“Miss Bennet, you do not fear us creating a scandal if I should claim you for yet another dance this evening? My cousin, Lady Atwood, gave me reason to think it might be rather shocking.”
Elizabeth’s laugh sounds like fairy bells. There was no note of the harshness and cynicism which spiced her amusement whenever she spoke to him. “I believe Lady Atwood would delight in such a mild scandal, sir. We must do our best to amuse her. Please excuse us, Mr. Darcy.”
And then they were off toward the lines of dancers, and too late Darcy realized Elizabeth had again discarded her ruined fan on the ground, where it was quickly kicked and shuffled away under the feet of the other guests.
He certainly did not mean to watch her dance, though it was several minutes before he realized that was all he was doing, just standing there, like a fool, and observing a lady weave in and out of forms in a line of dancers, watching as she smiled and laughed with her red-coated companion…
His new neighbor, as it happened.
In a flash, he could see it all. The two of them, master and mistress of Dovenlea Park. Mrs. Atwood, across the table at every fashionable dinner party in Derbyshire, wearing her husband’s jewels. Mrs. Atwood, lying in her husband’s arms… His breath caught in his throat.
“Ah, there you are.” His cousin emerged from the crowd and handed him a glass of brandy. “I thought I’d lost you as well as Bingley.”
“Bingley is gone?”
“Moping over that girl. I say, I like the chap, but are there not enough women in London to please him? I believe you thought those Bennet girls pretty enough, yet you are not mooning, are you?”
“What?” was all Darcy could bring himself to say.
“Nothing, man. Let us have no more talk of women.”
“I will drink to that.” Darcy took a sip of the brandy and waited for it to smooth his scattered thoughts. It might have worked had Elizabeth and Atwood not danced into view. “I have just made the acquaintance of that young man,” he said, nodding in the Captain’s direction. “I hear you are his friend?”
“Aye. A good sort of fellow. Very young. I hear he will inherit land near Pemberley.”
“Dovenlea Park, yes.”
“I believe he will prove a very pleasant sort of neighbor for you. I don’t know if he hunts, but I’d wager he’s a quick study. At least he’s young. All my father’s neighbors are ancient. We have no good company at home. It’s as bad as visiting Lady Catherine in Kent.”
“Young, yes,” Darcy observed. “Think you he shall marry?”
“I do not see why he shouldn’t,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “With an income all but guaranteed. Lucky chap.”
On the dance floor, Elizabeth and Captain Atwood turned again. They smiled at each other. Elizabeth’s eyes flashed with fire. She was too beautiful to look at. How had he never seen it before?
Darcy turned away.
The ball dragged on, and Darcy thought he might leave and go to his club, though that was likely to be abandoned, as everyone he knew was here. But how could he stand by and watch Elizabeth dance with every man in the room but him?
She left the floor and was, in turn, left by her partner. For a moment she was alone, and it must have been the devil himself who caused Darcy’s boots to move across the floor.
She was quite flushed, he noted as he strode in her direction. A wayward curl lay plastered to her brow, and she moved her wrist as if to lift her fan, only to discover it was no longer there. She waved her flattened hand before her face, then turned and headed toward the door.
It must be the devil himself that forced Darcy to follow.
The balcony was not abandoned, Darcy was relieved to see. It was not as it had been at Netherfield. It was nothing like that. Elizabeth had positioned herself near several ladies who were also cooling themselves in the frigid night air, but did not speak to them. Nothing was amiss in her propriety, however. No tongues would wag about the Bennet girl from the country.
He took a few steps closer. She was not facing him, but staring out at the clouds which choked the moon, at the darkened streets of the city.
He felt the stone of the wall beneath his gloved fingers as he reached the balcony. She was a few feet away, breathing deeply, her eyes closed.
It must be the devil himself that moved his tongue. “Do you find the air of London to your liking?”
She did not jump, nor turn to him, and for a moment he thought she had not heard him..
“If one must have air, it will do.” Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked at him. “I cannot advise this course of action, Mr. Darcy. We have not done well together, on balconies. At balls.”
