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“Firstly, I apologise for allowing a guest to be insulted in my home with impunity. I know you and Miss Elizabeth try your best to curb the worst excesses of your family, but they are not your responsibility. As head of this family, and master of the estate, the behaviour of my sisters was my responsibility. I not only failed…” he said resignedly, then looked at her with a frown. “…I did not even try.”

“Why is that?” she asked in apparent curiosity, which Bingley took to be a not too terrible sign.

“Because long ago I just got tired of beating my head against the wall, if I am honest.”

Jane sighed to match his. “I suppose I understand. I only recently started challenging my mother directly, and it is hard to break childhood habits. Your sister reminds me of Mama in some ways. They are both trying—and failing—to rise above their upbringing without bothering to learn the necessary skills.”

Bingley thought he might be getting somewhere but wanted to get the bulk of what he needed to say finished, so he chose not to continue the same disagreeable subject, which was only likely to frustrate them both.

“More importantly than failing to check my sisters, I must apologise for not taking you seriously… not giving you the respect you deserve.”

She looked slightly intrigued and puzzled at the same time.

He continued, “You were correct to chastise me at Netherfield for being attracted to your beauty. While nobody likes to consider themselves inconstant, I will admit that I have often been attracted to beautiful women. It has most often turned out badly, but I continued the habit.”

“How has it turned out badly?” Jane asked, curious for the first time.

“Any number of ways,” he replied with a shake of his head.

“Many were vain and selfish once I got to know them, much like my own sister. Many lost their interest quickly, once they learnt I was naught but the son of a tradesman. Some used me as bait to attract bigger fish. I could continue, but mostly it was my own naivete and vanity.”

Jane laughed slightly. “Vanity? I suppose you share that defect with Mr Darcy.”

Bingley laughed. “Darcy will swear up and down that he does not suffer from vanity and he has his pride under good regulation.”

“I could swear up and down my younger sisters have perfect manners. That would not make it true.”

Bingley laughed, and Jane joined in. Nothing was resolved, but she was at least slightly less hostile.

“While on the subject of defects, may we move on from my vanity and allow me to apologise for one more thing?”

“Feel free.”

“I had a lot of time to think in the last week. I even kept notes. I believe I must apologise for my selfishness.”

Jane looked confused. “You may need to elaborate.”

“Since you obviously are privy to my conversation with Darcy at the assembly, you are aware that I was attracted to your beauty. Hooray for me, I am not blind, though I am stupid.”

“Go on,” she said grudgingly.

“I was, in fact, first attracted by your beauty and it would be silly to claim otherwise. I would suspect your first glance of me compared to your first glance at your cousin shows that women are not entirely immune to appearance either.”

Jane blushed and sighed. “After that night, I told Lizzy you were just what a young man ought to be: sensible, good-humoured, lively; with happy manners and perfect good breeding!”

Bingley was blushing but had nothing to reply.

Jane stared at the floor. “Lizzy observed that you were also handsome, which a young man ought likewise to be, if he possibly can. Your character is thereby complete.”

She stared directly at him for the first time that morning. “I suppose it would be hypocritical to chastise you for doing the same thing we were.”

Bingley nodded, wondering if that revelation made things better or worse. “I suppose that mitigates perhaps the worst of my behaviour for the first night of our acquaintance, but thereafter…”

She nodded for him to continue, but he stopped and thought for some time.

“Thereafter, much to my shame, I did not really think about you. I thought about how I felt when I was with you. I thought that, perhaps I had found the woman who could match me. I thought about… well, it was all about me. I did not consider how the neighbourhood would comprehend your reputation when I so blatantly favoured you. I gave no thought to how your mother’s enthusiasm would make your home life.

As you so aptly pointed out, I learnt quite well how you made me feel without a second thought to how I made you feel.

I did not think about what would happen to you if our nascent acquaintance went off.

I took no real steps to curb my sisters’ tongues, though it was obvious they would be wagging.

I could continue in that vein for some time, but I suspect you understand. ”

“I do,” she said, staring at the ground again.

“I suppose I should apologise for the way my family treated you. My mother put a target on your back, and to be honest, she spent the entire time trying to bring you to the point—and whether it was with your compliance or without was of no interest. She sent me to Netherfield on horseback specifically so I might get trapped by the rain. She knows nothing about you save your income, and yet that was enough to make you a good matrimonial target, and I do not know to what lengths she might have gone if her ambitions were thwarted.”

Bingley watched her staring at him as if in challenge.

“I should prefer, Miss Bennet, that we both spend our efforts rectifying our own thoughts and behaviours… not our respective family’s.”

