Chapter 25 #3
Darcy swallowed and glanced away. He had not intended to attend to her so closely. He had resolved, in fact, upon quite the opposite. Yet the effort of not noticing her now required more attention than simply allowing himself to see what was plainly there.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said quietly, leaning just enough to avoid being overheard, “are you well?”
She looked back to him, a forced brightness returning to her expression as though it had never left. “Perfectly,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“Because,” he replied, choosing his words with care, “you appear less at ease than you were a moment ago.”
She hesitated—only a fraction of a second. “I am only observing,” she said lightly. “One must, in such company.”
Darcy drew his chair back only a fraction, enough to shield her from the worst of the room’s traffic without making a show of it. The motion left him faintly light-headed—nothing alarming, merely an odd swim at the edge of his sight—but it passed when he fixed his attention upon her.
He did not look toward Mr Collins again.
“You seem rather sensitized to the general—may I say, entirely expected—speculation of the room this evening,” he said mildly. “I should recommend ignoring at least half of it.”
Elizabeth’s mouth curved. “Only half? How generous.”
He flicked his eyes toward another corner, where Mrs Bennet was fluttering her handkerchief and holding forth with unmistakable animation. Elizabeth’s name surfaced even at a distance. Then there was Collins, whose glances in their direction were too frequent to be accidental.
“At least,” Darcy continued, “the remainder may safely be dismissed as invention. I have already heard three incompatible accounts of your prospects, my intentions, observed six hands covering indiscreet mouths, and we have been seated less than five minutes.”
She laughed—softly, but with unmistakable relief. The sound settled something in him. The faint queasiness that had dulled his appetite eased, replaced by the simpler pleasure of watching her speak without caution.
“Then I am glad of it,” she said. “I was beginning to fear I had been living a double life without noticing.”
“If you have,” Darcy said, “you conduct it with admirable discretion.”
Her eyes brightened at that, and she leaned back in her chair. “You see? That is precisely the sort of encouragement one requires. If I am to be misrepresented, I prefer it done with elegance.”
He found himself smiling before he could check it. The room still pressed close, the noise still rose and fell in uneven waves, but seated beside her, it all seemed manageable—background rather than assault.
“I shall endeavour to correct the record where possible.”
“I should be grateful,” she said. “Though I warn you—my mother will only improve upon any correction you offer.”
“That,” Darcy said dryly, “does appear to be a talent.”
She laughed again, more freely now. “It is rather astonishing how pleasant an evening may become when one is no longer obliged to listen for one’s own name. Do you not find that the success of any evening depends almost entirely on whether one is permitted to choose one’s own companions?”
“A dangerous doctrine,” Darcy replied. A brief blur crossed his vision; he blinked it away and went on. “Society would collapse.”
“Only the duller portions,” she said sweetly.
He huffed a quiet laugh before he could stop himself. “Then I shall consider myself warned.”
They ate for a moment in companionable ease, the clatter of the room receding to a tolerable murmur.
Darcy found he had little appetite for what lay before him, though he made a show of it—lifting his fork, taking a few careful bites—more for the sake of appearances than hunger.
The effort cost him more than it ought, but he ignored that as well.
“You danced well,” he said at last. “With attention and skill, I mean. Not merely with energy.”
She glanced up, amused. “That sounds suspiciously like praise.”
“I intended it as an observation,” he replied. “And perhaps gratitude from my toes, though I am aware the distinction is rarely convincing.”
“I shall allow it,” she laughed. “You strike me as someone who notices how things are done, not merely whether they are done.”
“That is generous,” he said. “And perhaps unwise.”
“Why?”
“Because it invites questions,” he said. “And I find myself ill-equipped to deflect them.”
Her smile turned curious. “I should have thought deflection a practiced skill of yours.”
“Only when necessary,” he answered. He reached for his glass, then set it down again untouched. “I prefer candour when it is… safe.”
She considered that. “I suspect we differ there. I find candour most useful when it is inconvenient.”
He shook his head, a quiet huff of amusement escaping him despite the faint tightening beneath his ribs. “Then I am glad not to be your adversary.”
Her smile hovered between deliberate flirtation and calculation. “Not at present.”
Warmth answered that—quick, dangerous—and with it a slight tremor at the corner of his vision that made him blink once, hard, before it passed. He did not look away from her.
“May I inquire,” he said, more softly now, “what occupies your time when you are not enduring the attentions of half the county?”
She blinked, then smiled. “Reading, mostly. Walking, when I can escape supervision. Observing people when neither is possible.”
“Reading,” he repeated, pleased despite himself. “What sort?”
“Varied,” she said. “Though lately I have been quite taken with something unexpected.”
“Oh? Anything worth reciting? I daresay it would make more agreeable fodder than most of the other conversation we might overhear tonight.”
She hesitated—only a fraction—then shrugged. “It is a collection of old ballads and fragments my father procured while I was unwell. Nothing fashionable. Odd, really. But strangely compelling.”
Darcy’s fingers stilled against the stem of his glass.
“Ballads,” he said carefully. The word itself seemed to settle wrong in his mouth. “Of what sort?”
She pursed her lips, thinking. “Legends, mostly. Folk tales. Inconvenient places. Unwise promises. The sort of thing sensible people pretend not to believe in.”
A faint pressure gathered behind his eyes. He shifted in his chair, the movement precise, controlled, and found his gaze drawn—of all people—toward Mr Collins before he could stop it.
“Have you a favourite?”
“I do. Though I doubt it would suit you.”
“Try me.”
“Well. I only recall the first two stanzas.” She smiled, then recited—softly, with a thoughtfulness that stripped the verse of any pretension:
“When Avalon in mist was bound,
And noble steel undone,
The thorn abid upon that ground
Till reckoning were begun.
