“That is not—”
“Nothing I care to tell you,” she said, more sharply. “Do not make me regret this.”
He watched her. The flush in her cheeks. The too-careful tone. The way her hands gripped her cloak just a shade too tightly.
Somethinghad happened. But she would not say.
He could refuse her. Call it a mad idea—because it was. He could return to London alone, and spend the next month dancing with heiresses and tolerating introductions engineered by his aunt and grandmother.
Or—
He could allow her to help him. Just a little.
She tilted her head. “What do you say?”
Darcy exhaled. “You would truly help me court other women?”
“Vigorously,” she said. “With ruthless, cheerful efficiency.”
“And you expect the same in return?”
She smiled. “It is only fair.”
There were at least six good reasons to say no.
Darcy nodded once. “Very well.”
Her smile widened, triumphant and tired and something else he could not name.
“December, then,” she said. “Let the season begin.”
And then she vanished—laughing, cloak swinging, already swallowed by the crowd.
He was left staring after her. Still holding his gloves. And possibly his doom.
Still entirely uncertain what had just occurred.
Chapter Seventeen
27 November
The sun was alreadyup by the time Darcy had made it to bed.
Not that it mattered. He would not manage to sleep.
The rooms of Netherfield were unnaturally still, the aftermath of celebration clinging to the walls like soot. Somewhere below stairs, servants were putting the drawing rooms back to rights. Chairs repositioned. Carpets straightened. A shattered punch bowl swept away and quietly replaced before Miss Bingley could come down and notice. No one else in the house stirred. But Darcy lay fully dressed atop his coverlet, boots still on, coat draped over a nearby chair, and eyes fixed on the ceiling like it might offer a solution to the latest Bennet-shaped puzzle that refused to leave his mind.
He had agreed to a scheme. A plan. A partnership—with the most maddening woman in the county.
And she had orchestrated it with a smile on her lips and a fire in her eyes, as if proposing their mutual courtship expeditions was no more meaningful than asking him to pass the preserves at tea.
Worse—he had accepted.
Not because the idea was good. Not because it would work. Not even because he trusted her to follow through. But because for one moment—one bright, absurd moment, probably born of exhaustion—he had believed her. Believedinher. That she meant what she said, and that her urgency, whatever its origin, had something to do with him.
He was, evidently, a fool.
Darcy scrubbed a hand over his face and rose.
