Page 63 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

Fitzwilliam waited at the foot of the stairs in his black coat and offered his hand. "They are all looking at my wife."

"They are all looking at my back. There is a difference."

"There is not," he said, and led her in to the music.

Mrs. Bennet held the north end of the room, resplendent in lace, conducting the county through the evening at full volume. "...my daughter, Mrs. Darcy, you know, of Pemberley, testified before the Lords themselves! And that dreadful man is to be hanged! I always said he was no good, I said it from the very first..."

Had she said any such thing? She had not, and everyone in the room knew it. Elizabeth caught her mother's eye across the floor and received a look of ferocious, tearful pride.

Her father stood near the punch with his spectacles polished and firmly on his face. When he caught Elizabeth's glance he raised his glass to her, an inch, no more. The old irony was still in the gesture, but tonight he meant it.

Jane and Bingley danced. Elizabeth had watched him ask her, three days after the verdict, from the Gardiners' back bedroom. She had not meant to spy. Four small Gardiners had meant to, and she had gone up to fetch them away.

Below, in the little garden, Bingley stood under the bare pear tree. He put his hands behind his back, then in front, then behind again. Elizabeth heard none of it. She had the words from Jane that night. He had forgotten every line of his speech, so he told her the part that was not the speech.

At Netherfield, in the summer, he had called roses the finest of flowers because they asked nothing of anybody. Jane, who agreed with everyone, had argued. A rose needed her thorns, she said, for how else was she to protect herself? "I have loved you since that minute," he told her under the pear tree. "Not the smile. Everyone loves the smile. I love the thorns."

Jane said yes before he had finished. "I had more arguments prepared," he said, and she told him she should like to hear them, over the next forty years. Then he kissed her. Behind Elizabeth, a small Gardiner cheered and was hushed.

Tonight he called her my rose in the hearing of the county. Half the room knew they were to marry before Easter.

Miss Bingley sat by the window with a cup of punch she did not drink. As Elizabeth passed, Miss Bingley's eyes went to the small of her back. Elizabeth watched her assemble a remark of the old kind. Would it be something with how brave in it? Miss Bingley put it away unsaid. Miss Bingley inclined her head the merest fraction and turned back to the dancing. Elizabeth found she could pass the window without triumph.

Mr. Collins had secured a position near the fire and an audience of one. "...the fate of the prosecution, my dear Miss Mary, I do not exaggerate, balanced upon my parish diary as upon the point of a needle..." Mary listened with her head tilted and believed every word.

Richard and Anne sat at the edge of the floor, not dancing. His hand covered hers on the arm of her chair, in full view of the room. By the far wall Lady Catherine de Bourgh sat in her wheeled chair, wrapped in dove-gray, with Mrs. Jenkinson in attendance. She had been carried into Netherfield with enormous ceremony.

She saw the joined hands. Elizabeth watched her see them. Would she forbid it, here, before the whole county? Her ladyship regarded her daughter and the soldier for a long, level moment. Then she turned her attention to the dancing and said nothing at all.

From Lady Catherine, silence was consent. Anne knew it. Her chin came up, and she did not let go of Richard's hand.

Kitty danced with Captain Gill. Her hand trembled as he took it, and he steadied it with a small pressure of his fingers. Captain Gill had not put a foot wrong in seven years of parades. At the bottom of the set he missed the beat entirely. He stood half a second, looking at her. The couple behind bumped him. He bowed his apology to the room and did not appear to regret it in the least.

Mrs. Bennet observed the pair over her fan and delivered herself to Mrs. Phillips in a whisper that reached the orchestra. "He is very brown, is he not?"

"He is very tall, sister."

Mrs. Bennet considered this gravely. "Well! He is a captain. And he has all his teeth." From Amelia Bennet, it was a coronation.

Lydia watched her sister dance with bright, proprietary satisfaction. She nudged Mary, who had escaped Mr. Collins between anecdotes. "Kitty's captain is rather handsome, is he not?"

Mary examined the couple. "I think he has good posture."

"Good posture." Lydia laughed, the true unguarded laugh the family had missed since autumn. "Lord, I am asking Mary about men. What has become of me?"

"Improvement," said Mary, with terrible sincerity.

When the reel was called, Mr. Bennet crossed the floor, bowed to his youngest daughter, and asked for the honor. The room had spent months not-saying things about Lydia Bennet, and it noticed. He led her through it with old-fashioned exactness. He was making amends where every gossip in the county could see. Lydia danced it bright-eyed and careful. When the music ended her father kissed her hand, and Elizabeth found her eyes full.

"You are crying," Fitzwilliam observed, somewhere near her ear.

"I am not. It is the candles." She took the handkerchief he was already holding out. "You might have the decency not to anticipate me."

"I have abandoned decency. I laughed aloud last night. Ask anyone."

Georgiana had written from Pemberley that morning. You will tell me everything at Christmas, and you will not soften it. I am done with being the person things are softened for. The compact, it appeared, was spreading.

Upstairs a boy was waiting to be tucked in, and Elizabeth had promised.