“To be honest,” said she, “Lizzy had the right of it. I suppose you could make some grand gesture like Mr Darcy, but I think that would be a square peg in a round hole. Your… offenses… such as they were, are different from his.”

“Agreed, which is why I did not follow his example. In some ways, I think Darcy and I have opposite problems.”

“Do tell,” she said, showing a spark of curiosity.

“Darcy knew he was the heir to a vast estate as soon as he learnt to talk. I was raised to be a tradesman, and my father threw me into a gentleman’s education and set lofty expectations late in the game and unexpectedly.

That is how we became friends. Darcy came to my rescue, and we got along well together. ”

Jane nodded for him to continue.

“We are the opposite because I need to grow up, and Darcy needs to reclaim his childhood. He was very much like a middle-aged man before his twentieth birthday, while I have yet to fully mature.”

Jane sighed. “That may be the saddest thing I ever heard.”

“Not really,” Bingley said with a smile, and nodded his head toward the other couple. “Did you pay attention to how they sat down?”

“Not especially,” Jane said curiously.

“Darcy knows he is on thin ice, so he sat at the proper distance. Now look at them!”

Jane carefully regarded her sister, and then a smile graced her face.

Lizzy was not sitting on Darcy’s lap, but she was at least a handspan closer than she had been when they sat down.

Darcy and Lizzy were there to chaperone the most important conversation of their sister and best friend but looked to all the world like they could care less what was happening so long as no open flames were involved.

Bingley said, “Darcy has hope… dare I emulate him?”

Jane sighed resignedly. “Is your house in order?”

Feeling great relief, Bingley outlined what had changed in the past week.

“I decided I need to grow up, as do my sisters. I have cut Caroline and the Hursts from my life entirely. I will not give them a public cut if they behave, but I will no longer support any of them. Caroline will live with Louisa through this next season, and if she is not married by then, I will release her dowry and cut her loose.”

“You may as well declare her a spinster,” she said in some alarm.

Bingley shrugged. “She is a beautiful woman with a good dowry, a lady’s education, and a lot of expensive clothes and jewellery.

The only thing holding her back is her sharp tongue and her propensity to reach too high.

Like me, Caroline suffers mostly from self-inflicted wounds, and like me, she will have to work out how to move forward.

She has a few months to recognize the limits of her reach, but she is her own problem.

It is time for all the Bingleys to grow up. ”

Jane sat in thought for a few moments, while Bingley waited patiently (more or less).

She finally said, “I learnt something interesting in this experience. I believe Elizabeth and I both were overly enamoured with first impressions, and we have learnt to be more… measured. As part of that, I am trying to avoid overcompensating.”

Bingley was thoroughly confused, which she noticed.

“All my life, I equated good manners and amiability with good character. Elizabeth did the same, which is part of why Mr Darcy was so thoroughly in her brown books, even though what he said was barely different from what we get from our father regularly.”

Bingley just raised a sceptical eyebrow, and she smiled in return.

She blushed and then stuttered and stammered the next.

“I hope you appreciate the sort of pinch I am in. I liked you at one point… quite a lot… and might again. That said, I have my approaching spinsterhood squeezing me from one side, and the risks of too fast of an attachment pushing me into a bad match on the other. Both frighten me.”

Bingley nodded several times in thought.

“Suppose we take things slow. I strongly suspect your worries about spinsterhood will disappear once your sister is well settled. No sister of Fitzwilliam Darcy will ever lack suitors, but I would hope to be first in line. If you allow it, I will simply call but without alarming frequency. I will dance and converse with you but will not neglect your neighbours. When you wish for more, or less, simply give me a hint… but not an overly subtle one. Let us begin anew and see where it leads us.”

“I should like that,” Jane said, and returned the first smile approaching her previous countenance.

Both feeling exhausted, they stood up and Bingley took a chance to grasp her hands and kiss the knuckles.

They wondered if they would have to throw something at Darcy, but the couple on the other side of the room stood at once, showing they were not as indifferent in their duty as it seemed.

They all came together and spent a quarter-hour discussing what had occurred.

Feeling slightly overwhelmed, they returned to the rest of the family just in time for Darcy to take another beating at backgammon from Mary while Jane and Elizabeth played whist with Mr Bingley and Mrs Bennet.

After dinner, the party returned to Netherfield.

They all felt much lighter than upon their entry.

Bingley felt like a condemned man who had gotten a temporary reprieve.

Darcy felt lighter just as he always did after an hour or more with Elizabeth.

The Colonel felt lighter by six shillings after gambling with Mr Bennet. Georgiana was lighter by three bonnets.