Page 110 of The Matchmaker’s Mistake

“Well,” she said. “According to Emmeline, you fetched Miss Elizabeth punch. Although there were eighty people, you never once lost her in the crowd. The one time you could not see her, you left the room in search and returned some minutes later with her on your arm. And Miss Elizabeth, for her part, did not seem to like it when you spoke with Miss Finch.”

“It does not matter.”

“Emmeline also observed that you allow Miss Elizabeth to tease you.”

“I allow Richard to tease me.”

“Yes, but you enjoy her teasing.”

Darcy did not answer.

“She says you watch Miss Elizabeth even when she is speaking to someone else. Not continually,” his mother added, before he could object. “That would lack subtlety. You look away and then look back again, which she considers far more telling.”

Darcy rubbed the back of his head, something he would never have done in his mother’s presence had he not been so tired. “This is absurd.”

“Most observation appears absurd to the person being observed,” his mother said. She moved her eyes to his hands but did not point out his lapse in manners. “There is also Georgiana.”

“What of her?”

“You have encouraged the friendship between them. Emmeline says—and I quite concur—that you have never before taken the least interest in forwarding Georgiana’s acquaintance with any unmarried woman.”

“Miss Elizabeth is good for her.”

“I am aware.”

Darcy had believed himself careful. Richard knew, but he had not expected anyone else to notice. Emmeline had, but despite George’s teasing about his wife and her wager with Milton, he had never considered that Em, so busy with her own life, would care this much about his.

He had misjudged that too, it seemed.

He considered what his mother had said. Had Miss Elizabeth truly minded his speaking with Miss Finch? Could she have been jealous? He certainly had been when it came to Aldridge.

“That was not all,” his mother was saying. “Emmeline spoke at length, and she ended with three sentences I am going to repeat exactly. They do not reflect well upon me, and so I shall say them only once and will then deny having ever admitted them. Are you listening?”

“Of course,” he said.

His mother caught his gaze and held it. “She said, ‘Your son has been in love with Miss Elizabeth Bennet all winter. Miss Elizabeth is not unmoved. And you have been proceeding all season under a mistake of some magnitude.’”

The fire ticked, but otherwise there was no noise in the room.

His mother closed her eyes. “When I asked you if there was anyone⁠—”

He would not allow her to continue. “There was not. Not then. I had insulted her grievously, and my own feelings were not relevant. But Miss Elizabeth is not moved by my feelings for her. Even if she was once, she is not now.”

His mother sighed and opened her eyes again but did not move. “Emmeline has never in her life been mistaken about who is looking at whom. She may not always be correct about why, but she was quite convincing in this case.”

“Em is mistaken this time. I have it from the lady herself.”

His mother paused. “You have what from the lady herself?”

“A refusal.” He had not meant to say it, and certainly not to his mother of all people, but it was a relief to let it go. “I called at Gracechurch Street a week ago on Thursday, where I asked Miss Elizabeth to be my wife.”

His mother was silent.

“She refused me. It was final and deserved. I would rather have told you nothing about it, but you have come in here armed with Em’s suspicions, and I suppose you must have your answer. That is my answer.”

She was silent for a moment. “Tell me everything,” she said.

Darcy did not wish to revisit the mess he had made of things. But he could not sit in this room working all hours and never putting away the catalogue, either. So he told her.