“I daresay it was the only way to speak to him,” Hurst muttered.
“She is rather tiresome, I thought,” Miss Bingley continued. “Quick to speak. Very sure of her own cleverness.”
Bingley frowned. “I thought she was charming.”
Miss Bingley snorted. “Oh, Charles, you once said the moth in your drawer was charming.”
“When I was five,” he countered.
“I only think your esteemed friend has some experience with the lady that would reveal more of her character than can be learned in a single evening, andhedoes not appear so quick to praise her. What say you, Mr. Darcy?” Miss Bingley’s eyelashes were fluttering like some dratted butterfly.
Darcy looked back at the fire.
He should have agreed. It would have been easy. Expected. She had given him the line. He had used it before.“Tiresome.” “Presumptuous.” “Unsuitable.”
Instead, he found himself remembering the exact shape of her mouth when she had said,“I paid.”
The way her hands trembled after she curtsied.
How he had not moved, not spoken, not breathed—for at least two seconds longer than he ought to have.
“She is… peculiar,” he said finally. “Fond of provocation.”
Peculiar.That should have been enough. An easy dismissal.
So why did it feel like a defense he did not quite believe?
Miss Bingley smiled slowly. “Indeed. Do you know, Louisa,” she said, turning to her sister, “I had taken the notion of inviting Miss Jane Bennet to dine with us tomorrow.”
Mrs. Hurst glanced up with a slightly querulous expression. “Tomorrow? Whatever for?”
“Why, you heard our dear brother this evening. He has made some indecently impromptu plan to be dining out with some gentlemen tomorrow. Surely, he means to take your husband and Mr. Darcy away from us, as well. How, dear sister, shall we amuse ourselves?”
Lousia Hurst frowned. “I suppose I shall have to endure four hours of turning pages for you at the pianoforte.”
“Precisely my point, dear sister. Shall we not invite a companion to our evening? I think Miss Jane Bennet a fair prospect for society—for one evening, at least.”
“What a capital notion!” Bingley cried. “Why not invite her sister Miss Elizabeth as well? Four does make a more even table.”
Darcy turned back, his spine stiff.Elizabeth… dining here?Even without him present, somehow the notion seemed a… a violation of his privacy. She would ferret out some intrigue, expose something private, that much was sure.
“Oh, no, no, pray!” Miss Bingley laughed. “I, for one, do not fancy the notion of being outnumbered in my own home.”
Bingley’s brow creased. “But they are only two, as are you.”
The thing was on the razor’s edge of decision. Darcy closed his eyes. He could add the weight of his words, or let it pass. Take a chance…
“I would advise against it,” he said, turning toward the others. He was rewarded with a slow blink of pleasure from Miss Bingley and a slightly open-mouthed look of wonder from Bingley.
“Whatever for?” Bingley demanded.
Dash it all. Now he needed a reason. “I… I suspect,” he said, testing each word, “that if Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst desire to come to know Miss Jane Bennet better, they had best let her speak without the… the rather more…dynamicpresence of her younger sister.”
It was flimsy. He knew it. But flimsy was better than transparent. Anything to stop Elizabeth Bennet from walking through the door and making everything… complicated.
Bingley blinked.
“Surely,” Darcy continued, “you noted the lady’s modesty. Would she not be thrown into her sister’s shadow?”
