A brief spasm caught at the corner of his mouth. He forced a breath through his nose and let his expression settle into composure by sheer habit.
“You never cared for that sort of talk, did you, Darcy?” Wickham went on, his tone pitched easily, publicly. “I remember you could scarcely keep a straight face when such subjects were raised at Pemberley. Old trusts, family obligations, and the like.”
Darcy felt irritation rise—swift, sharp, and threaded with something more dangerous. Wickham had no right to summon those words into the open. Not here. Not whereshecould hear them and begin, in that incisive way of hers, to wonder. The twitch returned, sharper this time, drawing a faint line along his cheek. He turned his head slightly, presenting his profile, as though the angle alone might subdue it.
“I do not recall finding it amusing.”
“No,” Wickham said at once, conciliatory. “Perhaps not amusing. Tiresome, then. A burden laid on you without your consent.”
Miss Elizabeth’s mouth curved. “A most considerate assessment. One might think consent a useful element in many arrangements.”
Darcy glanced at her despite himself—and was caught. Her expression held a challenge lightly worn, curiosity sharpened by wit rather than suspicion. The sight of it unsettled him far more than Wickham’s provocation. The sensation in his arm deepened,concentrating itself with malicious precision in the middle finger of his right hand. It twitched once. He pressed the offending finger against his thigh and kept his posture perfectly still. He had already allowed too much.
“And yet,” she continued, “I find it endlessly fascinating how certain topics manage to recur, no matter how decisively one declines to encourage them. It does tend to excite curiosity, despite my better judgment.”
She was not circling idly; she was closing in. The ease with which she articulated it, the care of her phrasing, stirred a cold unease beneath his ribs. She spoke as though the thing itself had already begun to yield to her attention.
“You see, Darcy? Declining encouragement is rarely sufficient,” Wickham said. “One must appear to entertain them, or they return with greater enthusiasm.”
Darcy barely heard him. His awareness had narrowed to her—her tone, her concentration, the way her mind moved forward even as her manner remained easy. He had known she was clever. He had not anticipated how dangerous that cleverness might become when turned toward this.
“Like a cold,” Miss Elizabeth chuckled. “Or an unwelcome relative.”
Miss Bingley’s laughter rose like a bubbling brook. “Both topics with which you are intimately familiar, Miss Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth levelled a cooler smile at Miss Bingley, and Darcy’s unease deepened. The muscle beneath his eye flickered again, stubborn as a pulse. He smiled immediately—an old, reliable reflex—hoping the motion concealed it. The effort made his jaw ache.
Miss Elizabeth continued to regard Miss Bingley for a moment, her head tilted slightly, as though considering a line of argument rather than a jest. “And yet intimacy does imply attachment,” she said.
And then her eyes turned to Darcy. “One does not revisit unhappy subjects so persistently without being forced to acknowledge that they retainsomepower—whether to instruct, to warn, or merely to remind.”
Darcy felt a sharp, unwelcome recognition. She was not guessing. She was reasoning. And worse—she was enjoying it. The notion that this might matter to her, that she might feel the pull of it as something worth understanding, filled him with a sudden, irrational need to stop her at once.
Miss Bingley smiled, her eyes bright with interest. “How very philosophical. I should not have thought the matter so complicated.”
“Nor should I,” Miss Elizabeth replied. “Which is precisely why I find it so engaging.”
That did it.
Darcy’s restraint frayed—not from temper, but from urgency. The twitch in his hand broke free again, a quick, traitorous movement he subdued by curling his fingers hard into his palm. He could not allow her to follow this thread any further. Not with Wickham present. Not with half the room listening. Not when she had already come so close without knowing it.
Wickham’s brows lifted, amused. “You would have made a formidable auditor, Miss Elizabeth. Few endure such discussions long enough to inquire into their persistence.”
“I doubt endurance is the issue,” she laughed. “One listens because one suspects there is something beneath the repetition that has not yet been said.”
Darcy spoke then—not loudly, but with a firmness that surprised even him.
“There is not.”
The words came out cleaner than he felt, edged with an authority he did not entirely possess. He had not decided to speak; the moment had forced him to it. The tick in his face ceased at once, as though chastened by the sound of his own voice.
He did not trust himself to say more. Already, he had said too much.
Wickham smiled, as though amused by the exchange rather than checked by it. “You see, Miss Elizabeth? A question answered before it is fully asked.”
“And a very efficient answer,” she returned. “Though I confess I am not yet persuaded.”
Darcy felt that confession land like a challenge, though it was offered with perfect civility. His hand twitched again, once, sharp and unmistakable.
