Chapter 25 #2
She curtsied, then turned away soon after. Darcy remained where he was, telling himself—firmly—that the matter was settled.
It was only when the officers entered, laughter preceding them, that he noticed Elizabeth glance back over her shoulder. Not toward him. Toward the room itself.
Her eyes moved—swift, eager—from Mr Collins to the space beside Darcy, then onward to Wickham as he joined the circle.
Darcy stiffened. No, it was not jealousy. Not alarm.
Surely.
He looked away before he could consider it further.
Elizabeth smiled where smiles were due, answered easily when addressed, and allowed herself to be drawn into conversations that required nothing deeper than agreeable attention.
If her laugh came a moment too quickly, if she inclined her head with more care than usual before committing herself to a direction, no one remarked upon it.
A ball rewarded animation. It excused movement.
It permitted a lady to circulate without appearing restless.
That, at least, was her intention.
She kept a careful sense of the room as she moved through it—not in any deliberate fashion, but with the same instinct that guided her steps in a crowded street.
She noted where the officers clustered, where the matrons had claimed the safer seats along the wall, where her mother’s voice rose and fell in tones of energetic satisfaction.
And she noted, with a vigilance she would have denied if asked, the shifting position of Mr Collins.
He was never quite where she expected him to be.
At one moment, he appeared firmly engaged near the refreshments, expounding to Sir William on the advantages of proper ventilation for a greenhouse; at the next, his voice carried from behind her shoulder, closer than she had judged, already winding itself toward some declaration of duty or improvement.
Each time, Elizabeth adjusted her course without appearing to do so—accepting a remark from Mrs Long, stepping aside to admire a ribbon, turning neatly into another circle before he could quite lay claim to her attention or approach near enough to send a bone-numbing shock of pain through her ear.
It was exhausting work, made more so by the necessity of appearing entirely at ease.
She had just extricated herself from a discussion of the musicians—conducted largely by her mother, with Elizabeth cast as approving audience—when she became aware, too late, that Mr Collins had begun to angle in her direction, his expression fixed with purpose.
The sound of his voice reached her before the words themselves, and with it came the familiar constriction that warned her she had misjudged the distance.
Elizabeth did not hesitate. She retreated—not backward, but sideways—allowing the press of guests to carry her toward a quieter corner near the windows, where George Wickham stood with two of his fellows.
“Miss Elizabeth!” he greeted, “you have been quite lost to us. May I say, you look particularly radiant this evening.”
Elizabeth had time enough to notice two things at once: the angle of Mr Collins’s approach from her left, and the first sharp tightening that warned her she had waited a moment too long.
She turned brightly back to Wickham. “What a pretty compliment. Did you intend to follow that with asking me to dance?”
The question was direct enough to earn a blink of surprise from him—quickly followed by laughter. “Indeed, I did,” he said, offering his arm with exaggerated readiness. “And I should be grievously disappointed to be forestalled.”
“Then I am very glad you arrived when you did,” Elizabeth replied, already moving.
They passed Mr Collins at a decisive angle, Wickham’s presence creating just enough interruption to prevent a claim from being made.
Elizabeth did not look back. She did not need to.
The moment his voice fell behind them, the pressure receded, leaving her clear-headed enough to breathe easily again.
She told herself—without much conviction—that it was merely the relief of motion.
They joined the forming set near the centre of the room, not far from where Mr Darcy stood apart from the dancers. Elizabeth became aware of him without seeking him out, as one becomes aware of a fixed point in a shifting crowd. His gaze was already upon them.
The music began.
She did not think about the steps. She had danced often enough for them to require no attention.
Wickham spoke rather constantly, some comment about the press of the room or the merits of the musicians, but his words passed her with little impression.
What she noticed instead was the relief—the absence of strain, the ease with which she turned and moved.
Across the floor, Darcy did not look away.
Elizabeth caught the fact of it more than once as the figures carried her round, his attention following with an intensity she did not pretend not to notice. She did not smile at him. She did not acknowledge it at all.
