Duty and Desire Read Online Free PDF Page A

which he could only guess. By the time Bingley had excused Darcy and himself to his study after dinner, she was biting her lower lip, but whether in vexation or agitation of nerves, Darcy could not tell.
    Charles again fell silent as they strolled to the study, and not finding a creditable way of relieving it, Darcy had followed suit. The door had not even clicked behind them before Charles was extending a heavy, cut-glass tumbler of light amber liquor toward him. His own he held up in salute and downed it entire as Darcy looked on in consternation.
    “Charles…” he began, but was stopped by the closed eyes and uncharacteristically grim line of his friend’s mouth. Bingley opened his eyes then and tilted his head at him.
    “Do you remember our conversation at the coaching inn? You warned me there of my propensity to exaggerate.” Bingley’s gaze bore into his own, and it required a good deal of command on Darcy’s part not to look away.
    “Yes, I remember,” he replied quietly.
    “Also, you cautioned me of becoming so enthralled with the phantoms of my imagination that I would estrange myself from my family, friends, and society in general.” Bingley withdrew his gaze and turned to pour another round from the decanter.
    “You were more than tolerant of my advice, Charles,” Darcy offered, still unsure of his friend’s state of mind. Bingley held out the decanter to him, but he refused it.
    “I have thought a great deal about what you said, Darcy. I have argued with myself and, in my mind, with
you
as well.” He bent and snatched away the scattering of papers from the chairs by the hearth, then indicated they should sit down. “I have spent the last two days since her surprising arrival testing what I believed true against Caroline’s observations.”
    Darcy now remembered squirming in his chair at this point in Bingley’s narrative, but he hoped it had not been so. Bingley had paused and looked into the flames of the hearth for so long a time that Darcy had been hard put to maintain a disinterested attitude. Then, with a small sigh, his friend had continued.
    “I have also thought long on Lord Brougham’s admonition, and in the light of the love my friends and family bear me, I have come to a conclusion.” He lifted his eyes again and with a self-deprecating smile confessed, “You were right, Darcy. I have greatly misled myself in believing Miss Bennet offered anything more than her friendship. It was all my own doing. No blame should ever be attached to her, ever.” He took another swallow from his glass. “She will always be my ideal of womanhood…her beauty, her gentleness. I shall carry her always with me, but to further
my
desires would only cause her distress; and that I could not bear,” he ended in a whisper.
    As the coach sped north through the gathering dawn, Darcy recalled how he had looked down into his glass, unable to think of what he should reply. He had achieved his object with, as it seemed, fewer tedious confrontations than he had feared and had retained Bingley’s friendship in the bargain. Yet he could not entirely rejoice in his success. Relief, he concluded, was his chief emotion. There was little danger of encountering the Bennet sisters ever again. Charles would survive his heartbreak and not blame Darcy for it. But it pained him to see Charles, whose habitually sunny disposition had supported his own more reserved one on so many occasions, so dispirited.
    “It is for the best,” he had finally uttered, and he found himself repeating the maxim now.
    “Mr. Darcy?” In the opposite corner Fletcher struggled to attention from a doze that had begun mere blocks from Grosvenor Square. “Pardon me, sir. Did you say something?”
    “‘It is for the best,’ Fletcher. It usually is; is it not?”
    His valet gave him a brief, curious look before sliding back into his restful position against the cushions. “If it has been placed in the hands of Providence, sir, it is