“You said we were neither of us ill tonight, and so there is no danger of either of us acting against our wishes.” Or their better judgment, Darcy realized, as he could never say that kissing Elizabeth had been against his wishes.
“I suppose you must be right.” She turned again toward the night.
He should leave. He should stop taking to her. She had made it abundantly clear that she did not wish to talk to him, did not welcome his presence. Not as she had desired Atwood’s.
At Netherfield, even when she sparred with him, she had watched him. He knew how she watched him, as he had been engaged in watching her right back. But now—now—he could leave and she might not even know.
He should leave. But if he did, might not Atwood come and speak to her, here in the damnable moonlight?
“Are you enjoying yourself tonight?”
She hesitated. “Yes. This evening has been full of lively conversation, and you know how fond I am of a good dance.”
“I do know,” he said. “What a pity we never finished ours.”
“I cannot count it a very great pity,” she replied. “I have come to believe that we do each other little credit when dancing, and it was best our single attempt ended when it did.”
“You cannot expect me to agree with you on that point.” He ventured a half-step closer.
She still would not turn and look at him. “No, but I have also come to believe there is no point on which we agree.”
“Unlike you and Captain Atwood.” The words had escaped his lips before he even knew they’d formed. He could cut out his tongue.
“Captain Atwood is very amiable,” was all Elizabeth would concede. “I have enjoyed spending time with him.”
“Your good opinion is rarely bestowed, and therefore more worth the earning.”
“I do not believe that follows. There are those who are similarly stingy with their good opinions, yet those they do choose are not worthy of the preferment.” She paused. “You see? Even in this we cannot agree.”
Darcy could not find a response, but he could more easily pull the moon out of the clouds than walk away from her now.
“There are those,” Elizabeth went on, still looking into the night, “who believe that goodness in character increases with the importance of their connections or the size of their fortune.”
“And I suppose you do not count yourself as one of the number?”
“I do not believe there is a relationship.”
“Is not your new friend Captain Atwood all the more charming because he possesses such fortune as to be able to marry?” he scoffed. “That is what I am told by Colonel Fitzwilliam.”
“Colonel Fitzwilliam speaks much of deprivation for the son of an earl,” Elizabeth said, and he found he could not but agree with her. “Perhaps it is a matter of expectations. Captain Atwood thinks less of such things as fortunes because he did not ever expect to have one. He was always free to love where he chose.”
Love where he chose! What nonsense was this? Darcy had been fending off fortune hunters since he’d been a boy at school. He nearly laughed at Elizabeth’s naiveté. “Spoken like someone with nothing to lose.”
She whirled to face him. “When one has nothing, one has nothing to lose. Your estimation is as remarkable as your cousin’s. But you have not considered the benefits the sta
rk deprivation you imagine can bring.”
“I did not mean—”
“In such a circumstance, one can give one’s love, rather than sell it. Affection freely given is the sweetest fruit of life. How lucky I am to have avoided bestowing such love on a less than worthy party. Good evening, Mr. Darcy.”
And, with a curtsy, she was gone.
Chapter 20
Neither Bennet spoke much on the way home to the Gardiners’ house. They did not speak of flowers, or gowns, or the new fashions in long sleeves that the other women at the ball wore. They did not gossip about the flirtations they witnessed or the ices that had been served.
On another evening, Elizabeth might have shared her thoughts with her sister—told Jane all about what had passed between herself and Mr. Darcy. But she knew Jane had more than enough to concern herself with and so spared her a recitation of her own romantic struggles.
Poor Jane. She had been doing so well, too. How dare Mr. Bingley pretend friendship, after all this time! Jane was right, of course. Even if he had been misled by his sister as to Jane’s presence in London, he had left Netherfield without taking his leave, and with no emergency or calamity to excuse such behavior. Hardly the actions of a man who truly esteemed a lady. A man who had been truly serious, truly honorable in his attentions, would not have disappeared without contriving some way in which to send word to the object of his affection.
