Chapter Eight
Darcy encountered Elizabeth again some days later at a musical evening given by mutual acquaintance of the Gardiners, an occasion he had not expected to attend until Fitzwilliam, with the particular persistence of a man who had appointed himself unofficial architect of his cousin's happiness, secured them both an invitation on grounds Darcy suspected owed more to design than to chance.
She was seated, when he entered, beside a gentleman he did not recognize, whose easy laughter and evident attentiveness to whatever she was saying produced in Darcy a sensation he was too honest with himself, these days, not to identify plainly as jealousy, unwelcome and entirely unjustified given the terms on which he and Elizabeth presently stood.
"Who is that," he asked Fitzwilliam, with more sharpness than the question strictly required, "seated beside Miss Bennet?"
Fitzwilliam followed his gaze with evident interest. "Rafferty Vane, I believe. Pleasant fellow, minor fortune, connected to the Hursts through his mother's side. I have heard nothing ill of him, though I confess I have not made a particular study of his character."
Darcy said nothing further, but the observation sat with him uncomfortably through the whole of the evening's music, and it was not until the company had risen to move between rooms that he found occasion to approach her, choosing his moment with a care that felt, even to himself, rather more deliberate than the casual encounter he attempted to present it as.
"Miss Bennet."
"Mr. Darcy." She turned to him with an expression he could not entirely read, something guarded that had not been present at Mrs. Fenwick's party, and he wondered, with a small stab of unease, whether Mr. Vane's easy attentions had begun, in some measure, to replace whatever cautious understanding they had reached in that earlier, more difficult conversation.
"I hope I find you well," he said, "and that the difficulties of recent weeks have not weighed too heavily upon you."
"I am tolerably well, I thank you. I find that a person may grow accustomed to almost anything, given sufficient time and sufficient distraction.
" There was something in the last word, a small, deliberate emphasis, that he suspected was not entirely without design, though whether it was meant to wound him or simply to declare her own independence he could not determine with certainty.
"I am glad you have found distraction," he said, and heard, in his own voice, a stiffness he had not intended and could not entirely master. "Mr. Vane seems a pleasant companion."
"He is very pleasant, yes. He has the particular gift of making an evening feel lighter than it otherwise would, which I confess I have found a welcome quality of late, given how heavy so many of my other engagements have grown."
Darcy absorbed this with a discomfort he recognized, distantly, as unreasonable; he had no claim upon her attentions, had made none, had told himself repeatedly over the past weeks that he had no right to expect anything of her beyond whatever cautious civility she chose to extend him.
And yet the sight of her laughing easily with another man, a man untouched by the complicated history that made every exchange between himself and Elizabeth a careful negotiation of old wounds and new hopes, struck him with a force he had not anticipated and did not entirely know how to master.
"I am glad," he said again, and found he had nothing further to add that would not betray, more than he wished, the true state of his feelings.
She studied him a moment, and something in her expression softened, very slightly, though she said only, "You mentioned, at Mrs. Fenwick's, that you hoped for an opportunity to speak with me properly, Mr. Darcy.
I confess the opportunity has not yet presented itself, between one engagement and another. "
"No," he agreed. "It has not."
"Perhaps," she said, and there was something careful in the offering, a door left deliberately ajar rather than thrown open, "perhaps it will, before too much longer, if we are both willing to make the occasion for it rather than waiting for it to arrive unbidden."
It was, he understood, both an invitation and a test, an acknowledgment that whatever stood between them remained unresolved and a challenge to him to be the one who resolved it, rather than continuing to circle the matter in crowded rooms where neither of them could speak freely.
He felt something in his chest loosen, very slightly, at the offering, the first genuine hope he had permitted himself since Fitzwilliam's warning of Caroline's gossip had thrown the whole delicate balance of their situation into fresh jeopardy.
"I will make the occasion," he said, quietly, "if you will permit me to call at your uncle's house, Miss Bennet, at whatever hour is convenient to you and to Mrs. Gardiner."
"I believe," Elizabeth said, after a moment's consideration, "that would be permitted, Mr. Darcy. My aunt is not unreasonable in such matters, provided the proprieties are properly observed."
It was not, he understood, the whole of what either of them wished to say, but it was, in the careful architecture of a courtship conducted under the constant scrutiny of a curious and unforgiving society, as much ground as could safely be claimed in a single evening, and Darcy found himself, walking home some hours later beneath a sky beginning to clear of the day's earlier clouds, entertaining a hope he had not permitted himself in the whole of the three weeks since Hunsford: that whatever the story circulating through London's drawing rooms presently claimed of them, the truth, when it was finally spoken plainly between the two people who alone possessed it, might yet prove considerably kinder than the rumour.