Chapter 18 #2
“Miss Bennet, are you familiar with the competitive form? I ask only because country families sometimes play the cooperative version, which is charming but rather less stimulating.” She spoke with the instructive patience of a woman explaining table manners to a vicar’s daughter.
“In the competitive form, each pair faces the other across the boundary line. The shuttlecock is served diagonally and must be returned before it strikes the ground. If it lands within bounds on your side, the serving pair scores the point. If it lands outside, the point goes to the receiving pair. We play to eleven. The shuttlecock must clear the line,” she gestured at the rope the footmen, Tom and Jerry, had strung between two posts at waist height, ”and may not be struck twice by the same side. ”
Jane, who had been playing competitive battledore since she was nine and had once beaten Papa in straight sets on the Longbourn lawn, smiled with the serene forbearance she reserved for people who underestimated her.
“Thank you, Miss Bingley. That is most helpful. I confess I had been striking the shuttlecock at random and hoping for the best.”
Mary, who did not possess Jane’s gift for diplomatic irony, opened her mouth. I caught her eye and shook my head, and Mary closed her mouth, which was a small victory for sisterly communication.
“Shall we take the near court?” Darcy asked Caroline, already moving to the position with the efficiency of a man who had played this game at school and did not intend to lose in Hertfordshire.
Mrs. Hurst beckoned me to the opposing side, and thus Bingley and Georgiana were left to square off against Jane and Mary in the far court.
This was, I told myself, a practical decision made by a man who intended to play competitively and did not wish to restrict his movement. It had no bearing on the width of his shoulders, which I had observed before and which required no further investigation.
“Ladies first,” Darcy said, tossing the shuttlecock to me across the cord.
I served. The shuttlecock sailed high and clean, and Caroline, who was positioned at the front—an arrangement Darcy had clearly engineered to minimize the distance she would need to move—swung her battledore with the languid grace of a woman who believed the point of the game was to look elegant.
She missed.
“The wind,” Caroline said.
“There is no wind,” Mrs. Hurst observed beside me.
“There will be by the time she finishes explaining,” I murmured, and Mrs. Hurst made a sound that might, in a more demonstrative woman, have been a laugh.
On the adjacent court, Bingley was bouncing on his toes while Georgiana tested her serve. Jane and Mary took their positions opposite, Jane with graceful readiness and Mary with the squared shoulders of a field marshal intent on winning a battle.
Darcy collected the shuttlecock from behind Caroline with the economy of a man who has already accepted that he would be covering approximately ninety percent of the court.
He served—a clean, controlled stroke aimed deep into the corner—and Mrs. Hurst returned it with a backhand of surprising precision.
“Well played, Mrs. Hurst.”
“I am as surprised as you are, Miss Bennet.”
The rally built. Darcy, at the back, covering every shot Caroline should have taken and several she had not attempted.
His returns were measured and accurate, placed with the careful deliberation of a man who surveyed land for a living and understood angles.
Caroline contributed a decorative presence at the front and the occasional swing that connected with nothing but air.
I, meanwhile, was discovering something I had not expected.
I wanted to win. Not in the general, abstract way one wants to win at any game, but in the specific, personal, and entirely irrational way one wants to win against a man who kicked his acorn farther on the lane and looked at me as though the kicking mattered.
Darcy sent a shot wide to Mrs. Hurst’s side. She lunged—creditably, for a woman who had pledged not to perspire—but the shuttlecock passed her reach.
“One all,” Darcy said, and the corner of his mouth moved in a direction that was not quite a smile but was undeniably competitive.
Across the lawn, Georgiana’s serve slapped against Jane’s return, and Mary, positioned at the net with the solemn concentration of a woman defending a philosophical principle, blocked a return with a flat-paddle stop that sent the shuttlecock dribbling over the cord.
“Point,” Mary announced. “Newton’s third law. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction.”
“I do not believe Newton played battledore, Miss Mary,” Darcy called across.
“He should have. It would have improved his temperament considerably.”
Darcy blinked, shocked and amused, and I bit the inside of my cheek.
The rallies sharpened. Darcy sent a cross-court shot that I chased to the boundary post, stretching for a return that my battledore found at the last possible moment—a wrist-flick that sent the shuttlecock spinning back across the cord in a trajectory that surprised me as much as it surprised Caroline, who watched it sail past her immobile battledore and land at Darcy’s feet.
