Elizabeth laughed. “You object to a story that asks something of its characters?”
“I object to stories that make demands at all,” he replied easily, though his appetite had quite abandoned him. “I read to be educated or entertained, not enlisted.”
“Ah! Then you must avoid half the best poems and legends. They are forever insisting that one thing must follow another.”
“Yes,” he said, lifting his glass and taking a measured sip. “A most tiresome habit.”
“And yet people keep repeating them.” She pursed her lips, brow arched in quiet challenge.
“People repeat many things they do not intend to believe,” Darcy answered, a shade too quickly. Then, as if it were of no consequence at all, he added with a smile, “That does not make them true.”
She laughed, conceding the point with a tilt of her glass, and glanced away.
For a moment, he allowed himself to think the matter settled. Then he noticed the direction of her gaze—deliberate, wary—down the length of the table.
Toward Mr Collins.
Her mouth tightened, only briefly, before she smoothed the expression away.
“May I ask,” Darcy said quietly, “whether your cousin has given you cause for discomfort beyond his… conversational enthusiasm?”
Her brows lifted. “An odd question for a ball supper, sir.”
“I am observant,” he replied. “Occasionally, to my regret.”
She stiffened. Her smile now held a question. “What concern is it of yours?”
He met her gaze and chose his tone with care. “Call it a general dislike of seeing anyone cornered against their will.”
She laughed softly, as though to dismiss the matter. “You are very kind, but I assure you my cousin’s chief offense is endurance. One grows weary of being improved at.”
Darcy did not return the smile. “That is not what I asked.”
Her expression shifted—sobering, then brightening again. For a moment, she seemed poised to parry. Instead, she hesitated. The hesitation was slight, but he had been watching her too long to miss it.
“You flinch,” he said quietly. “Not merely from tedium. When he approaches. When you are forced into proximity with him.” His voice lowered. “I do not believe that is nothing. Has he harmed you?”
She drew a breath and released it more slowly. “You observe too much for your own comfort, sir.”
“So I am often told.”
Her fingers tightened about the stem of her glass. “It is not his voice,” she said at last. “Nor even the manner of his address. It is… what he insists upon saying.”
Darcy leaned a fraction closer. The movement sent a faint, unwelcome pressure through his chest, which he ignored. “What does he insist upon?”
She met his eyes now, and all levity fell away. “He speaks of arrangements. Of expectations laid out long before anyone had a voice in the matter. He speaks as though repetition itself might grant authority.” Her mouth tightened. “And when he speaks of them, it is as though he believes I ought to listen—ought to accept—as if such things concerned me personally.”
“That… makes no sense.”
“No,” she agreed. “It does not. And I doubt he is intelligent enough to perceive any fault in it.”
She frowned, then tilted her head, studying him with a curiosity that had sharpened into something more exacting. “But if we are to be candid,” she continued, “the conversations that trouble me most do not begin with myself at all.”
“Oh?”
“They begin,” she said evenly, “with one Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Your aunt, I understand.”
The name fell like a tolling bell. Darcy blinked, a brief tightening passing through him.
