The dance had been a late one—graceful, restrained, chosen by the musicians as much out of courtesy as necessity. Fewer turns. Longer figures. The sort meant to carry a room gently toward a respite. It should have spared him.
Instead, it had demanded more.
Her hand in his—light, exact, responsive—had sent the now-familiar sensation through him in uneven waves: a twitch behind the eyes, a faint hollowing beneath the ribs, as though something essential were being drawn away and returned out of order. Each time she stiffened—each moment her attention snagged elsewhere—the feeling sharpened. When she relaxed again, it eased, but never fully released him.
He had held her through it. Smiled when required. Counted the measures. Let no one see how many times his toes dragged or his vision swam.
Now, as he guided her forward, his fingers tingled where they had rested at her back, not with heat but with a strange, echoing chill. He was faintly aware of his own pulse—too quick, then oddly slow—of the floor rising and falling by degrees so slight they might have been imagined.
He ignored the eyes upon them. He could not afford to spare attention for anything but remaining upright.
Elizabeth did not.
She took her seat with composure, but it was the sort that required effort. Her shoulders remained square; her hands folded neatly in her lap. Only the quick glance she cast along the table betrayed her attention to something beyond the place set before her.
Darcy drew back his chair—and had to pause before sitting, his hand resting a moment longer than necessary on its carved back, waiting for the faint rush in his head to pass.
It did. Mostly.
Mr Collins appeared only a short distance down the table, holding a chair for Charlotte Lucas. Collins was speaking already—apologizing profusely for the delay, congratulating himself upon securing such an advantageous position—and as he moved down the line toward his place, Darcy saw Elizabeth squirm in discomfort.
Not sufficiently to invite notice. But enough.
Her head angled away from Collins; her gaze dropped as though to inspect the napkin she had already arranged. One hand lifted briefly—not quite to her face, but near enough to suggest the gesture had been checked midway, as though she had remembered herself just in time. Then she blinked, drank in a breath, and the tension in her shoulders eased. She looked up, around, and smiled at him before he pulled out his own chair.
A pulse of nausea rose and fell again, sharp enough that he briefly considered—quite seriously—whether he might beg indulgence and withdraw. A breach of etiquette. An unpardonable one. And yet the thought clung, insistent, until he felt Elizabeth shift beside him.
She was not looking at him now. But her spine went rigid again, and with it, so did the pressure in his chest.
Darcy narrowed his eyes and frowned as he took his seat beside her.
Collins settled into his own chair two places down, still talking, still pleased. Charlotte Lucas inclined her head politely, her expression composed in the way Darcy had come to recognise as endurance rather than interest.
Elizabeth’s posture altered, her breath drawn as if to speak—but instead she startled, visibly, and turned her head. Staring… across the room.
Her gaze travelled past the nearer tables, past the press of gowns and uniforms, and came to rest—briefly, searchingly—on the far side of the hall, where the militia officers were being seated together. Wickham stood among them, laughing at something said by Denny.
Elizabeth’s eyes lingered there.
Then confusion crossed her face—not alarm, not distress, but a clear, unguarded uncertainty, as though the thing she had expected to find had failed to present itself. Her hand tightened once on the edge of the table.
The pressure in Darcy’s chest eased—just enough to be unmistakable.
She looked away again, this time more slowly, and straightened in her chair as if correcting herself. When her gaze returned to the place before her, it held no relief—only calculation.
Darcy swallowed and glanced away. He had not intended to attend to her so closely. He had resolved, in fact, upon quite the opposite. Yet the effort ofnotnoticing her now required more attention than simply allowing himself to see what was plainly there.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said quietly, leaning just enough to avoid being overheard, “are you well?”
She looked back to him, a forced brightness returning to her expression as though it had never left. “Perfectly,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“Because,” he replied, choosing his words with care, “you appear less at ease than you were a moment ago.”
She hesitated—only a fraction of a second. “I am only observing,” she said lightly. “One must, in such company.”
Darcy drew his chair back only a fraction, enough to shield her from the worst of the room’s traffic without making a show of it. The motion left him faintly light-headed—nothing alarming, merely an odd swim at the edge of his sight—but it passed when he fixed his attention upon her.
He did not look toward Mr Collins again.
