Chapter 3 #2
The parlour door opened. The gentlemen returned. Darcy's eyes found Elizabeth the way a compass finds north, inevitable, unerring, requiring no thought. He gave her a slight nod. A command dressed as a greeting. Come to me.
She went. She was learning that the small submissions were easier than the large ones, and that this ease was itself a danger.
Mr. Bennet rose first, glass in hand and irony banked so low it was almost invisible. "Ladies and gentlemen, my daughter Elizabeth has accepted an offer of marriage from Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley."
He sat before anyone could read more in his face than he wished to show. Sir William rose at once, delighted to be useful. "A most joyous occasion! Let us drink to their happiness!"
Exclamations. Congratulations. Mrs. Bennet's voice soaring above the rest. Elizabeth maintained her smile through all of it while Darcy's hand settled against her lower back, a gesture that appeared supportive to the company and felt like a hand holding a chair in place.
"You perform admirably," he murmured against her ear. "One might almost believe you genuinely pleased."
"I'm an apt pupil. You have made the consequences of failure abundantly clear."
His fingers flexed against her back, a small flinch from a man reminded of something he preferred not to think about.
Charlotte approached with congratulations. Her face was steady, her voice level. One look held everything they shared and could not say, the whole road to their parallel captivity in a cheerful parlour full of people who understood nothing.
"I wish you every happiness, Lizzy," Charlotte said, and the formal words meant: I know. I'm sorry. Survive this.
"Your good wishes mean a great deal, Mrs. Collins," Darcy replied.
The evening ground on. Elizabeth moved through it as though underwater, smiling, speaking, accepting felicitations, while maintaining constant awareness of Darcy's position as a swimmer maintains awareness of the current.
Mr. Bennet caught her near the refreshment table.
"You'll call upon me tomorrow in my library," he said without preamble. "Before your daily correspondence is sent."
"Papa—"
"Whatever hold that man has upon you, whatever circumstances in Kent precipitated this match, I'll know of it before I give my blessing."
"Please. Don't pursue this. For all our sakes."
Something in her tone arrested him. He studied her face, his own going grave. "Is it as serious as that, my child?"
The question hung between them. Her father's face was grave, his hand resting near hers on the table. His concern pressed at every defence she had raised around the truth. She wanted to say: Yes. It is exactly as serious as that. Help me. She opened her mouth.
Darcy appeared at her elbow just as the conversation reached dangerous territory. It might have been rehearsed. It had not been. He simply watched her with the sustained attention of a man who always knew Elizabeth's position in a crowd.
"Mr. Bennet, I hope we might speak privately tomorrow. There are certain arrangements regarding Elizabeth's settlement that require discussion."
"Indeed." Her father's voice had cooled by several degrees. "We have much to discuss. Far more than settlements, I suspect."
In the carriage home, Elizabeth stared at the dark countryside and said nothing.
Mrs. Bennet dozed. Jane watched her with unconcealed concern.
Mr. Bennet sat in his corner and thought his private thoughts.
Darcy rode beside them, a dark figure appearing and vanishing at the window as the road curved.
At Longbourn, Darcy handed the ladies from the carriage. When Elizabeth's turn came, he held her hand a beat too long, drew her aside.
"Your father grows suspicious. This complicates matters."
"He has always seen more than others."
His expression hardened, then smoothed. He lifted her hand to his lips.
His mouth on her gloved knuckles, his breath warm through the fabric, lingered one beat beyond propriety.
She felt the warmth travel up her arm and lodge somewhere behind her ribs.
Heat and cold, attraction and revulsion, left her standing on uncertain ground.
"Until tomorrow," he murmured.
She withdrew her hand and went inside without looking back.
In her chamber, she sat at her writing desk and composed her nightly letter to him. She wrote of the announcement, the congratulations, the evening's events. She described her family's reactions. She confirmed her compliance. She sealed the letter with wax.
She did not sign it.
A small defiance. A gesture he would recognise, remember, and perhaps admire. His admiration confused her. For all his insistence on obedience, Darcy wanted the resistance. He wanted to feel it bend.
She placed the letter on the dressing table, undressed in the dark, and climbed into bed.
She lay there listening to the old house breathe around her and the garden bench returned to her, his thumb tracing her wrist, his mask slipping, something human showing through.
Not tenderness exactly. Its shadow. A shape moving behind glass.
She turned her face into the pillow. The linen smelled of lavender and starch and nothing else, nothing of sandalwood or leather or the particular warmth of a hand too careful for the man it belonged to.
She closed her eyes. Outside, an owl called from the elm at the end of the garden, a sound so familiar it hurt.
Tomorrow her father would demand answers she couldn't give. Tomorrow Darcy would arrive with his plans and his strategies and his dangerous, complicated hands. Tomorrow the pretence would continue.
Tonight she lay in the dark and said her own name, Elizabeth Bennet, Elizabeth Bennet, like a prayer against erasure, a small bright stone held tight in a closed fist, refusing to be dropped.