The Colonel threw his head back and laughed.
Darcy offered a small, crooked smile that was infinitely more devastating than his usual scowl.
“We shall not delay you, Miss Elizabeth.” Darcy bowed again, this time with a measure of his customary elegance. “I trust we shall encounter you again during our stay.”
“Brighton is small, Mr Darcy, despite the crowds.” Elizabeth met his eyes one final time. “I imagine it will be quite impossible to avoid one another.”
“I certainly hope so.”
The words were spoken so quietly Elizabeth almost did not hear them over the crash of the waves.
She turned quickly, her heart hammering an erratic rhythm inside her chest. She marched to the row of shops lining the opposite side of the Steine.
She needed to find Lydia and drag her back to their cramped lodgings. She needed to sit in a dark room and think of the fact that Fitzwilliam Darcy was in Sussex and was looking at her as though she were the only woman remaining on the earth.
This was no longer simply a long summer. It was rapidly becoming the most complicated season of her entire existence.
Elizabeth gripped her parasol like a weapon and waded into the throng, her eyes desperately searching the crowds.
Chapter Four: A Question of Stamina
The floorboards of Mrs Gable’s first-floor bedchamber had a distinct creak. Fitzwilliam Darcy knew this fact intimately because he had spent the entirety of the previous afternoon testing every single one.
He had paced. He had brooded. He had attempted to read a volume of poetry and found himself staring at the same stanza for three consecutive hours. The brief, agonising encounter on the Steine had dismantled his capacity for rational thought and sleep.
It was a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good fortune and a crushed ego should ideally be unconscious between the hours of midnight and dawn. Darcy, however, was cursed with an excellent memory and a profound sense of irony. He lay rigidly upon a mattress that appeared to be stuffed exclusively with rocks and malevolence, listening to the crashing waves of the English Channel. He felt personally affronted by the Sussex coast.
Elizabeth Bennet was in Brighton and had looked at him without loathing. It was enough to deprive a man of his sanity. It had certainly deprived him of his sleep.
He abandoned the bed at six o’clock. Horlicks, a loyal servant who, apparently, never slept, helped him shave anddress as he preferred: fast, efficiently, and most importantly, silently. Darcy descended to the breakfast parlour.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was already seated at the table. The Colonel woke cheerfully when not nursing the aftermath of alcohol, a character flaw Darcy found deeply offensive at all hours, but especially before breakfast. Richard was attacking a plate of eggs and toast with spectacular gusto, unburdened by the complexities of human existence.
“Good morning, cousin,” Richard announced brightly, brandishing a piece of toast like a conductor’s baton. “You look as though you have been trampled by a minor demon. Did you sleep well? I slept beautifully. I dreamt of a very fast but polite horse.”
Darcy walked to the sideboard and poured himself a cup of coffee. He did not reply. He merely stared into the dark liquid as if it held the answers to the universe, or at least a map leading directly out of Sussex.
“I see we are employing the silent treatment,” the Colonel observed. “Is it the sea air, or are we experiencing a total collapse of our faculties because a certain lady from Hertfordshire has breached your line of defence?”
Darcy closed his eyes. The coffee tasted of burnt timber and defeat, but he carried the cup to the table and sat down heavily. “Miss Elizabeth’s presence is a coincidence.”
“A staggering one,” Richard agreed, buttering his toast.
“She is irrelevant to our purpose here,” Darcy continued, his voice adopting a flat tone. “We came to Brighton to focus on Wickham. That remains our singular objective. Miss Elizabeth is merely an... unfortunate complication.”
The Colonel watched his cousin with interest. Darcy was gripping his coffee cup with such intense, white-knuckled force that the porcelain was in severe danger of shattering into a thousand pieces and embedding itself in the table.
“An unfortunate complication,” Richard repeated, testing the phrase on his tongue. “That is a very clinical term for a woman who occupies the entirety of your waking thoughts.”
“She does not.”
“Darcy, yesterday on the promenade, you stopped breathing for ten seconds. I counted. I was about to summon an apothecary.”
Darcy set the cup down, picked up a silver spoon, and began to stir the coffee, despite having added neither milk nor sugar. “Richard. We are here to prevent an assault, a scandal, a potential ruin. I will not allow myself to be distracted.”
“We are here to save the unsuspecting ladies of Brighton,” Richard agreed, his tone shifting, shedding a fraction of its amusement to acknowledge the gravity of the threat. “But let us review the reality of our situation. Wickham is establishing himself in society. He is attending the assemblies, walking the promenade, drinking tea in the circulating libraries.”
“He is a social parasite.”