But when the dance ended, she was certain of two things. First: that Wickham’s timely intervention had spared her more than a dance.
And second: that Darcy had remained within a dozen paces throughout, watching every moment.
The supper tables were already being claimed when Darcy entered with Elizabeth after their dance.
The atmosphere had transformed from the ordered brightness of the ballroom into a looser, louder arrangement of appetite and opinion.
The air itself felt heavier—warm with exerted bodies, sound, and the sharp edge of hunger.
Darcy was aware, acutely, of the distance between his own breath and the strength he required of it.
The dance had been a late one—graceful, restrained, chosen by the musicians as much out of courtesy as necessity. Fewer turns. Longer figures. The sort meant to carry a room gently toward a respite. It should have spared him.
Instead, it had demanded more.
Her hand in his—light, exact, responsive—had sent the now-familiar sensation through him in uneven waves: a twitch behind the eyes, a faint hollowing beneath the ribs, as though something essential were being drawn away and returned out of order.
Each time she stiffened—each moment her attention snagged elsewhere—the feeling sharpened.
When she relaxed again, it eased, but never fully released him.
He had held her through it. Smiled when required. Counted the measures. Let no one see how many times his toes dragged or his vision swam.
Now, as he guided her forward, his fingers tingled where they had rested at her back, not with heat but with a strange, echoing chill. He was faintly aware of his own pulse—too quick, then oddly slow—of the floor rising and falling by degrees so slight they might have been imagined.
He ignored the eyes upon them. He could not afford to spare attention for anything but remaining upright.
Elizabeth did not.
She took her seat with composure, but it was the sort that required effort. Her shoulders remained square; her hands folded neatly in her lap. Only the quick glance she cast along the table betrayed her attention to something beyond the place set before her.
Darcy drew back his chair—and had to pause before sitting, his hand resting a moment longer than necessary on its carved back, waiting for the faint rush in his head to pass.
It did. Mostly.
Mr Collins appeared only a short distance down the table, holding a chair for Charlotte Lucas.
Collins was speaking already—apologizing profusely for the delay, congratulating himself upon securing such an advantageous position—and as he moved down the line toward his place, Darcy saw Elizabeth squirm in discomfort.
Not sufficiently to invite notice. But enough.
Her head angled away from Collins; her gaze dropped as though to inspect the napkin she had already arranged.
One hand lifted briefly—not quite to her face, but near enough to suggest the gesture had been checked midway, as though she had remembered herself just in time.
Then she blinked, drank in a breath, and the tension in her shoulders eased.
She looked up, around, and smiled at him before he pulled out his own chair.
A pulse of nausea rose and fell again, sharp enough that he briefly considered—quite seriously—whether he might beg indulgence and withdraw. A breach of etiquette. An unpardonable one. And yet the thought clung, insistent, until he felt Elizabeth shift beside him.
She was not looking at him now. But her spine went rigid again, and with it, so did the pressure in his chest.
Darcy narrowed his eyes and frowned as he took his seat beside her.
Collins settled into his own chair two places down, still talking, still pleased. Charlotte Lucas inclined her head politely, her expression composed in the way Darcy had come to recognise as endurance rather than interest.
Elizabeth’s posture altered, her breath drawn as if to speak—but instead she startled, visibly, and turned her head. Staring… across the room.
Her gaze travelled past the nearer tables, past the press of gowns and uniforms, and came to rest—briefly, searchingly—on the far side of the hall, where the militia officers were being seated together. Wickham stood among them, laughing at something said by Denny.
Elizabeth’s eyes lingered there.
Then confusion crossed her face—not alarm, not distress, but a clear, unguarded uncertainty, as though the thing she had expected to find had failed to present itself. Her hand tightened once on the edge of the table.
The pressure in Darcy’s chest eased—just enough to be unmistakable.
She looked away again, this time more slowly, and straightened in her chair as if correcting herself. When her gaze returned to the place before her, it held no relief—only calculation.