Chapter 11
Elizabeth entered the music room with every outward appearance of composure but no inward composure at all.
Miss Darcy had seated herself at the instrument, pale with shyness yet evidently desirous of pleasing, while the rest of the party disposed themselves with the easy ceremony of people who knew where they belonged.
Elizabeth took a chair beside Mrs. Gardiner, folded her hands over her fan, and attempted to attend only to the music.
It was impossible.
Mr. Darcy stood across the room, near the mantel, his figure partly shadowed by the warm fall of candlelight.
He was not looking at her when she first dared to glance at him; he was watching his sister with that grave, protective attention which had already done more injury to Elizabeth’s peace than all his former pride had ever done to her vanity.
Yet every few moments, as Miss Darcy’s fingers moved softly over the keys, his eyes returned to Elizabeth, and each look seemed to carry the words he had spoken in the corridor.
You are still very dear to me.
The phrase entered her again and again, keeping time with the music until she could scarcely tell whether the trembling in her chest belonged to Georgiana’s song or to herself.
Very dear. Not merely forgiven, not merely remembered, not merely admired in some distant, mortified way after Hunsford, but dear still—after her refusal, after her unjust accusations, after every sharp word she had thrown between them like a door bolted against him.
Her throat tightened, and she lowered her eyes.
The melody deepened. It was a gentle air, but there was ache in it, a slow sweetness that seemed to find its way beneath the silk of her gown and the line of her stays, moving through her with an intimacy she could neither resist nor explain.
Her skin remained aware of Mr. Darcy across the room: the breadth of his shoulders, the stillness of his hands, the controlled severity of a man who had just told her more than propriety ought to have permitted and then had been forced, cruelly, to stand among company as if nothing in him burned.
But she knew something in him burned.
The corridor returned to her first: his gaze lowering to her mouth, the hard close of his hand at his side, the roughened sound of her name.
Then the dream rose behind it, warmer, darker, less easily dismissed.
Moonlight at Lambton. His silent body braced above hers.
The heat of his breath beside her cheek, near her throat, hovering where her pulse had leapt for him.
His hand at her waist, firm through the thin linen, not taking, not demanding, yet making every part of her feel as if she had already answered him.
She remembered the brush of his mouth in sleep, the restraint that had made the imagined kiss more devastating than any boldness, the way she had whispered for him not to go.
Elizabeth’s face burned.
She pressed her fan tighter between her palms, but the fragile painted sticks could not save her from the memory of wanting him.
The music slipped lower, softer, and for one dangerous moment she could almost feel him again: the weight he did not give her, the touch he withheld, the reverence that made desire feel not wicked, but unbearably tender.
Across the room, Mr. Darcy stood perfectly still, honourable as marble, and the sight of such restraint only made the hidden warmth in her body gather more fiercely.
“You are fond of music, Miss Eliza?” Miss Bingley asked, her tone all sweetness and polish from a nearby sofa. “I had not remembered that you performed.”
Elizabeth looked up. “I am fond of music, yes, but my performance is not remarkable enough to demand remembrance.”
Miss Bingley smiled. “How modest. Though perhaps in Hertfordshire one need not be remarkable to be admired.”
The remark passed over her like a draft against a window while all warmth remained within.
Elizabeth might have answered, and perhaps answered well, but Mr. Darcy’s gaze had lifted at the remark, calm and dark and unmistakably displeased, and the silent defence of it stole the breath from her reply.
Mrs. Gardiner, with admirable ease, said, “In Hertfordshire, as elsewhere, admiration is often more wisely given to good sense and good humour than to display.”
Mr. Bingley laughed. “Very true, Mrs. Gardiner. Very true indeed.”
Miss Bingley’s smile tightened, and Miss Darcy, blushing anxiously, continued playing.
Elizabeth gave her attention back to the music, though attention had become a poor, fluttering thing.
Hope, which she had distrusted all evening, now rose in her with alarming sweetness.
It warmed her face, loosened something painful beneath her ribs, and made the room appear at once too bright and too close.
Darcy had said she was dear to him.