“Of course you did,” the dowager said.
Darcy only swallowed and looked as though he would have preferred an encounter with Napoleon.
“Your timing is excellent,” the dowager went on. “I have just invited the Miss Bennets to accompany me to a musicale tomorrow evening. You shall have company.”
He blinked. “You have—?”
“I have.” She looked positively gleeful. “Seven o’clock. My carriage shall call for them here. Come along, Fitzwilliam, we are late already.”
Darcy hesitated, his mouth working. “Late for what?”
But the dowager only took his arm. “Shall we? And Miss Elizabeth, I fancy you shall make for an amusing companion.”
Elizabeth concealed the rather swift upturn of her brow as she dipped a curtsy to the lady. “We look forward to it.”
The carriage jolted forwardwith a lurch that sent Darcy bracing against the doorframe. Across from him, his grandmother sat perfectly composed, her gloved hands folded atop her reticule, looking every inch the benevolent architect of someone else's disaster.
"You are brooding again," she said cheerfully. "I do not allow brooding in my carriages. It darkens the upholstery."
Darcy fixed his gaze on the passing streets. "I wonder if it is worth the bother of reminding you that this ismycarriage, as you had already sent yours away. Oddly.”
“Oh, no sense making the fellow wait out in the rain.”
Darcy narrowed his eyes and slid a glance to his grandmother. “Indeed. And what precisely are you about now? You ought not to have brought Georgiana to Town."
"Nonsense. Georgiana is in excellent hands. Mrs. Annesley is an admirable companion, and I shall personally see to it that no gossip dares brush so much as a hem of her gown."
He did not answer. The thought of Georgiana exposed—even under careful supervision—to London’s gossips and fortune-hunters set his teeth on edge.
"And as for you," the dowager continued, blithely ignoring his silence, "you are quite wrong to sulk. I have done you a tremendous favor."
Darcy turned a disbelieving glance upon her. “I am sorry?”
"Indeed," she said. "You could not very well march up to Gracechurch Street and drag the poor girls into Society by brute force. Appearances must be preserved. I, being the soul of discretion, have offered them my escort to the Harrington musicale. Entirely proper. Entirely unremarkable."
Darcy closed his eyes briefly. "You should not involve yourself in this."
"I already have," the dowager said, unrepentant. "It was either me or some clumsy scheme of yours, and we both know which would actually result in you at the altar."
He tightened his grip on his gloves. "Miss Bennet is not a suitable match."
"Good heavens, no," she agreed at once, her tone positively sparkling. "A provincial girl of no fortune, no connections, and an alarming tendency toward original thought. Utterly unsuitable.” She sat back and peered deliberately out the window before growling, “Though I do wonder how many ‘unsuitable’ women you intend to collect before you finally trip over one who suits you entirely too well.”
Darcy stared at her, unmoved. “Grandmother…”
The dowager only smiled, the kind of smile that had seen more courts and wars than Darcy cared to contemplate. "She amuses me," she said. "And if you think, Fitzwilliam Darcy, that I amabout to deprive myself of that amusement merely because you are constitutionally incapable of managing your own affairs—" she broke off, lifting one gloved hand in a delicate wave—"well. You are not nearly so clever as I hoped."
Darcy looked away again, scowling at the city beyond the window.
He did not trust her easy agreement.
He did not trust her laughter.
And he most certainly did not trust himself when it came to Elizabeth Bennet.
"You willnot," he said after a moment, "make a spectacle of them. Or of me, for that matter."
"My dear boy," the dowager said with false sweetness, "I am always a spectacle. That is the point."
