“Simple soldier. Can’t help it.”
“If I were married to you,” Elizabeth replied, “I would beat you till you ceased the act.”
“Married to me?” Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. “That would be worth the endless beatings, for I shall never cease to be naught but a simple soldier.”
Darcy stared at the two of them with a deepening glower on his face.
Was he jealous?
Elizabeth could not help but like that idea, and she smiled at him, but before she could decide what to say to Darcy, the music began, and Colonel Fitzwilliam took her hand to lead her into the line.
Jane and Bingley opened the set at the top of the line, as Elizabeth was rather beginning to expect.
Darcy and Caroline settled a little higher up into the line than Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam.
There was a cheery glow in Caroline’s face, while Mr. Darcy… Elizabeth sighed and shook her head.
She could not read him — or rather she could, but wished that the reading suggested something different.
The music began, and they went around and around in turn.
Elizabeth began the conversation with Colonel Fitzwilliam with a laugh, “My anxiety upon the matter of my clerical cousin proved well founded — heisdetermined to marry me and hedidask me to dance the first with him.”
With a grin Colonel Fitzwilliam replied, “But you do not yet know if he is fat toed, perhaps he is the finest dancer in the county? — you know he is my aunt’s parson. She might have advised him on how to dance.”
“The famous Lady Catherine de Bourgh! You are connected to her?” Elizabeth replied with delight. “Is she everything I have imagined? — shall you wish me joy whenIfind myself serving as a fourth player at her card table. A role Mr. Collins has suggested several times I will serve elegantly in.”
“I would delight more in seeing the two of you fight,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied, “than in watching a regiment of the French be overrun by Spanish soldiers.”
Much further down the line they heard a squeal of pain, and when the two of them looked over, Mary was glaring at Mr. Collins while she gripped her foot in pain.
Elizabeth winced.
“Oracle! From Delphi!” Colonel Fitzwilliam exclaimed. “Goddess, proclaim my fate.”
Laughing, Elizabeth replied, “It is no joke to me, I am obliged to partner him for the second dance of the night.”
“If you wish I might, ah,accidentallystep on his foot myself.”
Elizabeth snorted with delight. “Do not say such things, or I might become tempted to take advantage of yoursimple soldierlynature.”
Grinning at each other, they paused their conversation as they made the square with another couple. Elizabeth glanced over to see how Caroline fared.
She still smiled, but Elizabeth thought that despite the exercise her glow had faded.
Darcy did not smile.
“I wonder at it,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said while they walked hand in hand further up the line to their next position, “at your behavior in this matter. You must know that there is no chance that my cousin will marry your friend.”
Elizabeth sighed and said in a quiet voice which would not carry, “Now, now, say notnochance. Perhaps they shall meet again in ten years, both matured and changed by their sufferings in the intervening years, and each widowed and free once more — do not laugh! Such things happen in novels every day.”
Colonel Fitzwilliamdidlaugh. “So why then do you continue to push her case?”
“What else am I to do? She is my friend.”
“You might counsel her to abandon the effort, to spare herself the heartbreak that will ensue.”
The music now sounded sour, the horde of guests stank, and the heat oppressed. Elizabeth felt all the pleasantness of the ball flee from her. “Oh, please! Do not speak about such unhappy things.”