She bore no sword, nor carried shield,
Nor rode in silver mail
Her voice alone the grove did bind,
Her oath the thornwood vale.”
“There,” she finished with a faint lift of her shoulder. “That is all I remember at the moment.”
Darcy remembered.
His lips parted without his consent, the next words pressing forward—not as recollection, but as something that had never loosened its hold on him. He had learned them young. He had been instructed, just as firmly, never to give them voice.
A sharp, visceral awareness went through him—like misplacing one’s footing and discovering there is no ground beneath.
This was not a fragment. Not a curiosity.
This was the ballad as his father had kept it, intact and unromantic, meant to be endured and dismissed, not spoken aloud by anyone who had no right to it.
And she had spoken it.
Elizabeth Bennet’s eyes were still upon him—bright, attentive, waiting.
She could have no notion of what she had just touched. Darcy forced his attention back into himself, into the room, into the harmlessness of the moment. Some recognitions, once admitted, could not be lived with. They altered the terms of everything that followed.
“That,” he said, managing a faint, dismissive smile, “is a remarkably earnest choice for light reading. Were there dragons and faeries as well? A black sorcerer, no doubt. I hope the volume offers something that does not hinge quite so heavily upon doom.”
Elizabeth laughed. “You object to a story that asks something of its characters?”
“I object to stories that make demands at all,” he replied easily, though his appetite had quite abandoned him. “I read to be educated or entertained, not enlisted.”
“Ah! Then you must avoid half the best poems and legends. They are forever insisting that one thing must follow another.”
“Yes,” he said, lifting his glass and taking a measured sip. “A most tiresome habit.”
“And yet people keep repeating them.” She pursed her lips, brow arched in quiet challenge.
“People repeat many things they do not intend to believe,” Darcy answered, a shade too quickly. Then, as if it were of no consequence at all, he added with a smile, “That does not make them true.”
She laughed, conceding the point with a tilt of her glass, and glanced away.
For a moment, he allowed himself to think the matter settled. Then he noticed the direction of her gaze—deliberate, wary—down the length of the table.
Toward Mr Collins.
Her mouth tightened, only briefly, before she smoothed the expression away.
“May I ask,” Darcy said quietly, “whether your cousin has given you cause for discomfort beyond his… conversational enthusiasm?”
Her brows lifted. “An odd question for a ball supper, sir.”
“I am observant,” he replied. “Occasionally, to my regret.”
She stiffened. Her smile now held a question. “What concern is it of yours?”
He met her gaze and chose his tone with care. “Call it a general dislike of seeing anyone cornered against their will.”
She laughed softly, as though to dismiss the matter. “You are very kind, but I assure you my cousin’s chief offense is endurance. One grows weary of being improved at.”
Darcy did not return the smile. “That is not what I asked.”
Her expression shifted—sobering, then brightening again. For a moment, she seemed poised to parry. Instead, she hesitated. The hesitation was slight, but he had been watching her too long to miss it.
“You flinch,” he said quietly. “Not merely from tedium. When he approaches. When you are forced into proximity with him.” His voice lowered. “I do not believe that is nothing. Has he harmed you?”
She drew a breath and released it more slowly. “You observe too much for your own comfort, sir.”
“So I am often told.”
Her fingers tightened about the stem of her glass. “It is not his voice,” she said at last. “Nor even the manner of his address. It is… what he insists upon saying.”
Darcy leaned a fraction closer. The movement sent a faint, unwelcome pressure through his chest, which he ignored. “What does he insist upon?”
She met his eyes now, and all levity fell away.
“He speaks of arrangements. Of expectations laid out long before anyone had a voice in the matter. He speaks as though repetition itself might grant authority.” Her mouth tightened.
“And when he speaks of them, it is as though he believes I ought to listen—ought to accept—as if such things concerned me personally.”
“That… makes no sense.”
“No,” she agreed. “It does not. And I doubt he is intelligent enough to perceive any fault in it.”
She frowned, then tilted her head, studying him with a curiosity that had sharpened into something more exacting. “But if we are to be candid,” she continued, “the conversations that trouble me most do not begin with myself at all.”
“Oh?”
“They begin,” she said evenly, “with one Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Your aunt, I understand.”
The name fell like a tolling bell. Darcy blinked, a brief tightening passing through him.
“And they end,” she added, “with you.”
His hand closed against the edge of the table. “My aunt has a talent for presuming,” he said. “You need not trouble yourself with her suppositions.”
“And yet she troubles the room with them,” Elizabeth replied. “And my cousin repeats them as though they were already settled.” Her gaze searched his. “What is it Lady Catherine expects of you, Mr Darcy?”
The question struck too near. Habit rose at once to shield him.
“I do not think this is a suitable subject for—” He pushed back his chair.
He did not know what he meant to do. There was no proper excuse for leaving the table mid-course.
But the instant he rose, Elizabeth startled.
The reaction was immediate, unguarded. She gasped—not loudly, but sharply—one hand shot to her temple, and the other flew out as though to stop him, closing around his wrist without thought.
The contact was unmistakable.
Not pain. Not shock.
Something else entirely.
Heat flared where their skin met—swift, certain—as though recognition itself had taken form. Darcy froze. The pressure in his chest deepened, breath caught high and shallow, every instinct arrested.
The room did not vanish. It simply ceased to matter.
Elizabeth stared at their joined hands, then up at him, her expression caught between surprise and something perilously close to understanding.
Darcy did not move. Could not.
For the first time, the old stories did not feel distant or absurd. They stood before him, embodied and undeniable—looking back through her eyes.
And in that instant, he knew—beyond sense, beyond any chance of saving doubt.
This was the thing he had been fleeing. A lifetime spent in dismissal and reason, laughing off a heritage so buried beneath habit that its shape had nearly been lost.
It had found him out at last.