Page 25 of The Longbourn Bloodline

“How arrogant you are to believe I harbor the least bit of regard for you, Mr. Darcy.”

“If you harbored none, you would not have taken such pains to protect it from my aunt’s anticipated wrath,” he countered, his eyes locking onto hers, unyielding. “Forsooth, you regard me quite enough.”

“I would destroy you with my own hands if I could.” She snarled, exposing her teeth.

“My, my Miss Elizabeth, what big fangs you have. I should like to feel you try.”

“I should leave you exactly where you fell—bloodied, battered, and flat upon your face.”

“I believe you already have, although your father would deny it. I wonder, Miss Elizabeth, why you wished me to change the entail for your sake? Your words were: Would he not change it for me? Please, what exactly did you mean by that?”

The color drained from her face. “I hate you.”

“No.” Darcy retrieved his walking stick and turned toward the path that led back to the steward’s cottage. “You do not. That is rather the problem, is it not?”

He did not wait for her response. He walked away, his shirt flapping in the December wind, his back smarting from a multitude of thorns, and his heart hammering with something that felt dangerously like hope.

Behind him, Elizabeth let out a noise of pure, thwarted fury.

And Cleo, emerging from the hedge with a mouse in her jaws, gave him what might have been an approving look as he passed.

“Traitor,” he told her, smiling. “Or should I say, matchmaker?”

The cat dropped the mangled mouse at his feet as her offering of gratitude for the rescue.

CHAPTER NINE

QUIZZING THE COLONEL

Never had Longbourn’s annual greenery gathering inspired such a flurry of anticipation, nor had Mrs. Bennet’s spirits soared so high, as when two eligible gentlemen threatened to transform the day’s rustic labors into a campaign of conquest. She bustled about at prodigious vocal volume, preparing her five daughters for the possible conquest of the inadequate number of gentlemen.

“Fresh air! Exercise! The Colonel in his regimentals among the holly bushes!” Mrs. Bennet clapped her hands so adamantly that a piece of toast went flying over Jane’s head. “Jane, dear, you must wear your blue pelisse. It brings out your eyes. Lizzy, do try to be agreeable for once. And Lydia, if you tear another hem climbing after berries, I shall lock you in the attic until Twelfth Night.”

Her exclamations punctuated the air with every glance out the window and every sip of tea. “Mary, do try to quell your dour quotations from Fordyce. The Druids, I am told, considered holly sacred, and surely there is some tale of romance between holly and ivy to enliven our gathering?”

Mary sat at the table scribbling into her improvement journal, while Elizabeth’s pink one lay silent and untouched.

“We must have mistletoe. Hill, see to it that the footmen collect the finest specimens from the stone wall behind the orchard. And we must have pine boughs to construct the kissing bough.”

“Mamma, I shall reach for the mistletoe as I am the tallest,” Lydia crowed.

“Be sure to allow the gentlemen to assist you.” Mrs. Bennet fluttered her eyelids as if reenacting her coquettish days. “And Lizzy, appeal to that tall Mr. Darcy rather than try to crawl up a tree yourself. Although I fear Mr. Darcy’s tree climbing is no better than Mr. Collins’s horseback riding.”

Elizabeth suppressed the urge to roll her eyes, recalling that Mr. Collins’s unfortunate demise was not a subject for levity. Her mother, however, was less respectful, and Elizabeth wondered whether she had benefited in the least from Mrs. Beaumont’s conversational lessons. Hadn’t anyone taught her to be discreet? That everything that crossed her mind need not be spoken in a loud voice?

The two gentlemen had hardly arrived when Mrs. Bennet began positioning poor Jane beside Mr. Darcy—which was just as well for Elizabeth, because she was unsure how to approach him after yesterday’s agitation. Her father had said nothing about Elizabeth being present when Darcy dropped from the tree. Instead, he allowed Elizabeth to hide her bloodstained glove in his locked bookcase.

She understood her father’s secrecy. If her mother scented the opportunity for marriage by compromise, she would be campaigning for a special license and the wedding breakfast before the next teacup dropped on a gentleman’s toe.

They entered the room warily, as if expecting ambush. The Colonel bowed extravagantly at Mrs. Bennet and Jane, but Mr. Darcy moved with a stiffness that betrayed his discomfort, his left side guarded, and the telltale scratches peeking above his cravat where his collar failed to conceal them. After the words she had flung at him—words she now wished unsaid—Elizabeth found herself quite unable to meet his gaze.

Neither did he speak other than with a pained bow. He also seemed to be avoiding the vicinity of her mother as if fearing that she would launch the “you must marry my daughter because you fell from a tree and landed at her feet” gambit.

Determined to avoid such a fate—and, annoyingly, finding Darcy’s avoidance more provoking than flattering—Elizabeth curtsied and made her way to Colonel Fitzwilliam’s side.

“Miss Elizabeth.” Richard offered his arm as they headed to the foyer for her cloak and bonnet. “How delighted to see you this morning. I hear you had quite a fright yesterday when my cousin fell out of a tree.”

Elizabeth cast a glance at her mother, who was correcting Kitty’s posture with one hand while, with the other, arranging Jane’s gloved fingers upon Mr. Darcy’s arm and pushing them both toward the door, where Hill had marshaled two footmen, a cart, and a nephew brandishing a saw.