Chapter 19 #2
“You have been subjected to it longer than any of us, Darcy,” Wickham said, making a brief, careless gesture. “That rot Mr Collins was discoursing upon yesterday. I hope you did not suppose any of us took it seriously.”
Darcy did not answer at once—not because he had nothing to say, but because Miss Elizabeth had already spoken.
“Oh, I should hope not,” she said. “I have found that the more confidently a subject is explained to me, the less likely it is to improve my understanding of it.”
Her tone—dry, exact—caught his attention. He found himself watching her mouth as she spoke, the faint emphasis she placed upon confidently, the quiet satisfaction of a thought well landed. The rest of the room receded. He was aware of Wickham again only when he resumed.
Wickham smiled. “Exactly my thought. A great many words expended to prove what requires none. One would think the matter settled generations ago, and yet it resurfaces whenever someone wishes to feel important.”
Wickham’s ease unnerved him. He spoke as though the matter were safely abstract, when Darcy knew too well how quickly such talk acquired shape once repeated aloud.
Darcy felt the faint tug beneath his right eye again—irritating, insistent.
He forced his mouth into stillness, held it there until the twitch subsided.
“Generations! My, that is an impressive talent,” Miss Elizabeth returned. “To say everything at once and nothing in particular and to never let old bones rest.”
Darcy’s attention sharpened further. She was engaged now—not merely teasing, but probing—and the knowledge set him on edge.
He did not want her encouraged in this line of thought.
He did not want Wickham entertaining her curiosity at all.
The muscle along his cheek tightened without permission; he masked it at once by shifting his jaw, as though easing a stiffness that did not exist.
Denny grinned. “That sounds like half the men I’ve met since joining the regiment.”
“And all the sermons,” Miss Elizabeth added. “Though I am told one must be charitable.”
“Charity,” Wickham said, “need not extend to listening without end. Especially when one is reminded, again and again, of obligations attached to certain unwilling people.”
The words struck too near. Wickham was opening a door Darcy had spent years keeping firmly shut, and doing so before an audience he did not trust himself to disregard.
A thin, crawling sensation traced the inside of his right arm, from elbow to wrist—nothing painful, merely intolerable.
His fingers curled and uncurled once at his side before he stilled them.
Miss Bingley, who had drawn near enough to hear this, paused beside Darcy. “One would almost imagine you speak from experience, Mr Wickham.”
He inclined his head. “Only from long acquaintance with the subject. Some families acquire expectations as naturally as others acquire furniture, and are told it would be ungrateful to question either.”
Miss Bingley smiled. “Expectations are rarely without foundation.”
“Nor are they always welcome,” Wickham replied, just as pleasantly.
Darcy became acutely aware—too late—that he had been positioned within the circle without volition.
Wickham had done it deftly, as though Darcy’s participation were a foregone conclusion.
He had not spoken. He had not assented. And yet Elizabeth was now looking toward him, however curiously, as though waiting to see whether he would.
A brief spasm caught at the corner of his mouth. He forced a breath through his nose and let his expression settle into composure by sheer habit.
“You never cared for that sort of talk, did you, Darcy?” Wickham went on, his tone pitched easily, publicly. “I remember you could scarcely keep a straight face when such subjects were raised at Pemberley. Old trusts, family obligations, and the like.”
Darcy felt irritation rise—swift, sharp, and threaded with something more dangerous.
Wickham had no right to summon those words into the open.
Not here. Not where she could hear them and begin, in that incisive way of hers, to wonder.
The twitch returned, sharper this time, drawing a faint line along his cheek.
He turned his head slightly, presenting his profile, as though the angle alone might subdue it.
“I do not recall finding it amusing.”
“No,” Wickham said at once, conciliatory. “Perhaps not amusing. Tiresome, then. A burden laid on you without your consent.”
Miss Elizabeth’s mouth curved. “A most considerate assessment. One might think consent a useful element in many arrangements.”
Darcy glanced at her despite himself—and was caught.
Her expression held a challenge lightly worn, curiosity sharpened by wit rather than suspicion.
