Chapter 23 #2
Sir William clapped his hands and turned to address the room, his voice swelling for attention. “Ladies and gentlemen! If I may have your attention, we shall open the first set. Mr. Bingley of Netherfield Park, will you do us the honor of leading the dance?”
“Delighted!” Bingley stepped forward with the easy confidence of a man who had never once dreaded a dance floor. “Absolutely delighted, Sir William.”
“And Miss Darcy, of course, will stand up with her host.” Caroline guided Georgiana forward with a hand at the small of her back. “Miss Darcy’s first assembly. What better way to begin than with her brother’s dearest friend?”
Bingley blinked. I saw the fraction of a second where his gaze travelled past Georgiana toward the place where Jane stood, the smallest check in his forward motion, and then it was gone, replaced by that inexhaustible warmth, because Bingley could no more refuse a lady standing before him than he could refuse to breathe.
“Miss Darcy.” He bowed. “Would you do me the honor?”
Georgiana curtsied. Her cheeks were pink, and her fingers trembled slightly as she placed her hand in his, but she met his eye, and the meeting was brave, and the bravery was mine.
The fiddlers struck up, and they took the floor.
I watched Jane standing beside Mary. She was looking at Bingley, her smile unwavering. That unchanging expression was the most disturbing part, because Jane’s way of dealing with heartbreak was to compose her features so perfectly that the one causing the pain never even realized it.
“Oh, Lizzy.” Charlotte squeezed my arm, acknowledging the hurt.
The couples began to form for the first set. The Gouldings' eldest son was with Mary King, Mr. Chester with Mrs. Long's niece, and a few neighborhood pairs who always danced together.
Bingley and Georgiana stood at the front of the line. I forced myself to watch, knowing that to look away would be cowardly, and I’d vowed long ago not to shy away from things that caused pain.
Georgiana’s movements were perfect. Her posture was impeccable, and she danced with the grace of someone taught by London’s finest masters. She was beautiful and refined, and I should be proud of her performance, but I couldn’t when it destroyed the happiness of a beloved sister.
“She dances beautifully,” Charlotte observed. “Whoever prepared her, prepared her well.”
Darcy stood with Caroline and Mrs. Hurst, with Caroline’s arm linked through his—a casual, possessive gesture, the kind a woman makes when she wants the room to draw certain conclusions.
She whispered something in his ear, but he wasn’t paying attention.
His gaze swept over the floor, past the dancers and the chairs where the matrons sat, until it landed on me with the sure aim of a man who had already spotted me upon entering and was waiting for an opportune moment to approach.
Caroline seemed to suggest something to him, and he shook his head, gently freeing his arm. Without glancing around, Caroline deployed her fan with the composure of a woman who had been dismissed before and had learned to hide the sting.
Averting my gaze, I remarked about the musicians to Charlotte and waited for Darcy to approach. We would miss the first set, and I was glad of it, because Jane stood against the wall while the Darcys snubbed my sisters.
Mrs. Goulding leaned toward Mrs. Long. “Look at Mr. Bingley and Miss Darcy. They make quite a pair, don’t they?”
“Indeed,” Mrs. Long agreed. “An heiress with her brother’s best friend. A match made in felicity, and she with a dowry of thirty-thousand pounds.”
“But didn’t Mr. Bingley dance two sets with Jane Bennet at the last assembly?”
“Hush,” Mrs. Long said, glancing at me briefly.
I turned away from my neighbors, my heart aching for my sister. Bingley had expressed his hopes for the first set with Jane. The look he gave her was almost apologetic. This had to be Caroline’s doing, and I blamed myself for being absent from Netherfield.
Mrs. Hurst stepped into Darcy’s path with a murmured word and a tilt of her head toward the dance floor where Georgiana was completing a turn. Darcy nodded, said something in return, and moved past her. He was crossing the room now with the long, unhurried stride—toward me to claim our dance.
I gave Charlotte an apologetic look. She understood, and I left her to intercept Darcy at the edge of the dance floor. Before I danced with him, I had to clarify his position regarding Mr. Bingley. He could not have failed to notice my sister’s discomfort.
“Mr. Darcy, might I have a word?”
His features changed from expectation to something more guarded, and that meant I had departed from the expected script. “Of course. Is something—”
“Not here.”
I turned and walked toward the entrance hall—the narrow passage between the cloakroom and the assembly doors, where the window alcove by the staircase offered the only pocket of semi-privacy in a building full of witnesses.
The alcove was cold. A servant passed with a tray of empty glasses and did not look at us. Below, on the staircase, a latecomer was mounting the steps. But the space was ours, and the noise of the assembly muffled itself behind the doors into something distant and irrelevant.
I turned to face him. “Before we dance, I need to clarify my position.”
He stared at me. “I believe you promised me the first set.”
“And you brought your sister and promised her to your friend.”
His expression softened—not into apology, but beaming with pride.
“Yes, because Georgiana asked to come, of her own volition. She’s always been shy and does not wish to be displayed.
But tonight, she wished to dance, and Elizabeth, this is your doing.
The walks, the conversation, and the way you have drawn her out.
She trusts herself in ways she did not before you came to Netherfield.
I wished you had seen her spirit when she decided it was time to face her fears. ”
“But with Bingley? He’s much too old for her… and he smiles too much,” I said, thunderstruck by his blindness to Jane’s fate.
“Bingley is my best friend, and she looks at him like a brother. When she comes out next year, she will, naturally, be introduced to other gentlemen,” he continued, as though the question had been whether Georgiana’s feelings were romantic and not whether Jane’s heart was lying in pieces across the room in a town with people she had known her entire life.
“She has never been to a public assembly. She needed a familiar face, and I asked Bingley because I trust him.”
