Chapter 8
Darcy had never before found the arrangement of a dinner table to be a matter of peril.
In general, he left such questions to those who understood them better, intervening only where hospitality required particular attention; but on the following morning he discovered that every ordinary decision had become a trial of nerves.
Whether Miss Bennet should sit near Georgiana or nearer Mrs. Gardiner; whether Bingley might be placed where his good humour would relieve any stiffness; whether Miss Bingley’s eye could be safely diverted from Elizabeth for more than three minutes at a time—each consideration seemed grave enough to command a statesman.
It was absurd, and he knew it.
He stood in the breakfast room with a letter unopened in his hand, staring at nothing, while his mind returned, with humiliating persistence, to the previous afternoon.
Elizabeth in the wind. Elizabeth lowering her lashes when she accepted his invitation.
Elizabeth stepping into the Gardiners’ carriage at last, one gloved hand taking her uncle’s, the other gathering her gown just enough to lift it from the step.
Darcy had been behind her then, not close enough to offend, but not so far away as to be safe, either, and the motion had drawn the muslin close over the line of her back, the narrowness of her waist, the soft, living curve of her hip beneath all that innocent summer whiteness.
His throat had tightened as if he had been struck.
He had looked away, of course. He had done it at once, because he was a gentleman, because she was Elizabeth, because wanting her did not give him the right to take even with his eyes what she had not knowingly offered.
Yet the image had entered him before honour could forbid it, and now it remained: the graceful lift of her arm, the delicate strain of fabric, the glimpse of warmth and womanhood beneath propriety’s veil.
He could still see the small movement of her body as she settled into the carriage, still remember the curve of her throat when she looked back to thank him, still feel, with a force that bordered on torment, how near his hand had once been to the same waist he was now trying not to imagine.
Darcy closed his eyes.
The image did not leave him. It deepened.
Her waist beneath his hand in the gallery, slight and warm and startlingly real; the soft catch of her breath when he steadied her; the colour that had risen beneath his gaze as if her skin itself answered him.
Memory and desire moved together until the room felt too close, the open windows useless, the morning air incapable of cooling the blood that gathered low and insistent in his body.
He wanted not merely to look. That was the danger.
He wanted the right to stand close, to touch with reverence what wind and muslin had revealed by accident, to feel her lean toward him not from a stumble, not from surprise, but because she chose him.
The thought nearly unmanned him.
He opened his eyes, jaw set, hands still, every outward line of him disciplined into propriety while inwardly Elizabeth Bennet remained before him in white muslin and sunlight, utterly untouched, and yet enough to set every restrained part of him burning.
“Brother?”
Darcy opened his eyes at once. Georgiana stood near the doorway, her music book held against her chest, her expression shy but searching.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I did not hear you enter.”
“I knocked,” she said, with the smallest smile. “Twice.”
“Then I am doubly guilty.”
She came farther into the room. “You are anxious for tonight.”
“Only attentive to the comfort of our guests.”
Georgiana looked down at her book, then up again, and the sweetness of her hesitation touched him. She was still easily embarrassed, still fearful of presuming, yet there had been a new steadiness in her since Ramsgate, as if truth, once survived, had given her some claim upon courage.
“Miss Bennet is the lady from Hertfordshire—Miss Elizabeth, is she not?” she asked. “I mean, one of the sisters. I may mistake the name. You wrote there were several Miss Bennets, I think.”
Darcy set the unopened letter upon the table. “Yes. Miss Elizabeth.”
“And you knew her there.”
“I did.”
Georgiana waited, but he found no more words immediately.
How could he explain Elizabeth?
That she had refused him and yet remained the centre of his thoughts; that her censure had humbled him more effectively than any lecture in virtue; that the sight of her in his grounds had shaken him with hope and hunger until he hardly knew whether he was ashamed or alive?
“I value Miss Bennet’s good opinion,” he said at last, carefully, “more than I can easily say.”
Georgiana’s eyes widened, though she tried to hide it by glancing toward the window. “Then I hope she gives it to you.”
The simple kindness of it moved him. “So do I.”
She pressed her lips together, and though she was too gentle to tease him openly, the faint warmth in her cheek betrayed that she understood more than he had intended.
“I liked her,” Georgiana said. “She looked at me as if she wished me comfortable.”
“She has that gift,” Darcy replied, his voice softening before he could prevent it. “When she chooses to be kind, one feels it.”
“And when she does not?” Georgiana asked.
Despite himself, Darcy smiled. “One feels that also.”
His sister’s answering smile was brief but real. “Then I shall try very hard to deserve the first.”
Darcy crossed to her and touched her shoulder lightly, grateful for her, grateful and afraid, and still with some portion of him elsewhere entirely: waiting for evening, for Elizabeth’s arrival, for the dangerous pleasure of seeing whether her eyes would again meet his and warm before she looked away.