Chapter 1 #2
Darcy inclined his head, though he found little comfort in the reassurance. London was indeed fickle, but it could also be persistent at precisely the wrong moments.
Left once more to himself, Darcy allowed his gaze to wander over the room.
He told himself that he was merely surveying the company.
He had no reason to expect anything unusual.
He should have been able to stand at the edge of the room in silence and let the evening pass, as he had done a hundred times before.
The memory of the concert intruded before he could stop it. Darcy bit his lip, thinking of the moment that had started all the talk in a single unguarded instant, when he had spoken the truth without thinking of the consequences.
They had been seated together during the intermission when Caroline Bingley had leaned towards him, her smile arch and flirtatious.
“How pleasant it is to be back in London,” she had said. “Though I wonder whether you find yourself missing Hertfordshire. Or perhaps a certain young lady with particularly fine eyes. Surely you have not dismissed Miss Elizabeth Bennet from your memory so easily?”
It had been intended as teasing. She had said it lightly, as though it were nothing, as though Miss Elizabeth were no more than a passing curiosity.
It was only too obvious that Miss Bingley had wished him to make an immediate denial, and perhaps to say that no lady’s company could be more pleasant than that in which he already found himself, but Darcy had been tired, distracted, and unguarded.
The question had touched something raw, and he had answered without thinking.
“Never,” Darcy told her. “It would be quite impossible for me to forget her. Miss Elizabeth Bennet is not so easily dismissed.”
He had realised his error at once.
Not because Miss Bingley’s expression changed, for she merely looked mildly annoyed, but because the air behind him seemed to still.
A rustle of silk quieted. A laugh faltered mid-breath.
Darcy did not turn his head, but he knew with a certainty that made his stomach tighten that someone had been close enough to hear.
Close enough to carry away a handful of sentences and make them into something else.
In the following days, the remark acquired a life of its own.
Whispers became speculation, speculation certainty, and certainty entertainment.
Darcy read it in faces before he heard it in words.
He saw it in the way people studied him, as if trying to imagine the mysterious lady who had succeeded in catching his attention.
There had even been a notice in the paper, delicately phrased and carefully anonymous, alluding to a gentleman of consequence and a countryside gentlewoman all but unknown to London.
Darcy had folded the paper with care and resolved to think no more of it.
At least, he reflected now, Elizabeth Bennet need never hear of it. There was no reason her peace should be disturbed by his carelessness. The talk would die away. It always did. London would find a new amusement, and his own mistake would be forgotten among a hundred other trifles.
He was in the midst of reassuring himself when something in the room seemed to shift.
It was nothing tangible, yet he felt it all the same. His attention sharpened, his breath caught, and before he could convince himself it was only foolish imagination, he saw her.
At first, it was only the sense of her. A familiar movement, a certain turn of the head, the impression of dark eyes even at a distance. Then he recognised her fully, and the world narrowed with such sudden force that Darcy stood quite still, as if any motion might prove the moment an illusion.
Elizabeth Bennet stood across the ballroom, her hair arranged simply, her expression animated as she spoke to the lady beside her. Her gown was well-fitted but unadorned, elegant in its restraint.
Lovely as she was, it was not that which drew and kept Darcy’s attention. Elizabeth looked wholly at her ease. Unlike the fashionable members of society all around her, she was not braced for battle. Nor was she wary. Elizabeth was simply present, bright and alive in the midst of London’s glitter.
For a moment, Darcy could only stare.
Shock came first. She was not meant to be in London. Certainly not here, under the same roof, within reach of all the whispers that had begun because of his error.
Alarm followed close behind. If she had heard even a fraction of the gossip, if any hint of it had reached her ears, then he had placed her in a position no gentleman ought to create for a woman of good character.
Then, to his dismay, something else stirred beneath his alarm. A quiet, treacherous sense of pleasure.
She had not yet seen him.
Darcy straightened, summoning his composure with effort. Whatever the consequences of her presence, whatever this meant for the fragile order he had attempted to restore, one fact was now unavoidable.
Elizabeth Bennet was in London. And the evening, it seemed, was only just beginning.