Darcy walked on and did not look back.
As he turned away, Elizabeth’s laughter—more muted now—carried across the room again. Her gentleman companion bowed politely and moved toward the music, leaving her speaking to a matron in violet.
Darcy adjusted his cravat and tried to look purposeful.
You do not need her.
You are entirely capable of identifying a suitable match.
Elizabeth is not exceptional.
Except she might be. Not because she was clever, or lovely, or inconveniently vivid—but because she had a way of seeing through people faster than he could parse them.
She would have spoken to Miss Partridge for two minutes and known everything. He had needed the full ten. And probably wasted countless other opportunities.
She had not failedimmediately.
The first gentleman had seemed promising enough—young, not overly loud, possessed of fine boots and better posture. They had spoken of the paintings, the weather, and a recent article on marble preservation in The Gentleman’s Repository.
Elizabeth nodded, made an agreeable sound, and even volunteered a comment about the statue in the corner having a particularly expressive jawline.
“Ah,” he said, squinting slightly. “Yes. Remarkably noble. One imagines it spoke with great dignity. When it had a mouth.”
She smiled. “That may still place it above several members of Parliament.”
There was a pause. Then a blink. Then a smile that clearly meant:“I do not know what to do with that, so I shall pretend it was profound.”
He looked into his glass. “You have fine, serious eyes, Miss Bennet.”
She inclined her head.
“And that reminds me, there was a painting just there… Will you excuse me?” He wandered off in the direction of the punch bowl without another word.
The second had appeared while she was speaking with Jane and Aunt Gardiner. Older. Possibly a second son, possibly someone’s curate on the rise. Her aunt seemed to know him and introduced him as Mr. Hatherleigh.
“Miss Bennet,” he said with a small bow, “may I ask—do you prefer the harp or the lute?”
She blinked. “Sorry?”
“I find the choice speaks volumes,” he said gravely. “The harp is ethereal, mournful, transcendent. The lute, more grounded, more intimate. In your estimation, which most moves the soul?”
She hesitated. “Are we speaking of instruments or suitors?”
He chuckled, missing the edge in her tone. “Ah, the wit of lively minds. No, I refer to their timbre. Their capacity for stirring the heart.”
“I see.” She folded her hands. “In that case, I prefer the triangle. Immediate, honest, impossible to ignore.”
He blinked.
She smiled sweetly. “Though I suppose it does lack the soul-stirring melancholy of a harp in mourning.”
He recovered with a nod. “Well said. Quite. I myself heard a lute played once in the Lake District during a storm. My cousin Margaret wept openly. Her feelings are finely tuned.”
“Now there is a compliment I have not heard before,” she mused.
“Aye, but it is true. She once wept at a sermon on patience,” he added, apparently believing this a further point in Margaret’s favor.
Elizabeth nodded, lips pressed together. Perhaps the gentleman was secretly nursing a tendre for his cousin? She could not be sure.
