is very much how I'd expect you to be in love. Obsessed with not marrying her? Tell more."
"There is nothing to tell."
"Course there is—" Richard tapped his nose. "I can sniff out a good story with this. Better than a hound."
"No you can't. That is ridiculous, and—"
"True. Learned it on the Peninsula." Richard took a stout swallow of coffee. "When a fellow lied to me — sometimes if he just hid something he'd rather not speak about, my nose would twitch, and itch, and I'd get a strong scent of magnolia. Catching it now. You have a woman you'd like to marry."
"I do not want to marry her."
"Oh, good. Then you've no reason for melancholy. Which means you aren't melancholy. Except you are."
"Georgiana."
"Fiddle."
"Fine, then: In sooth I know not why I am so sad. It wearies me, you say it wearies you. But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn."
Richard laughed. "Your mind is tossing on the ocean, There where your ladies with comely dresses sail."
"That is not a correct quote," Darcy replied primly.
"Let's get drunk together. Have you talked about her at all to anyone? Bingley? — a bit of speech can help take the girl off your mind."
"Really?" Darcy said, shocked, and suddenly tempted. "It might? — no. No, it would not. How would that work?"
"Hahahaha. You've at least now admitted that there is a woman."
Darcy shrugged and sighed.
"Who is she? And why aren't you going to marry her."
With a grimace Darcy stared at the painted porcelain figures on his breakfast table. He tapped his fingers.
"Do tell. Speak, I'll not be put off."
Before Darcy replied, his butler entered the room. "Sir, it is too early for visitors, but Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley have come to call, and say they must speak with you on a matter of some importance."
"Yes, yes. Let them in." Darcy jumped up. "We'll greet them in the drawing room."
"No, no — you'll not escape from me," Colonel Fitzwilliam cried. "I'll have the story, or I'll… be forced to use my imagination, and I assure you, that will be much worse for both of us. I'd much prefer to hear it from your own lips."
Darcy laughingly headed through the door. "What could you possibly imagine that would be so bad."
"Good God," Colonel Fitzwilliam exclaimed as he hurried behind Darcy, having to almost jog to match his cousin's far taller stride, "It is Miss Caroline Bingley!"
This set Darcy chortling. He was glad to see his cousin. He'd not felt happy since he left Hertfordshire and Elizabeth. He was eager to see Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst simply because they too had been there in Hertfordshire when he fell into his disastrous love affair.
The women lounged on the plush divan in Darcy's drawing room, Miss Bingley made small circles in the burgundy Oriental rug with the toe of her elegant boot. She leapt up when Darcy entered the room. "You'll not believe who we were obliged to call upon yesterday. Miss Bennet and Miss Elizabeth!"
Darcy felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach.
"Miss Elizabeth is in London?"
"Yes! Those scheming sly girls — hurling themselves in the way of rich gentlemen. I wonder that they can live with themselves while being so obvious."
"Ooooo," Colonel Fitzwilliam smiled widely at the three others in the room. "And who is this Miss Elizabeth who hurls herself in the way of rich gentlemen?"
Caroline Bingley looked Colonel Fitzwilliam up and down. She grimaced. "Not her. It is her sister."
"Oh, her sister! Do you think she might accept the second son of an earl? I've a decent competency and need a fortune hunter for a bet."
Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst stared at him, clearly uncertain whether to take this cheerful proclamation from Colonel Fitzwilliam as a joke or not.
"There were things said by Miss Elizabeth and her aunt that make me think they intend to throw Jane into every circumstance where Charles might see her." Miss Bingley spread her hands out pleadingly towards Darcy. "Please promise to keep Charles away from them — take him into the countryside. You've both friends everywhere. Hunting season isn't quite finished, is it? I can never quite remember what months it runs to. But go bloody some foxes. Until Miss Bennet disappears from London once again. She'll chase him to balls, finagle an invitation to every private event where he might be, and — he mopes endlessly about the house."
