Chapter 17
Elizabeth returned to the party only slightly damp but more than slightly addled.
The contrariety of her feelings, and the intensity of them, was vastly confusing her.
Hardly knowing what she was doing, she allowed herself to be escorted to a sofa amid the rest of the party and handed a glass of wine.
There were some still at the card tables while others ate from the generously laden tables of refreshments.
Miss Larkin stood by the window, allowing Colonel Fitzwilliam to flirt with her, but it did not escape Elizabeth’s notice that she glanced, continually, at the door. Looking for Mr Darcy no doubt!
It had been absolutely intolerable, watching Mr Darcy and Miss Larkin make love to one another at the card table.
Intolerable! He had leant over the woman on a multitude of occasions and then would tug at his cravat like a bashful schoolgirl.
At one point, Elizabeth had considered asking him if he would like to use her fan to flirt more thoroughly.
It had angered her beyond reason—far more than his cheating had, even if she had attempted to make that the primary source of her vexation with him.
Yet, though she could pretend to Mr Darcy, she could not lie to herself about the true cause of her anger.
She was jealous of Miss Larkin. It was a realisation against which her mind fought instinctively and vehemently for several minutes—she had no desire to marry him and no reason to be jealous!
—until her heart whispered that her protests were in vain.
His letter after that fateful night back in April had certainly disposed her to think better of him.
His solicitude towards her here in Brighton, his unexpected amiability, and his own admission to jealousy had done so even more.
And then, on the balcony, wrapped within his coat, the warmth of him enrobing her…
She groaned a little, wishing for these thoughts to be gone.
“Are you well?” Mr Hartham asked. “You are not falling ill from being out in the rain, are you?”
“Oh, no,” she said with a little laugh. “It is nothing.”
He quirked his brow at her. “Perhaps wishing I had not come along when I did?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I was longing for escape. No one wishes to be locked out on a balcony in the driving rain.”
“Rain can be unpleasant,” Mr Hartham acknowledged. “But the effects of it less so.”
Elizabeth turned to look at him more fully. “What do you mean?”
With a twinkle in his eyes, Mr Hartham said, “I think you rather appreciated Mr Darcy’s state of déshabillé.”
Elizabeth felt herself grow flushed. “I am sure I have no idea what you mean,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster.
“Miss Bennet, I was born at night, but I can assure you it was not last night. Pray spare me your folderol.”
She held her hand to her lips to prevent herself from laughing. “I am in earnest!”
He replied with a roll of his eyes.
Elizabeth gave his arm a little shove. “I told you of my history with Mr Darcy. I daresay he and I are, by now, both perfectly unaffected by one another, déshabillé or not.”
“If you believe that,” said Mr Hartham, “then you are not half so quick as I had imagined you.”
She did not believe it, she comprehended with a start. Not even a little bit. And that terrified her.
“You saw how it was at the whist table,” she reminded him. “He was quite enchanted by Miss Larkin.”
“Maybe. Or perhaps it was merely the advantage of proximity. Did it trouble you?”
Visions thrust themselves into Elizabeth’s mind and, uncomfortably, most of them were of Mr Darcy in wet attire and shirtsleeves. One, most uncomfortable of all, was the way he had looked when he told her, in Kent, that he ardently admired and loved her.
“It troubled me more than I like to admit.”
“Then it is to you to determine why,” said Mr Hartham. “And from there, what best to do about it. But I would not ruminate long on the subject, for there are Miss Larkins in abundance, and he is a highly eligible gentleman.”
Elizabeth abruptly regretted behaving so crossly towards Mr Darcy on the balcony.
He had admitted to only cheating in an attempt to help her, and she had repaid him with surliness.
Would she never learn? Every time this man showed her his favour, she treated him abominably!
What did it matter what effect his déshabillé had on her when he must think her the most ungrateful wretch?
Mr Hartham shifted his position suddenly and said under his breath, “Speak of the devil.”
