Chapter SEVEN
THE FROZEN yoghurt place was a test. Not an overt one, but Elizabeth had picked it with intent.
It was bright, overly casual, and slightly too cold—both in temperature and ambience.
A place she was almost sure someone like Fitzwilliam Darcy would find beneath him.
Not that she was hoping he’d turn around and leave. Just… wondering if he might.
He didn’t.
He arrived two minutes early that Thursday afternoon. No tie. Rolled sleeves. Hair neatly indifferent, like he'd run a hand through it in passing and then left it to fend for itself. He spotted her instantly.
“Hi,” she said, standing halfway.
“Hi.”
That was it. No hug. No handshake. Just a quiet mutual recognition that this was, in fact, happening.
They hadn’t messaged much since she’d broken the silence. Just a time. A place. No banter. No small talk. Minimal emoji use. She’d sent “Still on?” the night before, and he’d replied with: “Yes, unless you’ve changed your mind.”
She hadn’t known what to make of that. She still didn’t.
He looked around, his gaze sweeping the fluorescent-lit shop with the clinical detachment of someone mentally cataloguing every detail.
The plastic chairs. The laminated posters.
The self-serve machines humming quietly along the left wall.
The toppings bar, inexplicably stocked with sorghum, dried dates, assorted fruit, crushed nuts, and scattered bits of chocolate.
A man brushed past them and, without a hint of irony, requested a swirl with chocolate and dates.
Darcy’s brow lifted.
“Interesting choice,” he said.
“You don’t like frozen yoghurt?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You said ‘interesting’ like someone describing a child’s drawing that vaguely resembles a duck.”
“I said it like someone reserving judgment.”
“Hope you’re not lactose intolerant,” she said, eyeing him.
He shook his head once.
She handed him a cup.
“Then judge away.”
They moved to the machines. She filled her cup with original tart, a splash of mango, and a small pile of strawberries that looked better than they tasted. He chose plain vanilla. No toppings.
Of course he did.
They took seats near the window, at a small round table that wobbled if you leaned too hard on one side. Outside, rain tapped against the glass. The clouds were low and sulking.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she said after a beat.
“I wasn’t sure you’d message.”
“Why did you?”
“Come?” He glanced down at his cup. “The whole thing felt unfinished.”
Elizabeth chuckled. “That’s exactly what Jane said.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“My sister,” she added. “The calm one. You probably remember her from the gala—I’m fairly certain you saw her drag me off when I started asking the dangerous questions.”
Darcy gave her a look, unreadable.
“Mr. Bingley’s girlfriend?”
“I know who your sister is.”
“Right,” Elizabeth said, recovering. “She thinks I bail too quickly.”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes. But not this time.”
“I’m glad.”
There was a pause—short, but loaded.
“I owe you an apology,” she said, stirring her spoon. “For walking out at our first ‘date’. It wasn’t fair.”
“It was unexpected.”
“I was startled,” she admitted. “And I thought—” She stopped. “I thought you did it on purpose.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know that now. But at the time, it felt... orchestrated.”
He gave a small nod. “A strange coincidence.”
“Very.”
They ate in a few quiet bites. The frozen yoghurt was already melting faster than it should have. She tapped her spoon against the rim.
“So,” she said, “why are you on your app?”
Darcy looked at her evenly. “You did joke about my love life in public. So I thought I’d try having one.”
She blinked, caught off guard.
“And if I’m going to market something,” he went on, “shouldn’t I use it? At least for the ailment it claims to fix.”
Elizabeth stared. Then: “That’s actually... not a terrible answer.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am.”
“You sound like I just said something half-unexpected.”
“Like you built yourself a toy and then extended it to the poor masses so they could feel what the elite enjoy?”
He frowned—unsure if it was a joke, an insult, or something in between.
“Relax, sir,” Elizabeth said lightly. “I said that just to avoid silence.”
He sighed, picked up his spoon, and took another bite of the rapidly melting yoghurt. “And you? Why are you on the app you so vehemently criticised?”
She didn’t hesitate. She’d anticipated this question and already had her answer lined up.
“Curiosity, mostly. I thought I’d try it for myself. See if I was hasty in my judgment.”
It was a lie. But it sounded better than I signed up to study your app and then write an article to destroy it.
“You don’t strike me as someone who does things gently.”
“Someone told me recently I might be too harsh.”
“Someone close?”
“Close enough.”
He nodded once, as if filing the information away. “Well. Whatever the reason, thank you.”
“For signing up?”
