Chapter 10
Mr. Darcy
Darcy asked Miss Elizabeth Bennet to dance.
He had not planned to. He had planned to stand at the side of the ballroom, as he always did, and endure the evening with the stoic resignation of a man fulfilling a social obligation.
Bingley's ball at Netherfield was to be a grand affair, twenty families invited, the ballroom opened and polished for the first time since the previous tenant, a full supper, an orchestra brought in from London.
Bingley had thrown himself into the preparations with the delirious enthusiasm of a man who had a specific woman to impress and an unlimited budget with which to do it.
Darcy had spent the previous week telling himself that the departure of Elizabeth and Jane and the pig had been a relief.
The house was quiet again. The library was his own.
No small hooves tapped across the corridors.
No warm weight settled on his boot at mealtimes.
No one argued with him about books or caught him scratching a pig's belly or looked at him in a way that made him forget, for one dangerous moment, that he was supposed to be immune to all of this.
It had been a relief. A vast, echoing, hollow relief that felt nothing at all like relief and everything like loss.
But now the ball was beginning, and the Bennet family was arriving, and Elizabeth was walking through the door in a white gown with her hair pinned up and that look on her face, the one she wore when she was determined to enjoy herself despite everything, and every lie Darcy had told himself for the past week stopped working at once.
He watched her from across the ballroom. She was laughing with Charlotte Lucas. She was greeting neighbours. She was looking around the room with the sharp, observant gaze that saw everything and missed nothing. She had not looked at him.
He wanted her to look at him.
The dancing began. Bingley danced with Jane, of course, with the beaming, transparent joy of a man who had been counting the days since he last saw her and did not care who knew it. Other couples took the floor. The music swelled.
Elizabeth danced with a young officer whose name Darcy did not catch. She danced well. She moved with a natural grace that was nothing like the studied elegance of women in London who danced to be watched. She danced as if the music were pulling her forward and she was simply choosing to follow.
He watched her through two dances. He watched the officer's hand on her waist during the turns and felt something he refused to call jealousy, because jealousy would imply a claim, and he had no claim.
Caroline appeared at his elbow. "You are staring, Mr. Darcy."
"I am observing."
"You are observing Miss Eliza Bennet with an attention that the room has noticed." Caroline's voice was pleasant and precise. "I would not have thought her the sort to attract your particular notice."
"I was not aware my notice was a matter of public discussion."
"Everything is a matter of public discussion in this neighbourhood. That is part of its charm." She paused. "Or so I am told."
Darcy said nothing. Caroline waited for a response that did not come, and then she drifted away toward Louisa, and he was grateful for the silence.
He made a decision. It was not a careful decision.
It was not the product of deliberation or strategy.
It was the sort of decision a man made when he had spent a week missing the sound of hooves in the corridor and had just seen the woman responsible for the hooves walk through a door in a white gown.
He walked across the ballroom. He reached her between sets. She was standing with Charlotte, slightly flushed from dancing, a glass of lemonade in her hand.
"Miss Elizabeth. Would you do me the honour of the next dance?"
She looked at him. For a moment, her expression was unguarded, and he saw surprise and something else, something quick and warm that vanished before he could name it.
"I would, Mr. Darcy."
Charlotte Lucas's eyebrows rose to a height that suggested she would be discussing this moment for weeks.
They took their places in the line. The music began. A country dance, lively, with figures that brought them close and then apart, close and then apart, in the maddening rhythm of a conversation held across a gap.
"Are you enjoying the ball, Mr. Darcy?" Her voice was light, but her eyes were watchful.
"I am enjoying it more than I expected."
"That is not saying a great deal. Your expectations for enjoyment are notoriously low."
"You speak as if you know my expectations."
"I have observed them. You stand at the side of every gathering with an expression that suggests you would rather be reading."
"Perhaps I would."
"And yet you asked me to dance."
"And yet I did."
They turned. Their hands met, pressed, released. Her fingers were warm through her gloves.
"You have not brought the pig," he said.
"Was that an invitation?"
"It was an observation."
"Truffles is at home. I reinforced the kitchen. I used two broom handles and a barrel. Hill is standing guard."
"That is a formidable defence."
"It is the best I can manage without a moat."
He almost smiled. He could feel it, the pull at the corner of his mouth, the loosening of the muscles he kept locked when he was in public. She was doing it again. She was disarming him, not with charm or flattery but with the simple, devastating weapon of being exactly who she was.
"You were kind to my pig at Netherfield," she said, more quietly. The dance brought them together. Her face was close to his. "You did not have to be."
"The pig gave me very little choice."
"That is not what I mean. You let her into the library. You fed her bread crusts. You talked to her."
His ears heated. "You heard that."
"I heard enough."
They separated, moved through the figure, returned. His heart was doing something that bore no resemblance to the rhythm of the dance.
"Miss Elizabeth. What I said at the assembly. About your being tolerable."
Her chin lifted. The armour went up. He could see it happen, the walls that rose when she expected to be hurt.
"I was wrong," he said. "I was wrong, and I have thought about it every day since, and I am sorry."
The music carried them apart. When they came back together, her expression had changed. The walls were still there, but they had developed cracks, and through the cracks he could see something fragile and surprised.
"That is the first genuine thing you have ever said to me," she said.
"It will not be the last."
The dance ended. They stood facing each other in the suddenly quiet space between the last note and the applause. Her eyes were bright. His hands were at his sides. The distance between them was two feet and felt like nothing.
"Thank you for the dance, Mr. Darcy."
"Thank you, Miss Elizabeth."
She turned to go. He watched her take three steps. Four.
A squeal erupted from the direction of the entrance hall.
Every head in the ballroom turned. Darcy closed his eyes.
