Page 181 of What Change Entails

Her attention sharpened.

“So, it is true.” She came nearer, close enough that he stepped back by instinct. “You would marry her.”

“If she will have me.”

Miss Bingley inhaled sharply.

The next moment she reached for his arm.

He moved before her hand could settle.

She froze, humiliated.

“Do not,” he said.

The word emerged lower than he intended.

Her eyes filled, though he could not tell whether from grief, fury, or calculation. “You would prefer her to me?”

“Yes.”

Cruel in brevity perhaps. Necessary.

“She is beneath you.”

“No.”

“She has nothing.”

“She has herself.”

Miss Bingley laughed then, a harsh, wounded sound wholly unlike her usual polish. “And what am I, then?”

Darcy’s anger, which he had held behind his teeth for days, pushed nearer the surface. He forced himself to speak without heat. Heat would serve her. Clarity would not.

“You are a lady who has enjoyed welcome in my house and used it to belittle those under my protection. You have injured Georgiana by presuming to govern her. You have insulted guests whose conduct has shown more generosity than your own. You have spoken cruelly of Elizabeth and her family, and when checked, you have sought subtler means to wound.”

“That is Lydia Bennet’s doing,” she snapped. “She has set Georgiana against me.”

“Georgiana has not been set against anyone. She is free to choose.”

“She is a child.”

“She is my sister.”

Miss Bingley flinched.

Darcy took a breath. “I will not marry you. I would never marry you. Nor would I subject my sister, my household, my tenants, or any future wife of mine to your contempt.”

Her face drained of color.

The room became unbearably still except for the murmur of conversation beyond the door.

Miss Bingley stared at him as though he had struck her.

“You are cruel,” she whispered.

“Perhaps tonight I am. I ought to have been honest sooner.”