But her spine? Straight.
Because for the first time since this whole strange game began, Elizabeth Bennet felt exactly what she needed to feel—
Clear.
And yet, it wasn’t as pleasant as she had imagined it would be.
Chapter TEN
“WHERE TO, sir?” the driver asked, glancing at him in the mirror.
Darcy did not answer at once.
The café door had closed behind him with far more finality than it deserved, and yet the sound of it still seemed to ring in his ears. The hum of traffic outside was distant, muffled, as though the city itself had decided to give him space.
He sat in the back seat and stared ahead, not seeing the street.
“Just… drive,” he said at last. His voice came out controlled, even, as if nothing had happened. “Anywhere. I need a moment.”
“Yes, sir.”
The car pulled away from the curb, merging into the afternoon flow. Darcy leaned back, one hand resting against his knee, the other clenched loosely at his side.
For a moment, Darcy sat perfectly still. Then, despite himself, he let his mind drift.
What had just happened was only the latest in a chain of moments he had been collecting with Elizabeth Bennet. It had truly begun at the frozen yoghurt shop—something small, almost laughable, that should have meant nothing at all.
Or perhaps it had begun even earlier.
Those eyes.
Fine eyes, he had thought once, long ago, and now the phrase returned to mock him with its simplicity. He had seen them first on a screen late at night, when he had been doing what he did not do, what he certainly did not admit to doing—looking her up after the gala, scrolling through fragments of her life with a restless attention he would have called ridiculous in anyone else.
He had told himself it was nothing. Mere curiosity. A passing amusement.
And yet—
They had followed him since.
They had appeared in his sleep, uninvited and infuriatingly vivid.
At Bingley’s dinner table, when the conversation had turned light and teasing and far too personal, he had said—calmly, dismissively—that he was not prepared for any relationship.
He had added, with the same practiced ease, that he was not falling for Elizabeth Bennet.
A lie.
Not the sort of lie that served a purpose, either. Not strategy. Not protection.
Just cowardice, dressed up as restraint.
BecauseBazile—clever, sharp-tongued, perceptive, anonymous Bazile—had captured something in him long before Elizabeth Bennet had ever sat across from him in person.
A week of anonymous chatting. Three meetings in person—though only two with anything resembling real conversation. And yet it was that one evening in the frozen yoghurt shop that triggered everything, when she had laughed with such unguarded ease, as though amusement were both her shield and her charm.
And he had felt, with a disconcerting certainty, that he knew her… not in the careless way one knows a passing acquaintance, but in the quiet, unsettling way she seemed to take up space in his mind, as though she had always been there, waiting to be noticed.
Not her hobbies. Not her profile statistics. Not the neat list of preferences the app displayed so obediently.
