“Such a pleasure! I declare we have heard so much about you. I have two nieces here this evening, Mr Darcy,” she said, lifting her hand toward a pair of young ladies lingering near the punch table. “Both accomplished, both eager for dancing. You shall meet them, I am sure.”
Bingley beamed. “Mrs Long hosts the most charming gatherings. Her nieces are quite the favourites.”
She gave another quick curtsy—nothing like departure, everything like anticipation. “You are welcome among us, sir, most welcome, indeed! Hertfordshire is always improved by new faces.”
Bingley moved on before Darcy could summon a polite reply, and Mrs Long drifted after them with purposeful slowness, clearly waiting for a better moment to resume the introduction.
Darcy surged ahead, if only to avoid becoming the centre of a small circle at once.
Bingley caught him by the elbow. “You will like it here. They are eager to know us. At least—to knowyou. You will be besieged in a moment. Best to meet ithead-on.”
Darcy doubted that, but he closed the distance anyway.
Bingley stopped to greet another neighbour, and Darcy’s attention slipped past the crush of unfamiliar faces. Someone called out a name—“Lizzy”—and the group of young women near the far wall broke apart for a moment.
Darcy meant only to glance at the commotion. Instead, his vision narrowed.
A young woman stepped into view with a riot of dark curls pinned into a haphazard display. She was speaking to a girl who bounced at her side, and her voice carried just enough to reach him without forming clear words. Something about the way she stood—balanced, alert, ready—caught at him before he could explain why.
He had seen countless young women in countless rooms. None had ever struck him like this: not with admiration, nor surprise, but with a jolt so abrupt it made the air wad up in his throat, as if someone had suddenly grabbed his cravat. Another instant and it seemed like a nauseous fever had brushed up the back of his neck and over his crown.
He drew a slower breath, annoyed by the sensation. It was nothing. The room was warm, the day long, his thoughts still largely back in Derbyshire. His body was merely reminding him that he had not eaten since midday.
Still, his gaze returned to her before he permitted it.
The young woman turned at that moment. Her eyes—dark, joyful, unflinching—caught his without the slightest hesitation. She looked at him as if she were assessing a stranger in a crowd, nothing more.
Yet some inner part of him lurched, as if his balance had shifted a hair too far forward.
He looked away at once.
Bingley called across the room to some acquaintance. “Sir William! There you are! I hope you will introduce us all.”
A man with animated limbs and courtly enthusiasm hurried forward. He bowed to Bingley, attempted a bow to Darcy while still finishing the first, and then swept toward the same pair of young women Darcy had just been studying.
“Miss Bennet! Miss Elizabeth!” Sir William exclaimed. “Fortune smiles. You must—yes, indeed—you must meet our new neighbours.”
Darcy had no time to compose a polite expression. Sir William had already placed the two ladies before him as if arranging pieces on a chessboard.
The shorter one—Elizabeth—studied him rather openly. Up close, she was even more arresting, though not in the glossy, ornamental way Miss Bingley prized. Her face held aquickness, a readiness, the same charged poise he had noticed across the room. She met his eyes without the slightest trace of modesty, but there was nothing brash in her look.
Darcy felt the odd fever-surge again, sharper this time, as though his pulse had skipped in the wrong direction. He tamped down his breathing, refusing to acknowledge it.
“Mr Darcy,” she said.
He returned her greeting with a bow. “Miss Elizabeth.”
She offered her hand with the ease expected in such an introduction. He reached to acknowledge it, but just as his fingers met hers, she gasped and withdrew—so swiftly and with such apparent intention that the gesture settled between them like a closed door.
He could not pretend he had imagined it. She disguised the motion at once by smoothing the edge of her sleeve—an adjustment without purpose, save to conceal the first.
What could have occasioned that? It might have been nothing more than a misjudged angle, or some sudden twinge of pain—her sleeve had shifted as if she concealed an awkwardness there. Or perhaps she disliked the formality of such greetings. Some young ladies cultivated little gestures of mystery in public rooms; he had seen that often enough.
Yet the movement had lacked any trace of coquetry. If anything, she seemed intent on denying notice, not inviting it.
Or perhaps the fault lay with him. His height often put people off, and his reserve was seldom misread kindly.
He dismissed each idea as quickly as it came. None satisfied. None aligned with the directness he had seen in her gaze from across the room. He bowed again, falling back on courtesy because it required no interpretation. “A pleasure.”