“Yes, it was entirely reasonable, generous, and very kind,” I said it without sarcasm, because it was true, and the truth of it made everything worse.
“And it was done without a single thought for the woman whose heart your friend has been carrying around Hertfordshire like a handkerchief he forgot to return.”
Something moved behind his eyes, a recognition not quite arrived at. “That is not what this is.”
“Is it not?” My chin tilted up. “Mr. Bingley told me himself, at the breakfast table, that he wished to save Jane the first set at this assembly. Believing him, I conveyed as much to my sister, who is now sitting against the wall with a smile fixed on her face. This is not nothing.”
He blinked, not with guilt, but the dawning awareness of a man who has been shown a piece of the board he had not bothered to examine.
“Miss Bennet will have his attention for the rest of the evening—every dance, every conversation. This is but one set.”
“One set that tells every person in this room—every mother, every neighbor, every gossip with a fan and a functioning pair of eyes—that Mr. Bingley’s first choice is not the woman he has been courting for weeks.
” My voice was low and hard, and I did not soften it.
“My sister is not a reserve plan to be pencilled in after the important business is concluded.”
“You are making this into something it is not.”
“Am I. Because from where I stand, the evening looks remarkably like a campaign. Your sister entered on Caroline Bingley’s arm, was steered away from my family as though we carried contagion, and is now dancing with Mr. Bingley at the head of the first set while Caroline circulates the room informing anyone who’d listen on the suitability of such a match.
” I drew a breath that tasted of candle smoke and fury.
“Anyone with half an eye can see what Caroline Bingley is building—an alliance between your family and hers, with Georgiana and Bingley as the foundation.”
“Caroline is tiresome, I grant you. But she is harmless.” His voice had cooled by several degrees—the retreat into certainty that was Darcy’s most reliable fortification.
“I assure you, I have the matter well in hand. No one of consequence will read a country assembly dance as a declaration. Bingley will dance with your sister next, and by supper no one will remember the order of the sets.”
“No one of consequence,” I repeated, and the repetition sat between us like a slap. “How fortunate for you that this room is full of people who do not matter.”
His jaw set. I watched it happen, the physical mechanism of a man retreating behind walls built long before I understood they existed, long before I had been foolish enough to imagine I had been admitted past them.
“Miss Bennet.”
The name landed between us, and the landing was a door closing.
Not Elizabeth. Not the woman in the library by the light of a banked fire. Not the woman who had fed him ginger biscuits and said, I am here by choice, Mr. Darcy—the contract is the mechanism; the choice is mine. But Miss Bennet. The companion. The employee.
“I think it best,” he said, and his voice was controlled, carrying the authority of a man accustomed to having his arrangements go unchallenged, “that I manage the concerns of my family, and you manage the concerns of yours.”
The stillness that followed was worse than the night he called me merely suitable.
Worse, because the first time he had insulted a stranger, and a stranger’s pride recovers in a week.
This time, he had insulted a woman who had stood in his kitchen and fed him the word he was reaching for, and the word had turned out to be insufficient, and the insufficiency was not the vocabulary but the man.
“You have made your position clear, Mr. Darcy.” My voice was lethal. “And I have made mine.”
I turned and walked back through the doors, re-entering the world of candlelight, music, and noise.
The noise was a welcome distraction, filling the space where my thoughts might have otherwise festered—thoughts I didn’t want to dwell on in a public room, especially in this green dress I’d so meticulously chosen for a dance that would never occur.
Mama was by my side; I hadn’t heard her approach. Her hand landed on my arm, a touch both light and firm. “I’m not feeling well. This headache... I can’t stay. Will you take me home?”
Mama always knew how to extract me, to protect me, and her headache served as an exit, allowing me to leave the assembly with a scrap of dignity intact.
“Of course, Mama. Let me fetch my wrap.”
My sisters stayed, chaperoned by my Aunt and Uncle Philips. Darcy stayed. I saw him against the wall. The same wall with the same posture—tall and still and separate. He looked away before he could catch my eye, or perhaps he never looked.
Mama sat beside me in the carriage, took my hand and held it, not asking what had happened. Her silent presence was perhaps the kindest thing anyone had done for me since the evening began.
Longbourn was dark and quiet when we arrived. Papa was in his library with a candle and a book, and a glass of port. He looked up when we entered, and whatever he saw in my face made him set the book down without marking his page.
“Mrs. Bennet?”
“A headache, Mr. Bennet.” Mama’s voice was smooth as poured cream. “Elizabeth was good enough to accompany me home.”
Papa looked at me, and I looked at the floor.
“I see,” he said. And he did see, because Papa always saw, even when he chose not to act. “I hope the headache improves, my dear.”
“It will.” Mama squeezed my hand. “Go up, Lizzy. You look tired.”
I climbed the stairs. My room was cold and smelled of lavender and the stillness of a house that had been waiting. I did not weep because weeping would have conceded that the evening had held enough weight to warrant tears, and I would not make the concession.
Cinnamon was on my pillow.
I gathered her up and pressed my face into her fur, which smelled of the kitchen and the fields and the life I had been living before I went to Netherfield and let a man with a programme convince me that I was something more than a function he had purchased.
“You would not survive Pemberley,” I told her. “There is a Persian who rules the north wing. She has a pedigree and a programme, and she has never once sat on a stile or eaten an apple core or slept on an employer’s boot. You would be quite beneath her notice.”
Cinnamon purred and did not dignify the fiction with a response.
Outside, the carriage wheels had fallen silent, the house was dark, and somewhere in Meryton, the dancing carried on without me. And a man stood against a wall in the same assembly room where he had stood weeks ago.
The wall had not changed, and neither, it seemed, had he.