Page 59 of A Compromise By Design

“That circumstance could hardly fail to arouse my suspicions.” He paused. “I questioned her about it, of course. I thought her guilty of a lesser crime, that of wishing to speak to me alone without a proper reason. That she could have intended a compromise had not occurred to me, still less that she had paid for it and then allowed the consequences to fall on you.”

“She did not intend me,” Elizabeth said wryly. “She intended herself.”

“That does not improve the account.” He stood and moved to the window. “Nor was that the end of her attempts. There was the suggestion that the engagement might yet be dissolved.”

Elizabeth looked at him. “Yes. Miss Bingley came to me with a piece of information she had heard — allegedly — from Mr Hurst’s solicitor. About the conditions under which an engagement might be quietly dissolved.”

Mr Darcy rubbed his mouth. “Yes. She brought the same information to me.”

“I know,” Elizabeth said. “Or I suspected. The information was too precisely useful to have arrived at her by accident, and she must have imagined that she might more easily convince you than myself.”

“She presented it as concern for my well-being,” he said wryly. The expression that crossed his face was not pleasant. He controlled it quickly, but not before she had seen it. “I declined it and told her that such an arrangement would not mend that damage to your reputation, which was true. I also —” He stopped and placed his hands on his knees. “I also declined it for reasons I did not give her.”

“As did I,” Elizabeth said. “It has been a difficult time.”

“It has,” Mr Darcy agreed. Though Elizabeth could not see his face, his voice was grim. “We have both suffered much to reach so happy an understanding, and Miss Bingley was entirely responsible. This must not stand.” Anyone else might have paced in agitation, but Mr Darcy simply stood with his back partly to her. Elizabeth could see from the set of his shoulders what the stillness, the control, was costing him.

“This can put an end to all the scandal,” he said. He faced her once more, a determined frown set in his face like stone. “The circumstances of it can now be properly accounted for. The housemaid’s testimony, the payment, all of it is exactly what we needed. It clears your name entirely.”

“It would,” Elizabeth said softly. Wishing, for a moment, that matters could yet be so simple.

“Then we’ll use it.” He said it with quiet certainty, unwavering. “We bring it forward. Everyone who has believed a version of events that reflects badly on you, it can be corrected. The record can be set right.”

Elizabeth tilted her head. “And what happens to Miss Bingley when it is set right?”

Mr Darcy paused. “She faces the consequences of what she did.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth agreed. “She does. And what are those consequences for a woman who is found to have deliberately arranged a compromise?”

His eyes went wide as understanding dawned.

“She is finished,” Elizabeth said evenly. The bare facts needed no embroidery. “Not censured or embarrassed for a season. Finished. No respectable household receives her. No suitable match is made. Even her family and friends would bear the shame of so great a scandal, while the woman at the centre of it would be as removed from society as though she were dead. Whatever Miss Bingley has, and she has considerable intelligence and not inconsiderable accomplishments, none of it is sufficient to recover from that. I have thought about this at length over many weeks, and I cannot find a version of her exposure that ends differently.”

“She brought it on herself,” Mr Darcy said.

“Yes, she did. I am not arguing otherwise. I am telling you what the exposure will truly do to her, because I think you should have it fully before you decide what you want to do with it.”

Mr Darcy glanced down at her, reading her intentions. “You have already decided what you want to do with it.”

“Indeed, I have decided what I am going to do with it,” Elizabeth said. “I am not certain I have any right to decide for you.”

He sat down across from her. His eyes grew distant as he considered all options. “Bingley,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Whatever happens to his sister, the scandal would also reflect on him.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “He is entirely without fault in any of this. And yet he would also be shamed, perhaps shunned, in the event of his sister’s exposure. Then, too, his attachment to Jane exists in a world with opinions about such things, and I cannot be certain it survives. I have thought about this as well.”

“Because of your sister,” he said.

Elizabeth nodded.

Mr Darcy was quiet for a long moment. The fire popped in the grate. Elizabeth sat with her hands in her lap and let him think.

“This is,” he said finally, “an argument for your silence that has nothing to do with Miss Bingley’s well-being.”

“I know,” Elizabeth said. “I have three reasons, and I have tried to be honest with myself about all of them. Jane’s happiness is the first. The cost to Mr Bingley is the second. Miss Bingley’s ruin is the third. She is not an easy woman for whom to feel sympathy. Yet neither could I feel at ease in knowing myself to be responsible for the destruction of any hope of future happiness for her.”