The woman groaned, flapped her hands like a butterfly, and thumped herself back down in Darcy's thick sofa without making a sound.
"Oh, this dame sans merci has stuck her claws into Bingley? Except she would not pursue him if she had no mercy. But tell me about this Miss Elizabeth. I think she'll have to do for me." Colonel Fitzwilliam winked at Darcy in a way that told him clearly that his reaction to the name of the girl had not been unobserved, and that his cousin now had a name to attach to Darcy's melancholic nymph.
Miss Bingley groaned. "Do not make me speak up her! Most forward, impertinent, and self-satisfied woman I have ever known. Very country. A proper rustic. She once walked three miles, over field and dell and many a muddy pond to visit her sister when she was sick at our house."
The image of Elizabeth Bennet, her neatly arranged hair and her long swanlike neck. Her cheeks red and her eyes bright from the exercise vividly intruded into Darcy's memory. He was stabbed again with that sense of longing and loss.
"She arrived drenched in sweat." Miss Bingley continued, "Brought the stench of the cows with her. And her petticoats had been six inches deep in the mud. Six inches deep. Darcy, you marked it, did you not?"
Darcy shook himself. "What?"
"Oh, I cannot imagine a man noticing such a thing!" Colonel Fitzwilliam said. "I am certain Darcy's eyes were elsewhere. It is for women to notice petticoats and their care."
"Oh, nonsense," Miss Bingley replied. "Any decent gentleman will attend to the clothes of a woman. It is why we spend such attention on our dress!"
"I attend to the shape, eyes, and figure of a woman," replied the officer. "Her clothes only matter in so far as they tell me whether she is likely to be happily possessed of loose morals, or too high in her manners to look upon a poor officer such as myself."
"Richard," Darcy sharply said. "You forget yourself."
"And I speak for you: Did you mark that Miss Elizabeth's petticoats were six inches deep in the mud?"
Darcy flushed. He had a very clear memory of Elizabeth's face, figure, shape and eyes from that morning. The way that the ribbon of her pelisse wrapped around the narrowest point of her waist. And he remembered how he'd once during that conversation stared down at their feet.
She'd been embarrassed by the mud… defensive when he asked her why she had not taken a carriage.
It already was there: She sensed from the first how he judged her as his inferior.
How had he been so stupid?
London. She was in London — perhaps…
"Aha!" exclaimed Colonel Fitzwilliam in victory. "You see how embarrassed my cousin is to have missed anything. He fancies himself a keen observer."
"I confess, Colonel Fitzwilliam, that I must disappoint you. I in fact clearly remember those petticoats, and the mud on them. The two of us in fact discussed that mud."
"You were discussing her petticoats?" Colonel Fitzwilliam nearly crowed with delight and a bizarre pride. "My cousin! I never knew you could be so forward!"
"I am certain he merely told her," Miss Bingley said, "that it was impolite and improper to visit without taking the carriage or a horse and showing up in a decent fashion."
"But what are the details of Miss Elizabeth's visit?" Darcy suddenly asked. Miss Bingley looked at him with a concerned frown. "I mean the visit with Miss Bennet. Will they be in town long?"
"I dare say they will be in town so long as they fancy themselves to have any hope of snaring a rich gentleman. And you know my brother. Too easily influenced by trivial matters. I confess that Jane is a sweet girl, and unusually pretty, and—"
"You'll confess that?" Colonel Fitzwilliam exclaimed. "I must meet this paragon. A woman who another woman will praise, even when she dislikes her."
"I do not dislike Miss Bennet. Merely…" Miss Bingley's voice faded out.
Mrs. Hurst, who'd been playing with the bracelets on her arms for the entire time they'd been talking, looked up. "We only wish what is best for our brother."
"And a sweet and exceptionally beautiful woman will not do for him?"
"She is not right for him — Darcy, you were the one who convinced Bingley to give her up, explain it to your cousin."
