“In fact, I do,” he said. “No, that would give you too much credit. I don’t have energy to waste on hatred towards you, Miss Bingley. I find your behavior appalling, however, and you disgust me.”
She took a step backward, and hurt registered on her face.
“I would never have considered marrying you, never. But to think that I would ever stoop to such a level now—”
“I can tell everyone everything,” she said. “You don’t wish anyone to know about Mr. Wickham? Well, I can shout it from the rooftops.”
He gaped at her.
She squared her shoulders. “Of course, I could be convinced not to if you but—”
“Let me get this straight,” he interrupted. “You are attempting to blackmail me into marrying you?”
“She is your mistress,” said Caroline. “You will doubtless go off and live with her all the time. What would it matter to you?”
“If I were going to marry someone else, I should marry someone proper,” he said. “Why, I have a ready-made future wife, one who my aunt Lady Catherine would dearly wish me to marry, my cousin Anne de Bourgh. There is no reason to ever marry you, and I would not.”
Her nostrils flared. “Well, I don’t see any reason to keep your secrets, Mr. Darcy, not if you are going to be this way with me.”
He let out a frustrated sigh. What todowith this woman. He took a step towards her. “What I think I should do, Miss Bingley, is to lock you up in a room upstairs, make you dress yourself and fetch your own food and comb your own hair. Empty your own chamberpots. I understand you made her do that. I should deny you dinner, and make you wait to break your fast until midday. I should—”
“I have apologized for all of this, sir!” she broke in. “Miss Bennet has forgiven me. Besides, she is all right. She has not starved. Nothing I did was truly harmful.”
“Well, if it wasn’t truly harmful, you wouldn’t object to it for yourself, I suppose.”
Her eyes widened. “You can’t confine me to a room.”
“How could you stop me?” He tilted his head to look at her.
She was very alarmed.
He lifted a finger. “Miss Bingley, I am quite aware that your family enjoys a close association with me and my family and that this is a social currency that your brother values. You yourself benefit from it. Shall I remove it? Shall I make it plain that I have cut you all from my society?”
She swallowed.
“You’ll keep your counsel, then,” he said in a low voice. “And yes, you and your sister should make yourself ready and get off my property as soon as possible.”
“B-but… what are we to say about why Louisa is no longer with child?” said Caroline. “Mr. Hurst will wish to know, and if we cannot give him some excuse—”
“I care not,” he said.
“Just as you care not that the whole of good society will be quite aware you are marrying a woman gone with some other man’s child?” said Caroline, her eyes flashing.
He heaved a huge sigh. Caroline was awful, but she wasn’t entirely incorrect. This was a problem. His whereabouts were known, were quite accounted for. He had been with Miss Bennet in April, but that did not line up timing wise.
Perhaps he could claim that one of the nights he had been at home that he had actually ridden all the way to Brighton and back and had time while there to surreptitiously impregnate Elizabeth, but it would not go that way. No one would come right out and ask him about it. They would never say a word to him about it, but they would whisper behind his back.
It was one thing to marry a woman who was quite gone with your child. It was poor behavior, perhaps, but people eventually forgave it. After all, anticipating one’s vows was rather common, in all truth. Marriage was the remedy for such indiscretions. If he married Elizabeth, it would mean he was doing what he was meant to do to reap what he had sown.
But to marry a woman who was carrying another man’s child, to be an acknowledged cuckold from the outset of a marriage, it was… well, no one did that, and it was the sort of juicy gossip that tended to be spread far and wide.
His hope had been to marry Elizabeth, stay here in the country for some time. When they returned to London, whenever that might be, they would obviously not be parading around with their babe or small toddler, and it would be a matter of five months to contend with. In order to discover the scandal, people would have to count things on their fingers.
His assumption had been that if the wedding was quiet enough and the babe’s birth was quiet enough, and he and his new wife simply emerged at some point, no one would think to ask questions.
However, it would not go this way if everyone was talking about his marriage.
Would everyone talk about his marriage?