Jane was right. Mr. Bingley had not been anything other than a flirt, and now that they were in London, and surrounded by flirts of a far more fascinating nature, they needn’t pay any bother to him.
Mr. Darcy, however…. Elizabeth sat back against the carriage seat, mindless of the impropriety. And yet, had she been at all mindful of the proper mode of behavior when she’d fairly yelled at him in the ballroom, when she’d attacked him on the balcony? Mr. Darcy might think all the Bennets marvelously lacking in dignity and manners, and she certainly wasn’t helping matters with the way she was tempted to behave whenever she was in his presence.
And this time she hadn’t the excuse of a fever. She’d been fully conscious, completely in control of her faculties, and she’d still upbraided him like a fishwife. What devil did that man bring out in her? He’d siphoned all the joy from the ball, somehow, made even the smiles and attentions from Captain Atwood pale in comparison to his slim, snide remarks.
What a fool she was! Were she back home in Hertfordshire, how she and her father would laugh at the folly of a lady who might prefer the pretentious pronouncements of a Mr. Darcy to the kind conversation of a Captain Atwood!
At long last, she was tempted to share all her history with Mr. Darcy with Jane—despite knowing how Jane, too, suffered—if only in hopes that her sister might be an adequate substitute for their father and make her laugh herself out of her silliness.
But instead the dour mood lingered, long after the carriage arrived in Gracechurch Street, long after they’d removed their evening finery and had braided each other’s hair and tucked themselves into bed, even long after a restive Elizabeth could tell, by the slow, even breathing of her sister at her side, that Jane had succumbed to sleep.
The very next day, all three of the ladies sewing in the parlor room of the house on Gracechurch Street were astonished to learn that a Mr. Darcy of Mayfair had come to call.
“Is this a conquest from the ball?” Mrs. Gardiner asked the Bennets, after she had instructed the servant to allow him in.
“Indeed not,” said Elizabeth, poking her needle so hard into the fabric she nearly took off her own thumb.
“Though we did renew the acquaintance last night,” clarified Jane. “He stayed at Netherfield for a few months in the autumn…with the Bingleys.”
“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Gardiner. A small frown appeared on her face. “Was I quite right to allow him entrance?”
“Of course,” said Elizabeth, closing her fist about her injured thumb and squeezing. What ever could he mean by calling here? Had they not spoken more than they might ever need to last night? Hadn’t her words, flung in a blind rage, been more than enough to drive him away forever?
“Mr. Darcy,” announced the servant, and the man himself entered. He seemed so much taller in the confines of Mrs. Gardiner’s London parlor, so much larger-than-life than he ever had appeared in a ballroom or a country house. His cravat was perfectly tied, his shoes and hat perfectly brushed. Mrs. Gardiner’s room was lovingly appointed, with new furnishings and curtains, and yet suddenly everything looked remarkably shabby, in a way it hadn’t even when Lady Atwood had come to call there.
It was some special quality Mr. Darcy possessed. Some enchantment that allowed everything around him to seem somehow beneath him, or for him to seem so much better than everything else…Elizabeth didn’t know which one she meant in that moment.
They rose and curtsied in response to his bow.
Jane rushed to make introductions. “Mrs. Gardiner, may I present Mr. Darcy, whom we came to know when he was recently staying in Hertfordshire. Mr. Darcy, my aunt.”
“Madam,” he said with a nod. “Thank you so much for permitting my intrusion into your home.”
“Not at all,” said Mrs. Gardiner, and gestured to a chair. “Please sit down.”
He took a seat nearest to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth doubled her efforts in her embroidery.
Jane found her tongue. “How lucky we were to see you at the ball last night, Mr. Darcy. It is good to know there are those who will fulfill the courtesy of calling upon friends in town.”
Even Mrs. Gardiner’s eyes widened at such a pronouncement from the lips of her eldest niece. Elizabeth nearly stuck herself with another needle.
“Yes, well, I was fortunate to be in this part of town today,” he replied.
