“You have stated your case on women’s situations beautifully, so I must,” he said in a low voice, leaning a little closer. Darcy’s heart pounded wildly when he asked, “If you were pursuing a partner, a man you admired for his merits rather than what he could offer you, what qualities would you look for?”
This had to be the most pointed conversation he had ever had with any woman. Did she like him? Could she come to love him? He needed to be certain before he acted or spoke. Any sure sign from her would unleash every feeling in his heart.
Elizabeth’s lips parted, and she turned pink. Her gaze slipped from his eyes down to his mouth. “Darcy…” she whispered.
The librarian came to the table at the front to introduce the lecturer, and the conversation in the room stopped. Elizabeth gave a little disappointed sigh and looked away. Darcy reluctantly shifted away to face the front of the room, but he fought a smile as the lecture began.
Somehow, during their short reacquaintance in town, he had gone from being a person Elizabeth disliked to being a person she cared about.
The lecture might have beenbrilliant. Elizabeth could suppose the Institution fostered and disseminated scientific, technical, and literary knowledge and understanding. But what she was most aware of was Darcy. While Mr Accum made demonstrations with an elaborate display and talked of gaslight and the future of illumination to a rapt audience, Elizabeth felt Darcy’s heat next to her. His arm as he held his hat in his lap was scarcely an inch from hers. The audience on all levels of the elegant rotunda leant forward in interest, and Elizabeth wished she had reason to lean into Darcy to pretend to see better.
I put myself forward—how alarming and wonderful—and he seemed interested.
Elizabeth felt she was the sort of woman that could attach a man of sense, a man who had lived in the world, but would Darcy consider marrying a little beneath him? He wanted a marriage of attachment, just as she did, but it might be uphill work to show herself in an amiable enough light to make him propose. She had neither beauty, connexions, nor fortune to tempt him,so her personality and character would be the way to gain her his notice.
But she knew Darcy to have all the worth that could justify the warmest hopes of lifelong happiness with him—if she continued to put forth the effort.
After the lecturer finished and the crowd lingered to talk to him and amongst themselves, some men came to talk to Darcy. He introduced her to his acquaintances, but she preferred to watch him rather than speak herself. She had the impression the audience was more middle class than aristocratic, but Darcy was entirely at ease. He was either putting forth the effort to be more agreeable, or he was more in his element here talking to these people interested in science and manufacturing than in Meryton amongst strangers.
He still should have been introduced and danced, but she had judged him harshly.
While the conversation went on about chemistry and the charter for a Gas Light and Coke Company, Elizabeth noticed that Mrs Sullivan and Colonel Fitzwilliam had drifted apart to talk to themselves. She watched them and wondered why Mrs Sullivan did not linger at Darcy’s side.
“Do you find us tiresome?” Darcy asked.
She started and snapped her eyes back to his. “Not at all. I was only wondering why Mrs Sullivan was not with us, but I am content here with your friends.”
Darcy smiled, but he parted from the group and pointed toward the door. “We are tedious; you are just too polite to admit it. Would you like a tour of the Institution while Fitzwilliam chatters with one group and another?”
She agreed, and Darcy led her out of the crowded rotunda. Adjoining the theatre and near the enclosed space appropriated to the lecturer was a chemical laboratory. Contiguous to that wasthe committee-room. There were also conversation rooms and a reading room.
“On the other side of the theatre is the research library,” Darcy said, leading her down a corridor, “with a gallery on three sides, and easy access to it by a flight of steps, if you would like to see it?”
“I am not a subscriber; am I allowed?”
“Unless you plan on walking out with a book, it won’t be a problem.”
He led them through the throng to an impressive library that Darcy said held five thousand volumes. When the door closed behind them, the silence was a welcome relief from the noise and conversation of five hundred people. Elizabeth noticed Darcy exhale and settle his shoulders, and she wondered how little he liked a crowded room.
“Could we stay for a moment before we find our friends?” she asked. If he suspected that her asking to stay was for his benefit, he did not show it. He smiled and gestured that she look around. She pretended to look at the bookcases nearest to her, her eye wandering up to the gallery, but she preferred to stay near to Darcy as he asked her what she thought of the lecture.
“Does he really mean to tell us it will be possible to have light without a wick?” she said sceptically.
“Mr Accum thinks that through gas, it will be possible to have light in all rooms the way many private homes in England are provided with pipes in the walls that deliver water.”
“Are you a chemist, as well as a landowner?” she teased.
Darcy laughed. “No, I have no talent at all for scientific study.”
“Then why do you attend the lectures?”
He thought for a while, looking around the room as he came up with an answer. “I am always learning. I am curious, I suppose, and I want to support curiosity.”
“I understood little about Mr Accum’s process,” she admitted, hoping he would not disapprove of her or think her stupid. “I would have to attend several more lectures to be able to explain it to anyone.”
Rather than grow haughty or condescend to her, he smiled and stepped nearer. “I do not always understand every topic presented, but I enjoy feeling on the verge of progress.”
She could not help smiling at learning more about Darcy. “How did you come to be involved in the Institution?”
