Bingley studied him for another beat, then rose. “You know, Darcy, sometimes your silence is more withering than any speech.”
“Then I am saving us both time.”
Bingley gave a short laugh. “Indeed. Well, perhaps I will call again when you’ve less on your mind. Good day, Darcy.” Bingleystood and let himself out like a colt scurrying away from a thunderstorm.
Darcy waited until the latch clicked shut before turning back to his desk.
Atop the day’s correspondence sat a pale blue pamphlet—again.
Lady Matlock had taken to placing it on his desk every morning, no matter where he tossed it the night before. “You need to know what is being said,” she had warned. “Even if you think it beneath you.”
He did think it beneath him.
He had moved it to the bookshelf. To the window. To the waste bin once, only to find it perched beside his teacup an hour later, like a stray cat with opinions.
Now it sat squarely on top of the day’s post, mocking him in cheap gold type:“The Ink-Stained Nobody: A Series of Domestic Sketches by an Unknown Pen.”
He glared at it.
Then, grimly, he picked it up. It was insulting to even read the headline, but he might as well have done with one more task so he could dispose of the thing.
Darcy flipped past the preamble—an arch little note from“an admirer of human nature, though rarely impressed by it”—that bitwasclever—and into the meat.
The tone was light. Observant. Irreverent. And irritatingly well-structured.
The first sketch opened with:
“Sir R— has seven daughters, two dogs, and a detailed memory of all their weights at birth. Only the dogsare thin now, but the conversation remains as unsubstantial as the hounds.”
Darcy snorted. He did not mean to. It escaped him before he could stop it.
The second offered:
“Mrs. C— moves chairs between dances not for the sake of upholstery, but to prevent a niece from forming unfortunate attachments. Her waltz patterns are more elaborate than the ones on the carpet.”
What worthless twaddle! He should have stopped there. He meant to. He nearly closed the pamphlet and pushed it aside.
And then he saw the heading for the next piece:
“A country wit, with a fatal taste for ink and insolence.”
He stilled.
No name. No initials. Only the silhouette of a girl with a quick tongue and a quicker pen, whose observations“could pierce the rind of a dinner party with barely a scratch to the silver.”
Darcy read the paragraph once, then again. The phrasing shifted just left of exact—but the shape of it, the cadence, therhythm of intelligence held just long enough to be mistaken for amusement—it washers.
Orhadbeen.
Only now, it was turned inside out.
A line about“a gentleman’s eyebrows that give orders”made his stomach drop.
Another about“schedules masquerading as personalities”nearly made him close the pamphlet on instinct.
He set it down carefully, as though it might bite.
Not merely clever.
