Page 2

“What an evening this is turning out to be,” she remarked enthusiastically. “Charles is so pleased with himself that his first country ball is such a success. He does love a full room.” Her gaze moved across the floor before landing, with apparent carelessness, on the figures of Mr Collins and Miss Elizabeth. “Though I must say, I think he is a bit too indiscriminate when it comes to the company.”

Darcy took a slow breath and did not reply.

“I see that Mr Collins has found Eliza,” she continued, still in a tone of innocent observation, though her eyes had grown rather hard. “He has been most attentive to her all evening. Though I suppose one cannot wonder at it,” she said, with a small, sympathetic sigh. “They say that the Bennet estate is entailed on him, and so he has come here with the express purpose of finding a bride among the Bennet girls. Mrs Long in Meryton believes he had hopes for Jane, but since Charles has been so particular in his attention….” She left the rest delicately unfinished. “At any rate, it seems that Mr Collins has decided to look elsewhere, and Eliza is the obvious choice. She’s quite clever, perhaps too clever for a country clergyman, but it will ensure that her mother and sisters aren’t thrown out into the cold and as they say, beggars cannot —”

“I wonder at all this interest in Mr Collins,” Darcy interrupted.

Miss Bingley blinked, but she was not deterred. “I am sure that they will come to suit each other well. She has great wit but little else, and he has little wit but stands to inherit her home, and for a woman in her position, a clergyman of good character is quite as much as can be expect—”

“Miss Bingley.” Darcy’s voice came out colder than he intended, but he decided he did not care. “I do not think you are as indifferent to Miss Elizabeth as you claim, as she seems to be quite often the focus of your conversation.”

Miss Bingley’s face went through several expressions in quick succession before stopping at one that was bland and surprisingly unreadable. “Oh, Mr Darcy, you do like to tease,” she said. Darcy, who never teased, looked at her impassively. She excused herself with perfect composure and moved away, and Darcy, for a brief moment, felt a bleak sense of satisfaction. He had not meant to say that to Miss Bingley. Things he had not meant to do were becoming a rather large part of his daily actions.

Any satisfaction he might have gathered from rousting Miss Bingley disappeared the moment he turned to look again upon Elizabeth dancing with Mr Collins. The thought of so vibrant and intelligent a woman tied to a simpering fool like Collins… But Miss Bingley was right. Most would see it as an excellent match, for the girl and for her family. Darcy watched them. Collins was, of course, still talking. Elizabeth turned away in what Darcy could only guess was the third or fourth attempt at a graceful exit that Collins had completely missed. Her lips tightened slightly, as though preparing herself for the next opening. Would this be her entire life? Trying and failing to escape Collins’s prattle?

Darcy turned away. It was not his concern. There was nothing he could do about her situation, and even if he had been so inclined, she had made her distaste for him quite clear. It was none of his concern.

A movement at the edge of his vision caught his attention.

Lydia Bennet was at the centre of a large group of officers. That in itself was not unusual — that appeared to be the girl’s natural habitat, she was found there so often. What was unusual was the quality of attention the young girl was giving to the erstwhile objects of her attention. She was laughing and talking, turning from one young man to the next with her usual complete regard for restraint, but even for her, there was an overly exuberant air to her attention. She was usually single-mindedly focused on whatever young man was in front of her, but tonight, she seemed far more interested in the far door than in any of the young men. She had an air of anticipation that was different from her usual boisterousness, that seemed…expectant.

Who could she be expecting when all the objects of her delight were before her? Darcy frowned.

Then Elizabeth Bennet laughed. It wasn’t a polite, social laugh, but one of real amusement, sudden and unguarded in the way one laughs when taken by surprise by something unexpectedly amusing. Darcy responded to that laugh before he realised he had, swinging his gaze back to the other side of the room. Elizabeth looked amused in a near-delighted way, whereas Collins looked perplexed, and as though he could not decide if he should be laughing as well, or be offended.

Elizabeth pressed her hand to her mouth, forcing back her amusement, then nodded at Collins. Darcy realised what must have happened — Collins had said something intended as a compliment that doubtless had come out sounding like anything but. For whatever reason, Elizabeth, who took everything Darcy said as the most dire of insults, had chosen to be amused rather than offended. That, Darcy thought crossly, was rather more generous than the man deserved.

He looked away for a moment, back to the other side of the room where Lydia Bennet —

Was gone.

Darcy frowned, scanning the room. She had slipped away somewhere — to the card room or ladies’ sitting room or somewhere perfectly unremarkable, surely. Miss Lydia Bennet was fifteen and irrepressible, and it would be rather more surprising than not if she didn’t slip away somewhere or other during the ball. She had plenty of family here to watch over her, and it wasn’t Darcy’s responsibility to keep tabs on her.

Though perhaps he should tell Elizabeth….

He looked to find her, and found that she had finally escaped Collins and was making her way across the room. She had stopped to speak to an older lady, who laughed at something Elizabeth said to her. She moved on to the next person, that perfect ease with which she moved through every situation fixed to her like it was innate, and had nothing to do with effort.

Darcy watched her, and wondered what it was like to move through the world so at ease with oneself.

No. He would not be thinking such things about Elizabeth Bennet. He would not be thinking about her at all. He did not remind himself that he had made this decision before. He would begin ignoring her immediately, Darcy decided.

He kept watching her, his eyes following as she moved about the room.

Perhaps not quite immediately.

Chapter 2

Elizabeth had always had a certain sensitivity to being watched. She attributed it, when she thought about it at all, to something that had developed out of necessity in a household where privacy was a foreign concept and where most of its inhabitants were continually observing each other, and for reasons of nosiness or poking fun more often than genuine care. She felt it now, that warning tingling at the back of her neck, the subtle warning that a gaze was following her with intention and that she had better watch her actions lest she be reported on.

It wasn’t enough for Elizabeth to know that she was being watched, however. She must, of course, know who was doing the watching.

She turned, and was rather surprised at what she found.

Elizabeth had been expecting her mother, making the sort of matrimonial calculations that she, and to be fair, all the other mamas, always made at this sort of event. She was half-afraid it would be Mr Collins, who had told her that “she was rather more attractive than one would expect a clever woman to be,” which had greatly amused her until she realised that Mr Collins would not be giving “compliments” on her appearance without some reason behind it.

To Elizabeth’s momentary relief, neither of her suppositions proved to be correct. She was at least as discomfited, though, to find that the person looking at her was Mr Darcy.

Odder still, Mr Darcy was not simply glancing at her. He was looking at her openly, watching her, even, with no apparent attempt to disguise his perusal. Such blatant observation was either the sign of a man with very little social awareness, or of one who thought so little of her opinion that he didn’t bother to disguise the scorn he felt that led him to watch her as though she were some curious species of insect.