Surrendering to Mr. Darcy

Chapter 1 The Netherfield Ball

Elizabeth Bennet had danced with many disagreeable partners in her life, but none had possessed the particular talent of Mr. Darcy for making a set feel like a duel.

They moved through the figures with mechanical precision, their bodies performing the steps their minds had long since abandoned in favor of combat.

The ballroom at Netherfield blazed with candles, their light multiplied in the long mirrors until the room seemed infinite, an endless corridor of spinning couples and glittering glass.

The music was bright, insistent, demanding a gaiety neither of them felt.

"Do you talk as a rule while dancing, Mr. Darcy?

" Elizabeth asked, because silence with this man was somehow worse than speech.

Silence left room for awareness -- of his hand engulfing hers through thin gloves, of his height, of the way he looked at her as though she were a problem he could not solve.

"I talk when conversation is worth having."

"And is mine?"

His gaze dropped to hers. Dark eyes, impossibly serious. "Yours is always worth having, Miss Bennet, though it frequently vexes me."

"Then we are well matched, sir. You vex me entirely without speaking at all."

Something moved in his expression -- amusement or irritation, she could never tell with him, and the not-knowing was its own kind of torment.

They turned in the set, and his hand found the small of her back, guiding her through the figure with a proprietary ease that made her breath catch.

The touch was correct, expected, required by the dance.

There was no reason for it to feel like anything more than choreography.

She told herself this firmly and believed it not at all.

The evening had been, by Bennet standards, a catastrophe of familiar proportions.

Mary had commandeered the pianoforte for the third time, subjecting the company to a performance that was technically competent and spiritually agonizing.

Mrs. Bennet had informed Lady Lucas, at a volume sufficient to reach Derbyshire, that Jane's attachment to Mr. Bingley was a settled thing and that she expected a proposal before Michaelmas.

Mr. Collins had cornered Charlotte Lucas with a lecture on the chimney dimensions at Hunsford Parsonage.

Lydia and Kitty had been shrieking in corners with officers whose names Elizabeth could not keep straight.

And through it all, Mr. Darcy had watched. He had stood at the edge of the room like a sentinel, his dark coat a rebuke to the cheerful chaos, his expression betraying nothing but a faint, persistent displeasure that Elizabeth had learned to read as his natural state.

She had not expected him to ask her to dance. When he had, she had been too surprised to refuse, and now she was trapped in the geometry of the set, his hand periodically finding hers, his attention fixed on her face with an intensity that felt less like interest than investigation.

"You are very quiet, Miss Bennet," he said. "I had braced myself for wit."

"Wit requires a worthy target. I am still searching."

The corner of his mouth twitched. Not a smile. Darcy did not smile. But something adjacent to one, something that lived in the neighborhood of smiling and occasionally borrowed its expressions.

The dance ended. They stood facing each other while the room applauded, and for a moment neither moved. His hand was still extended, still holding hers, and the contact burned through two layers of silk like a brand.

Elizabeth pulled free first. "Thank you, Mr. Darcy. That was very nearly pleasant."

"High praise from you, Miss Bennet."

She turned away before he could see whatever her face was doing, because she did not trust it. She did not trust any part of herself in proximity to this infuriating, inscrutable, unreasonably tall man who looked at her as though she mattered and treated her as though she did not.

She needed air. She needed distance. She needed a room without Mr. Darcy in it.

The library at Netherfield was blessedly dark, lit only by the remnants of a fire that had been left to burn down.

Elizabeth slipped inside and closed the door behind her, pressing her back against the wood and releasing a breath she felt she had been holding since the first chord of the first dance.

The room smelled of leather and old paper and the faint sweetness of beeswax. Shadows pooled in the corners and gathered between the shelves like conspirators. The fire crackled softly, casting amber light across the carpet and the spines of books she could not read in this dimness.

She moved to the window and pressed her forehead against the cool glass. Outside, the November night was black and starless. Inside, the distant sound of music filtered through the walls, muffled and strange, as though the ball were happening in another country.

She did not hear the door open.

"Miss Bennet."

She spun around. Darcy stood in the doorway, one hand on the frame, the other hanging at his side. The candlelight from the corridor silhouetted him, making his face unreadable. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, and the room shrank.

"Mr. Darcy. I was seeking solitude."

"Then I apologize for intruding." He did not leave. He moved further into the room, his steps measured, deliberate, as though approaching something that might bolt.

"You are not leaving."

"No."

"Then your apology is somewhat undermined."

"I came for a book." He gestured vaguely toward the shelves, but his eyes did not leave her face.

"In the dark?" Elizabeth crossed her arms. "You must have remarkable eyesight."

"I know where the book is."

"Then retrieve it and go."

He did not move. The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney, and in the flare of light she saw his expression clearly for the first time since he had entered: tense, almost pained, as though he were holding something back by force of will.

"What is it?" she asked, and her voice came out softer than she intended. "What is wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong." He said it the way one says a thing to make it true. "I came to -- I wanted to say --" He stopped. Started again. "Your mother. The things she said tonight. About Jane. About Bingley. I want you to know that it does not --"

"Do not." Elizabeth's chin came up. "Do not presume to tell me that my mother's behavior does not affect your opinion of my family, because we both know it does. I saw your face, Mr. Darcy. I saw how you looked at her."

"I was not looking at her. I was looking at you."

The words landed like a slap. Elizabeth stared at him.

"I was looking at you," he repeated, lower, "and wondering how you endure it with such grace.

How you manage to be so -- so entirely yourself in the midst of all that chaos.

