Chapter 4 #2
He looked down at the pig. The pig looked up at him. Her tail was wagging, which he had not known pigs could do, and her snout was pressed against his trouser leg, leaving a faint smear of mud.
His mouth twitched. He could feel it happening and he could not stop it.
Something in the animal's face, the sheer unreasonable devotion of it, pulled at a muscle he had not used in public for as long as he could remember.
He set his jaw. He stared straight ahead.
He was in a room full of people, and every one of them was looking at him, and he could not afford to be charmed by a pig.
But the pig was warm on his foot, and its eyes were half-closed with contentment, and its small body rose and fell with each breath in a rhythm that was, against all reason, calming.
He had not asked for this. He had not invited it.
And yet here he was, with a pig on his foot, in the middle of an assembly, and the muscle in his jaw would not quite hold.
Miss Elizabeth was crossing the room.
She walked with the controlled composure of a woman who was aware that every person in the assembly was watching her and who intended to give them absolutely nothing.
Her chin was up. Her back was straight. Her eyes were fixed on the pig.
He could see the effort it cost her. The tightness in her shoulders.
The careful steadiness of her step. She was holding herself together in the way a person held a cracked cup, gently and with great attention.
She did not look at him. She did not speak to him. She knelt, scooped Truffles into her arms, and stood in one fluid motion. The pig squealed and twisted, straining back toward Darcy's boot.
For one moment, their eyes met. Hers were bright and hard and furious. Not the playful anger of their previous encounters. Real anger. The kind that came from being laughed at, in public, by an entire room, after being insulted by the man her pig had just publicly chosen over her.
She said nothing. She turned and walked out of the assembly hall with the pig squirming in her arms, and she did not look back.
The door closed behind her. The music started again, haltingly, as if the musicians themselves needed a moment to recover.
The dancing resumed with the self-conscious bustle of people pretending to be occupied while actually listening to the whispers that ran through the room like water through a broken dam.
Bingley appeared at his side, looking concerned.
"Was that the pig again?"
"Yes."
"Poor Miss Elizabeth. She looked rather upset."
"She had every reason to be."
Bingley glanced at him. "You sound as if you mean that."
Darcy said nothing. He was looking at the door through which Miss Elizabeth had vanished. The spot on his boot where the pig had sat was warm.
Caroline materialized at his side. "Well," she said, with a laugh that was meant to be light and was not. "The Bennet pig has caused quite the scene. One wonders what sort of family allows a pig to roam freely. It speaks to a certain... disorder in the household."
"The pig followed the family's carriage," Darcy said. "It is not as if they brought it intentionally."
"Nevertheless. It is irregular. And the girl, running through the assembly like that, in front of everyone. One really does wonder about the upbringing." Caroline smoothed an invisible wrinkle from her glove. "I cannot imagine any family of consequence permitting such a display."
Darcy looked at the muddy smear on his trouser leg. Tiny hoof marks. Precise as punctuation.
"She was retrieving her pig," he said. "I am not certain what alternative you would have preferred."
Caroline opened her mouth, closed it, and changed the subject to the quality of the supper.
He thought about her face as she walked out. The set of her jaw. The way she had not let herself cry, or shout, or show anything beyond that terrible, dignified composure.
He thought about what he had said to Bingley. "Not handsome enough to tempt me." The words sat in his chest like a stone. He had said them carelessly, the way one batted away an insect, without thinking about whether the insect had feelings.
She had heard. He was certain of it now. The laugh that did not reach her eyes. The way she had turned to Miss Lucas and said something that made Miss Lucas look at him with an expression that was half pity and half judgment.
The assembly would talk about this for a month. The Bennet pig and Mr. Darcy. It would be a joke, and she would be the punchline. And he would be the man who had insulted her and then stood there like a stone pillar while her pig made a fool of them both.
He finished his punch. It tasted of nothing.
On the ride back to Netherfield, Bingley talked about Miss Bennet. Caroline talked about the supper. Louisa talked about the gowns. Mr. Hurst said nothing because Mr. Hurst was asleep.
Darcy sat in the dark of the carriage and thought about dark eyes and a lifted chin and a pink pig on his boot, and the terrible, dawning suspicion that he had made a very poor first impression on a woman who deserved a better one.