Page 5 of Shadows Of Rosings Park: Part 2

"What you call protection, I call ownership."

They looked at each other across the narrow space between the bench and his standing body. The morning light fell between them. The lilacs smelled sweet and false. Neither of them blinked.

Elizabeth's hands were shaking. Not from cold, the April air was mild, but from the precise, targeted fury of a woman who has just been told that her friend's future is being decided by men in a garden, over the sound of birdsong, as casually as one might discuss the rotation of crops.

Elizabeth rose from the bench.

"One final matter," he said. "You will accompany me on a drive before the week's end. There is a place I wish to show you."

"May I ask what location?"

"You may ask. I shall not answer. Consider it an incentive for continued cooperation."

They returned to the house. Mrs. Bennet's exclamations reached them before the door did. Elizabeth dropped Darcy's arm as they entered the morning room, a small, fluid movement, unhurried enough that it could not be read as rebellion but definite enough that they both knew what it was.

She felt his gaze on her back as she turned to her mother. He had noticed. The look lasted only a beat, but the way his jaw set told her he would forget nothing.

"Mamma, Sir William said we might bring Mr. Darcy to Lucas Lodge this evening. You must persuade him to join us. He's quite alone at Netherfield until Mr. Bingley's arrival tomorrow."

She had done exactly what he wanted, issued the invitation, played the part, while withdrawing her hand before he chose to release it. It was almost nothing, a gesture another person might have missed. But in the grammar of their arrangement, where every touch and every withdrawal carried meaning, it was the first sentence Elizabeth had spoken in her own voice since Hunsford.

Darcy accepted the invitation. At the door, he paused.

"Until this evening, then. I look forward to continuing our conversation."

She watched him walk down the drive to where his horse waited, and Charlotte's words at Rosings returned to her: His hand trembled when he touched you. That is your advantage, Lizzy. He desires not just obedience, but willing surrender.

If Charlotte was right, and Charlotte understood men's wants better than anyone Elizabeth knew, then Darcy's weakness was not cruelty but need. He did not merely want to own Elizabeth. He wanted her to want to be owned. In that distinction, narrow as a blade's width, lay the only power she possessed.

She intended to use it.

CHAPTER 3

ELIZABETH

The sapphire brooch sat at Elizabeth's collar like a cold finger.

She had not chosen it. Darcy had sent it that afternoon with a note: Wear this tonight. It belonged to my mother. The presumption of it, the use of sentiment as command, made her want to hurl it at the wall. Instead she pinned it at her collar, because the blue stone commanded attention, drawing the eye to itself and away from the faint shadow beneath the rice-paste on her cheek.

Charlotte would be at dinner tonight. The thought sat in Elizabeth's stomach like a stone.

She had not spoken privately with Charlotte since Rosings. They had parted on the gravel drive with a whispered exchange, We are bound now, Lizzy. By blood and silence, and the look in Charlotte's eyes had been the worst thing Elizabeth had carried away from Kent, worse than the bruises, worse than Darcy's bargain. Charlotte had looked emptied. Not grief-stricken, not frightened, not angry, emptied, as though someone had reached inside her and removed the vital spring, leaving the shell intact and functioning but hollow.

"Lizzy?" Jane appeared at the connecting door in a blue gown that brought out her eyes. "Are you ready? The carriage awaits."

"Yes. Coming."

The dinner was at Lucas Lodge, Sir William and Lady Lucas hosting, Charlotte the silent centrepiece, the neighbourhood assembled to gawk at a fresh widow and a fresh engagement in the same evening. The social cruelty of it would have amused Elizabeth under other circumstances. Now it merely added another layer to the pretence.

In the carriage, Mrs. Bennet vibrated with anticipation. Mr. Bennet sat opposite, his shrewd face half-shadowed, his eyes finding Elizabeth at intervals with the muted worry of a father who suspected his daughter's happiness was not quite what it appeared. Whether he attributed this to the strangeness of a sudden attachment, the shadow of a death in the parish, or mere wedding nerves, Elizabeth could not tell.

"You mustn't fall behind, Papa," Elizabeth said. "The excitement of the evening will require your sharpest wit."

"My wit has been the sharpest thing about me for thirty years, Lizzy. It's the only blade I possess that your mother hasn't managed to blunt."

Mrs. Bennet ignored this, as she ignored all of her husband's remarks that did not pertain to the financial or matrimonial advancement of her daughters. "Oh, what a night this will be! And Charlotte will be there, poor dear. You must be very kind to her, Lizzy."

"I intend to be."