Darcy, seated at the far end beside his aunt, said almost nothing. He cut his meat with the exactness of a man who found disorder intolerable, even on a plate, drank sparingly, and watched. She could feel his gaze even when she wasn't looking — a weight at the periphery of her vision, steady and patient, the way a hawk watches from a high branch. Once, when she glanced up, their eyes met directly, and the impact of it — the sheer focused intensity of his attention — made her set down her fork.
"You seem to have captured my cousin's interest," Colonel Fitzwilliam murmured, following her gaze. His tone was amused but not unkind.
"I cannot imagine why," Elizabeth replied, picking up her fork again. "I have nothing to recommend me to a man of Mr. Darcy's consequence."
"On the contrary. I suspect it is precisely your lack of deference that intrigues him. Darcy is accustomed to being agreed with. It bores him tremendously."
"Then he must find the whole of England a great yawn."
Fitzwilliam laughed. At the other end of the table, Darcy's head turned at the sound, and Elizabeth saw something flicker across his face — not jealousy, exactly, but a sharpening of attention, as though his cousin's laughter in her company constituted a development that required assessment.
After dinner, when the ladies withdrew, Charlotte was speaking quietly to Colonel Fitzwilliam about the parish gardens — hehad followed the gentlemen in sooner than custom required — and Elizabeth noticed, with the idle attention one gives to a detail that does not yet have significance, that the Colonel was listening. Not with the polite half-attention most men gave to women's conversation, but with his body turned toward Charlotte and his head inclined, as though what she was saying about roses and drainage actually interested him. Charlotte, who had spent her marriage being spoken at rather than spoken to, looked briefly startled by the novelty of being heard.
Lady Catherine demanded music. Elizabeth obliged with a piece she knew well enough to play without concentration, which freed her mind for the more pressing work of ignoring Mr. Darcy. He had stationed himself near the instrument, leaning against the wall with his arms folded, watching her hands on the keys.
"You do not play perfectly," he observed.
"No," Elizabeth agreed without looking up. "But then, I did not practise as a child, which I believe is the explanation most commonly offered for feminine failure."
"I was going to say that your imperfections are more interesting than most women's accomplishments."
She looked up then. He was close enough that she could see the candlelight in his eyes — amber flecks in dark brown, warm against the hard planes of his face. His expression was intent, almost severe, as though he were trying to solve a problem she presented and could not quite find the equation.
"That is either a compliment or an insult, Mr. Darcy, and I cannot determine which."
"Perhaps it is neither. Perhaps it is merely an observation."
"You observe a great deal."
"I do."
The single syllable sat between them like a door left ajar. Elizabeth returned her attention to the pianoforte, but her fingers stumbled on a passage she had played a hundred times, and she knew he noticed.
Collins appeared at her elbow when the music ended, radiating self-importance. "Cousin Elizabeth, Lady Catherine has expressed her satisfaction with your performance. What a singular honor! I must say, her ladyship's condescension in permitting you to play at all?—"
"Thank you, Mr. Collins."
She rose from the instrument and found Darcy still watching her. He had not moved. He stood against the wall in that posture of studied ease that she was beginning to suspect was anything but easy, and his eyes tracked her across the room with an attention so focused it was almost physical.
The evening ended as such evenings do — with Lady Catherine's pronouncement that they had been sufficiently entertained, with Collins's effusions in the carriage home, with Charlotte's quiet hand finding Elizabeth's in the dark of the cab and squeezing once.I know. I'm sorry.
Elizabeth lay in her narrow bed at the parsonage and stared at the ceiling and listened to the old house settle around her. Through the wall, she could hear Collins's snoring — a wet, rhythmic sound that she found obscurely depressing. Charlotte slept beside him, or did not sleep, or lay still and did her arithmetic in the dark.
She pressed her fingertips to her collarbone where Darcy's gaze had seemed to rest during dinner. The skin was warm. That meant nothing. Skin was always warm. She turned onto her side and closed her eyes and thought about the way his mouth had moved — that almost-smile, there and gone — and then she thought about nothing, deliberately and at length, until sleep came.
CHAPTER 2
ELIZABETH
She woke before dawn and dressed in the half-dark, pulling on her oldest dress and her walking boots and slipping out through the kitchen door before anyone else stirred. The morning was damp and cool and smelled of wet earth and new leaves, and for twenty minutes she walked without thinking, letting her legs carry her along the path that wound through the woodland behind the parsonage. Bluebells had begun to push through the leaf litter. A thrush sang from somewhere in the canopy — the same four notes, over and over, stubborn and sweet.
This was the only part of her day that belonged to her. The rest was Collins's territory, or Charlotte's, or Lady Catherine's — parcelled out and spoken for, every hour belonging to someone else. But the early morning was unclaimed. She could walk as fast as she liked, think as freely as she liked, and nobody required her to be pleased about hedgerows.
She had been walking for perhaps half an hour when she heard footsteps behind her. Not Collins's — too steady, too deliberate, and without the fussy little shuffle that accompanied her cousin's every ambulation. She knew who it was beforeshe turned around. Something about the rhythm of the stride, the weight of it on the path. Something about the way the air changed.
"Miss Bennet."
Darcy stood on the path in riding clothes — dark coat, tall boots, no hat. His hair was disordered from the wind, which made him look less like a portrait and more like a person, and the effect was not an improvement in the sense of making him easier to dismiss. Sweat darkened the collar of his shirt. He had been riding hard and recently, and the physical evidence of exertion — the colour in his face, the rise and fall of his chest — made Elizabeth suddenly and acutely aware that they were alone.
