"I am playing it," she returned, just as quietly.
"You are sacrificing the hand."
"I am playing in my own way."
"That is not the object."
"It is mine."
She moved to lay the card down, and his hand came forward as if to still hers, not enough to draw the attention of the room, but enough to draw her notice before she could complete the motion.
"Do not," he said.
Elizabeth turned her head then, her eyes resting on his face with a composure she did not feel.
"Sir, you are interfering."
"I am preventing a mistake."
"I do not require prevention."
"You do."
There was something in the certainty of it that might have unsettled her, had she not been equally determined.
She played the card. It was, as he had predicted, the wrong one.
"Ah," said Mr Fletcher, with mild interest, "a bold choice."
"A mistaken one," Darcy replied.
"You may yet be wrong," Elizabeth said, though she knew very well he was not.
"I am not."
"You are insufferable," she said in an undertone.
"Frequently."
They lost the hand.
Bingley leaned back with a small laugh. "Marvellous. That was decisive, if not entirely clear to me."
"It was perfectly clear," said Mr Fletcher chuckling. "Miss Elizabeth prefers boldness to caution."
"I prefer not to be dictated to," Elizabeth said.
Darcy did not answer, but she felt a shift in him. A bristle of annoyance that moved through his stiff frame.
The next hand began more quietly. For a few rounds she played with perfect correctness, as though to prove a point she had already abandoned, and then, just as deliberately, she did not.
He saw it at once. "Do not," he said again, lower now.
"You have no authority here."
"I have reason, madam."
She reached forward. This time he did not check her. He took her hand. It was not a light correction, nor a passing contact that might be overlooked. His fingers closed over hers and held, arresting the movement entirely before the card could be played.
