Elizabeth laughed lightly. “I would be happy to dance with you, Colonel.”
The next half hour gave Colonel Fitzwilliam the opportunity to understand why his cousin had fallen in love with this young lady – for Darcy most certainly had done so, deny it as he might. She was lovely, she was intelligent; indeed, she asked him any number of questions about his war experiences and was quick to grasp the implications of his replies. “You have a keen understanding of the battlefield,” he complimented her.
She blushed. “I have been studying geography, Colonel, and it has come in most handy when reading the war reports in the newspapers.”
“Your father allows you to read the papers?” He could not hide his astonishment.
“Certainly; I wish to understand what is going on in the world, Colonel. My father allows me to read anything and everything. Well, perhaps not quite everything. He has a private collectionof books that he keeps under lock and key, and I dare not peruse them even though I know where he hides the key!”
They laughed together. The Colonel thought he himself might have been in some danger of forming an attachment to the young lady, had he not known full well that he could not afford to do so. But he could spend more time with her, could he not? “Have you promised the supper dance to anyone, Miss Elizabeth?”
She admitted that she had not.
“I know I promised not to ask you for a second dance, but I find now that I am tempted to break that promise. Might you partner me for the supper dance?”
She laughed, and agreed at once.
When the dance ended, the Colonel thought he had better find Darcy and calm him down.
It took the Colonel a full twenty minutes to locate his cousin, who was standing behind a pillar with a glass of some amber-coloured liquid. “How did you manage that? All I saw was champagne, negus and orgeat,” the Colonel began.
Mr. Darcy shrugged. “I have been at Netherfield several weeks now; the servants know me. Why did you dance with her?” His tone was brittle.
“So that I might learn to know her a little.”
“And?”
“She is perfect.”
“Ha! She is, yes. Did she tell you that she refused my offer of a second dance?”
“She said that she wanted to give you the opportunity to dance with young ladies who had not yet danced.”
“It was a lie.”
“Was it?”
“Yes; she quoted Cowper at me!True friendship's laws are by this rule expressed: welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.With me as the parting guest, you understand.”
The Colonel decided this would likely not the best time to mention that Miss Elizabeth had granted him a second dance. Instead, he said, “I do not know her at all well…”
“No.”
“But I venture to say that it does not sound like her at all.”
“Why, then, would she not dance with me again?”
“Did you ever think that perhaps it was not justyourheart that had been touched?”
Mr. Darcy leaned toward the pillar and hit his head against it. And then again. And then again.
“Stop it, Darcy; you will do yourself an injury!”
Staring at the pillar he had so recently attacked, he said, “I do not agree that my heart was touched; it is not rational.”
The Colonel quoted, “Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.”
Mr. Darcy muttered, “I am a fool.”
