“Indeed, I think you do.” There was no accusation in his tone—just certainty. Unshakable, infuriating certainty.
Elizabeth held his stare. “If I did, Mr. Darcy, I would be quite happy to enlighten you. But as I am not in the habit of playing charades at a poetry salon, perhaps you might say plainly what you mean.”
“I think you know precisely what I mean,” he said, voice low. “And you are choosing not to say it.”
“I am choosing not to fabricate answers to riddles I have not been asked.”
His silence was worse than any reply. Not cold—just calculating. She could see the wheels turning behind his eyes.
She crossed her arms, her gloves creaking faintly with the motion. “You believe I have said something,” she said. “Tosomeone. About something that displeases you. And instead of asking directly, you prefer to interrogate me like a criminal caught in the middle of her confession.”
Darcy gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. “Because you are far too clever to confess. Even when you ought to.”
Her fingers tightened over her elbows as her eyes widened. She leaned forward with a hiss. “I have not betrayed your confidences, sir.”
“Nothing?” he asked. “Not one detail about the reason I came to London? Not a single note passed to a friend? Not a phrase, not an impression?”
She flinched. Not visibly. Not quite.
Because the truth was—shehadwritten. Often. Privately. Carelessly. Sometimes even impishly—not cruelly, but taken out of context, perhaps it could be…. Not words meant to be read by others, but in that blasted journal she had never meant to lose.
And now it was gone.
“I do not answer to you, Mr. Darcy,” she said at last. Her voice was steady, but too calm—like a lid fitted too tightly to a pot.
“Perhaps not,” he said. “But your words do.”
Elizabeth blinked.
That made no sense. Or it made too much.
He saw it. The hesitation.
And then she turned on her heel. “I am done here.”
She walked without hurry. But she did not stop for the woman who called her name near the pianoforte, nor for the pair of cousins who lifted their brows in recognition as she passed. A footman approached with a tray of ratafia and a strained smile—she waved him off without a glance.
The gallery’s outer ring was cooler. Quieter. The music sounded faint here, half-muffled by velvet and voices. A curved settee waited beneath a niche where a bust of Marcus Aurelius frowned at nothing in particular.
Elizabeth dropped onto the seat with a heavy creak of the furniture. Her gloves itched. Her teeth ached from clenching.
And then she saw it.
A folded pamphlet on the cushion beside her—lightly creased, as if thumbed through and forgotten. Probably a handbill. Probably nonsense. But it was something to look at that was not a person.
She picked it up.
The print was dense, too florid. She flipped past the front page, half out of habit.
And stopped.
A line.
A very specific line.
#
“A gentleman whose entire soul is held together by cufflinks and contempt.”