“For the tweet.”
She blinked again. “Excuse me?”
“You boosted our user numbers by sixty percent. We should be cutting you a check.”
“Finally,” she said, deadpan. “Acknowledgement of my marketing genius.”
Darcy smiled—a small, reluctant one.
She smiled back, then immediately caught herself. It wasn’t that kind of moment. She wasn’t here to become his friend. Just to complete the two-date pact she made with Jane, and maybe find out more about the man called Fitzwilliam Darcy.
They fell into silence again, but it didn’t stretch as awkwardly this time. The air in the shop was still too cold, the neon sign in the window still flickering, but it was less noticeable now.
“You really believe in it?” she asked.
“The app?”
“The whole ‘algorithm knows your soul’ thing.”
“I believe people are bad at knowing what they need. We’re good at projecting. At curating. The algorithm sees past that.”
“So you trust data more than instinct.”
“I trust data to get people past their first set of blinders. The rest is human work.”
She stared at him. “That’s weirdly reasonable.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“No, I’m just trying to figure out if I owe you another apology.”
“For what?”
“For assuming you were the kind of CEO who builds a matchmaking empire and then dates supermodels in Paris.”
“I’ve never dated in Paris.”
“You’re dodging the supermodel part.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you interrogating me?”
“Absolutely.”
He didn’t seem bothered by it. If anything, he looked amused.
After a while, she leaned forward slightly, “How much of what you said in our chats was real?” she asked.
“All of it.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Even the bit about classical piano and hiking?”
“I own hiking boots.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I use them.”
She nodded slowly. “Alright. Fair. Me too.”
“All real?”
“Nothing but.”
“Even your hatred of oat milk?”
“It’s not milk. It’s beige water.”
He looked down at his cup. “You hate oat milk, but you like yoghurt from this place?”
“It’s better than anything you’d find in a grocery store.”
“Wow.”
“Tell me you don’t like it.”
He gave a small shrug. “Still undecided.”
They sat for a moment, listening to the wind push against the glass.
Then came a loud metallic clunk from the front of the shop. Elizabeth looked up.
“Was that the door?”
“I am not sure.”
Darcy stood, walked over, tugged at it once. Then again. It didn’t budge.
“They must’ve locked it automatically,” he said. “Storm sensors.”
“There is no storm, is there?” Elizabeth stared out of the window.
“The weather forecast didn’t mention any,” Darcy said. “Probably the sensors are malfunctioning. It's just drizzling outside with a little wind.”
Elizabeth stood too. “Are we seriously locked in?”
“Looks like it.”
She looked around. The place wasn’t empty—just quiet in the way shops get when the rush has passed.
A couple of patrons lingered at the corner tables, half-distracted by their phones.
One of them glanced up at the metallic clunk, frowned faintly, then went back to scrolling.
Another—college-aged, headphones around his neck—looked toward the front door, saw Darcy tugging at it, and gave a shrug like, well, not my problem.
Behind the counter, a single employee—young, pink-haired, chewing gum like it was a sport—looked up at the sound of the door.
“Uh, that’s not supposed to happen,” she muttered, already fishing out her phone. “I think the wind tripped the auto-lock. I’ll call the maintenance guy. He lives, like, two blocks from here.”
Elizabeth offered a thin smile. “Great.”
She turned back to Darcy, trying to look casual about being very much locked inside a yoghurt shop with Fitzwilliam Darcy.
“Well,” she said lightly, “that’s dramatic.”
“It’s something.”
She sat back down with a sigh, blowing on her hands even though it wasn’t that cold.
“Trapped on a second date in a frozen yoghurt prison. This is either fate or a lawsuit.”
Darcy remained standing for a moment longer, watching the employee pace behind the counter with her phone pressed to her ear. Then he returned to his seat.
“I’m not litigious,” he said dryly.
“That’s what all the rich people say.”
He chuckled—an actual, audible chuckle. She wasn’t sure she’d heard that sound from him before.
They fell quiet again, the tension oddly softened by circumstance. It wasn’t cozy exactly, but it was… paused. Contained. Like the wind outdoors had made the world smaller for a little while.
“You know,” she said after a moment, “it’s weird more people don’t recognise you. For someone with your net worth, I figured people would be swooping over you to get autographs or something.”
He tilted his head. “So you did Google me.”
“I had to. After the café, I needed to know what I was getting into.”
“And?”
“I’m still deciding.”
“I’m a private person,” he said. “That probably helps.”
