“Driving the course under the critique of the country’s most noted horsemen and whips was not half so unnerving as my man’s fiddling with this thing.” He flipped the ends of his silks with contempt.
Darcy laughed. “I have already put Fletcher on notice, Charles. Come, let him set you to rights before the others have at you.”
“I feel at such sixes and sevens,” Bingley confided to him later as Darcy’s carriage pulled away from the curb. “It is not just this.” He motioned to his neckcloth. “Or the scrutiny of the club on my every word until my induction this evening. It is my whole life!” he ended in exasperation.
“How do you mean? Has something happened?” Darcy turned to him in concern.
“Nothing in particular, but that is part and parcel of the problem. I have no goal, no direction. Nothing to strive for or against,” he answered. “Yet, there are decisions which I must make that could very well determine my future.”
“The stuff of life,” Darcy commiserated lightly, but his companion was not deterred.
“For instance,” Bingley continued, “I determined last year that I simply
Netherfield! Darcy’s mind set to racing. He had forgotten about Netherfield, assuming that Bingley had terminated his lease months ago. Netherfield! And only three miles distant — Elizabeth!
“Perhaps,” he delicately interrupted his friend’s musings, “another visit might help you to make your decision.”
“You advise it?” Bingley drew back. “That was my own feeling, but…So, you do! Well!” He shook his head as if in wonder. “Would you, then, possibly consider —?”
“Accompanying you?” Darcy finished for him, then wished he had bitten his tongue rather than betray his eagerness.
Bingley did not appear to notice, for his next words were a rush of gratitude that spilled on into dates and plans until the carriage pulled up to the site of the club’s dinner. “This is so good of you, Darcy!” he exclaimed, descending to the curb.
“You are arrived at last!” Bingley’s great smile and hearty clap on his shoulder attested to Darcy’s welcome one week later on the very doorstep of Netherfield Hall. “I thought I would be driven mad awaiting you these several days, but there is such a great deal to be done opening a house! Dawn to dusk!”
“Really?” Darcy raised an eyebrow. “I had no notion!” he teased.
Bingley laughed. “Come in, come in!” Darcy followed behind as his friend led him to the library. Their progress was slowed somewhat as Bingley confidently nodded directions to a servant here or answered a question from another one there until at last they were alone within their old haunt awaiting the arrival of a tray. Had it taken but two days as master of Netherfield to effect such a difference in attitude? From whence had come this ease? Darcy teased his friend. Coloring at his praise, Bingley quickly placed its origin in the warmth of his reception. A number of the county’s landowners had paid him visits within hours of his arrival, welcoming him back into the neighborhood and pressing upon him all manner of invitation. Then there were the servants, largely the same as those he’d had the previous year, who showed every indication that they were, indeed, glad to see him returned to Netherfield. “It is truly above everything,” Bingley concluded with obvious pleasure, “more than ever I expected!”
Darcy smiled and murmured his agreement, pleased with his friend’s doubly good news. The neighborhood, it appeared, had not held the events of last year against Bingley but was, in fact, eager to renew its acquaintance. That the servants were glad for his return also boded well. Bingley’s increased confidence and ease in his role were undoubted testimony of their efforts to encourage him to stay. There remained but the question of Miss Bennet. Had he tried to see her?
The ordered tray arrived, and after the servant closed the library door behind him, Darcy inquired whether his friend had paid any visits since his arrival. He had been far too busy to do any more than pay a call on Squire Justin, Bingley replied and shook his head, and that only because he had encountered his carriage on the road and been strongly importuned to follow him home for a welcoming cup. “But yesterday, I determined to remedy that.” He looked at Darcy, a mixture of anxiety and excitement in his eyes. “I intend to visit the Bennet family tomorrow.”
“Indeed?” Darcy accepted Bingley’s statement with no show of his surprise, but his heart pounded in expectation.
“I know that the company of the Bennets is not what you prefer,” Bingley continued, sitting back in the chair, “and the younger girls can be rather tiresome. I could put it off —”
“My dear Bingley,” Darcy remonstrated with mock severity, “you are not to neglect your social obligations to as prominent a family as the Bennets on my account!”
His friend laughed, then sobered only a little before asking, “You have no objection, then?”
“None.” Darcy rose from his chair, the rapidity of his immersion into Elizabeth’s society exciting both a joy and a fear he was not certain he could disguise, and approached a window that looked out onto the fields and wood of the hall. “Shall we see how the land has fared in the year you have been absent?”
Rather than send his card in announcement of their visit, Bingley decided over their evening port that they should give their prospective hosts the joy of it in person. Torn between an engulfing desire to see Elizabeth and an innate caution that his appearance might not give her or her family as much pleasure as Bingley predicted, Darcy could only nod approval to his friend’s plan before steering the conversation elsewhere. Yes, he had come to Netherfield with Bingley’s welfare as his prime motivation and, if he had made a terrible mistake in his assessment of Jane Bennet’s affections, rectifying his misdeed. The sooner he determined the yea or nay of the matter, the better — not only for Bingley but for his own conscience. But he had come, too, nurturing the hope of discovering what remained of the beginning he and Elizabeth had made at Pemberley. He had pondered how to achieve these ends during the greater part of his journey to Hertfordshire, but miraculously, the opportunity for seeing to both was set before him without effort on his part! Nevertheless, the speed at which his hopes and fears were distilling into irretrievable action was breathtaking, beyond anything he could have planned or, truth be told, even wished!
Despite what he wished, there was no denying the material fact that tomorrow would bring him face-to-face with Elizabeth. How should they meet? How should they go on? It was certainly quite paradoxical, he wryly observed as he lay in bed that night, how an event for which one had longed could, upon the eve of its occurrence, so handily transform itself into a thing fraught with the most wrenching apprehension. An unquiet night followed, but when morning finally dawned, with it came the conviction that, in order to accomplish what he had come to do, it was not Elizabeth but Jane Bennet he must learn of and toward whom the greater part of his powers of discernment must bend.
They rode slowly. When Darcy had met his friend at the mounting block, Bingley greeted him with his usual smiling exuberance and chatter, which had lasted until they met the road to Longbourn. Then, his conversation lagged. Now Bingley was almost silent, the gait of their horses reduced to no more than an amble. Darcy looked sideways at his friend, searching for some revival of his liveliness, but Bingley continued gripped by a pensive mood Darcy knew not how to brook.
They had just turned in to the lane leading up to Longbourn when Bingley reined in his horse. “It
Darcy nodded slowly, his eyes trained on Bingley’s countenance. “That is usually the wisest policy.”
Bingley nodded back. “Well then.” He turned and, setting his shoulders, nudged his mount forward. Following a moment later, Darcy observed the set of his friend’s shoulders with dismay and no little sting of guilt. If, as he
