Page 45 of A Mismatched Compromise

Elizabeth stared at her father for another long moment, then turned quietly and left him to his chosen isolation. She went upstairs to her room and changed into her walking dress and boots, and came back down. She had reached the bottom step when she heard his voice. He was calling out to her mother, then to Mary and Kitty, with a purposefulness in his tone she could not recall hearing before. They all met him in the drawing room, and she stopped quietly before the door and listened for a moment, listened to him apologise for not leaving the study, heard him reassure her mother that he was not angry with her, and praise Mary for informing them of what had happened. Then Elizabeth silently slipped out of the front door. There was a long walk before her.

Mr Bingley received her in the drawing room, dismissing Miss Bingley’s attempts to remain and her pointed questions with a pleasant firmness Elizabeth had not seen before, and suggested that they walk in the gardens. He was clearly curious about the purpose of her sudden visit, but was patient enough to let her bring it up in her own time.

They walked in silence for a little while, before Elizabeth broke it with perhaps the frankest question she had ever asked anyone. “Do you love my sister?”

Bingley looked at her, reddening slightly, and looked away. She could see the hesitation fill him, then see it drain away as though he had run out of the energy to sustain it, just as she had run out of the energy to sustain the pretence that her father’s absence from the family was all right.

“Yes,” he said, and she heard the relief of speaking the truth in his voice. “I am engaged to you, and I have no intention of breaking my word, and I am deeply sorry to be disrespectful to you in this way. But, yes. I love Jane, very much, despite having tried everything in my power to stop doing so.”

“I know,” Elizabeth said gently. “I have known for some time.” She took a deep breath. “That is why I have come to break our engagement. I cannot marry you.”

He stopped walking, staring at her in shock. “Elizabeth —”

“I mean it entirely,” she said. “I will love you as a brother. Of all things, it will be perfectly easy, and considerably more comfortable than the thought of loving you as a husband, which I cannot do.”

He searched her face, clearly trying to determine if she was sincere. Then he said carefully, “Does this have anything to do with Darcy?”

Now it was Elizabeth’s turn to stiffen in surprise. “What do you mean?” she managed.

“I know he intended… He told me he wanted to propose to you,” Mr Bingley said gently. “I am not angry or offended — I only want to understand. Is that why you have come? Because he has asked you to be his wife?”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “It is not.” She paused and realised she owed him more information than she really wanted to share. “He did propose. I refused him, and I expect that is all there will be to that.”

Mr Bingley’s mouth fell open in surprise before he carefully rearranged his expression to something as neutral as his open countenance could manage. “You refused him,” he repeated, and she heard the surprise in his voice.

“I did,” Elizabeth said, wrapping her arms around herself.

The silence lengthened, and when Mr Bingley spoke, his voice was again very careful. “I do not understand. Besides solving the problem of reputation, you would have great wealth and consequence as his wife, not to mention having Pemberley. More importantly, I thought — though perhaps I was mistaken — I thought you had come to respect Darcy and even to like him over the course of our stay in Derbyshire. May I ask why you refused him?”

“Because it was clear that he did not really want to marry me,” Elizabeth said. “I cannot think why he made such an offer, for he told me that condescending to do so would be degrading himself in the eyes of the world.”

Mr Bingley actually groaned at that, which drew a reluctant smile from Elizabeth, despite the heaviness of the conversation.

“Of course he did,” he said, more to himself than to her. “That is, I am very sorry,” he said, trying to recover himself. “That must have been… That must have been most uncomfortable.” He sighed, his lips curving wryly as he silently acknowledged the inadequacy of that observation.

They walked for another moment in silence. “May I say something, on his behalf?” Mr Bingley asked at last. Elizabeth could hear the hesitation in his voice. “Not to correct you for your response — your reasons are your own, and I understand them. But I feel I could perhaps…clarify a thing or two for you.”

Elizabeth was unable to speak, but he apparently took this as permission and proceeded.

“Darcy is my closest friend,” Bingley said, “but he is not a man who finds speaking his feelings easy. Most of us do not, to be honest, but I could count on one hand the number of times Darcy has told me something he felt, rather than something he thought. It is not — I do not believe that it is a question of coldness, of lacking feeling. It is more that emotion comes out sideways in him — he cannot express it as feeling, but as practicality, or honesty, or action. For all that he is irritatingly clever, and even more irritatingly willing to tell you about his cleverness, it seems that when words come from his heart, they get lost between there and his mouth.”

Elizabeth watched him, unsure of how to respond. Mr Bingley stopped walking and turned toward her, waiting until she met his eyes to continue.

“He never, in all our acquaintance, expressed any type of deep feeling for anyone, other than brotherly care for Georgiana. Until the night before we left Pemberley, when he told Fitzwilliam and me that he intended to propose to you. I think you should know that when he told us, he didn’t discuss the merits of the match, or the qualities he admired in you, or any concerns he had. Darcy did not even present it as the sensible solution to the problem of this engagement.” Mr Bingley paused, letting her see the sincerity in his gaze. “He didn’t touch on any of that. He only said that he loved you.”

Elizabeth caught her breath, tearing her eyes away from his.

“I have known him for many years, and have never heard him speak so about a woman,” Mr Bingley finished quietly.

Elizabeth said nothing for a long time. “He said nothing of the sort to me,” she said unevenly. “He said that my mother was horrible, and my sister a disgrace, and I was ruined, and…” She stopped, unable to continue. She heard Mr Bingley sigh.

“I believe… I cannot claim to know his mind, but I do know him, and I believe he thought he was being sincere by being honest,” Mr Bingley said. “I think Darcy believes that kindness without acknowledging truth is…empty. False. He is not exactly wrong in that, but I do not think he is particularly skilled in determining what truths need to be shared and in what manner they should be delivered in a given situation,” he said with a hint of amusement. “I believe that he likely told you of those obstacles to show, well, to show that he had weighed them and had chosen you anyway, not realising that leading with the obstacles meant that you didn’t hear him making the choice.”

“I understand,” Elizabeth said finally. “And I appreciate you, Mr Bingley, for clarifying that. But I find that knowing why he said those things does not change what it told me about what our life would be like if I accepted him. He would have regretted it — perhaps not immediately, but eventually — and I would know. I would always know.”

Mr Bingley regarded her for a moment. “I think he would disagree with you about that,” he said, “but you must be the judge of it.” He looked at her, his face more serious than she had ever seen it. “Elizabeth…you must know that, setting Darcy aside entirely, if we end this engagement, the scandal will not disappear with it. You will still have been…compromised. People will say I abandoned you because I had…got what I wanted, which is a vile belief, but not one that we can prevent. You may find it very difficult to…” he hesitated, his discomfort obvious. “You may never marry.”

“I know,” she said quietly.