Elizabeth’s mouth curved. “That is not a small thing you have done, Mr. Darcy.”
“It is a very small thing compared to the damage I inflicted months ago.”
Lady Sophia closed her volume of Fordyce with a definitive snap, whether satisfied with the conclusion or merely eager to steer him away from dangerous ground. “Since my Fitzwilliam is clearly not to be moved, we shall turn our attention to Miss Elizabeth’s engagements. Lady Harewood’s musicale is upcoming. I find myself quite unequal to the crush of the crowd, and Allegra is already promised to the Pembrokes. As Georgiana and Miss Mary are to perform, and Elizabeth must be seen, it seems only natural that you two should attend together.”
Elizabeth’s mouth opened, then closed, her silence suggesting a protest that pride or propriety eventually stifled. She looked to Lady Sophia, then to the window, and finally to him, her expression changing like a tide before she settled on a familiar, sharp wit. “I hope you dance, Mr. Darcy.”
“It is a musicale, Miss Elizabeth. Not a ball.”
“A pity. I have it on reliable authority that your dancing is… adequate, when you can be persuaded to the floor.”
Darcy’s eyebrows rose. “Told by whom?”
“A source who has known you since you were thirteen and, I am told, remarkably awkward.” She rose, the pale blue silk of her morning dress shifting in the light. “Friday evening, then. I shall try not to require excessive management.”
“And I shall try not to hover.”
Elizabeth’s mouth curved again. She held his gaze for half a beat, and then she walked out of the drawing room with her teacup and her ink-stained fingers.
Lady Sophia picked up her chocolate and took a sip of victory.
“She does not need you for the ledgers, Fitzwilliam. One wonders what she might actually need you for.”
“A trustee’s purpose,” Darcy said, his voice stiff as he forced his eyes away from the empty doorway, “is to render himself unnecessary.”
“Is it?” She regarded him over the rim of her cup. “How fortunate, then, that I have found you a new purpose. Friday. The blue coat. The one that doesn’t make you look like a country curate. Do not argue.”
“I was not going to argue.”
“No. You were going to wear black and look funereal, and I was going to send you home to change, and we would both waste twenty minutes neither of us possesses.” She reopened the Fordyce with the satisfied air of a woman resuming a comedy she found inspiring. “Go and tell your valet. And Fitzwilliam—she was up at six this morning working on those accounts. She did not have to finish them before you arrived. She chose to.”
To spend the time with him? Going over her social engagements? That possibility was more than his composure could sustain in front of his sharp-eyed godmother.
Darcy rose abruptly. To remain seated would have required a response, acknowledging the significance of what Lady Sophia had revealed.
Bidding her goodbye, he walked out into the garden, the thirty steps that separated them, where the damp scent of wet earth and boxwood greeted him—along with a leather ball thudding at his feet.
Nettle had dropped it, barking with the pent-up hope of a dog who’d been waiting since breakfast.
Darcy hurled the ball, and the dog barreled after it. And he stood there in the pale April light, wondering if Elizabeth saw him, and not daring to look at the windows.
Nettle returned, and he threw the ball again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LADY SOPHIA’S DEPUTY
Darcy’s strategy was straightforward,and he was convinced of its virtue.
He would not pursue Elizabeth Bennet again—no second proposal, no lingering glances, not even the faintest hint that the man who had proposed with all the charm of someone apologizing for a plague still harbored any intentions towards her.
Instead, he would be useful and competent, fixing what his arrogance had broken—restoring Bingley to Jane, shepherding Elizabeth’s Season, and keeping her fortune from being compromised. By being faithful with his duties, without expectation of return, he hoped that one day Elizabeth Bennet would look at Fitzwilliam Darcy and see not the man who had wounded her but the man who had spent every subsequent day attempting to deserve her good opinion without presuming to ask for it.
A flawless plan, if one overlooked the fact that it reeked of a man terrified of hearing ‘no’ again.
Darcy lurked at the window of Number 34, spying shamelessly as the door of Number 33 burst open and the ladies spilled out into the late-April morning, intent on an expedition.Elizabeth, resplendent in her new pelisse and bonnet, strolled arm-in-arm with Allegra, both laughing at some secret only they found amusing. Jane trailed them, listening to Mary, who waved her hands about, likely sermonizing on the perils of frivolity.
Georgiana emerged from the music room, saw the departing group through the window, and turned to Darcy with transparent longing.
