The remark should have stung. Itdidsting. But it also sank deeper, hooked itself into that terrible space between indignation and truth.
He caught her eye as they stepped through another figure—closer now, just briefly.
“And what do your observations suggest?” he asked.
“That the subject is determined. But not particularly effective.”
He exhaled—once. Not quite a laugh. Not quite not.
“And what result would satisfy the scientist?”
“I suppose,” she mused, “when the subject stops mistaking calculation for courage.”
The final turn approached. They met, bowed, and held—for just a moment too long.
Supper doors opened with a rustle of anticipation. Chairs scraped. Laughter bloomed somewhere to their left.
He offered his arm.
She took it—lightly, without comment. They walked off the floor together in a silence that was not quite silence at all.
Chapter Fifteen
Elizabeth had never beenso grateful for soup.
It gave her something to look at. Something to do. Something to contemplate, however briefly, while Lydia shrieked across the table about a lieutenant’s dancing legs and her mother pointed at everything that shimmered.
She sat beside Mr. Darcy.
The supper arrangements had been fixed, as was the custom, before the ball began. And as the guest with whom she had danced the supper set, Mr. Darcy was now her dinner companion for the duration. This had seemed almost tolerable during the music, when their connection was purely mechanical—turn, bow, retreat. But now—
Now, with Darcy on her left, Lydia and her partner on her right, and Miss Bingley shooting darts from the opposite end of the table, Elizabeth had begun to suspect some celestial punishment was at work.
Lydia was speaking far too loudly about a recent walk with the officers. Kitty kept giggling behind her hand at jokes no one else could hear. Mary was describing the piano concerto she meantto play at the end of dinner with solemn detail to a neighbor who looked increasingly desperate for wine. Her mother and Lady Lucas, meanwhile, had taken to gesturing toward Mr. Bingley’s end of the table with such enthusiasm that her bracelets clinked every time she mentioned “fortunes” or “excellent connections.”
Elizabeth sipped her wine and tried to remember what dignity felt like.
Beside her, Darcy had stiffened to the posture of a man attempting to fuse with the back of his chair. He was doing his best imitation of an inanimate object—one with high cheekbones and better-than-average tailoring. Elizabeth could not blame him. If she were not related to the noisiest half of the room, she would have fled to the card tables.
She took another sip. Then, in a tone pitched for him alone, said, “I must wonder, Mr. Darcy, why are you still here?”
He turned his head, slow and guarded. “I beg your pardon?”
“Well, Hertfordshire is not known to be a gold mine of débutantes. Add to that the unfortunate fact of my own residency here…”
“A fact I forgot until my arrival.”
She arched her brows. “I will believe that when good sense becomes the height of fashion.”
He set his spoon down. “Excuse me?”
“I mean that you probably remember how many drops of water the vicar splashed on your head at your christening. You have never forgot a thing in your life.”
He picked his spoon back up and looked down at his soup. “You may believe that if it amuses you.”
“Oh, greatly. But why are youstillhere? It seems an unlikely enough place to begin with, and I had assumed, after so many unsuccessful outings, you might have taken your search to livelier fields.”
He exhaled in a way that sounded a little like a growl—neither amused nor offended. “And yet, here I remain.”
