“I congratulate you on a successful party, madam,” he said to his hostess, “but I beg you would not attribute the triumph to anyone but yourself and your good husband, for you alone deserve the praise.”
“Of course, sir. I did not mean to imply…” Lady Staunton paused, looking between them anxiously. “But now that you are both here, it would be a shame if you did not seize the opportunity to dance. Mrs Marsdon was just telling me how you excel at it, Mr Darcy, and I know for myself how well Miss Elizabeth enjoys the amusement.”
“If Miss Elizabeth would allow me the honour of her hand, I should be very happy to dance with her.”
He could not remember ever being so well pleased by a woman accepting an invitation to dance as when Elizabeth gave her smiling consent. Lady Staunton was apparently equally pleased and wasted no time in rallying all her guests to the floor.
“You were supposed to pretend not to know me,” Elizabeth said under her breath as Darcy led her to the centre of the room.
“That was your scheme, and I did not agree to it,” he replied, smiling. Feeling the weight of a hundred pairs of eyes on him, he added, “Besides, I do not believe we would have been permitted not to dance.”
Elizabeth huffed a tiny laugh. “Probably not. You must hate all this attention.”
“I cannot imagine you have much patience for it either.”
“I am inclined to laugh about it. Why do you think they have all lost their minds over it?”
Darcy could have told her why he had lost his mind overher. What anyone else’s reason might be was of no interest to him at present. “I have no idea.”
They came to a halt in the middle of the room and stood still, waiting for the dance to be called that would tell everybody what formations they should take. Elizabeth looked around at the multitude of gaping spectators, then up at him with sudden seriousness. “I have done nothing to encourage it.”
“I know.” That was one of the myriad reasons he admired her.
Lady Staunton cleared her throat and invited one of her guests to call the dance. Lady Crowley made a great show of accepting the honour, then looked directly at Darcy and Elizabeth with a sly expression and called for the German Waltz. A wave of murmurs rumbled around the room, some clearly outraged, others just as clearly delighted. Considering his partner, Darcy was inclined to side with the latter faction.
“Do you know it?” he whispered.
Elizabeth glanced up at him with such an alluringly arch expression that he genuinely feared it might render him indecent to be in public. “I might. Do you?”
“I do. Will your uncle object to your dancing it?”
“I hope not, for as you say, I am not sure we can escape it. They have done this on purpose, have they not? To justify all their speculations.”
He nodded. “Do not allow it to unnerve you.”
“Oh, do not worry. I am not easily intimidated. But I do not enjoy performing for strangers.”
The music began, and Darcy took up her hands. “Then it is a very good thing that I am not a stranger to you.”
A faint blush broke out across her cheeks, her lips parting as they had when she blew on her tea, and Darcy pulled her into the first hold with barely restrained fervour.
Wherever she had learnt the waltz, she had learnt it well. They spun through the figures with faultless grace, matching each other effortlessly. Her pleasure in the dance was infectious. She made every aspect of it more enjoyable; the music was more rousing, the candlelight more brilliant, the activity more invigorating. The joy of it was so heady, and the feel of her, warm and supple, beneath his hands, was so sublime, so distracting, that he forgot to talk at first. He almost resented the recollection that she had admonished him for being silent during their last dance, at Netherfield, for he would happily have completed the whole set in silent admiration. For her alone, he forced himself to speak.
“I have been remiss in not telling you how very well you look this evening.”
Elizabeth looked thoroughly taken aback, thanked him in very few words, and returned to silence. Darcy was somewhat amused to comprehend that he had embarrassed her. It was more commonly she who left him tongue-tied and stupid.
“It is your turn to say something now,” he teased.
She smiled wryly. “Very well. Did you know I would be here this evening?”
“No, it was a very pleasant surprise. Why do you ask?”
“I have been trying to work out why we keep running into each other.”
A string of oaths rang through Darcy’s mind, all of them directed towards Bingley. But he could hardly tell Elizabeth that he had been searching for the man who abandoned her sister and seduced her mother; thus he was forced to equivocate. “For all its contrariety of inhabitants, London is not such a large place.”
She regarded him searchingly, as well she might, for London was the largest city with the densest population in Europe.
