Page 52 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

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"He cannot dance, Lady Lucas. Not a single set. Mr. Jones has forbidden it absolutely." Mrs. Bennet's voice carried across the ballroom over the fiddles.

Darcy sat in a gilt chair against the wall and watched the dancers.

"And Lizzy cannot dance either, poor girl," Mrs. Bennet went on. "So there they sit. Was there ever such a pair?"

She beamed across the room at them both. It was a long, warm, satisfied look, and it rested on Darcy.

Beside him, Elizabeth made a small sound behind her fan.

"Your mother looks very pleased," he said.

"That is what frightens me." She kept the fan raised. "Mr. Bingley has not left Jane's side all evening. Now she has looked at you, and she is thinking of ten thousand a year. I can see it from here."

"Can you?"

"I have watched her do it to every gentleman who ever came into Meryton." Her voice was light. Her fingers were tight on the fan. "I beg your pardon for her. And please do not suppose it runs in the family. I should hate you to think I sit here looking at your fortune too."

"I do not think it."

"Good." She kept her eyes on the dancers. "Because I am not."

He saw what she was afraid of. Her mother was staring at him across a ballroom, in front of the whole neighborhood. Elizabeth was ashamed of it, and afraid of what he would make of it. She thought he might take her for one more fortune seeker with an eye on Pemberley.

Before the fire, he might have. Before the fire, he had looked at her whole family and seen nothing but their manners.

Now he nearly laughed. She had cut his meat, and dressed his burns, and called him proud to his face. In three weeks she had never once spoken of Pemberley.

They had sat side by side since the first set. Nobody had arranged it. She had come in on her new crutch with Jane at her elbow, and taken the chair nearest the fire. He had come in five minutes later and sat down beside her. Neither of them had moved since.

The crutch leaned against the wall at her side. Her mother had objected to it in the hall. Mr. Bennet had said that a ball was not a dinner table, and he would hear no more about it.

The whole neighborhood was watching them. Darcy could feel it. Mrs. Long had looked over three times in the first set alone. Sir William had come by twice to say what a fine thing it was. The two heroes of Bonfire Night, mending so well! Lydia and Kitty went down the set with two officers and giggled every time they passed. Miss Bingley danced with Mr. Hurst and watched them over his shoulder.

Darcy found that he did not care.

He wore gloves, as every gentleman did at a ball. He had worn them at a hundred balls and never once thought about them. Tonight he felt every seam. The kid pressed on the new skin of his palms, and it hurt whenever he closed his hands.

Elizabeth wore a shawl. It was long and cream-colored, with a silk fringe. She had drawn it across her lap when she sat down. Her right hand lay beneath it.

During the third set, he took off his right glove.

He did it carefully, below the level of her chair. Nobody was looking at his hands. Everybody was looking at their faces. He laid the glove on his knee. He slid his bare hand under the edge of the shawl and found hers.

She went still. She went on watching the dance with great attention.

Then her fingers turned under his and laced through them.

Her skin was warm. His palm was tender, and the ridges of the scars caught against her fingers. It hurt a little. He held on. For three weeks these hands had held nothing. Now he held hers in a ballroom full of people, and nobody knew.

"Mr. Darcy," she murmured to the dancers. "You are holding my hand."

"Yes."

"In front of half of Hertfordshire."

"Under a shawl," he said. "Which is quite different."