“Arthur, you told me you were profoundly moved.”
“It was August. I was profoundly warm.”
“Miss Bennet, he wept at the Sistine Chapel.”
“What a coincidence,” Elizabeth said. “I have just been informed that weeping is the preferred mode of masculine expression this Season. Mr. Arthur Craster wept at a sunset not twenty minutes ago.”
“Craster?” Lady Greaves snorted dismissively. “Craster has an income of six hundred a year and no living. My Arthur has eight hundred and an estate in Dorset.”
“The estate is a cottage, Mother.”
“It is a charming cottage. With a prospect.”
“The prospect is a sheep paddock.”
Elizabeth caught Darcy’s eye over Lady Greaves’s feathered battlements. His usual glacial composure was slipping—she saw the muscle in his cheek twitch. The urge to shatter that porcelain calm, just to glimpse what hid beneath, was nearly irresistible.
Before she could deploy another barb, Darcy stepped forward, effectively putting his broad shoulder between her and the heir of the Dorset cottage.
“I believe your sister, Miss Mary, requires your attention,” he said.
Elizabeth glanced ahead. Mary was most certainly not asking for her; she was currently thirty paces down the gravel path, deep in an animated discussion with Georgiana that required emphatic hand gestures and appeared to involve the relative merits of the Broadwoods’ pedal technique.
Elizabeth took Darcy’s offered escape with a grateful nod. They slipped out of the parade’s current, side by side, beneath the elms, Allegra and the others drifting ahead and leaving her and Darcy in a rare, quiet pocket.
“The Arthurs of London are waging a systematic campaign,” she said, letting out a long breath as she adjusted her parasol. “I have met two in the last quarter hour, both offered up to meby their mothers like prime stock at Michaelmas. One weeps at sunsets, and the other at Italian ceilings. I am apparently to choose between their tears.”
“You might prefer a drier suitor,” Darcy murmured. He bent down absently, petting Nettle, who still carried that leather ball, wagging her tail optimistically.
“I should prefer an afternoon without suitors altogether,” she said, her tone losing its sharp, defensive edge and softening into genuine exhaustion. “Give me Lady Sophia, a novel, an armchair, and not a single soul remarking on my complexion or fifteen thousand.”
“Your complexion,” Darcy said, his gaze remaining fixed on the distant line of the Serpentine as if he imagined tossing Nettle’s ball in the middle of a London promenade, “is unremarkable.”
Elizabeth froze in her tracks, her slipper catching on the gravel. She looked up at him, eyes widened, wondering if he had made a jest or an insult.
“Thank you, Mr. Darcy,” she said, her voice dry. “In a town where I have been compared to a duchess, a thoroughbred, and a kid goat, that may well be the kindest thing anyone has said to me today.”
“I did not mean—” He caught himself, his chest rising as he forced the words out. “I meant that remarking upon it is unnecessary. The practice is vulgar. Your features are not… they do not require the endorsement of a Mayfair address to be?—”
“I understood you, Mr. Darcy,” she said, stepping close enough that her skirts brushed his coat. “It was a compliment. Unconventional, yes, but I find I prefer those.”
“You… do?” The hard lines around his mouth relaxed, and he let out a breath. “I find myself often at a loss around you.”
“I am not so difficult to discern.” Elizabeth twirled her parasol, trying to hide a smile. “I know you wish to lob thatleather ball of Nettle’s at Sir Geoffrey Hale and you are just as eager to retire to the library and hide your face behind a large gilt-edged tome—thick and aged—perhaps Homer’sOdysseyor a saga equally long and tedious.”
“Lady Sophia has decreed that you are to be presented with every last aspect of the London Season, it being your first—” The corner of his lips twisted, a rare, private flash of ironical humor lighting his dark eyes. “And I, as her loyal deputy, am beholden to execute her commands to the letter.”
“A terrifying prospect for us both,” Elizabeth murmured, eyeing the blue cloth of his sleeve. She told herself his devotion to the task was merely the rigid honor of an aristocrat fulfilling a family obligation—the very pride that made him look down on her less orderly relations.
“No, Miss Elizabeth, it is not terrifying, but an honor.” Darcy turned his full stature toward her, stopping in the middle of the pathway, oblivious to the parade of parasols and walking sticks. Nettle, wagging her stubby tail, dropped the leather ball at his feet, but he was looking only at Elizabeth, his dark eyes arresting hers. “A lady has only a single first Season, Miss Elizabeth. It can never be repeated. To be permitted to witness yours—to ensure that it is not entirely intolerable to you—is a privilege I do not take lightly. I assure you, obligation has very little to do with it.”
Elizabeth’s breath hitched completely, a sudden, dizzying warmth rushing up to her collarbone. Privilege? Honor? Was he determined to assist her in finding a match as some kind of penance for the way he had proposed? To keep his promise never to address her again? To remain but a guardian, a trustee, and perhaps a friend?
She felt suddenly bare, wit stripped away, panic fluttering as she wondered what he truly meant.
A thin, reedy, frantic cheeping shattered the moment. Elizabeth looked up as a tiny downy fledgling tumbled from anest and landed on the grass. Above them, its mother circled, calling for him with the frantic energy akin to Mrs. Bennet’s clarion call while in the presence of eligible gentlemen.
Nettle quivered, ears rigid, preparing to pounce.
