“I was expecting strategy.”
“My strategy is: leave the house.”
Darcy scowled. “I have attended every dinner, musicale, and charity auction you have insisted upon.”
“Lastyear. And you left them all after twenty minutes and posted your cousin Lady Regina at the door to fend them off as you departed.”
“She enjoyed it.”
“Youenjoyed it. How many wasted opportunities, Fitzwilliam?”
He looked away. “I… I did not expect to be… quite so occupied during my final year.”
Lady Matlock tilted her head. “Have you any prospects at all? Friends to visit? Eligible connections to mine for possibility?”
Darcy hesitated. “Fitzwilliam is still in Spain. Coming back next month from what his last letter said.”
“What else?”
He cleared his throat. “Bingley wrote.”
“The tradesman?
“No longer. He has just signed papers on a new estate. He wants me to visit. Soon.”
“Well, thank heaven. You must go.”
“I have not finished—”
“You never do. Go.”
Darcy’s face evaporated into horror. “Bingley has a sister.”
Lady Matlock shrugged. “So much the better. Is she single?”
“She is worse than all the others combined.”
“Then she will manage to make some other woman jealous enough to speak up for you. Where is this estate?”
Darcy paused, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. “Hertfordshire.”
The countess narrowed her eyes. “Wherein Hertfordshire?”
He sighed. “Near Meryton.”
Lady Matlock smiled. Slowly. Like a cat watching a teacup tip off a shelf.
“Oh,” she said. “Her.”
Darcy’s chest went tight. He had not said her name. He had not even thought it… had not dared to.
“I never said—”
“You did not need to.”
Darcy grimaced. “You recall the lady, I see.”
“Elizabeth Bennet,” she said easily. “How could I forget? The girl with the notebook. The ribbon. The best charity bid I ever witnessed.”