Elizabeth followed his gaze and baulked to see the colonel approaching with Miss Larkin on one arm and on his other, a woman Elizabeth recognised as the second beauty with whom she had seen Mr Darcy walking earlier in the week.
Excellent, she thought wryly. Another of his handsome friends.
She forced herself to smile welcomingly.
As it turned out, the second lady was a less objectionable acquaintance than Miss Larkin.
She was introduced as Miss Georgette Hawkridge, Colonel Fitzwilliam’s cousin on his mother’s side.
That might not have necessarily precluded her from Mr Darcy’s affections, of course, but her evident disinclination in that direction certainly did.
Elizabeth felt an undeniable sense of relief every time Miss Hawkridge joked about Mr Darcy’s taciturnity—which she did uncommonly often—but a little more vexed every time Miss Larkin rushed to his defence.
“What say you two make up a table with us next?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked, indicating Elizabeth and Mr Hartham, then himself and Miss Hawkridge. “I hear you beat my brother in your last game, so it ought to be a decent challenge.”
Elizabeth was about done with card-playing, but Mr Hartham accepted with alacrity.
“What am I to do?” Miss Larkin complained.
Miss Hawkridge gave her a playful nudge with her elbow and inclined her head in the direction of the door. “Mr Darcy has returned. Why do not you see whether he is in need of a partner?”
Elizabeth did not allow herself to watch Miss Larkin go; she was already too bewildered by her own feelings to be able to observe the woman fawning over Mr Darcy—or him fawning over her in return—with anything approaching aplomb.
Keeping her eyes on the floor, she took Mr Hartham’s proffered arm and went with him and the others to find a table.
When Darcy returned to the party, Hartham and Elizabeth were engaged in a private tête-à-tête on a settee, the position of which in the room suggested a desire for seclusion. He resolved to join them immediately but was waylaid by Lady Preston.
“It will be an excellent match,” Lady Preston observed with an air of obvious satisfaction.
“I beg your pardon?”
“My nephew and Miss Bennet. I could never have imagined that old crow, Agatha, to have such a charming and vivacious niece! But Miss Bennet is everything delightful, and I shall call her my niece quite gladly. Are you much acquainted with her?”
Darcy swallowed hard, his eyes on the pair on the settee. Elizabeth was holding her hand to her lips, suppressing mirth about something Hartham had said; it made her eyes sparkle and her cheeks flush.
“The old crow or the delightful niece?” he enquired drily and was treated to a husky bark of laughter and a poke on the arm with the lady’s bejewelled finger.
“The Crow is dead, but she and I did have one thing in common, and that was the happy task of disposing of property and fortunes. There is no better way to find all your distant relations than to announce you are making a new will. I suffered a bad cold last winter that brought them all running!”
The lady laughed again. Darcy tried to join her in her mirth, though it did not come easily, for a hard lump had arisen in his throat at the sight of Elizabeth and Hartham teasing one another, flirting, Elizabeth giving him a playful shove.
She had avowed that she did not love him. Had that changed?
He was beyond relieved to see Fitzwilliam approaching her with Miss Hawkridge and Miss Larkin, and Hartham being forced to stand up from the settee to greet the ladies. Anything to get him away from her.
“Does not the present earl hold the lands?” he asked absently. He hoped it was not impertinent to enquire.
“He holds the Preston lands,” the dowager answered, “but my family’s property is all my own, to do with as I see fit. Benedict is the son of my dear sister, but I shall not leave him a farthing if he is not settled and married.”
Darcy was immediately alert. “Does he know that?”
“He will soon. It is the very reason I got him back from gadding about Greece and Italy. ’Tis a strange group he consorts with; none of them seem to have much inclination towards matrimony, and some of them forty years old!
” The lady shook her head. “Would that I could understand this generation! But never mind his friends; Benedict is about to find out what is best for him. If he does not fancy playing the fool in his own tragedy, he will propose to Miss Bennet before the month is out.”
