AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I have not,” Mr. Darcy said.
“I could ask Jack Bennet to introduce you?” Mr. Bingley continued. “I’m sure that would be proper.”
“Propriety does not seem to be first and foremost in the minds of most of the people here,” Mr. Darcy said, and Elliot knew then that he did realise and probably did not like it.
Bingley laughed. “Certainly, we are no longer in London. There’s a freedom to that though, Darcy! No society matrons looking over our shoulders telling us how we must behave. No clubs full of society gentlemen plotting how to compromise the latest omega that is fashion! I relish it!” He paused. “Now, about Elliot?”
“Elliot?”
“Jack’s brother.” He laughed again. “I wonder that you were not introduced to all the Bennet boys. They could hardly have missed you stood over here brooding!”
Mrs. Bennet nudged Elliot in his side. Elliot suspected she would have refrained had she waited for Mr. Darcy’s next words.
“I made no effort to be introduced,” Mr. Darcy said. “They hold no interest for me. No one here holds my interest, Charles. I am here only on your request. Please remember that!”
“Darcy!” Mr. Bingley cried. “They will hold interest if you allow them. Elliot is the dark-haired one with the curls. His dress is almost as plain as yours and his eyes are very brown. I have barely seen him dance all night. I wonder that he has lacked a partner.”
“I know who you mean,” Mr. Darcy eventually said. “He has been circling the dancefloor watching his brother.”
“As I said, he has lacked partners.”
“Indeed,” Mr. Darcy said. “And I understand why. He is barely tolerable. Certainly not handsome enough to tempt me!”
Mrs. Bennet gasped at the slight on her son.
Elliot simply sighed.
He had warned her of this. Men such as him did not mate with alphas of ten thousand a year!
Five
They arrived home at Longbourn much later than Mr. Bennet expected and only just within the bounds of what could be considered proper. The two younger boys were in high spirits almost to the point of excessive excitation. Marc ignored them all, complaining of a headache, and went straight to his bedchamber. Jack seemed introspective and Elliot sympathised with this as he too was pondering everything he had heard and experienced, trying to decipher how he felt about it all.
Mrs. Bennet on the other hand…
“Oh, my dear Mr. Bennet,” she said as she entered the room where he was waiting for them. “We have had a most delightful evening, a most excellent ball. I wish you had been there. Jack was so very admired. Nothing could be like it. Everybody said how well he looked, and Mr. Bingley thought him quite beautiful—though he is quite beautiful himself!—and danced with him several times. Indeed, we could not pry them apart! It was as if he was the only creature in the room!”
Mr. Bennet placed his well-thumbed book on the side table next to him. His expression clearly conveyed that like or not, there was no way to avoid this conversation. He had expected it and waited up for them regardless.
“He danced with Charlie Lucas,” Louis said slyly as he settled onto one of the chairs opposite Mr. Bennet. Elliot noticed the lace around his neck looked a smite askew and wondered how that had happened. “So clearly, Jack was not the only creature in the room.”
“I was so vexed to see him stand up with Charlie!” Mrs. Bennet continued for she was in full flow now and none of the men in the room were able to stop her. “However, Bingley did not admire him at all. How could he? Charlie Lucas is so firmly on the shelf any suitor would have to reach high there! Besides he danced with our other sons as well, first Marc and then Christian, though no sign of Elliot!” She shot her second son a thoroughly disapproving look. “And then even Louis?—”
“If he had had any compassion for me,” Mr. Bennet said impatiently, “He would not have danced half so much! For God’s sake, say no more of his partners. Oh, that he had sprained his ankle in the first dance!”
Elliot caught his papa’s eye, and they shared a grin, though oddly for a moment, Elliot found himself thinking about Darcy spraining an ankle on the first dance rather than Bingley. It would have spared him the ‘tolerable’ comment. Not that it bothered him but still…
“Oh, my dear,” continued Mrs. Bennet, “I am quite delighted with him. He is so excessively handsome! And his sisters are charming women. I never in my life saw anything more elegant than their dresses. I dare say the lace upon Mrs. Louisa Hurst’s gown?—"
Here she was interrupted again by Mr. Bennet to protest any description of finery. She was therefore obliged to seek another branch of the subject, and related—as if she were reading Elliot’s very thoughts—with much bitterness of spirit, and some exaggeration, the shocking rudeness of Mr. Darcy. By the time she had finished all of Elliot’s brothers were looking at him with sympathy, even Louis.
“But I can assure you,” she added. “That is only to the good that Elliot does not suit his fancy for he is a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited that there was no enduring him! Not handsome enough to dance with! I wish you had been there, my dear, to have given him one of your set-downs. I quite detest the man.”
“Elliot does not seem displeased by the outcome,” Mr. Bennet eventually said, and Elliot hurried to assure the room that was indeed the case but later that night, when Elliot and Jack were alone in their bedchamber, Elliot found himself wondering if he wasn’t a bit displeased after all, though he could find no good reason why he should be.
“Elliot?”
Jack was still awake, propped up on an elbow gazing out the leaded window. Their room gave them an excellent view of the river and both Jack and Elliot usually spent a good deal of time looking out of it as dawn and dusk arrived, marking the start and end of the days, talking over events and hopes—it was a favoured pastime.
