“Mr. Walton. He is the violinist, do you see? There. Bitten by a horse last week, I’m afraid. One would never know by his enthusiasm for the piece this evening.”
“Er…” Mr. Darcy adjusted his cufflinks. “Indeed. He plays very well.”
“There. Now we may be silent until we must step together again.” I turned my head to watch a servant replacing a set of nearly guttered candles at the edge of the room, but when I looked back, Mr. Darcy was still staring at me. Oh, bother.
“Do you find the tempo a little fast this evening, Mr. Darcy?”
He looked at me strangely. “I find it precisely as it should be. Do you not?”
“Oh, no, I think it accurate in every way. For, you see, it took us exactly one measure to traverse the line, just as it ought. I only wondered because you look displeased by something.”
“Nothing at all, Miss Elizabeth.”
“That is very fine. Now, it is your turn to think of something to speak of, Mr. Darcy. Might I suggest observing something about how much pleasanter it is to attend a private ball than a public one? Or perhaps you could comment on the flavor of the soup.”
He stepped forward and took my hand to lead me around the next couple. “The soup?”
“Just as you please. The pheasant was done to a turn. Do you not agree?”
“Indeed.”
“Oh, come, Mr. Darcy! You must give me something better than one-word answers.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “I would be happy to discuss anything you prefer. Pray, tell me what you would most like to speak of.”
I considered his question as he marched me around, then returned me to my place. “It must be difficult to settle on a topic, is it not? For I have noted that you, like myself, are usually unwilling to speak at all unless you can say something profound indeed.”
“I would argue thatyoupossess no such difficulty,” was his dry retort. “And I cannot control how my own words are perceived.”
“There, an answer that I must think on for a moment. That will do for the present.”
He stepped back, but his face did not look so grave as it had. In fact, he almost appeared to be amused, and searching for something to say. “Do you often walk toward Meryton?” he ventured.
That was a piteous attempt. But at least it was a question that evoked a response, so I smiled. “Yes, often. In fact, we had just been meeting a new friend yesterday when you happened upon us.”
My heavens! I did not know Mr. Darcy possessed so many feelings, but a great cascade of them blasted over his face all at once. His jaw rippled, his throat bobbed, and his eyes glittered to a fearsome black. “I do not wonder that Mr. Wickham was able tomakea friend of you. Whether he deserves tokeepyour friendship is another matter.”
“A friend is a valuable thing to have, would you not agree?”
His nostrils flared slightly. “I would.”
“Then you must also agree that the loss of a friendship is a tragic thing, indeed. The material harm in such a loss cannot be measured.”
He moved toward me and caught my hand for another march, and his voice dropped to a low growl. “Unless the ‘friend’ is shown to be deficient in character, in which case, the loss ought to be his burden to bear, not mine to regret.”
I stopped mid-step. “You are very hard, Mr. Darcy. With such high standards, it must be difficult, indeed, for anyone to winyourfriendship.”
He tightened his grip on my hand and pulled me out of the way of the next dancers. “Not so difficult as you might imagine. I believe the fault you would assign to me is not lack of civility, but an unwillingness to revise my opinions once they are fixed.”
I pivoted into my place. “One must wonder what measure you use. I trust you are exceedingly careful in the forming of these opinions?”
“Exceedingly.”
And with that one word, our conversation was done. I fell to silent fuming, and he to dark brooding. The very cheek of the man! To stand here with me and all but tell me to my face that I was being deceived in Mr. Wickham’s character, whenhewas the disagreeable one and everyone knew it! For surely, it was forhispleasure that Mr. Wickham had been excluded from this evening’s enjoyment. And not because the rest of the neighborhood liked Mr. Darcy, but because he was Mr. Bingley’s friend, while the other was not.
I was too practical to think myself in love with Mr. Wickham after only two meetings, but I will own that his happy manners and the hope of a dance with such an amiable man had been my balm since Mr. Collins demanded the first set. And now, because of Mr. Darcy, I was to be denied the pleasure of a cheerful man’s company.
But there was always tomorrow. Surely, we would see him walking up the lane with Denny, and he would humbly describe some perfectly acceptable excuse for his absence. And then, he would ask to walk our party to Meryton, or call on us again in the following days.