“That, and the fact that your Wikipedia photo makes you look like an exhausted finance bro.”
He smiled again. “That was intentional.”
She grinned. “A strategy?”
“Selective visibility.”
“I can’t relate.”
He met her gaze. “So what does that make you? Not interested in privacy at all?”
She leaned back slowly. “Me? I’m an open book.”
“Are you.”
“With… limited print editions.”
He didn’t press. She didn’t elaborate. Outside, the rain blurred the city to grayscale. Inside, their cups sat between them, half-melted and ignored.
But neither of them seemed to mind.
***
Elizabeth sank into the couch, legs tucked under a throw blanket, a glass of red wine warming slowly between her hands.
The heater buzzed faintly in the background, but it did little to erase the chill the frozen yoghurt had left in her bones.
It wasn’t just the cold—it was everything. The shop. The conversation. Him.
Her phone buzzed. She stared at the screen to find out the caller ID. Jane. She considered ignoring it for a moment. Then sighed and picked up.
“How did it go?” Jane’s voice boomed, far too loud and far too cheerful.
“How about you let me settle in before calling me?” Elizabeth muttered.
“Come on, Lizzy.”
“I think agreeing to your terms for these two dates was a mistake.”
“You did agree. Which means you owe me details. How did a date with the Fitzwilliam Darcy go?”
Elizabeth winced, then took a sip of wine. “It was... decent.”
“Decent?” Jane echoed, clearly unimpressed.
“He tried to be nice. I think. But I could tell he was forcing it.”
“How so?”
“There was just something about his demeanour.”
“Since when did you become Superman? Can you hear thoughts now? See through concrete?”
Elizabeth let out a dry laugh. “I took him to this frozen yoghurt place. Neon signs, plastic chairs, toppings bar that looks like it belongs in a middle school cafeteria. Not exactly five-star.”
“Okay...”
“And I swear, I could see the judgment radiating off him. Like the whole thing was beneath him. The chairs, the yoghurt, the people. He tried to hide it, but his face isn’t that flexible.”
“Lizzy,” Jane said gently, “is it possible you wanted to see judgment, so you did?”
“That sounds like something Mary would say.”
“Well. Mary rubs off on me sometimes.”
Elizabeth sighed and let her head fall back against the couch. “And to make it worse, the automatic door jammed. We got locked in. Had to wait an extra hour for someone to come fix it.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yep. Trapped. With Fitzwilliam Darcy. In a yogurt shop.”
“Was it awful?”
Elizabeth paused. “No. That’s the worst part. It wasn’t. We talked. Actual conversation. He wasn’t... completely intolerable.”
“High praise,” Jane said dryly.
“Don’t get excited. I’m not beginning to like him or anything. I’m just saying, for someone I actively disliked, he managed to carry a decent conversation.”
“Like Mr. F did, when you were chatting?”
“Not exactly. But close enough. At least he didn’t lie about the things he said in the chat.”
“Hmm. Did he ask you why you joined the app?”
“He did.”
“What did you tell him?” Jane’s voice had a new edge. Wary now.
“I said I was curious.”
“So you lied.”
“I told him a version of the truth.”
An uncomfortable silence followed.
“Come on, Jane, my job lets me frame things a certain way in pursuit of facts.”
“That’s an excuse.”
Elizabeth groaned. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Excuse me, sir, I joined your app to gather data and dismantle the premise of your life’s work’? No journalist would get anywhere with that approach. All you’ll get is a wall of no-comments and a cease-and-desist letter.”
Jane let that hang for a second. “So what now?”
Elizabeth traced the rim of her glass. “One more date.”
“Just one?”
“We agreed to two. I’ve done one. One more, and the TrueNorth trial is over. I get my article. He gets... whatever he was after.” She paused, then added, “Can you believe he actually said he joined to find love?”
“I told you,” Jane said. “Didn’t I?”
“I still don’t buy it,” Elizabeth sighed. “I let him think I believed it, but honestly, it’s none of my business. Whatever his reason, I just want to get through the next date and be done. Then we can go back to pretending we don’t exist in each other’s worlds.”
“That sounds incredibly mature of you.”
“It’s strategy, not maturity. If I ghost him now, he wins. If I finish what I started and get the truth I came for, I win.”
Jane hummed. “You sure you’re not a little curious?”
“No,” Elizabeth said too quickly. Then, after another sip: “Maybe. But only about the data.”
“Of course.”
“Just one more date,” Elizabeth repeated, more to herself than to Jane.
“Right,” Jane said. “Just one.”