Darcy was very still across the table.
Elizabeth did not look at him.
She did not dare.
Miss Bingley leaned slightly forward, warming to her subject now that she believed it one likely to impress him. “It was all most mysterious. One cannot help imagining the discovery. Some ancient chamber, perhaps, or a ruined cellar beneath a great house. The person who found it must have been intelligent and of very good breeding to understand its importance at once. After all, who else would have lived in a quarter wealthy enough for such treasure to be buried?”
Elizabeth pressed her lips together.
The idea that Roman Londinium had arranged itself according to the present prejudices of London society was almost too much to bear. She wanted desperately to say that perhaps the discoverer had been covered in mud, half frightened out of her wits, and chiefly concerned that the floor not collapse beneath her. Instead, she took refuge in civility.
“It must have been a wonder to behold.”
“It was,” Miss Bingley said. “A pity you have never seen it.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth replied, with commendable gravity. “A great pity.”
Darcy’s fork rested untouched beside his plate. She could feel his gaze. She still did not meet it. If she looked at him now, she would laugh, and if she laughed, the whole secret might tumble out after it.
Mr. Bingley, blissfully unaware of any danger, said, “I saw it as well. Darcy took me. Very fine, of course. Shining things in glass cases, and a great many gentlemen murmuring over coins as though they were old friends. I liked it well enough, but I confess I would rather go to the theater. I prefer being amused to being intellectual.”
Elizabeth’s control gave way just enough for a smile to escape.
This time, she did look at Darcy.
The look struck more deeply than it ought. It was not amusement alone, though that was there, carefully restrainedat the edges of his mouth. Nor was it merely recognition. His gaze held hers with a warmth so intent that Elizabeth felt it as surely as a touch, and for one breath the dining room seemed to narrow around them. Miss Bingley was still speaking, Mr. Bingley was still smiling over his own preference for theaters, and the candles still burned steadily upon the table, but all of it grew distant beneath the heat of his gaze.
Elizabeth’s breath caught.
For a wild instant, she wondered whether he felt it too: that strange, silent pull between them, half laughter and half longing, drawing tight across the table. The secret was still dangerous. Still hers to guard. Yet beneath his gaze it no longer felt like something locked away in darkness. It felt alive, warm, and shared.
Darcy’s mouth barely curved, but the look in his eyes deepened.
Elizabeth lowered her gaze before her own expression could betray her.
The secret remained safe.
Her heart, she feared, did not.
∞∞∞
Kitty coughed at intervals, though whether from sympathy, habit, or a desire to remind the room of her own delicate lungs, Darcy could not determine. Lydia had no such weakness. She laughed, admired the room, whispered too loudly about the officers, and asked Bingley whether the militia ever dined at Netherfield, for she was sure it must be prodigious good fun if they did. Miss Bingley received the question with an expression of such refined horror that Darcy was forced to turn slightly toward the window.
Mrs. Bennet, however, was more gracious to him than he expected. She asked whether he had found Hertfordshire pleasant, hoped he did not find the country roads too poor after Derbyshire, and even thanked him for his concern for Jane’s health with a sincerity that sat oddly beside all her noise. Darcy answered with proper civility, and though he could not call her agreeable, he found himself judging her less harshly than he might once have done.
She was abrasive, certainly. Indiscreet. Fatiguing. Yet she was not malicious.
In truth, she was not so very unlike many of the matrons around Lambton.
Mrs. Henson could speak for twenty minutes without pausing for breath if the subject were her son’s new shop. Mrs. Martindale had once recited the symptoms of every grandchild at a tenants’ dinner until even her husband feigned sleep. Mrs. Price knew every marriage, quarrel, christening, debt, and illness within five miles of Pemberley, and would share all of it if given tea and half an opportunity. They were loud, affectionate, interfering women, with little polish and much feeling. Darcy had been raised to think such manners vulgar in a drawing room and yet had learned, through long acquaintance, that villages were often held together by the very women who spoke too freely in them.
Meryton was not Lambton.
But it was not entirely different.
The same eager curiosity, the same family loyalties, the same public judgments and private kindnesses ran beneath both. The names changed, the accents shifted, and the rooms were smaller, but village life had a pattern all its own. Elizabeth understood that pattern. She knew when to laugh, when to yield, when to notice, and when to pretend not to notice at all. At Lambton, she would not stand apart like some fine lady enduring rusticcompany for duty’s sake. She would speak with Mrs. Price until the woman forgot to be nervous. She would know which child needed shoes before the child’s mother admitted it. She would walk the lanes, learn the cottages, tease the steward, charm the tenants’ wives, and return to Pemberley with mud on her hem and useful intelligence in her eyes.
Elizabeth at Pemberley.
