“To make sure everything runs smoothly,” Darcy said, “I’ve already set up a dummy account. No profile photo, barely any info. Just enough to let the algorithm do its thing. I want to see how well it actually works.”
“You signed up?” Mrs Hurst asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“Yes.”
Caroline straightened in her seat, visibly startled. “So you’re going on a date?”
“It’s not that serious,” Darcy replied, his voice cool and clipped. “Three dates. Controlled environments. If it works, we turn it into a case study. Use it for publicity. The investors will eat it up.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Louisa asked.
“Then we learn something. Either way, it’s useful.”
Caroline frowned, keeping her voice carefully measured. “And you actually believe it might match you with someone you like?”
Darcy let out a quiet chuckle. He recognised that tone. The concealed curiosity. The delicate sting of disappointment that Caroline tried so hard to mask, but the jealousy in her voice reminded him that she still had a crush on him, one he’d never encouraged but had always been aware of.
“That’s what the app is supposed to do,” he said.
He stood, took his coffee in hand, and glanced out over the rolling hills. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see what it’s like to date myself in the wild.”
Caroline watched him go, jaw tight.
Louisa went back to scrolling.
Bingley sipped his drink with a knowing smile.
And Darcy, without saying it aloud, acknowledged what they all refused to admit:
He was curious. Almost dangerously so. Most annoyingly, it was Elizabeth’s question about whether he had ever loved before that had stirred it.
***
Darcy didn’t like it when something bothered him beyond comfort. It felt inefficient. A waste of bandwidth.
And yet, there he was, alone in the guest suite of the Bingley vacation home, his phone glowing dimly against the dark wood of the desk, the search bar already populated with her name.
Elizabeth Bennet.
He hadn’t googled her before. Not when Charles first mentioned Jane had a sister. Not after the Q&A incident. Not even when the tweet began trending. He’d told himself he wasn’t curious. But now, with the hum of crickets outside the window and silence stretching long inside his head, curiosity had finally won.
Her articles were the first to load.
A scathing review of a self-driving car company that had promised sentience and delivered smoke. A profile of a reclusive female coder who had gone viral for all the right reasons. A takedown of a startup trying to replace therapists with AIchatbots, which had apparently led to a quiet investor exodus. Smart, unsparing, often funny.
She wrote like someone holding a sword behind her back. You didn’t see the cut until you were already bleeding.
Then came her Instagram. Public, naturally. Journalists used it as branding more than memory-keeping. But hers was… different. Less curated. Less posturing. Photos of books with coffee mugs. Chaotic family shots, picnics, birthdays and mismatched pyjamas.
In one photo from December, a group of eight stood in front of a wonky Christmas tree: two men, six women. He lingered.
That must be her family.
He didn’t scroll so much as drift. Twenty minutes passed unnoticed. One image became the next. Elizabeth in trainers, walking a dog. Elizabeth at a bookstore, cross-legged on the floor. Elizabeth holding a niece or maybe a cousin, smiling with crinkled eyes.
Her eyes.
He caught himself staring. In almost every frame, her gaze met the lens straight on. Not posed. Not polished. Just… present. Alive. Curious. She didn’t smile like she was trying to be liked. She smiled like she knew something you didn’t. It was maddening.