"I hardly had meant to — Bingley begged me for my assessment of whether she held him in a strong affection." Darcy sighed and shook his head. "My opinion, which I stated after some thought, is that I saw no sign of actual affection for him — but a man ought to be driven by his own heart in such a case. Bingley is my friend, but that he was amenable to persuasion in any direction in such a case does not speak well for him. I was shocked when he heard his fate pronounced in my guess, even though I told him repeatedly that I had not observed the pair closely on any occasion, as I had been absorbed in my own interests."
"You mean," Colonel Fitzwilliam said in a fey voice, "that you had been absorbed by the source of your melancholy."
Darcy grimaced.
"Oh, Mr. Darcy." Miss Bingley came up to him, and with an artful pretense of artlessness grabbed his arm. "You sad man! You must still feel so keenly the loss of your sister. And forever, for this was worse than if she had died: Her reputation and position in society has been irretrievably and permanently thrown down."
Darcy grunted at Miss Bingley, and with some effort controlled his disgusted expression.
It was unthinking statements such as this that made Miss Bingley repulsive.
She was clever, possessed of a reasonably attractive appearance, a good fortune and a good education. And the sister of his dearest friend — by logic she would be a decent though not exceptional match. Of course his father had always intended that he would have an exceptional match.
It was his duty, he'd understood, to marry a diamond of the first water, just as Lady Anne Darcy had been called the incomparable, and hunted after by half the ton the year that she came out.
But it had been George Darcy who convinced her to fall in love with him.
The idea of marrying anyone but Elizabeth still sickened him.
"The details please." Darcy sighed. "Just the details: How long will the Bennet sisters be in London. Do they stay with their Cheapside relations? And—"
"Lord! Yes! And they brought her with them when they first called on us. Her aunt. The Cheapside aunt! She sat on my sofa. In my drawing room. For fifteen minutes I had to endure the stench of a woman in active trade."
"You mean her husband?" Colonel Fitzwilliam asked with a mischievous smirk that showed that he meant to make a joke.
"Yes, yes her husband."
"Because I was merely shocked to hear about a woman in active trade."
The way that the officer spoke made it impossible for Darcy to decide if this was a lewd reference to prostitutes or not. From the half-confused expressions of the two ladies, it seemed that they could not decide either. Richard's comment was not pointed enough that he could be condemned for violating the strictures of polite society, yet…
Miss Bingley sighed. "They stayed twenty minutes, Miss Bennet asked again and again if our brother was about. I wanted to lie, but it would have been easy enough for her to find out. Their card was left. I delayed as long as I might, but Mrs. Castle would have beat my hand till I couldn't hold a quill if she learned that we did not return such a visit. Fifteen minutes exact in Cheapside was enough, I hope, to convince the girls that I consider the acquaintance at an end."
"What exactly is their address? It is on Gracechurch Street I believe?"
"The exact number?" Miss Bingley looked reproachfully at Mr. Darcy. "I certainly did not memorize it. There is no call to know it."
Colonel Fitzwilliam exclaimed, "Oh! That is quite near the Monument to the Fire. I quite like that area of town — I must go there and hang about to see if I can see this sweet and unusually pretty beauty, who none the less is dangling after Bingley even though she does not love him at all."
"She only is doing what her mother recommended," Miss Bingley said. "I have never met a more scheming and vulgar woman."
"Ah! I could imagine that meeting such a woman, with such daughters, would throw me into melancholy as well. I understand all now."
"No, you—" Darcy groaned. "I am glad you have told me; I will consider inviting Charles out of town. But I make no promises. And I do not think they are likely to meet each other in the common experiences of life. Miss Elizabeth's aunt and uncle run in very different circles than we do."
Miss Bingley sniffed. "An accidental meeting worries me not at all."
Soon the visit ended, and Darcy made an excuse of business that only barely existed to rush out of the house, so he could avoid the majority of Colonel Fitzwilliam's delighted interrogation.
On the one hand… it was nothing to him that Elizabeth was in London.
She had refused him.
A Darcy did not stoop twice.
And on the other hand… he desperately wished to see her, even if it was only one more time.