Chapter 1 An Incident at Netherfield #2
Elizabeth cleared her throat and deepened her voice. “‘She is tolerable, I suppose, but not handsome enough to tempt me,’” she replied.
Darcy’s mouth fell open. “Who said that?”
She let out a small, bitter laugh. “You did, sir. It was nearly the first thing most of our neighbours heard you say. At the assembly, you barely spoke to anyone, and when your friend encouraged you to dance, that was your reply. You continued to stalk the edge of the room for the rest of the night and spoke to no one outside your party, dancing only with Mrs Hurst and Miss Bingley and generally demonstrating your disdain for all present.”
“I did not know anyone,” he said in an attempt to defend himself.
“Neither did your friend before he allowed himself to be introduced to those in attendance,” Elizabeth retorted sharply.
Darcy slowly exhaled, the sound measured, as though he weighed each word before speaking. His shoulders shifted slightly, and Elizabeth thought she glimpsed the faintest hesitation in his eyes as if he searched for the proper reply.
At last, his voice came low. “I feel awkward in company. When I heard the whispers of my estate and my income on everyone’s tongues, it added to my unease.”
“I can appreciate that, Mr Darcy, but your words that evening were cruel,” Elizabeth said, her voice low but firm as she said what she had wished to since that evening.
“Nor were they spoken quietly. I was not the only one who overheard, and they shaped many of the first impressions formed of you in this area. Quite frankly, your actions as I have heard them described seem at odds with the man I believed you to be after that first evening.”
Darcy drew himself up, a flush rising faintly to his cheeks as though he had been stung by her charge. “I need to apologise to the lady. Do you know who she is?”
Elizabeth gave a short, sharp laugh, edged with near hysteria. For an instant she feared her composure might fail, her breath catching in her throat, but she pressed her lips together until she mastered herself. “I do,” she said at last.
“Then will you tell me who she is, so I may make my apologies?” Darcy pressed, his voice urgent.
His hands flexed once against his sides before stilling again, and Elizabeth, watching him, believed him to be in earnest. “Obviously, I did not look that closely at her. Bingley was prodding me to dance, and I wished only to be left alone.”
Elizabeth rose and faced him, her chin lifting in quiet challenge. “Think back for a moment, Mr Darcy. What else do you remember Mr Bingley saying to you?”
He hesitated, then pushed to his feet as well.
His brow furrowed, and his words stumbled.
“He was dancing with Miss Bennet, I believe, and stopped to speak with me between sets. He—” his voice caught as the realisation must have dawned on him, “—he mentioned one of her sisters…” His gaze flickered to hers, the colour draining from his face.
“Please tell me it was not you who sat there,” he said, almost pleading.
Elizabeth held his eyes without flinching. “It was,” she said quietly. After a moment, she sank back into her chair, her hands twisting in her lap, her gaze dropping to the floor. She did not want to face him as she admitted what she had thought that evening.
“Can you imagine,” she continued, her voice strained, “what it felt like to hear a stranger who has neer met me at all dismiss me as merely tolerable and not handsome enough to dance with? As though there was nothing else to know of me except what I look like?” Her throat tightened, but she forced the words out.
Her words dropped so low that Darcy had to lean closer to her to catch them. He carefully returned to the chair he had been sitting in before, drawing it near so they could speak without being overheard.
“Is it not enough that my mother has spent my life reminding me I am ‘nothing to Jane’—only to have it confirmed so easily by a man who had never spoken a word to me, whose judgement rested on appearance alone? Perhaps you are wealthy, perhaps you are pursued for your consequence and connexions—but to have my mother’s words echoed by you, a stranger in this area, and quite the…
” She paused, her voice breaking even as her cheeks flamed.
The final words seemed to tremble on her lips.
“That was more painful than I can say. I may have laughed, but only because it would not have done to cry, and it was easier to laugh the slight away as though it did not matter.”
Darcy’s jaw tightened, the lines of his face hardening with a momentary struggle. He did not speak at once, and in the heavy silence Elizabeth could see that her words had struck home.
“I am sorry, Miss Elizabeth—most sincerely sorry,” he said at last, his voice low and earnest. He leant forwards in his chair, his hands curling against his knees, arms taut, fingers trembling faintly—as if barely restraining himself from some impulse she could not name.
“I scarcely looked at the lady before I spoke, as you must now perceive,” he continued, his words slow and deliberate, weighted with a gravity Elizabeth had never before heard from him.
His gaze held hers, unflinching, as though he meant to make amends not only for the insult, but for every unguarded moment since their first meeting.
“You are—” he paused, his throat working as if he were searching for the right words to say, “—extraordinarily tempting.”
Again, the admission hung between them, suspended in the stillness that filled the room. Elizabeth’s breath caught; for all his reserve, there was no mistaking the sincerity in his tone. He pressed on, voice low, almost strained.
“I have been compelled, again and again, to remind myself that my duty to my family demands a marriage of fortune and consequence,” he said, the last word spoken with a kind of weariness that told her how often he had repeated it to himself.
“Every instinct within me urges rebellion against such constraint, yet I cannot disregard it. Were it not for my sister—her youth, her dependence upon me—I might already have made you an offer, Elizabeth.”
His final words faded into the quiet like a confession, and Elizabeth, uncertain whether to be affronted or moved, found herself unable to look away.