Which meant she needed a solution. Quickly. Before her words became weapons in someone else’s war.
A husband. That had been her decision. Not for love or poetry or noble dreams. For protection. A ring on her finger. A name not her own. A barrier between her and the ruin that might come leaping out of her own ink-stained past.
She lifted her chin.
Tonight was not for amusement. It was for strategy. For introductions and calculations and finding a man—any man—who might offer her a name that was stronger than scandal.
And if he had no poetry in his soul?
All the better.
"Elizabeth, my dear," the dowager Countess of Matlock's voice cut through her thoughts, "do stop lurking by the potted palms. It is dreadfully unbecoming."
Elizabeth turned to find the dowager approaching, her expression one of determined cheer. "I was merely observing the room, Lady Matlock."
"Observing is all well and good, but one must also participate. Come, I have someone you simply must meet."
Before Elizabeth could protest, she was being led toward a portly gentleman with a florid complexion and a waistcoat that strained against his girth. "Mr. Hollingsworth, may I present Miss Elizabeth Bennet?"
Mr. Hollingsworth bowed, his jowls quivering with the motion. "Delighted, Miss Bennet. Are you fond of canary breeding? I have a most impressive aviary."
Elizabeth managed a polite smile. "I cannot say I have much experience with canaries, sir."
"A pity! They are most charming creatures. Perhaps you would give me the pleasure of showing you sometime?"
"Perhaps," she replied noncommittally, her eyes already scanning the room for an escape.
The dowager leaned in, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. "He is quite wealthy, you know. And only mildly eccentric."
Elizabeth suppressed a sigh. Any husband would do, so long as he did not challenge her too much. But the prospect of spending her days discussing canaries, gout, or Bath’s mineral springs was beginning to sound less like survival and more like slow surrender.
She had already endured Mr. Pembroke’s thorough commentary on snuffbox curvature, Mr. Leland’s misty-eyed recitations of Cowper (with heavy sighs between lines), and Mr. Carstairs’s thirty-seven reasons why Bath was vastly superior to London. All of them polite. All of them dull enough to qualify as soporifics.
As the musicians began tuning their instruments—a sour scrape of violin followed by a tentative note from the pianoforte—Elizabeth made her way to the back of the room and sank into a chair. The seat wobbled. Fitting.
The opening notes drifted upward, delicate and clear. A Corelli sonata, she thought. It was well-played. But her attention snagged elsewhere.
Darcy.
He stood near the fireplace, speaking to a tall, elegant woman in sapphire silk—Miss Latham, whom Elizabeth had introduced to him not ten minutes prior, with every expectation that theywould suit. The lady had seemed promising: poised, articulate, entirely sensible. And yet Darcy’s posture—straight-backed, jaw set, hands clasped behind him as if resisting the urge to flee—suggested that the conversation had not borne fruit. He looked as though he were enduring a lecture from a particularly tedious canon of taste.
Jealousy was not the word for what she felt. Irritation, perhaps. Frustration. An unwanted pulse of something far too personal. She looked away.
This was precisely why she had to succeed. To find someone agreeable, stable, sufficiently dull. Someone who would never inspire her to question herself.
She would smile. She would endure. She would find the most amiably uninspiring man in the room and secure herself against nonsense like this.
Because caring for a man like Darcy—caring at all—was not a risk she could afford.
The musicians struck their first proper chord—a sonata, still delicate, still too gentle for Elizabeth’s current mood—and the crowd obligingly shifted. Chairs creaked. Fans fluttered. Conversations softened to accommodate the performance without actually yielding to it.
Elizabeth sat with her hands folded and her posture impeccable, a model of calm. But her smile was starting to fray at the corners.
Five introductions. Five men. All named Henry. Not one of them had asked her a question that did not involve needlework, music, or her opinion on weather. One had inquired whether she embroidered pastoral scenes.
“Only if they include gallows,” she had nearly said.
Across the room, she caught sight of Darcy beside Lady Matlock, who looked positively delighted with herself. He was engaged in conversation with a woman Elizabeth had pointedout not ten minutes earlier—Miss Latham, composed, graceful, and deeply unlikely to use her journal to roast the gentry.
