Page 11 of The Sole Love

“I did not think you enjoyed balls,” she replied, her voice almost cheerful and certainly teasing.

“I do not particularly, as you have wisely observed, but I accompanied Georgiana, who wished to come.”

“Miss Darcy is with you?” Elizabeth exclaimed with genuine interest.

They spoke almost as old friends might, both avoiding any mention of what had passed between them in Kent.

“Yes, she is here. She is dancing presently, but if you would permit me, I should like to introduce her to you.”

Elizabeth regarded him with curiosity and a strange sense of unreality. It seemed impossible that everything in Kent, the proposal and the letter, had happened to the same man and woman who now stood together on a London terrace making polite conversation.

Both behaved as though nothing had happened at the Parsonage, as though neither their terrible conversation nor his letter had ever existed. Elizabeth had imagined countless versions of their first meeting, but never this: two distant friends who liked each other, though neither seemed quite certain how much.

“May I invite you to dance, Miss Elizabeth?”

She nodded, and he saw the gesture, for his eyes were fixed upon her.

“Should you not consult your card?” he asked, this time with something almost teasing in his tone.

“No,” she said, looking directly into his eyes, and to her astonishment, he was the first to look away.

His gaze moved towards the ballroom, where Jane was dancing, and Elizabeth could not help noticing how happy her sister looked, almost as she had at Netherfield. For a moment, she searched for Jane’s partner, wondering whether Mr Bingley might somehow have appeared. As the dancers changed positions, however, she saw that it was not he. Indeed, nowhere in the long line of gentlemen could she see the man whose absence had made the previous months almost unbearable for both the Bennet and Gardiner families. Mr Darcy appeared to have come only with his own family.

“She seems completely recovered,” he said.

There was no malice in his voice, no particular emphasis at all. Their conversation remained so carefully neutral that Elizabeth felt they were both performing in some strange improvisation, each determined not to break character.

“Yes, after seven months, she is finally recovered.”

They spoke of Jane almost as if she had suffered an illness whose cause neither of them knew.

“I am happy for her. My friend…” He paused, and no name was necessary. “He went North on business, something regarding his late father’s legacy.”

Elizabeth nodded. As the dance ended, she saw Jane approaching them on the arm of a young gentleman. Her sister was smiling at her partner, but the moment she noticed Mr Darcy, she stumbled and immediately began searching the room.

Her search for Mr Bingley was so obvious that Mr Darcy could hardly have misunderstood it.

“I am sorry,” he said quietly.

Those three words meant more to Elizabeth than everything else he had said that evening. He understood the mistake he had made concerning Jane.

Her first impulse was to tell him that he ought to be sorry. She suppressed it. She had hurt him enough at Hunsford and had no desire to begin their acquaintance anew by striking another blow.

“I am sorry too,” she murmured.

Her heart beat so rapidly that she was grateful for the noise around them.

Fortunately, Mrs Gardiner appeared beside them with the vigilance of a mother guarding her young.

Introductions followed, allowing Elizabeth to observe Jane’s partner. If she had ever imagined a gentleman particularly well suited to her sister, he might have looked very much like the man beside her. Equally handsome, they even shared the same shy rather than cheerful smile. Elizabeth could scarcely remember seeing a more handsome man.

David Haskett entered their lives as naturally as though he had always belonged there.

Mrs Gardiner was delighted with her nieces’ partners. She looked at Mr Darcy with surprise, but the next moment Jane and her companion claimed almost all her attention.

After the usual civilities, Mr Darcy offered Elizabeth his arm and led her to the dance floor. Mrs Gardiner’s smile suggested that she believed peace had finally arrived. It was not quite so simple. Between Elizabeth and Darcy there existed, at best, an odd truce, but for the first time Elizabeth was content simply to be in his company.

During the dance, they barely spoke, limiting themselves to observations about the unusually warm weather for the end of May and the excellence of the orchestra. Yet even that restrained conversation gave Elizabeth a peculiar pleasure. When he returned her to her aunt, they found Mr Gardiner there as well, and not long afterwards Mr Darcy discreetly signalled for his sister to join them.