The man followed his fellows, stepped out of view. Brutus remained where he was, but there was the faintest rumble in his deep chest.
Darcy closed the ledger and drew the next one toward him. His attention returned to ink and margin, to lines that could be measured and verified.
By the time he finished, the clerk hovered with polite unease.
“Find what you were seeking, sir?”
Darcy considered the question. “For now.” He gathered his notes, replaced the ledgers precisely where he had found them, and reached for his coat. “Thank you for your time.”
The decanter made asoft, decisive sound as Bingley set it down.
“Now then,” he said brightly, rubbing his hands, “we are agreed that the pheasants cannot possibly have all fled the county at once. I refuse to believe it. Darcy, you will back me up—won’t you?”
Darcy looked up a moment too late. “I beg your pardon?”
Bingley laughed. “There! You see? Proof already. You were not listening.”
“I was listening,” Darcy said. “I was not, however, listening to the pheasants.”
Miss Bingley closed her book with a snap that suggested she had never been reading in the first place. “He has been like this all evening. Present in body, absent in spirit. One would think he had left something unfinished.”
Darcy reached for his glass. “I assure you, Miss Bingley, nothing of consequence has been neglected.”
“Nothingyouconsider of consequence,” she said sweetly. “Which is an entirely different standard.”
Mrs Hurst reclined a little more deeply on the sofa. “Charles, you were saying something about a ball? I do hope it shall not be too tiresome.”
Bingley seized upon the rescue with enthusiasm. “Ah, yes! A ball. I am convinced it is precisely what the neighbourhood requires. The weather is bound to keep us all indoors soon, and one cannot hunt forever.”
“One can try,” Darcy said.
Miss Bingley laughed. “Oh, Mr Darcy, you are a marvel of encouragement.”
“I was not aware encouragement was my assigned role.”
Bingley waved that away. “We should host it here, of course. Netherfield has not been properly animated in years—that is what the steward said. A fortnight from now, perhaps? Long enough to spread the word, not so long that everyone grows anxious.”
Mrs Hurst nodded, already imagining it. “With proper music.”
“And the very latest dances,” Bingley added. “I shall have the most fashionable musicians brought from Town to ensure it.”
Miss Bingley’s gaze slid back to Darcy. “You are remarkably silent on the subject. Are you not in raptures at the notion, sir?”
“I see no objection,” he said. “If you wish to host a ball, you certainly may.”
“That is not an opinion,” she said. “That is permission.”
He inclined his head. “Then you have it.”
She smiled thinly. “How generous.”
Bingley leaned forward. “Darcy, you must agree it would be pleasant. New friends, good food for the season, a little gaiety—”
“A great deal of observation,” Miss Bingley put in lightly. “We shall all be quite the spectacle, I daresay.”
Darcy met her look. “If one attends a ball, one expects to be observed.”
“Ah,” she said. “But you wereobservingrather keenly two evenings ago, were you not?”
