Chapter 4 #2
The warmth of her body when the step carried her past me.
Her scent, caught for a second, when she turned and the air pressed the fabric of her gown against my arm.
Lavender. Lavender, and something sweeter, warmer, that was her skin beneath the perfume.
Seventy people were watching us. I didn't care in the slightest.
“You're supposed to turn left, Mr. Darcy,” she murmured when I missed a step.
I turned left. My gaze didn't turn with me. It stayed on her face, on the amused curve of her mouth, on the brightness in her eyes that challenged and welcomed me at once.
“I beg your pardon.”
“It's nothing. I've never seen you miss a step before.”
“So you've been watching me.”
“Since the beginning of the evening.”
The figure separated us. She turned with another gentleman. I turned with a lady whose face I didn't see. A few measures. Then the music brought us back together, her hand once more in mine, warm and alive through the kid leather, and those few measures of separation had been far too long.
The dance ended. The music stopped. The silence lasted a heartbeat, time for the dancers to bow, and in that heartbeat, Elizabeth looked at me, and I saw in her eyes what burned in mine.
We bowed. I released her hand. I had to.
For the next dance, Bingley led Jane among the couples. They looked at each other with a simplicity that asked no one's approval. Elizabeth's eyes followed her sister; her shoulders finally relaxed.
At the edge of the floor, Mrs. Bennet beamed. The Gardiners exchanged a discreet smile. For a few measures, the evening ceased to be a trial: it became a family celebration in the midst of my world.
Nineteen days.
?
I heard them without meaning to.
The evening was ending. The guests were taking their leave.
I was crossing the corridor to give an order to Mrs. Thornton when I came upon them behind the pillar that separated the vestibule from the small drawing room.
Two women. Voices I recognized without putting names to them.
Not malicious. Not cruel. Worse than that. Condescending.
“Charming, one must admit. Very lively, very witty.”
“But so unexpected. One would have thought he'd choose… well, someone more…”
“Yes. Exactly. Someone more.”
The silence that followed that word contained everything they weren't saying. Richer. More titled. More suited to his station.
I approached. My boots on the parquet made the sound they were meant to make.
The two women turned. I recognized them.
Lady Alston and Mrs. Hale-Crawford, two matrons from Lady Catherine's circle whose opinions had the consistency of blotting paper, but whose tongues could slice a reputation to ribbons.
I said nothing. I looked at them. That was all. My father had taught me that it wasn't always necessary to respond to people who confused birth with merit. A cold look, slow, passing from one to the other with perfectly glacial courtesy, was sufficient.
Lady Alston paled. Mrs. Hale-Crawford opened her mouth, closed it, and they both retreated toward the vestibule with the haste of two mice who had just crossed paths with a cat.
I took no satisfaction from it. Only weariness. This world was mine, it was mediocre, and it didn't deserve Elizabeth.
But Elizabeth was there anyway. For me.
The last guests departed. The colonel shook my hand and whispered in my ear that he approved of my choice and that anyone who didn't understand it was a fool.
Mr. Gardiner was checking coats and shawls, while Mrs. Bennet, already settled in the carriage, was compiling the list of everything she would tell her husband the moment she returned.
Bingley had led Jane to the carriage step and lingered over releasing her hand.
Mrs. Gardiner waited a few paces away, with the discreet patience of women who know exactly when to look elsewhere.
Elizabeth stood on the threshold.
The house had emptied. The candles were melting in the candelabras.
The scent of flowers, heavy with the warmth of the ball, floated in the air like a memory.
Elizabeth’s cheeks were flushed from dancing, her eyes bright with exertion, and beneath the glow lay the fatigue of a woman who had been brave longer than necessary.
“You were magnificent tonight,” I said.
My voice was low. Lower than I had intended. We stood in the shadow of the doorframe, just beyond Mrs. Gardiner’s gaze, just shy of the line the world allowed.
She looked up. Her defenses had fallen. The mask of wit, the vivacity, the armor of humor—all had slipped away, and what remained beneath was bare, weary, true.
“I was terrified,” she said.
“I know.”
One second. Two. The sound of the street beyond the steps. The crackle of a candle in the vestibule. Her breath, or mine—I no longer knew.
“You were magnificent all the same,” I said.
I took her hand. Brought it to my lips. The pale kid glove smelled of her perfume—lavender—and beneath the lavender, the warmth of her skin trapped within the fabric.
My lips lingered on the back of her hand a second longer than propriety allowed.
Perhaps two. Long enough for her fingers to tremble beneath my mouth.
Long enough to feel her pulse through the leather, rapid, irregular, alive.
She climbed into the carriage. I remained on the threshold.
The Gardiners’ carriage disappeared around the corner, the sound of wheels on cobblestones fading into the London night, and still I stood there—in this house where my mother’s portrait kept watch from the drawing room,
where the flowers arranged for Elizabeth were already wilting in the heat of the dying candles.
Nineteen days.
Behind me, Mrs. Thornton supervised the tidying. The servants carried away the glasses, emptied the refreshment trays, and extinguished the candles one by one. The house was becoming once more what it had always been before this evening: beautiful, perfect, silent.
Empty.
I closed the door. Climbed the stairs. Entered my chamber. Sat on the edge of the bed without removing my boots, and thought of her fingers trembling beneath my lips, of her breath when I had said magnificent, of the unguarded look she had offered me on the threshold.
Terrified, she had said. So was I. But not for the same reasons.
She had feared she would not find her place in this world.
I feared wanting to protect her so much that I would prevent her from claiming the place that was rightfully hers.
I feared that the price of loving me would be the loss of herself.
I removed my boots. Untied my cravat. Lay down in the darkness. Nineteen days. And after those nineteen days, a lifetime to learn how to deserve what she offered me.
Sleep, this time, finally came.