“Curious and excessively kind,” he said. “Every face was new to me, yet I felt as if I had stumbled into a room of acquaintances. Sir William Lucas could not have been more attentive. Mrs Long is all civility.”
Miss Kitty brightened at once. “Mrs Long says we shall certainly have another ball if you stay long enough, Mr Bingley. She told me so herself.”
Miss Lydia kicked her foot against the rung of her chair. “And there will be officers by then, Kitty. Papa heard it from Sir William.”
“Oh, Lydia, do not tease us so!” Mrs Bennet declared—with a full smile at Bingley. “You know how your papa insists on tormenting my nerves with little fancies like that.”
“But it is true, Mama,” the younger girl insisted. “I am sure Maria heard it, too. Imagine a room full of red coats! I declare I shall never sit down.”
Miss Mary cleared her throat with the air of one who introduces a solemn truth. “A young lady who never sits exposes herself to vulgar observation.”
Miss Lydia rolled her eyes. “I would rather be observed than sit in a corner with Fordyce.”
“That is an uncharitable reflection,” Miss Mary said, though she coloured as she spoke.
Miss Bingley, who had been examining the room with polite attention, chose that moment to address their hostess. “I confess, Mrs Bennet, I had not expected Hertfordshire to be so…” She paused, selecting her word with care. “…animated. One hears of the country as if it were all hedgerows and turnpikes, yet your Assembly had quite the air of a little town.”
“We do very well,” Mrs Bennet replied, brisk and satisfied. “Meryton may not be London, but we have our share of visitors. Lizzy, my love, pass that plate to Mr Darcy. Mr Darcy, you must try the plums; they are from our own trees.”
Darcy accepted the plate because refusing it would only draw notice. But as Miss Elizabeth’s hand neared his, the china gave a tiny, unnatural twitch—nothing that ought to be possible, a mere brush of motion beneath his fingertips—yet his stomach lurched as if he had missed a step in the dark. A sharp prickle raced up his wrist; the air tightened around his skin, too warm, too near.
He pulled back before he meant to, the movement abrupt enough to betray him.
Her eyes jumped to his—quick, sharp, catching far too much—and then dropped again at once. No laugh, no apology. Just the quiet acknowledgement that she had seen something he wished he could explain, or deny, or ignore.
And he could do none of it.
“I assure you,” Bingley was saying, oblivious to everything but his own contentment, “Netherfield could not be better situated. The views toward Oakham Mount are very charming.”
“Oh, are they not?” Mrs Bennet cried. “Our girls walk there often. Lizzy was there only this morning. Lizzy, tell them how fair the prospect is.”
Miss Elizabeth looked as though she would rather bite out her own tongue, but replied dutifully. “The air was remarkably clear, ma’am. One could see as far as Lucas Lodge in one direction and Netherfield in the other.”
“Did you not say, Miss Elizabeth,” Bingley asked, “that Longbourn has some land in that direction?”
“We have a few fields to the east,” she replied. “My father walks there most mornings.”
“Mr Bennet is very fond of his walks,” Mrs Bennet said. “He knows every hedge and gate within three miles. I say he knows them too well; he is never in the house. But men must have their fancies.”
Darcy took another sip of tea. The heat broke across his tongue with a sudden flare, fierce enough to jolt him. He returned the cup to its saucer, fingers pausing there as the sensation settled. A prickle ran up the back of his neck—brief, but unmistakable.
His breath snagged on its next rise—not from pain, but from the unsettling certainty that someone had marked his reaction. The familiar hum of conversation resumed around him, unaltered, yet the instant still hung between his thoughts like a question he could not dismiss.
Miss Bingley turned toward him, her smile arranged with the care she devoted to every social manoeuvre. “I have often observed Mr Darcy’s fondness for a well-situated estate,” she said brightly. “He cannot resist a property with fine woods. Pemberley is renowned for them. Netherfield must seem quite modest beside such grandeur.”
Her tone slid neatly into the room, but to Darcy it felt like a hand closing around a thought he had not meant to display. He had no inclination to discuss Pemberley in a parlour already too full of voices and impressions, nor to entertain comparisons that invited every listener to picture his home.
He straightened slightly in his chair, forcing his attention back into order. “Netherfield possesses its own merits,” he said. “One cannot set two such places side by side as if they were entries in a ledger.”
But even as he spoke, a part of him strained toward the earlier oddness—the twitch of china, the heat of the cup, the feeling that the air itself had shifted without warning. And beneath all of it, the unwelcome thought that Miss Elizabeth Bennet had noticed far too much.
Mrs Hurst nodded. “Quite so. A more modest estate may be very elegant, if properly managed.”
Mrs Bennet nodded vigourously. “Netherfield will do very well when Mr Bingley is fully settled there, I am sure. It is a fine house. It only wants a mistress to put it perfectly in order.” Her smile encompassed the room and yet rested, unmistakably, upon Miss Bennet. The intention was so open that even Bingley, who seldom perceived what he did not wish to see, looked for a moment uncertain.
“I am persuaded it will be difficult to leave it,” he said quickly. “I grow more attached every day.”
Miss Bennet coloured and bent her head over the plate of cake she held.
