He departed with more dignity than one might expect from a man damp with cordial.
Elizabeth remained where she was, staring at her own reflection in a silvered tray.
It was not that she hadmeantto be unkind. It was simply that her tongue refused to behave like a respectable woman’s.
This was not going well.
Not in the small sense of awkwardness or disappointment, but in the larger, urgent sense of failure. She had a plan. She needed a man—any man—willing to marry her before the season turned and the journal turned up again, weaponized in Caroline Bingley’s claw-ringed hands.
She had only to act as someone reasonable. Mild. Wealthy enough not to care about her lack of dowry and indistinct enough for her to disappear into the bowels of invisible society. Safely.
Instead, she had made herself unlikable three times in succession, without even trying.
And Darcy had been no help at all.
He had promised—promised—to be her ally in this miserable campaign. And yet he had ignored her from the moment Caroline Bingley arrived. Left her flailing with strangers while he went off to chat with…
She turned her head, scanning the crowd until she saw him.
Standing stiffly beside Miss Partridge.
Miss Partridge, with whom Elizabeth had spoken once and subsequently pretended not to know. Darcy looked cornered, and serve him right, the ungrateful ninnyhammer. She could have told him not to waste his time there. The girl was gesturing toward a portrait with dramatic little flourishes, probably on about ghost stories again, and Darcy looked as though he wanted to swallow his wineglass.
Elizabeth felt no triumph in watching him suffer. Only the dull, dragging sense that everyone here was trying to be something they were not.
By the time the event drew to its polite conclusion, Elizabeth was too tired to make excuses. She stood at the top of the steps, feeling the wind tug at her ribbon, and prepared to walk in silence to the carriage.
Aunt Gardiner had other plans.
“Well,” she said, cheerfully slipping her arm through Elizabeth’s. “That looked promising.”
Elizabeth blinked. “What did?”
“That tall gentleman in the blue coat—he was hovering for a good ten minutes. And the talkative one! He seemed utterly fascinated.”
“With his dog,” Elizabeth said dryly.
“Still,” her aunt continued, undeterred as they reached the carriage, “I thought you handled them beautifully. Natural, intelligent, just enough wit to be intriguing.”
“I think perhaps I was a bittoointriguing.”
“Nonsense. You charmed them.”
Elizabeth smiled, and it hurt. “Something like that, I suppose.”
Her stomach was hollow. She had been seen, heard, and discarded. She had said the wrong things, or said them at the wrong time. She had not been careful.
And now Caroline Bingley was in town. Which meant danger. Which meant urgency.
Elizabeth turned her head toward the window and watched the buildings pass in a blur of cold stone and flickering lamplight. All she had to do was fool someone. One man. For long enough to sign his name beside hers in a register.
She did not need to like him. She did not need to admire him. She only needed him to stay long enough to save her.
And today, she had scared off three.
By the time Darcyreached the entrance hall, she was already halfway to the carriage.
Elizabeth’s back was to him—shoulders squared, spine straight, one hand resting lightly on the frame as she stepped inside. Her sister had followed, and then their aunt, bustling slightly with her reticule. The door closed.