You stood there while your mother announced your sister's engagement to a man who has not proposed, while your youngest sisters made spectacles of themselves, while your cousin lectured everyone within reach about his patroness's fireplace.

And you bore it all with a wit and a composure that I --" He broke off.

His jaw tightened. "I find admirable. That is all I came to say. "

Elizabeth's heart was hammering. She could hear it, feel it, a wild percussion in her chest that had nothing to do with offense and everything to do with the way he was looking at her: as though she were the only solid thing in a room full of shadows.

"You have a peculiar notion of compliments, Mr. Darcy. You have essentially praised me for surviving my own family."

"I have praised you for being remarkable despite circumstances that would diminish a lesser person."

"Lesser." She seized on the word. "There it is. The pride. You cannot help yourself, can you? Even when you mean to be kind, you condescend."

"That is not what I --"

"It is exactly what you meant. You came in here to tell me that you admire me in spite of my family, as though I am a diamond found in a coal mine, as though the coal is something to be ashamed of."

"I did not say --"

"You implied it. You always imply it. Every look, every silence, every carefully measured compliment reminds me that you consider yourself above this assembly, above this neighborhood, above everyone in it."

"Not above you." He said it quietly, fiercely, and she felt it in her bones. "Never above you."

They were closer than they had been. She did not remember either of them moving, but the distance between them had collapsed, as though the room itself were conspiring.

She could see the firelight reflected in his eyes, the rapid pulse at his throat, the way his hands were clenched at his sides as though keeping himself from reaching for her.

"You are infuriating," she whispered.

"So are you." His voice was rough. "From the moment I met you, you have been the most infuriating woman I have ever encountered. You argue with everything I say. You laugh at me to my face. You challenge me in ways no one else has ever dared, and I --"

"You what?"

He kissed her.

It was not gentle. It was not tentative. It was the collapse of a dam, weeks of tension breaking in a single, devastating instant. His hands came up to her face, fingers sliding into her hair, tilting her head back, and his mouth found hers with a certainty that left no room for hesitation.

Elizabeth's mind went blank. She should push him away. She should slap him. She should do anything other than what she did, which was to grab the lapels of his coat and pull him closer.

He made a sound against her mouth -- something between a groan and a gasp -- and deepened the kiss, one hand sliding from her hair to the back of her neck, the other dropping to her waist, pressing her against him until she could feel the heat of him through every layer of silk and linen between them.

She tasted brandy and something darker, something that was simply him, and her body responded with a frankness that horrified her rational mind.

Her fingers curled into the fabric of his coat.

Her spine arched. A sound escaped her throat that she had never made before and immediately wanted to make again.

His mouth left hers and traced a line down her jaw to her neck, and she tilted her head back without meaning to, without deciding to, her body making choices her mind had not sanctioned.

His breath was hot against the hollow of her throat, and when his lips pressed there she felt it everywhere: a cascade of sensation that started where his mouth touched and radiated outward until her fingertips tingled and her knees forgot their function.

"We should not --" she began, and he kissed the words away.

"I know," he murmured against her mouth. "I know."

Neither of them stopped.

His hand splayed across her lower back, drawing her hips flush against his, and the contact was so intimate, so shockingly direct even through their clothing, that Elizabeth gasped.

His forehead dropped to hers. They stood there, breathing each other's air, his hands in her ruined hair, her fingers still gripping his lapels, the fire dying behind them and neither caring.

"Elizabeth," he said, and her Christian name in his mouth was a revelation, low and rough and reverent, nothing like the clipped formality he wore like armor.

The door opened.

The light from the corridor fell across them like a judgment. Caroline Bingley stood in the doorway, Mrs. Hurst half a step behind her, and both women froze in a tableau of magnificent horror.

Elizabeth saw herself through their eyes: hair tumbled from its pins, lips swollen, pressed against Mr. Darcy's chest with his arms around her and his mouth inches from her throat.

There was no ambiguity. There was no innocent explanation.

There was only the devastating truth of what they had been doing and the equally devastating truth of what it meant.

Caroline's face underwent a transformation that, under other circumstances, Elizabeth might have found fascinating: shock, disbelief, fury, and finally a cold, glittering triumph, because Caroline Bingley was clever enough to know that what she had just witnessed was not merely a scandal. It was a weapon.

"Well," Caroline said, her voice carrying the precision of a blade, "this is unexpected."

Mrs. Hurst clutched her sister's arm. "Oh my."

Darcy released Elizabeth and stepped back. His face had gone white. "Miss Bingley. Mrs. Hurst. This is not --"

"Not what it appears?" Caroline's smile was poisonous. "I do hope not, Mr. Darcy. For Miss Bennet's sake. Though I confess the evidence is rather compelling."

Elizabeth felt the cold rush in where Darcy's warmth had been. She was trembling, she realized. Not with passion now, but with the slow, sickening understanding of what had just happened.

She was ruined.

She straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and met Caroline Bingley's triumphant gaze with a steadiness she dredged from somewhere deep and desperate.

"Mrs. Hurst," she said, and her voice did not shake. "I believe the next set is beginning. Shall we return to the ballroom?"

She walked past them both on legs that functioned through sheer force of will. She did not look at Darcy. She could not. If she looked at him, she would either collapse or confess, and she did not know which would be worse.

Behind her, she heard Caroline say, "Charles will need to be informed, of course," and the satisfaction in that voice followed Elizabeth down the corridor like a blade between her shoulders.

The music was still playing. The candles were still burning. The ball at Netherfield continued as though the world had not just ended in a library.

Elizabeth stepped into the brightness and smiled, and no one knew the difference.