The doors to the ballroom opened, and through them shot a small, determined, wildly squealing pink blur. Truffles. Three miles from Longbourn, past the broom handles and the barrel and Hill's vigilance, by means that no one would ever satisfactorily explain.
The pig navigated the ballroom with the fearsome competence Elizabeth had once described as "terrible" and Darcy privately considered remarkable.
She dodged a dancing couple. She weaved through the crowd.
She slipped once on the freshly polished floor, righted herself with a scramble that sent a dowager clutching for her companion's arm, and pressed on.
A servant lunged. A young officer tried to herd her with his boot.
Neither succeeded. She crossed the remaining distance at speed, and she arrived at the exact spot where Darcy and Elizabeth were standing.
She sat between them. She looked at Darcy. She looked at Elizabeth. Her curly tail quivered with satisfaction.
The ballroom erupted in laughter and gasps and the kind of delighted chaos that only an unexpected pig could produce. Caroline Bingley, who was standing near the punch bowl, made a sound that Darcy had never heard a human being make before.
Elizabeth's face had gone very still. She was looking at the pig between them, and then at Darcy, and then at the room full of people watching them, and he could see the mortification rising like a tide.
Darcy bent down.
He picked up the pig.
He stood in the middle of the Netherfield ballroom, in front of four and twenty families of the neighbourhood, holding a pig against his chest. Truffles nestled into his waistcoat and sighed. Her muddy hooves pressed against his lapel. Her snout bumped his chin.
He looked at Elizabeth. Her eyes were wide.
He held the pig out to her. Their hands met as she took Truffles from his arms. His fingers brushed hers, and neither of them pulled away.
The pig was between them, warm and wriggling, and he was close enough to see the pulse at the base of her throat and the gold in her eyes and the way her lips parted just slightly when she was surprised.
He wanted to say something. He wanted to say that the pig was right about him.
He wanted to say that he was not the man she met at the assembly, or rather, that he was that man and also someone else, someone better, someone who talked to pigs and meant the apology he had offered and would mean every word he ever said to her from this moment forward.
He opened his mouth.
"Cousin Elizabeth!" A man's voice, nasal and self-important, cut between them like a blade. "I believe the next dance is promised to me."
Mr. Collins. A clergyman, a cousin of the Bennets, a man who had arrived at Longbourn the previous week and who had the social awareness of a cupboard. He stood at Elizabeth's elbow with his hand extended and his smile fixed and his timing catastrophic.
The moment broke. Elizabeth stepped back, the pig in her arms, the surprise on her face folding back into composure.
"Of course, Mr. Collins." She looked at Darcy. She looked at the pig in her arms. She held Truffles out to him. "Would you mind?"
He took the pig. Of course he took the pig. "If you will excuse me, Mr. Darcy." And she was gone, led to the dance floor by Collins, who was already explaining the steps to her as though she had never danced before.
She looked back at Darcy once, over her shoulder, and the look in her eyes was something he would remember for a very long time.
He stood in the middle of the ballroom with a pig in his arms and a muddy mark on his waistcoat and the ghost of her fingers against his and watched her dance with Mr. Collins, who moved through the figures with the graceless determination of a man who had memorised the steps but not their purpose.
Elizabeth endured it. She smiled. She did not look at Darcy again during that dance.
She was too busy keeping her toes clear of Collins's feet and her composure clear of her face.
But when the dance ended and Collins released her with a bow so deep it was practically geological, she glanced across the room and found Darcy's eyes immediately, as if she had known exactly where he was standing.
She crossed the room to him. "I believe you have my pig."
"She has been very well behaved." Truffles was asleep in his arms, her snout tucked against his waistcoat, her body warm and heavy with the boneless weight of a creature who felt entirely safe. He transferred her carefully. Their hands touched during the exchange.
"Thank you," Elizabeth said. She settled Truffles against her shoulder.
The pig did not wake. She carried her to the side of the room, where a Netherfield footman was persuaded — with the quiet authority of a woman who had been managing a pig in public for months — to hold Truffles on a folded tablecloth near the servants' door. The pig slept through all of it.
He did not ask anyone else to dance. He did not want to.
The evening continued around him, bright and loud and full of music, and he stood on its edge and watched her.
He watched her dance with an officer. He watched her talk with Charlotte.
He watched her stand with Jane while Bingley fetched them both lemonade.
Twice more, she caught him watching. Twice more, she did not look away.
At supper, they were seated at opposite ends of the table.
Mrs. Bennet, between them, held forth on Jane's beauty, Bingley's fortune, and her absolute conviction that a match was imminent.
She said this loudly enough for the entire table to hear, including Darcy, including Jane (who went scarlet), and including Bingley (who beamed).
Darcy flinched. Not for himself, but for Elizabeth, who he could see from his end of the table pressing her eyes shut for one long moment before opening them and continuing to eat with a composure that cost her everything.
After supper, the dancing resumed. Elizabeth danced with a local gentleman. Darcy stood by the wall. The distance between them felt simultaneously vast and unbearable.
Bingley found him near midnight. "The best night of my life, Darcy. The absolute best night."
"I am glad."
"Did you enjoy yourself? You danced. I saw you dance with Miss Elizabeth."
"I did."
"And?" Bingley's face was alight with the bottomless hopefulness of a man who wanted the whole world to be as happy as he was.
Darcy looked across the room. Elizabeth was putting on her gloves, preparing to leave. The ball was ending. She was going home, taking her sisters and her laughter and her sharp eyes and her impossible pig, and Netherfield would be quiet again, and the quiet would feel like a punishment.
"And nothing," he said. "It was a dance."
But his hand, at his side, still held the memory of her fingers. And the muddy mark on his waistcoat, that small hoof print like a seal, stayed there for the rest of the night. He did not brush it away.