Chapter 28
Lady Wexcombe’s rooms could comfortably hold two hundred people, but by ten o’clock they held nearly twice that.
Elizabeth stood between a pillar and a dowager.
The great Whig crush of the season, she reflected, was very like what the newspapers said of the House itself—hot, loud, and chiefly concerned with who was speaking to whom.
Her uncle, for whom they had all been persuaded to attend, had been carried off towards the card room.
Her aunt was six feet away, but she might as well have been in Derbyshire.
Jane and Mr. Aldridge had gone to procure lemonade and were in no hurry to return—or perhaps they simply could not find their way back.
Elizabeth had come because she could not disappoint her uncle. This invitation had arrived for Uncle Gardiner from a connexion he had made apart from the Darcys, and even he had insisted that she attend.
There had been no further word from Mr. Darcy, though of course she had not expected it.
Instead, news came through her aunt’s callers.
Lady Anne Darcy meant to give no more parties this season.
She was far too busy, for the families of those she had matched were even now planning weddings all across London.
Two of the season’s young ladies would wed just after Easter, with more to follow through the month of June.
The ton had begun calling this Lady Anne’s most successful year yet.
The room grew hotter. Elizabeth had never done well in close rooms, and she had neither slept nor eaten well of late. The dowager to whom she had been speaking withdrew, only to be replaced by a wall of gentlemen discussing the Orders in Council.
The air seemed to thicken around her. Each breath grew short, while the heat beneath her gown crept upwards from her stays to the back of her throat. She looked for her aunt but could see only shoulders, dark coats, and the shifting gleam of candlelight.
She closed her eyes.
“Miss Elizabeth?”
She knew the voice instantly. For two weeks she had practised how she would act, what she would say, how she would arrange her features should she ever see the man again. But she was so very warm that all she could do was open her eyes.
Mr. Darcy stood at her side.
“You are unwell,” he said.
“I am warm. Everyone is warm. It is tonight’s fashionable condition.” She attempted to offer a little laugh, but her knees trembled beneath her, and she had to catch herself.
Mr. Darcy placed his hand under her arm. “Are you able to walk?” he inquired.
Elizabeth took a slow breath. “Yes,” she said. She was not going to faint, not here, not in front of him.
He did not reply, only wound her arm through his, then turned his shoulder into the crowd. As tall and imposing as he was, the crowd, which was otherwise packed so tightly, parted around him as a river might be divided by a stone.
“There is a smaller room behind the library,” he said in her ear. “It has a window and no one is in it. We shall leave the door open. Is that agreeable?”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth.
The smaller room, when they reached it, held a sofa, an unlit lamp, and a fireplace that remained unused. The air was still close, so Mr. Darcy pulled a chair over to the window and eased her into it before lifting the sash so the air could cool her.
Once Elizabeth was seated and leaning towards the draft of fresh air, he took a candle from the sconce in the hall and used it to light the lamp, then went in search of refreshment and returned with a glass of wine.
“I searched for your sister and your aunt,” he said as he gave it to her, “but I could find neither of them.”
“With this many people, Mr. Darcy, I am surprised you managed to find your own feet.”
He chuckled a little. “Drink,” he said.
Elizabeth watched him avoid her gaze. Once, she would have thought this meant he was cold- hearted.
Now she knew better. She took a sip of the wine, letting the quiet and the fresh air do their work.
Her breathing steadied. The room no longer seemed to tilt, and the noise from the hall faded to something she could bear.
Mr. Darcy glanced at her then, and she realised he was determining whether she had recovered without wishing to be caught doing so. He saw that she was aware, and he smiled ruefully. ”Are you feeling better?”
“Much.”
“Shall I try again to find your aunt or sister?”
“Not yet, if you please.” The meeting had been an accident, but she would take advantage of it. “There is something I have been wishing to tell you.”
He looked directly at her then, his dark eyes guarded.
“When you left my uncle’s house, I had not finished.
” She shook her head. “I do not mean that you should have stayed. You had every reason to go. But I was jealous at first, angry, embarrassed, hurt, and I could not sort one from the other quickly enough to speak plainly.” A little huff of air escaped her that sounded almost like a laugh.
