The couples who were to dance lined up; Elizabeth looked at Darcy with her flashing eyes. “Pray, turn my pages. I need assistance.”
“With alacrity, charming mademoiselle.”
Elizabeth’s lips twisted, and Darcy blushed.
He shook his head. “I greatly suspect that failed to be the prettiest speech you have ever heard.”
Elizabeth sat down on the stool, and patted the seat next to him. “Do you intend to fish for a compliment?”
“Whatever vanity I possess — we established early that Idopossess vanity — my dandyish or rakish banter are outside its wide scope.”
He sat next to her, their legs brushing against each other. Darcy hadneverbeen so aware of anything as he experienced the closeness of her body. The smell of her rose perfume made his chest feel light.
She flipped through the notebook of copied music sheets, written in a neat hand. “You can follow the music well enough to tell when to change the page?”
“I can,” Darcy replied, studiously not looking at where their legs touched. He was familiar with this sort of task from the days when Georgiana still played.
“Do you think all flirtations are rakish?” Elizabeth asked, shifting her weight in a way that pressed her knee slightly into the springy muscles of his leg. “Determinedly disapproving of the greatest feminine pleasure. A man who haseverywoman desperate for him, due to hispilecan afford to disdain flirtation. Lesser men must — ah here it is.”
Elizabeth looked up to make sure the couples were assembled in their positions, and she began to play. After she had played for long enough to have a feel for the tune, Elizabeth said cautiously, in a distracted voice, “You who have heard the finest of performers must disdain my petty efforts.”
“Lovely. Entirely lovely.”
Elizabeth’s fingers stumbled, and she smiled widely. Unconsciously, Darcy thought, she pressed her thigh further into his. “I thought you disdained flirtation. And this is the easy part.”
“You fill it with feeling.”
“You must say that to all of the pretty girls playing music.”
“I never say that.”
Elizabeth flushed.
Darcy said with a smile, “Is it you who now searches for a compliment?”
“Youarea charmer. Do you really never compliment a girl’s playing?”
“Not with meaning. Except…Georgiana.”
Elizabeth did not say anything at first, filled with the effort of a particularly fast part of the music. “Georgie can play? Jane said nothing of it.”
“She does not anymore.”
While Elizabeth’s eyes did not leave the sheet of music, he thought there was sympathy in her manner.
Darcy swallowed. “She would, in the past, before Wickham. She had an extraordinary genius for music.”
“What made her to stop?”
“I know not. She chose to not play. I always took great pleasure listening to her… She never played again.”
“You wish she would begin to play again?”
“Only if she found joy in the performance. Not for the sake of acquiring impressive accomplishments.”
“That…I approve. Papa always was much like that with what he expected us to learn. We might choose what we enjoyed instead of what society dictated.”
Darcy shook his head with a smile. “I did not mean that as a suggestion to anarchy in studies. A child should both show application and be directed by her guardians.”