Not if I have anything to do with it! Every particle in Darcy’s body revolted against the notion of Elizabeth marrying anyone but him.
He opened his mouth to ask Lady Preston whether she understood just why her nephew might be disinclined to marry, then closed it again.
It was not his discussion to have. Not with Lady Preston at any rate.
Whether it would be wrong for him to discuss it with Elizabeth, he was less certain.
Ought he to warn her? And did it matter—was she even inclined towards Hartham?
Before their misadventure on the balcony, he had hoped she might be amenable to the renewal of his own attentions—and she had not been entirely unreceptive then, despite her anger.
She had accepted his coat about her shoulders with gratitude enough.
Alas, his resolve to step up his efforts before Hartham got a foot in the door was immediately delayed when he spotted Miss Larkin heading in his direction.
Undesirous of enduring another bout of her assiduous attentions, he offered to fetch Lady Preston a drink and slipped out through the nearest door to go and get her one.
He successfully evaded Miss Larkin for another two hours by inveigling his way into a game with the Earl of Talbot. He spent most of the game surreptitiously watching Elizabeth and lost himself and the earl two hundred pounds apiece as a result.
“What the devil has got into you tonight, Darcy? You are usually far better than this,” the earl remarked afterwards.
“My apologies, Talbot. I am a tad rusty.”
“It is all the salty water you keep drenching yourself in,” Saye said as he approached their group. Darcy clenched his teeth and turned to deliver him a sharp rejoinder but was forced to swallow a groan upon seeing Miss Larkin on his arm. He could not long be without her, it seemed.
She let go of Saye’s arm and attached herself to his as fast as a whippet. “Your cousin is being absolutely horrid, Mr Darcy!”
“He generally is,” Darcy remarked absently. Across the room, Elizabeth and Hartham had risen from their own table and seemed about to quit the room.
“He is making the ladies leave, that you men might commence the more serious play.” She pouted. “Will you not tell him you would like us to remain?”
“I fear when Saye has his mind set to a thing, persuading him against it requires more power than I possess.”
“How good you are, Darcy, to comprehend your own limitations,” Saye replied with a smirk.
“Then do tell me you will see me home,” Miss Larkin said. “For Georgette is staying here with Miss Darcy tonight, and I do not wish to travel alone in the carriage. We were attended by my companion, but I fear she took ill earlier and I sent her home.”
“No need to trouble Darcy.” It was Hartham, very cheerful—as well he might be with Elizabeth still beside him. “I can see you home while I walk Miss Bennet back to her lodgings.”
“On foot?” Miss Larkin looked astonished.
“But of course,” said Hartham with a fixed grin. “It is not far, and the night is fair now that the rain has passed.”
Miss Larkin’s smile dimmed as she likely cast about for a way to refuse Hartham.
Darcy himself strove not to show the vast relief he felt.
It was an inappropriate request in any case.
Did she imagine they might move about Brighton in his carriage with no repercussions?
Perhaps she wishes for the repercussions, he thought grimly.
“Make sure you come back, Hartham,” Saye said. “We have a score to settle, you and I.”
Hartham merely smiled and offered an arm to each of the ladies.
Miss Larkin made a song and dance of bidding Darcy farewell before accepting one.
Elizabeth watched it all with her impenetrably dark eyes, giving Darcy only a wan smile by way of goodnight before curtseying to Saye and moving with Hartham in the direction of the door.
Saye gave Darcy a vicious nudge and nodded after her. “Go on, man!”
“Miss Bennet?” Darcy called, unsure of what he might even say.
She turned to look over her shoulder at him. “Sir?”
Think of something! “Um…my sister has expressed a wish to call on you…to be better acquainted with you, that is. Would the day after tomorrow do?”
She paused and then, with a sweetness of manner that sent his heart thrumming, said, “I believe any day will do, Mr Darcy.”