Chapter 14 #2
Gardiner inclined his head, courteous as ever. “I will leave you to your walk, sir. The air does a man good when the house grows close.”
Darcy returned the nod. “Indeed.”
When Gardiner turned back toward the door, Darcy stood for a long while in the fading light, listening to the muffled stamp of horses’ hooves and the hush of falling snow.
The wind clawed at the shutters, but inside, the room glowed.
Pine crackled in the grate, and someone had set candles along the mantle, their light unsteady but golden enough to make even the draughty corners seem inviting.
The air rang with the clatter of feet, serving trays, and too many people trying too hard to be cheerful.
Elizabeth had known this was coming. She had smiled, pretended pleasure, and spent the day dreading it.
Now, as chairs were drawn closer to the fire and cups of negus passed round, she could see there was no escape. Her aunt was comfortably settled, her uncle deep in talk with Sir Edward. The company was thinning of excuses, and Lady Montford’s eyes had begun to make their circuit of the room.
Elizabeth could almost hear her own pulse in her ears. Better to go first. Better to end it before Darcy appeared—if he was not already listening from some shadowed corner. She could bear the scrutiny of strangers; it was his gaze that would undo her.
When Lady Montford called her name, she rose with what she hoped passed for composure. “I have something brief,” she said, before anyone could suggest a song. “A bit of Cowper—it suits the evening, I think.”
Her hand shook only once as she opened the book.
The choice was safe. Respectable. Not too romantic, not too dull.
The sort of thing that would please a hostess and be forgot before the candles burned low.
She had marked it with a sprig of holly, but when she turned the cover and found her page, the leaves fell open to an entirely different poem.
Her breath caught. That was not it. In fact, it was not Cowper at all, but an entirely different book!
She slipped her hand round the cover for a quick glance—indeed, still bound with red, still marked with her sprig of holly, but whether by mischief or chance, the name on the cover was Thomas Moore!
She blinked hard, willing the lines to make sense. Too late. The murmured conversation had faded; every face was turned toward her. To flip back now would draw more notice than reading on.
For an instant, she considered the risk—one quick motion, a smile, some excuse about the light. A headache, perhaps. But her fingers refused to move. Her lips had already parted.
She began. And nearly melted through the floorboards for shame.“When is kind,Cheerful and free,Love's sure to findWelcome from me.”
The words seemed to reach out and take hold of her. Heat rose to her throat. Around her, the listeners leaned closer, and she knew—she knew—Darcy would at least hear of this from his cousin. There was no rescuing herself now. She read on, each syllable measured against the beating of her own heart.
“But when Love brings
Heartache or pang,
Tears, and such things--
Love may go hang!”
The words felt too tender, too exposed. A nervous warmth climbed her throat. Lady Montford was smiling, some others hiding behind their fans, and there was no graceful way to stop. She read on, willing her voice to steady even as her heart protested.
“If Love can sigh
For one alone,
ell pleased am I
To be that one,”
It was absurd to feel embarrassed by poetry. No one would imagine the words applied to her. No one—
The door opened behind her.
Cold air stirred the candle flames, and she looked up just as Mr. Darcy entered.
He paused, not from surprise—she knew that immediately—but as if caught.
His eyes fixed on her, the firelight catching the edge of them, and though he made no sound, the room seemed to narrow until there was only the two of them: her voice, his gaze, and the words she would have given anything not to be speaking aloud.
“But should I seeLove given to roveTo two or three,Then--good by Love!”
Her pulse thudded at the base of her throat. The sound of her own voice no longer seemed her own—it floated somewhere above her, steady enough to fool the room but foreign to her ears.
“Love must, in short,
Keep fond and true,
Thro' good report,
And evil too.”
She wished the words would end. She wished she had chosen anything else—Milton, scripture, even a Christmas homily. But Moore betrayed her: every line soft and human and painfully sincere.
She turned a page too quickly, the rustle loud as thunder.
For a desperate instant, she considered just ending it there, but she knew half the company had heard this very poem before.
To lose her place now would only draw more notice.
She could feel them watching—the quiet tilt of heads, the small smile on Miss Hinton’s lips, the way two ladies near the pianoforte leaned closer together, whispering behind their fans.
And Darcy—
He had not looked away.
Her eyes darted to the page, but from the edge of her vision she could see him, his gaze unwavering, his lips moving slightly as though he knew the lines by heart.
The sight of it—the intimate knowledge of those same words in his mouth—made her chest tighten painfully.
She forced her eyes lower, but the print swam.
Her palms were damp against the book’s spine.
The final verse trembled on her tongue.
“Else, here I swear,
Young Love may go.
For aught I care
--To Jericho.”
Her voice failed on the last line. She could hardly breathe through the heat in her face. Around her, chairs creaked, skirts shifted, and she knew without looking that some of the ladies were following Darcy’s expression instead of hers—measuring it, envying it, or resenting it.