“And how do you find Cheapside?” Elizabeth asked slyly.
He looked at her. “I find it as it ever was. Bustling with business.”
“I often think my neighborhood the very heart of London, Mr. Darcy,” said Mrs. Gardiner. “And I have grown used to its population and sounds, though I come from the country myself and must admit that sometimes I long for the quiet beauty of Derbyshire.”
“You are from Derbyshire, ma’am?” he asked, with a heightened degree of interest. “Which part?”
“I spent my youth in a little village called Lambton.”
“Why, that is not five miles from Pemberley!”
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Gardiner, and bent her head back over her sewing. It occurred to Elizabeth that her aunt must know very well how important and wealthy a person sat in her house at this moment, and yet she seemed more at ease than any of them.
“When you were there,” Mr. Darcy said at last, “do you recall the baker, Mr. Smith?”
Mrs. Gardiner laughed. “Oh yes! He used to give the neighborhood children bits of extra dough baked with honey — if you got to his door in time!”
Mr. Darcy shook his head. “I never had more than one taste, but I’ll wager it was the finest good in his shop. How odd that it should be so, don’t you think?”
Instantly, Elizabeth was overcome with a vision of Darcy as a boy, with short pants and wild hair, begging for treats with other children at the door of a country baker. And for a moment—just an instant, really—he seemed so normal
“Is it?” Elizabeth could not help but ask. “There is no novelty in the notion that those things we ought not to have shall always be sweeter than those that are meant for us.”
He turned toward her, and there was something in his gaze that nearly stopped her heart. “Yes. I agree completely.” Clearing his throat, he rose, and the women scrambled to follow. “I have taken up enough of your time today. Thank you so much, ma’am, for your hospitality,” he bowed toward Mrs. Gardiner. “Good day.”
Jane was the first to retake her seat. “It does not seem so very difficult for some gentlemen to call. If Mr. Darcy can manage it, we must surely count it notable that other gentlemen do not.”
“How London h
as changed you, Jane,” Elizabeth exclaimed. “You would never have made such an uncharitable statement back in Hertfordshire.”
“Do you begrudge me finding my spine at last, Lizzy?” Jane asked.
“I think she only wishes you to take care that you do not allow your strength to be corrupted by bitterness,” said Mrs. Gardiner. “But I am sure you are far too good for that.”
“Oh yes,” Jane said. “I am far too good for everything, except for those who think they are far too good for me.”
That, thought Elizabeth, sounded very bitter indeed. Poor Jane, who had once been renowned for her sweetness. Had she not already determined to dislike Mr. Bingley for his behavior to her sister, Elizabeth was quite sure Jane’s tone in this moment would cinch it.
But almost immediately their conversation was made to wait by the arrival of a very different gentleman: Captain Atwood. His visit was far more expected than Mr. Darcy’s, and as to it being more welcome, Elizabeth felt that with all the surety she could muster and chose to pay no mind to any indication that her spirits had been more roused by the earlier call. Captain Atwood was everything charming, and his conversation was animated and natural and comfortable. Not for him the airs of the richest man in Derbyshire! Not for him the stiffness and coldness of a man who should have known better than to come.
There may have been a time when she would have welcomed the visit of a Mr. Darcy. When she even expected it. But that was months past. She expected him no more than her sister expected his friend.
“—don’t you agree, Miss Elizabeth?” Captain Atwood asked.
“Oh yes, certainly,” was Elizabeth’s blind response. She might have just concurred with an opinion on the correct preparation of crocodile, for all she knew of the subject at hand. She committed herself to paying closer attention, yet despite her best efforts, her mind kept wandering away to their earlier caller.
What could Mr. Darcy have meant in coming here, after all these months? What could he have meant in coming after her at the dance last night? A cad indeed, to believe he could resume the intimacy they’d been stumbling toward in Hertfordshire. But then, he must be a cad. Had not Mr. Wickham said as much? To cheat a man out of his inheritance was worse than to flirt with a lady—even to kiss a lady— and then vanish.
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