“That,” Darcy said, looking at the shuttlecock and then at me, “was not the stroke of a middling player.”
“I never claimed to be middling, Mr. Darcy. That is Jane’s technique. I prefer honesty to modesty. Two-one.”
“They are not mutually exclusive.”
“In battledore, Mr. Darcy, they very nearly are.”
Darcy served again—harder this time, aimed directly at me, no longer content to let Caroline’s deficiencies determine the match.
The shot was fast and flat, and I returned it with a reflex stroke that sent the shuttlecock back at an angle he was already moving to cover.
We traded returns—four, five, six—each stroke harder, the rallies tightening into something that had very little to do with battledore and everything to do with two people who could not stop competing because the competition was the only honest conversation available to them.
He sent a lob high over my head. I sprang back, watched it descend, and swung—connecting at the top of the arc with a satisfying crack that drove the shuttlecock downward across the cord with a speed and angle that made Darcy take a full step backward.
He returned it. Barely.
I was at the cord now, closer than strategy recommended, and the shuttlecock came back to me at a high arc—invitation, provocation, or test, I could not determine which. I planted my foot, jumped, and brought the battledore down in an overhead smash that sent the feathered cork directly at Darcy.
He didn’t return it. He tried stepping back to use his battledore, but the shuttlecock bounced off his chest. He caught it with his bare hand and stood holding it, his chest rising and his hair disordered with a look on his face that I could only describe as delighted—a word I’d never associated with Fitzwilliam Darcy, and now that I had, I couldn’t unthink it.
“Point,” I said, slightly breathless from the jump.
“You hit me.”
“I hit the shuttlecock. You happened to be behind it.”
“I happened to be behind it because you aimed at me.”
“I aimed at the open court, Mr. Darcy. It is hardly my fault that you occupy so much of it. Three-one,” I announced.
His mouth compressed, and he released the shuttlecock to Caroline with the composure of a man who had been struck in the chest by a woman he promised to dance with.
From the adjacent court, a whoop of triumph carried across the lawn. Georgiana had executed a serve that sent the shuttlecock sailing over Jane’s head, and she was bouncing on her toes with the unrestrained delight of a girl who scored a point and had not yet been told to moderate her enthusiasm.
“Well struck, Miss Darcy!” Bingley cheered. “Jane—Miss Bennet—I do apologize, she has a vicious serve. I believe she gets it from her brother.”
“I taught myself, Mr. Bingley,” Georgiana corrected. “My brother taught me chess. The serves are entirely my invention.”
Darcy, hearing this from across the lawn, straightened with the expression of a man who had just learned something about his sister he did not know how to classify.
The match resumed. Darcy served to me, and I returned it to Caroline’s forehand, because her forehand was where shuttlecocks went to die, and the point was won before she had fully committed to swinging.
Four-one. Mrs. Hurst served, and Darcy smashed it back with such force that I had to dive sideways, scooping it off the grass with the flat of my battledore at ankle height and flicking it back over the rope where it clipped the boundary and spun into Caroline’s skirts.
“Five-one,” I said, slightly breathless and conscious that my hem was now decorated with a grass stain.
“That cannot have been in bounds,” Caroline protested.
“It clipped the line,” Mrs. Hurst said, with the dispassionate authority of a woman who had been watching the boundary rather than her sister’s scheme. “Five-one.”
Caroline, who had contributed little to the match beyond presence and the occasional decorative swing, dabbed her forehead with her handkerchief. “Mr. Darcy, perhaps we should reconsider our strategy. Miss Eliza appears to be playing a rather different game than the rest of us.”
“Miss Bennet is playing the same game,” Darcy said, straightening his cravat, which my smash had loosened by a fraction I should not have noticed. “She is simply playing it better.”
Caroline’s jaw tightened, but she could hardly argue with the obvious.
Darcy wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at me—at the grass stain, at the battledore clutched in my fist, at the hair that had escaped its pin and was curling against my neck—and the looking contained an intensity that had nothing to do with the score.
And I noted that maddening curl plastered over his forehead, and considered ourselves even. “Serve, Mr. Darcy.”