The sight of it unsettled him far more than Wickham’s provocation.
The sensation in his arm deepened, concentrating itself with malicious precision in the middle finger of his right hand.
It twitched once. He pressed the offending finger against his thigh and kept his posture perfectly still. He had already allowed too much.
“And yet,” she continued, “I find it endlessly fascinating how certain topics manage to recur, no matter how decisively one declines to encourage them. It does tend to excite curiosity, despite my better judgment.”
She was not circling idly; she was closing in. The ease with which she articulated it, the care of her phrasing, stirred a cold unease beneath his ribs. She spoke as though the thing itself had already begun to yield to her attention.
“You see, Darcy? Declining encouragement is rarely sufficient,” Wickham said. “One must appear to entertain them, or they return with greater enthusiasm.”
Darcy barely heard him. His awareness had narrowed to her—her tone, her concentration, the way her mind moved forward even as her manner remained easy. He had known she was clever. He had not anticipated how dangerous that cleverness might become when turned toward this.
“Like a cold,” Miss Elizabeth chuckled. “Or an unwelcome relative.”
Miss Bingley’s laughter rose like a bubbling brook. “Both topics with which you are intimately familiar, Miss Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth levelled a cooler smile at Miss Bingley, and Darcy’s unease deepened. The muscle beneath his eye flickered again, stubborn as a pulse. He smiled immediately—an old, reliable reflex—hoping the motion concealed it. The effort made his jaw ache.
Miss Elizabeth continued to regard Miss Bingley for a moment, her head tilted slightly, as though considering a line of argument rather than a jest. “And yet intimacy does imply attachment,” she said.
And then her eyes turned to Darcy. “One does not revisit unhappy subjects so persistently without being forced to acknowledge that they retain some power—whether to instruct, to warn, or merely to remind.”
Darcy felt a sharp, unwelcome recognition. She was not guessing. She was reasoning. And worse—she was enjoying it. The notion that this might matter to her, that she might feel the pull of it as something worth understanding, filled him with a sudden, irrational need to stop her at once.
Miss Bingley smiled, her eyes bright with interest. “How very philosophical. I should not have thought the matter so complicated.”
“Nor should I,” Miss Elizabeth replied. “Which is precisely why I find it so engaging.”
That did it.
Darcy’s restraint frayed—not from temper, but from urgency.
The twitch in his hand broke free again, a quick, traitorous movement he subdued by curling his fingers hard into his palm.
He could not allow her to follow this thread any further.
Not with Wickham present. Not with half the room listening.
Not when she had already come so close without knowing it.
Wickham’s brows lifted, amused. “You would have made a formidable auditor, Miss Elizabeth. Few endure such discussions long enough to inquire into their persistence.”
“I doubt endurance is the issue,” she laughed. “One listens because one suspects there is something beneath the repetition that has not yet been said.”
Darcy spoke then—not loudly, but with a firmness that surprised even him.
“There is not.”
The words came out cleaner than he felt, edged with an authority he did not entirely possess. He had not decided to speak; the moment had forced him to it. The tick in his face ceased at once, as though chastened by the sound of his own voice.
He did not trust himself to say more. Already, he had said too much.
Wickham smiled, as though amused by the exchange rather than checked by it. “You see, Miss Elizabeth? A question answered before it is fully asked.”
“And a very efficient answer,” she returned. “Though I confess I am not yet persuaded.”
Darcy felt that confession land like a challenge, though it was offered with perfect civility. His hand twitched again, once, sharp and unmistakable.
“You are not required to be.”
He inclined his head and stepped away from them—not in haste, but with unmistakable finality. He could not remain. Not while she was still looking at him as though the matter were unfinished. Bingley, speaking with Sir William near the window, turned in surprise as Darcy joined him.
Behind them, Denny laughed at something Wickham said; Miss Bingley’s voice followed, quick and animated, seizing upon the thread Darcy had abandoned. The space he had occupied filled itself almost at once, the conversation bending and reforming as though it had never paused.
Darcy did not remain to hear what was made of it.