Page 50 of Knowing Mr. Darcy

“I’m beginning to think this isn’t a good match.”

She turned to him in horror, letting out an audible gasp.

He cringed. “Oh, don’t be that way. You see it, too. I see the way your face tightens after I am amazed at something you think is obvious.”

“I don’t… feel that way.” Now, it was her turn to cringe. She hadn’t realized she was being so transparent.

“It would be one thing, if it weren’t forthat.” He gestured behind him.

She turned, unable to help herself. Mr. Darcy and his cousin and sister had all stopped riding their horses and they were all staring at her and Mr. Bingley. She turned her head back immediately, jolted by that. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why does he do that?”

“Oh, I thought Caroline told you,” he said.

“Told me…?” She let out a noise of disbelief. “Mr. Darcy isnotattracted to me.”

He laughed. “You don’t think so? How can you doubt it?”

She stopped walking, her heart in her throat.

He stopped, too, glancing at her. “Well, then. That answers that.”

“Answers what?” Her voice was insubstantial.

“Unless that’s a reaction of horror because you are so very disgusted by him.”

“I…”

“Didn’t think so,” he said in a tight voice.

She forced herself to walk again. She walked very quickly. Mr. Bingley matched her pace.

They were quiet.

“I’m very sorry to have strung you along for such a time,” he said. “I know that you find me acceptable for a number of reasons. I know you would likely accept me if I proposed at this exact moment. But I am convinced, every time that you lay eyes on him, that whatever you feel for me isn’t what you feel for him, and I can’t marry a woman who feels something so intensely for some other man. I have my pride, after all.”

“I don’t feel anything for him,” she protested. “I barely know him.”

“And yet, whenever he is anywhere near us, you can’t tear your eyes away from him.”

“That is not true,” she said stoutly.

“You seem to be as in as much denial about it as he is,” muttered Mr. Bingley. “No, yours is worse. He at least admits he fancies you. You pretend not to like him.”

“I never said I didn’t like him.”

“There we are, then.”

“What I have said is that I don’tknowhim,” she said. “I have certain reservations about his character. I have questions I should put to him if I were to be determining to form some kind of friendship with him, which is all I could consider forming with him, even if I did not feel as I have some obligation of faithfulness to you, sir, becausesuchare the reservations.”

“What reservations?” said Bingley. “That he said that you were only tolerable or that—”

“No, it seems he makes enemies rather easily,” she said. “Your own sister? Mr. Wickham? And I could deem him an enemy, I suppose, if I found that his behavior wascondemnable.”

“In the case of Wickham, he is entirely innocent,” said Bingley. “As for my sister, she is too severe on him.”

“You cannot deny he can be a difficult man to like, Mr. Bingley.”

“If you don’t know him, I suppose, he might seem…” A long pause.