“I know it will surprise you to learn that I do not have a ready answer for every occasion.”
He did not interrupt.
“I have regretted that,” she said. “Not my honesty, but the manner of it. You explained yourself as well as you could, and then I gave you no reason to stay.”
The guardedness eased a little.
“So I should like to try again,” she told him. “I do not expect a repeat of your offer, but this time, my head is clearer, and if you wish to speak, I promise that I will listen.”
He glanced at the door, and for a second she feared he was wishing to leave. But then he took her hand and the firm, steady pressure of his grasp sent a tremor up her arm.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said, “there is a misunderstanding between us. I swore not to trouble you again, and after tonight I will not, if that is what you wish. If you are willing, yes, I should like to explain. If you are not, if you are offering only out of pity, tell me at once, and I will say no more.”
She would not refuse him again. “Please,” she said. “I would like very much to hear what you have to say.”
His shoulders lowered. The tightness around his mouth eased, and he drew a slow breath before looking down at her hand in his. He did not relinquish it.
“The evening you came to hear my sister play, you overheard my mother speaking to my uncle about Miss Finch. I do not know all that you heard, but my mother has confirmed that they were speaking of a property in the Peaks that belongs to my uncle, and he has settled it, with a fortune, on my cousin the colonel. The young woman with thirty thousand pounds was being considered for him, not for me.”
“The colonel?”
Elizabeth set her glass down. She had known, of course, that Mr. Darcy would never have made her an offer were he irrevocably tied to another.
Sadly, it had taken her a week to think everything through, and by then she had no way to contact him.
She was not normally so slow, but she had never felt so many competing sentiments at once.
It had simply been too much for her to bear.
“You believe I offered for you because another man frightened me into it. You said as much, and you were right to say it. The rumour did bring me to you that day, but it did not make me suddenly realise that I love you. I did not know it until I thought it through, but I believe I began to fall in love with you at the Meryton assembly.”
Elizabeth stared at him. “You insulted me at the Meryton assembly.”
“Yes.” His mouth moved into a private little smile that Elizabeth found unreasonably attractive. “But then you laughed.”
“That cannot have improved your opinion of me.”
“It ruined it entirely. Until then, I had thought you merely pretty. Then you laughed at me, and I could think of little else.”
She shook her head, though she could not help smiling.
“After that, you refused to dance with me twice,” he continued. “The third time I requested your hand, you accepted, and while we stood up together, you advised me to be kinder to Miss Bingley.”
“She was your friend and your hostess.”
“Bingley is my friend. His sister was attached to my arm like a burr to a stocking.”
Elizabeth was startled into a laugh.
“And then,” he said, “I abandoned you on the floor and retreated.”
“I remember.”
“I did not withdraw because I disliked you. I left because I liked you far too well and your admonishment made me believe that you did not like me at all. I had no idea what to do. So I walked away and made everything worse.” His thumb moved once over her gloved hand.
“Those feelings you said overwhelmed you?”
She nodded.
“I suffered some version of them whenever you entered a room in Hertfordshire.”
For one suspended moment, Elizabeth could only look at him. He had been losing his composure because of her as long ago as Hertfordshire?
A warmth spread through her so quickly that she lowered her chin to hide her flaming cheeks, though a smile still escaped before she could prevent it. It was not the same sort of heat that had nearly felled her in the crush, but one that wrapped itself gently around her heart.
“I . . .” He looked about and then moved another chair over and sat in it before he reached into his pocket. “I meant to give you a letter the evening you overheard my mother and uncle. The next day was Valentine’s, and I had hoped . . . I am glad I did not.” He did not quite meet her eyes.
“Whyever not?”
“Because it was terrible,” he said. “I had so much I wished to say to you, but you would never have known it had you read that letter.” He removed something from his pocket and held it out. “So I have written another. You will forgive my deplorable poetry, I hope.”
She took it. The paper was still warm from his pocket. It was four lines in his careful hand, the ink pressed deep where the pen had hesitated.
If this poor verse may favour find,
One boon alone I dare entreat:
That you would deem me not too bold
To call—and make my hope complete.