The silence that followed was almost a mercy.
She closed the book with care, as though any sound might shatter what composure she had left, and dipped a small curtsy.
Applause rose—that from the gentlemen, at least, was polite, approving, unaware.
She heard her name praised, her “feeling” commended, but she could not lift her eyes, for the ladies in the room where trading whispers that felt like slaps.
The pages still seemed to glow against her hands, hot and treacherous.
Darcy had not moved.
When at last she risked a glance, he bowed slightly from where he stood, nothing in his expression to betray what she had seen there.
It was only courtesy, the same courtesy he had shown all evening.
Yet she felt hollowed out by it—as though he had looked straight through her and left something raw and defenceless behind.
Lady Montford called for another reader. Elizabeth turned quickly, meaning to slip back to her aunt’s side, but the crowd had closed in, and the air felt too thick to draw breath.
The book was still warm in her hands.
She made it as far as her aunt’s chair before the book was taken from her hands for the benefit of “another selection”. Mrs. Gardiner smiled, pride and fondness mingling in her expression. “Beautifully done, my dear. So much feeling.”
Elizabeth tried to laugh, but the sound caught halfway. Her fingers still tingled. She sank into the nearest seat, the fire a blur of orange and gold before her eyes. She needed a minute—only a minute—to breathe.
But Lady Montford, radiant with her own success in drawing entertainment from a restless house, was already scanning the company. “We are not finished yet! Who next? Mr. Kendrick? No? Then—ah! Mr. Darcy, you have been quiet long enough.”
Elizabeth’s stomach turned to ice.
He had been standing by the mantel, half in shadow, his gaze fixed anywhere but the company. At Lady Montford’s summons, his head lifted—just a fraction, the look of a man who had not heard his name soon enough to prepare an escape.
Before he could frame a refusal, Sir Edward laughed. “Yes, Darcy! We must have a man’s voice to balance all this sentiment.”
And then the room turned toward him—every face expectant, every fan poised.
Miss Kendrick, all bright eagerness, clapped her hands. “Indeed, Mr. Darcy must! I am certain no one reads with such gravity.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam’s voice near the fire echoed her, and another lady’s voice followed, until the room was full of light applause. Elizabeth watched the faintest flicker cross his expression—something between disbelief and dread.
Lady Montford was already rising, triumphant. “There now, the matter is settled.” She lifted the very book Elizabeth had set aside and placed it squarely into his hands before he could step back.
He looked at it as though it might burn him. “Madam, I—”
But the applause swelled again—good-humoured, relentless—and there was no graceful retreat left to him. His jaw tightened, nearly a soldier’s resignation.
He bowed once, low and brief, and opened the book.
The ladies shifted again—some with delight, some with calculation. Miss Kendrick folded her hands in her lap as though the evening had finally begun.
Darcy opened the volume where Elizabeth had left her mark. For an instant, she thought he meant to choose something else, but his gaze lingered on the very page she had read. A slow, deliberate movement—he turned only one leaf further.
Elizabeth’s pulse stumbled.
He began without preamble.
“BELIEVE me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,
Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy-gifts, fading away!”
His voice was steady, though she could hear the faint scrape of restraint in it—the careful control of a man forcing calm. The sound drew her like heat; she could feel every syllable in her throat.
“Thou wouldst still be ador'd as this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will;
And, around the dear ruin, each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still!”
He was not looking at her. Not directly. But each line seemed chosen, deliberate, and far too close.
It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
And thy cheeks unprofan'd by a tear,
That the fervour and faith of a soul can be known,
To which time will but make thee more dear!
Her handkerchief slid from her fingers.
She remembered those lines, her father quoting them with a laugh years ago.
But in Darcy’s mouth, they sounded like something bared—a prayer spoken in a language too old to hide behind.
His tone was steady, yet she felt the tremor underneath, the quiet ache of someone remembering what peace had cost.
She should not have looked at him, but she did.
The fire painted one side of his face in gold, the other in shadow. He was not reading for the company; he was not even reading for Lady Montford. She could not explain how she knew it, but she did.
“Oh! the heart, that has truly lov'd, never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close;”
Around them, the company listened in easy pleasure, oblivious. Elizabeth sat motionless, hands clasped too tightly in her lap. Every instinct told her to look away, but she couldn’t.
When he reached the final verse, he paused. His eyes lifted—not to Lady Montford, nor to the gathered crowd—but to her.
“As the sun-flower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turn'd when he rose!”
The air in the room seemed to falter.
Applause came, light and scattered, but Elizabeth scarcely heard it. Her heartbeat drowned out everything else.
He closed the book and gave it back to Lady Montford with the same composure he might have shown in church. A murmur of applause followed—soft, decorous, already fading.
Elizabeth’s hands were cold in her lap. The room was the same as before—the same voices, the same laughter—but she could no longer hear any of it clearly.
He did not look at her again. That, somehow, was worse than if he had.