She waited, tilting her head and studying him with an earnest, open expression that seemed to permit patience without mockery. Thank Heaven for that. He felt like madman enough already.
“I am not practiced at…” He broke off and pressed his lips together. The fire leaned, just then, toward her skirts, a wavering curl of heat that should have singed the hem. It did not. It bent away, as if corrected by an unseen hand.
Darcy stared. Blinked. Cleared his throat and tried not to wonder what sort of woman this was, whom even fire seemed to worship.
“You may proceed at your leisure, sir. I promise not to faint at incomplete sentences.”
He drew a breath. “You can be in no doubt why I asked to speak with you.”
She considered him over the rim of her glass, then smiled—only a little. “On the contrary. I have entertained at least a dozen possibilities. As I believe you to be a gentleman, however, several of them may be dismissed out of hand. Most of the others are merely the product of a fanciful imagination, and I doubt you are a man ruled by fancy. So, there, I am entirely at a loss, sir.”
He tried to answer her jest and could not. The breath caught halfway in, misfired, and tore loose instead. The sound that followed was not brief, nor decorous—something harsh and scraping that bent him forward before he could master it. He turned away, one hand braced hard on the chair, but the cough came again, deeper this time, dragging at his chest as though it meant to empty him of more than air.
Elizabeth was on her feet at once. “Mr Darcy—”
He shook his head. Tried to beg her to excuse him, wave it off as nothing. Perhaps a bit of sherry would do… but he could not cease coughing long enough to pick up the glass.
“Mr Darcy, youareunwell.” She crossed the small distance and laid a hand on his shoulder, as if she could pat his back to loosen his cough like she would a small child.
The room tipped.
The chair bit into the backs of his legs as his strength fled him, not slowly, not politely, but all at once, as though a marionette’s strings had been cut. He caught the edge of the table and missed it. The glass rang. His knees folded, and his forehead smacked the wood floor.
Elizabeth cried out and sprang back. “Oh—good Heavens, what have I done? Mr Darcy!”
He lifted a hand at once, palm outward, more plea than command. “Nothing. Pray—do not—” The words broke apart as another rasp seized him. He turned from her until it broke off, scrambled to his feet too quickly, and crossed the short distance to the hearth with a gait that betrayed him despite every effort at control.
She moved again, instinct driving her forward. “But let me help. Please, you are very unwell.”
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said hoarsely, gripping the mantel with both hands now, knuckles whitening against the carved stone. “Stay where you are. Please, I beg you.”
She retreated, but not without a soft growl of protest. “Very well, sir.”
The fire snapped softly behind the grate. Darcy leaned into the cool solidity of the mantel as though it were the only thing in the room that could be relied upon. His shoulders worked as he drew breath by force, jaw clenched, fighting the urge to cough again. A sound escaped him despite that resolve—low, ugly, gone as soon as it came. He shut his eyes until the world steadied into something he could bear.
“Shall I fetch… someone?” she offered.
Darcy shook his head. “I am quite recovered,” he said, the words less broken now. He remained where he was, one hand still upon the mantel, the other easing away only after he was certain it would hold.
He could feel her behind him. Not by sound. Not by sight. By the same indefinable awareness that had plagued him since her arrival—an attention that refused direction, that would not be commanded.
“It occurs to me,” he went on, carefully, “that it is a grand—if perverse—coincidence that we should both have been subject to so many… irregularities of late.” He paused, choosing each word as though it might betray him if mishandled. “I wonder whether you have observed the same.”
Elizabeth did not answer at once.
He felt her behind him—still, intent—before she crossed the small distance to the hearth. She held her hands out to the fire, not close enough to warm them, only near enough that the flames leaned subtly in her direction, restless in a way Darcy had learned to distrust.
She watched them for a moment. Then she looked away.
“Yes. I noticed it,” she said, her voice almost matter-of-fact. “From the first time you touched me.”
Chapter Forty
He still stood atthe mantel, one hand braced against the stone as though it anchored him there. The firelight caught the line of his shoulder, the careful stillness of a man who had mastered restraint by habit and now relied upon it too heavily.
Elizabeth did not look at the fire again, but kept her eyes on him.
“At the Assembly. I blamed it on a spark, because it was easier, and because I have two… perhaps three very silly young sisters.” She lifted a shoulder. “Everyone expects sparks at a dance.”
